Jazz-Sax has been around a LONG TIME. I’d say one of the longest running sites, since 1997 I believe. And all the stuff here is free. I do require you to register in the hopes that perhaps people comment on stuff, ask questions, etc, etc. I’m not going to password protect posts. Nor require a subscription (I hope that link people are not paying to see!). It is kind of frustrating that some of the guys on the net are charging for things like fingering charts when other people like Charles McNeal are giving away amazing transcriptions for nothing. Something is wrong out there!
Sometimes I receive donations. That is a great thing. Someone just donated some money for one of the arrangements I have up. Thank you very much. I just wish I had time to put more stuff up. More stuff is coming…..soon I hope.
Hey Eric,
I think your assessment is a bit unfair. The password for the fingering chart is freely available if people enter their name and email address.
The registration for this site requires more information than I do. Registration is not required to comment on my site either. And I also don’t have google ads on my site.
Instead I have some classes and options to pay for things, including a premium version of the fingering chart.
Sincerely,
Neal
Seriously? Password protecting a FINGERING CHART? And a chart that you used was the free one Bret Pimentel provided? Seriously?
What do I ask for registration? Username, email address. The other stuff is completely optional, and it will let you register without them (or it is supposed to). Though you do need to answer the CAPTCHA.
Ads? Yes. Finally. I went for about 10 years without Ads. But everyone has them, saxontheweb, etc. And the money goes towards paying for the internet connection and upgrades for the server. Jazz-Sax has always been run on a home server, the current one is an Atom powered computer. I’m hoping at some point to upgrade it to be a little faster and have more memory and a SSD.
I don’t see anything wrong with Ads. Heck, doesn’t woodwind.org or something have a membership donation drive to keep their stuff afloat?
I think the problem I have is that you are charging for a fingering chart. Or making people register for a fingering chart. I mean…..come on. A fingering chart. I have 200+ pages of II-V patterns that require a simple registration. Charles has easily transcribed enough songs for a book or two or four. He’s not charging anything.
Maybe when I finish this project of a community enabled encyclopedia of altissimo fingerings, I will charge for that. I wasn’t thinking of. Maybe registering to add or comment on fingerings and what instrument it works on, but heck if a simple fingering chart can get people to pony-up for a premium version, they should for a huge database of altissimo fingerings…..
I like some things you have on this site, I’ve been registered on here since 2008. But I had never heard from you until today when you attacked something that I did.
I remember reading a poll that you created about whether you should charge for those ii V I licks.
Now you seem to be expressing disbelief that there’s a password when before you assumed that there was a charge to see it…..
Yes, I password protected a fingering chart. It uses high resolution images and I had to pay a better hosting package starting within this last year, I don’t necessarily want to need to upgrade again immediately.
There isn’t anything wrong with ads, I just wanted to create my own stuff.
There are other fingering charts out there. I’m not sure if you’ve created one yourself.
I spent over ten hours making the fingering chart….. Making changes that made sense to me about how it’s organized and presented.
Really don’t want to argue with you about this anymore, it seems like you provide something cool on your site, and I think I provide things that help saxophone players on my site as well…..
-Neal
And yes, Charles McNeal has done some great stuff. And that’s cool he shares it like he does.
What, I’m supposed to be talking to you? Huh?
Actually, the poll was whether or not people would PAY for a hard copy of them. And the answer would be NO, because I believe I did put them on Lulu.com and no one has bought it. Shame, because I had them do a copy of the Zinn Practice Regimen and it was beautiful.
The password thing doesn’t tell you ANYTHING about what is going on. In fact, it just wants a password. No (you need to be registered to view it, nada). It’s not even clear how to really get the password on your “site” as well.
I have an on going chart that I’ve been working on for a while that was based on a font that Matthew Something (I totally forget his name, Australia dood I believe, on the Finale Mailing list) did a long time ago.
Seems like a lot of time for something that one can get online for absolutely free. I think even Selmer and Yamaha have free fingering charts in PDF format for download.
