#7 Learn The Careless Whisper Sax Solo

0:00 - intro playing of the hook and titles

1:01 - background on careless whisper

1:19 - why careless whisper was pitched and doesn't sound like tenor sax

2:11 - phrase 1 slowly

2:54 - phrase 2 slowly

3:20 - phrase 3 slowly

3:33 - phrase 4 slowly

4:41 - whole thing at full speed

5:19 - sign off

This free saxophone lesson is part of my Sax Hall Of Fame series where I walk you through the RIGHT way to play your favourite iconic sax hooks.

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Careless Whisper was a massive 1984 hit for George Michael and contains one of the most famous sax hooks of all time. Michael knew how important the sax was to the success of the track and went through some 12 different session musicians before finally going with the Steve Gregory version that we all know and love.

The line itself was played on tenor sax on the recording by Gregory but instead of playing it in D minor which is the original key of the song the engineer slowed the tape down and Steve Gregory played it in D flat minor avoiding the awkward high F sharp first note on tenor.

The tape was then sped back up to the original key giving the sax line a really unique tone unlike anything else you can hear on famous sax solos - not quite tenor not quite alto but really gives a distinctive sound to the track. So if you're a tenor player and you've ever tried to copy that line and you can't quite understand why it's not sounding like the original that is probably why!

To keep things simple for this video I'm going to teach you on alto sax so all the pitches I give you will be for alto sax. If you want to play it on tenor transpose it up a fourth, that's five semitones, higher. Okay let's do this!

So without further ado let's break this down into four separate phrases and the first phrase starts on a D middle and you're gonna very quickly rip up a D major scale - E, F sharp, G, A, B and then finish on the C sharp. Then followed by B, F sharp, D, C sharp, B, F sharp, D. So putting together the whole first phrase then…

Second phrase we start on an A, so A, G, D, B, A, G, D. So joining out the whole second phrase… 

Phrase 3 is going to be G, F sharp, D, B, G.

So the fourth phrase we're gonna start on the low f-sharp and we're gonna make our way up a D major scale, so, F sharp, G, A, B then C sharp, D, E, F sharp, and then we quickly rip up the rest of the D major scale so G, A, B to get to the top C sharp where the phrase starts again. And we repeat the whole thing again.

There’s only one difference the second time round and that is at the end of the final phrase, that's phrase four, we go from the F sharp instead of ripping up to the C sharp to start again we just go back to B. And that is the whole first sax break!

Okay great, now finally you can play along at full speed.

So I hope you enjoyed the video today, if you find it useful please do subscribe down below and "ring the bell" for notifications, also, don't forget to go to the descriptions and get the free pdf bonus sheet. Sign up for that one andI'll see you next time for more free great sax lessons and vlogs on Get Your Sax Together.