I have been thinking of starting to play the saxophone that I bought about 3 years ago (my teenage daughter has benn enjoying it meanwhile!) and have been looking at the jazz exams.
Do you/your pupils usually use the Cd recording for the exam or have a live accompianist?
What tends to be the norm?
Any views/experiences gratefully received.

nothing about accompanists but yay you want to play sax!

I used the CDs for my Jazz Clarinet exams, and it was fine - it's nice playing with a band rather than just a piano accompaniment.

The only 'downside' is that you can't change their dynamics etc - several times I've wanted to play a bit softer here and there, but when the band continues loudly it then seems out of place to do so!

Have fun!

I wonder what the requirements are for an accompanist? I do jazz..not CLassical. My site reading is no where near my playing ability, but im jazz..I dont read music i look at chord charts and improvise.

Just interested if he must be a site reader or if the accompanist can play his own thing as long as it follows what the examinee must play. ?

Daniel

Thanks for your replies.
I wasn't sure if anyone was using the CDs for the exam or not - so now I know that people do I shall maybe go with this.
Jazzman - you can buy the piano/keyboard accompaniments for Jazz exams. However I should think that some improvisation might be encouraged?-as this is the nature of the exams. However it is the saxophone (or whatever) player who is being examined and so the emphasis must on listening to them?? Hence nothing too fancy on the accompaniment!

I used the backing tracks from the CD when I did my first Jazz trumpet exam last November.

I created another CD which did the following:

- contained just the 3 tracks I was going to play in the order I wanted to play them (my portable CD palyer doesn't have a programmer)
- cut out the voice that does the count-ins (I think these do not sound good and really shouldn't be necessary)
- cut down the time between tracks so that there's no big gaps (for apprehension to set in)
- speeded up one of the tracks (without altering pitch) which I thought was a bit too slow for my liking
- very slightly increased the pitch so that I didn't have to pull out my main tuning slide so far to be in pitch myself

The examiner noticed that some of these things had been done and commented on it, which was probably a positive thing.

I'll be doing the same sort of thing for my next exam in February.

Maybe one day I'll look into creating my own versions of the backing tracks using computer software, where you can introduce some of your own ideas. I imagine that this sort of thing wouldn't be frowned upon (quite the opposite perhaps) as long as you don't stray too far from the path.

Regards,

Mark.

Actually the jazz exams are quite novel and do not follow the classical structure at all for accompanists. You could very well ask your friend who happens to play acoustic guitar to come along to the exam with you and just play the chord charts for the pieces, is'nt that great! Hey maybe if you had 2 musical friends you could get one to play bongos!

Like the idea of the bongos!

I'll remember that for next time... though I don't suppose it'd go down so well in a non-jazz exam...