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You are here: Home / Reviews / Mouthpiece Reviews / Alto Mouthpiece Reviews / Flight of the Bumble Bee

Flight of the Bumble Bee

August 13, 2009 by Steve 7 Comments

One of my students challenged me to play this song……so I’ve been working on it.  It’s getting there.   Man this thing is hard.  I’m going to keep working on it until it’s perfect and I can play it in my sleep………. I’m dedicating this one to my Dad. He use to come to all my concerts and after every concert would say “Pretty good son but……..you need to work on your technique! It’s all about your technique! If you don’t have good technique……….” Anyways, here you go Dad. I know, I know…..technique! I’m playing this on a Selmer Reference 54 alto saxophone and my Freddie Gregory refaced HR Link 7. Not bad for a jazz player………..

https://www.neffmusic.com/images/mp3/Flight%20of%20BB%201.mp3

Filed Under: Alto Mouthpiece Reviews, Live Recordings Tagged With: flight of the bumble bee, freddie gregory

Steve

About Steve

Steve Neff has been playing and teaching saxophone and jazz improvisation around the New England area for over 30 years. He is the author of many best selling jazz improvisation methods as well as founding the popular jazz video lesson site Neffmusic.com.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. AvatarMike says

    December 28, 2009 at 7:52 pm

    Funny enough…this is better than a lot of classical players can play this hehe…
    Interesting how a jazz mouthpiece can sound great on classical work. Maybe I’ll pay for a rubber link and use it for both situations…occasionally I’ll pull out the Meyer but it gets too bright up top.

    Reply
  2. Avatarmike says

    February 9, 2010 at 12:53 am

    hey steve, what note does this piece start on?

    i seem to have heard to versions. one that starts on B and one on F# and its bugging me. i paid for the sheet music and it sound completely wrong. -_______-

    Reply
    • stevesteve says

      February 9, 2010 at 7:40 am

      Mine started on B for alto sax.

      Reply
  3. Avatardeolsaxman says

    February 12, 2010 at 4:29 am

    That was great. The ONLY suggestion I could think of is to try to do the whole thing with one breath (really just circular breathing)
    2 fun versions you might like to hear (of Flight of the Bumblebee) are by Galway (on flute) and one I heard on an album by George Young (I think it was called “The Greatest Sax in the World” – kind of egoistic, but is WAS good). He became my alto idol of that time.

    Reply
  4. AvatarDahunsi says

    September 7, 2017 at 6:17 pm

    Hello Steve. Can you please make a lesson on circular breathing? I’ve been struggling with the concept for years now, and it’s driving me nuts.

    Reply
    • SteveSteve says

      September 9, 2017 at 2:08 pm

      Dahunsi, I’ll see what I can do regarding a circular breathing lesson. I learned to do it in high school but haven’t used it since to be honest. I have never seen a need for it over all these years but I’ll see what I can do. Steve

      Reply
  5. AvatarAnand Ramakrishna says

    September 12, 2017 at 11:26 pm

    Nice. But it really misses the circular breathing. There’s a recording of this one by Harvey Pittel in his website.

    Reply

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