Free Podcast on Saxophone Best Saxophone Web Site Ever dot com + Car Dab Radio

[Tony Edge]

If you are planning a long journey and want to listen to talks on how to improve your saxophone playing.
Download some brilliant talks by some of the masters of the saxophone these will be sure to keep you entertained for hours.
These can be downloaded for free, as .mp3 format.
The website http://www.bestsaxophonewebsiteever.com/
The podcast link http://www.bestsaxophonewebsiteever.com/tag/podcasts/
With tutorials on saxophone Techniques
http://www.bestsaxophonewebsiteever.com/category/best-saxophone-tips-and-techniques/

Learn from the lectures from some of the saxophone players.
http://www.bestsaxophonewebsiteever.com/category/best-saxophone-players/

These days many car radios have sockets for mp3 players.
My car had an old radio and no input sockets.
I love listening to Jazz FM but is only available on DAB Radios
So it was time for a change the reviews for a low cost car dab radio
The Mutant MT5068DAB Car Stereo RDS DAB Radio with USB, CD, WMA, MP3, iPod, iPhone and SD Card were very good with prices with delivery just a little over ?70 on EBay.
Fitting was quite easy once the old radio had been removed the connectors on most are standard ISO.  Hiding the tiny Dab antenna wire took a bit of fiddling but with a bit of patience with a small length of ring main cable stripped to just one insulated wire.
After 5 minutes managed to reach the door frame and secured the tiny SMA Antenna
with some gaffer tape and carefully pulled the wire back to the radio.
Switched on with the antenna mounted near the windscreen pillar.
Bingo!!
Looking forward to a 7 hour drive tomorrow the company of Jazz FM and the "Free Podcast on Saxophone Best Saxophone Web Site Ever dot com" downloaded to a tiny ultra cheap mp3 player.
Happy motoring
Tony

[Tony Edge]

Just arrived back home after 7 hours driving
Delighted with Dab radio received Jazz FM in the remote parts of North Wales.

Lovely journey listening to the pod casts on Saxophone made the journey a joy.

For me to name just two interesting tips gained from the lectures I need to work on.

(1)   Watch the masters of saxophone on You tube when they play fast music you can hardly see their fingers move.   Try and keep your fingers touching the pearls but remember on tenor this is not easy for many.
(2)   Most of the players practice with a metronome.

One of the discussions mentioned should Tenor sax or Alto lead.
One of the podcasts reinforced my thinking

I like to use sibelius to practice. The source of music could be a midi file or a scanned sheet with melody and piano.
I like to play the music in Band in a Box change the melody instrument to Tenor Sax With ctrl alt 5 or ctrl alt 6 change the key that sound nice and is within easy play range.
Quite often dropping an octave.
A problem encountered the piano sounds too low.
With Band in a Box this is easy if I wish to keep the piano and other instrument without change. Drop just the key of Sax with 3rd 5th or octave by using [melody] , [edit melody track], [transpose melody only]  or use the similar for the melody if in the soloist track.
Add any extras such as improvisation and chords. When happy
Save all to a midi file.
Open Sibelius and import the midi file.
I find for practice I like the play along you can see all instruments the play along vertical line cursor is very precise.
I noticed during playing along watching the notation if I played the tenor sax note a little before the same note for piano did not sound as good as if I played the sax note when the cursor line was just to the right hand side of the notehead.

[Tony Edge]

Bad news for 2014.
Jazz Fm stopped the Dab radio broadcast for people outside the London area.


But for home use I resurrected an old SKY box we still have the dish outside.
I tapped into the internal +5V supply with a 250mA fuse and resistor to limit current in case of any short circuits.
I soldered a USB cable to the +5V and 0V.
I rummaged in my old junk box and found an old FM transmitter
These can be bought for about ?5 on ebay
In car wireless MP3 radio transmitter they use batteries or power from a USB connector and a small phono connector for MP3 players.
The ?1 shop had a converter cable.
Then just plugged in the FM transmitter into the SKY box.
Selected JazzFM on the Sky box.
Now we can listen to JazzFM on the radio.