Alto Sax Etudes Exploring Tensions: 2025 NASA Masterclass Follow-Up Materials

Sharing these annotated etudes (downloadable file below) as a follow-up from my 2025 NASA Region 1 masterclass. I think we sometimes skip several steps when we learn this. So calling attention to the beauty in the tonality in a piece makes the alterations that much more impactful. This exercise is meant to help clarify different sounds for an advanced student.

These two etudes (for Alto Sax) are meant to illustrate varying tensions that are commonly used in jazz improvising and hopefully offer a look into the way jazz musicians actually approach these sounds.

Etude A contains melodies pulled from “tonal” scales. I believe this gives a strong story of the song and is important for creating memorable melodies. Etude A is not free from tensions however - the sound of V7 resolving to I, for instance, is an important tension and release!

Etude B has many more resolved and unresolved tensions and at times treats each chord as its own island while keeping in mind its context within the composition. Much like in Etude A, scale notes are not all equal. (There’s a lot of music and jazz education that goes into understanding these concepts and creating melodies, but I hope to provide some inspiration.)
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In Etude A bars 1-5 contain one scale sound that connects all these chords. In Etude B there are sounds pulled from 5 different scales for those same measures.

I believe the way most improvisers play in the style of Etude B is based on the sounds from Etude A or the song itself, and then experiment with colors. Meaning, thinking of a new scale from each chord is less common than hearing and singing these different expressions. 

In a larger sense we as artists are calling attention to the relationships of different chords (Etude A) or drawing the ear to other shapes possible in these sounds (Etude B). No value judgement in this -- Satie's Gymnopédie might be one of my desert island pieces and is made from all consonant sounds.

I’d recommend playing these etudes with a backing track. Or even slowly playing the chords on piano and experimenting with the associated scales. They could be helpful in your transcription analysis as well.

etudes_a_and_b.pdf
File Size:	94 kb
File Type:	pdf

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