{"id":3072,"date":"2016-10-13T19:43:09","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T23:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.musikalessons.com\/blog\/?p=3072"},"modified":"2023-01-24T00:17:44","modified_gmt":"2023-01-24T05:17:44","slug":"the-saxophone-in-pop-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.musikalessons.com\/blog\/2016\/10\/the-saxophone-in-pop-music\/","title":{"rendered":"The Saxophone in Pop Music: 1950s to Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Have you ever thought about playing saxophone in a rock band? Maybe you’re getting bored of playing in concert band or marching band or other school ensembles? Maybe you don’t want to have to learn a new instrument in order to join your guitar, bass, and drum playing friends who have decided to start a rock band? Not quite sure how the saxophone fits in to rock and pop music? Typically, pop music is associated with instruments such as guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, etc. However, the saxophone definitely has its place in pop music. In fact, in the past few years especially, the use of saxophone in pop music has been making a resurgence.\"saxophone<\/p>\n

The saxophone<\/a> was initially invented for use in military bands. It was meant to be a combination of a woodwind instrument and a brass instrument, combining projection with dexterity. Inventing such a versatile instrument led to versatile applications. Today, the saxophone has become an important part of almost every genre of popular music: jazz, funk, R&B, blues, reggae, ska, soul, rock, pop, etc.<\/p>\n

Pop music is hard to define. There isn’t really an exact definition. When some people use the term \u201cpop\u201d, they are referring to all popular music; others refer to \u201cpop\u201d as a specific genre under the \u201cpopular music\u201d heading. For the purposes of this article, I’ll use the term \u201cpop\u201d to denote music that made it to the Billboard <\/i>charts. Billboard<\/i> started charting music popularity statistics around the time rock and other similar genres of music were being established and popularized in the 1940s and 1950s.<\/p>\n

The role of the saxophone in pop music varies. If we want to go way back in time and define what popular music was, we could say church music was the popular music during the early Renaissance. Or we could say opera was the popular music of the Italian elite in the 17th<\/sup> and 18th<\/sup> centuries. Obviously, neither of those styles had saxophone. In the 1930s and part of the 1940s, swing music was America’s popular music. The saxophone was heavily used. When swing music died out, the saxophone had to find a new home.<\/p>\n

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As noted earlier, the saxophone is a versatile instrument. It can be used as an ensemble instrument, as part of a horn section, or as a solo instrument. It can have different effects added to it. The saxophone had no trouble adjusting to the ever-changing music scene. The specific role of the saxophone in pop music changed over time. In this article, I’ll break down the role of the saxophone in pop music by decade, starting with the 1950s.<\/p>\n

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1950s<\/b><\/h2>\n

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Pop music in the 1950s took a lot of its early influence from jazz. In a way, rock and roll is a simplified version of jazz, at least harmonically. It consists of a lot of blues-based progressions, or progressions using I, IV, V, and the occasional vi chord. Because of the similarities, the saxophone had no trouble fitting right in.<\/p>\n

One of the most well-known songs from the 1950s, \u201cRock Around the Clock\u201d by Billy Haley and His Comets, prominently featured the saxophone. Many other songs featured the saxophone as an ensemble as well as solo instrument.<\/p>\n

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