Two suggestions, as I somehow have your site in my Google RSS feeds. One would be to NOT do all those fingering charts as individual posts. I was laughing when I saw them, looked at the “free” (non-password protected ones). I didn’t know things needed to be explained at that level. Whatever.
Second suggestion is to make your site make more sense. Half of the page is the right column overflow. There is no FAQ. There is no obvious “you need to be a free member to get access” to the password protected things. There is no obvious registration. I can get your “12 Killer Saxophone Tips” that are too intense for my Grandma (really?…sigh), but is that going to get me into your site? I can’t tell. I mean, you do these totally way too detailed fingering charts for a simple note, one per post, but you can’t make the site that way? If your “readers” need fingering charts like that, how do they navigate around the site? How did they figure out how to obtain a password for the things that need passwords to view?
I couldn’t figure it out and then decided it wasn’t worth it looking at the other fingering charts and assumed that you are charing people for this, which I think is totally insane. If it is free but you want people to register to perhaps get them to participate in the discussion, that is great. I’m totally for that, and require people here to do that (it also cuts down on the people who leech pdfs off here endlessly). But MAKE IT CLEARER. Again, I had no clue what was what. How to get a password, etc. If I can’t figure it out……and I’m a freaking genius…..how is a mere mortal to cope?
haha, thanks Eric, you make some pretty good points in this last comment. Esp. about navigation and all that. You just weren’t overly friendly initially, so I wanted to clear up the misunderstanding (which I admit is mostly my fault from lack of explanations).
I’m sure you’ve been playing sax longer than me and have definitely had a website up for a lot longer. Sax Station’s only about four years old. Sometimes our perspective from playing for a long time is much different than a beginner. For the chart, I figured being as clear as possible would eliminate most questions.
I figured if I had this fingering chart of my own, I could explain quickly any fingering for any note and do it with my own material. And I can add it to my classes for reference.
Your point that if the chart is clear, the whole site should be more clear was a good one.
Do you have clips of yourself playing on here or youtube anywhere?
Thanks
-Neal
-Neal
Hi Eric! Been a long time. If you don’t remember me, it’s Adam Roberts…the guy who gave you the Giant Steps and Midnight Voyage transcriptions like a decade ago…
I just got my own site up (adamrobertsmusic.com) and running posting more of this sort of stuff recently, including an update of Midnight Voyage.
As for the topic at hand, pay for transcriptions and pdfs? I wouldn’t do it personally, though when I was younger I bought a ton of books. These days if I want it, I do it myself as I find that more valuable. I can’t imagine, with the “free” mindset of the web, you’d get a lot of paying customers. Especially with more than enough things over at Charles McNeal’s site. Plus, I think it contributes to the jazz community more when people are open with the information.
Glad to see you’re still around and kicking.
Hey! dood! whatsup!
yes, it is very valuable to figure it out yourself. Yet you’d be surprised how many emails I get for people wanting a song, or me to do an arrangement just because they really really want it. Ugh. And there are a lot of great people out there, yourself included who make their labors of love free to people. Michael Brecker should be shared by all!
on a side note, I’m currently working on figuring out a trading section on the site which would allow people to upload things…..remember the patterns thing we discussed many moons ago. Might happen. Not sure what the best way to do it is…..that isthe hard part.
anyhow, hope the weather in AZ is good.
Its beautiful out here!
I’m moving towards a more active presence on the web. And that patterns idea, or some sort of trading thing would be interesting to check out. I saw something over at Casa Valdez about a fingering warehouse that has me really intrigued. In particular, microtonal fingerings and split-tone altissimo…!!!
I think that was me mentioning the idea. I think some sort of photo group type sharing thing would probably fit the bill, but I haven’t found one yet that does what I want it to do, which is a tag able gallery (so people and the author can tag a fingering as hi a, works great on selmer mark vi, and someone else tags sucks balls on Yamaha) and that it is linkable to the forum features on buddy press.
Maybe this weekend, too busy with writing out songs and arrangements, doing oboe reeds, and general life things…..plus cleaning up all the spam users that have registered on the site……good god, there are a lot.