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PodchaserMeet Joel! For our first episode in the “Meet the Tutors” series Nigel is talking with jazz educator Joel Purnell.
Joel is a member of our Sax School tutor team, but you might know Joel from his “Triad Pairs” video on YouTube. Our Sax School Members know him as the brains behind our Explore Jazz series of courses.
But, he didn’t set out to be a jazz sax player, let alone one of the top jazz educators in the UK! Check out the full story in today’s episode.
About this episode
G’day, Nigel here. In this episode of the Sax School Online Podcast I’m chatting with Joel Purnell from the Sax School tutor team.
So Joel is not only helping all of our members at Sax School in our Sax School tutor team. He’s also an amazing jazz artist and an educator, one of the top guys here in the UK.
So today we’re going to do is dig a little bit into his background. Because I’m hoping that we can uncover some of the secrets to the way he approaches improvising, practising, and learning, so we can get some tactics and tips that we can all apply. I think it should be a fun conversation.
Hey also, if you are new to the podcast and you’re enjoying it, it just be awesome if you could share it with one other person so we could reach more friends like you. Help us spread the message – that would mean the world to us.
Meet Joel Purnell from the Sax School Tutor Team
Nigel: So, Joel, I was thinking about this the other day. You were actually the very first saxophone player in the UK that I spoke to when I arrived here, 20-plus years ago. So, it’s quite strange to think that now we’re working together on Sax School, helping our members in the Sax School tutor team, doing stuff together. It’s funny how it works out!
Joel: It is indeed, yeah. I remember you calling me up when you’d first come off the cruise ships. And we had a mutual friend trombonist called Kevin Holbrook who put you in touch with me, and you phoned me up, scoping out gigs.
N: ‘What’s the sketch? What’s this UK place all about?’ I suppose though, in a way, it’s, It’s not unusual that we are sat here 20 years later. Because that’s the way the music business works, isn’t it? It’s all about connections.
J: It’s all about networking – who you know, and then what you know.
Networking as a musician
N: And that’s always a difficult thing to hear if you’re new in your saxophone journey, particularly if you’re young, and have ambitions to do it as a career. But I know in my career, I can trace everything, like a web, back to people I’ve randomly had conversations with. I’m sure you’re the same. All the amazing players that we’ve had come and do masterclasses at Sax School, they all say the same thing too.
J: Yeah. It’s like a big family tree. It’s like a sort of a music DNA. And from that point of view it can be a bit daunting. It is like, “Well how am I ever gonna get anywhere? I’ve not got any gigs and I don’t know any other musicians.’ Jam nights, things like that. Just getting yourself down, and meeting some other players and chatting to them. That’s how it all starts. That’s how it started for me and that’s how it starts for most people. So you’ve just got to start that family.
N: And it starts with the first person you meet, and making those conversations. That’s why all musicians are such friendly, happy people!
J: Oh yeah.
N: Are we?
J: I think so. Mostly.
Being a Jazz Educator
N: Okay so we’ve got lots to talk about today. But I think one point that we could dig in on is – well, we know each other now because we’re working on Sax School. So, you’re making amazing jazz lessons for our thousands of students inside Sax School as part of our Sax School tutor team. And they love your lessons, by the way. Even I love your lessons too. I’m learning loads of stuff.
But you don’t just help us at Sax School. For a number of years. You’ve also been working at the Leeds Conservatoire, right? And hey, even before I thought about coming to England, I’d heard about the Leeds Conservatoire and the jazz program. It’s one of those schools that’s got a reputation all around the place. So did you always see yourself as going into being a jazz artist and a jazz educator?
J: Well, definitely a jazz artist is what I wanted to be. I didn’t see myself going into education but here I am doing it and I love it, you know. I’m really glad, glad I did get into that. I’ve worked at the Conservatoire for nearly 25 years now. That makes me feel old! And obviously, I’ve taught thousands of students in there who are all fantastic.
What I really like about that sector is they’re there because they want to be there. You know, they’re not forced into playing it by their parents. They’ve made a decision to come and study music, so they’re all really passionate about learning. And they all go off and have great careers. So that’s really kind of satisfying, from a teacher’s point of view, when you see them headlining a festival somewhere. Or they’re on this recording. And they’re all making a living out of music and sounding great, – sounding much better than I am, that’s for sure in a lot of cases.
So I love that side of it. And I like teaching and it’s good to share what you’ve learnt, and find ways of communicating music, which is always a weird thing anyway, because the language of music is music.
Learning by teaching
Also it makes you analyze yourself. That’s what I like. So I do this and I do it quite naturally, but now I’ve got to teach you to do it. You’ve got to really think about it. And you learn a lot from teaching, because you’ve got to learn how to teach it. And it makes you really engage with what you’re doing, clearly. Sometimes you realize you’re not doing what you think you’re doing! And it creates practice subjects for yourself and things to work on.
N: I completely agree with you. I think teaching is actually one of those things that helps you to be a better player. And a lot of people who don’t teach, don’t think about it that way. But because you’ve got to go through that process of breaking down what you’re doing in a way that somebody else can understand, it forces you to really clarify the way you think about things. So I think it’s a great personal development tool. You’re helping other people, and you’re also helping yourself.
J: Without a doubt. That’s what everyone should be doing in the practice. You should be self-analysing, and that’s, what teaching taught me. It’s that ability to really self-analyse my playing and see what I need to work on. I can see ‘this isn’t quite as good as I thought it was’, or ‘that technique’s not quite right’, or ‘that sound doesn’t sound like I expected it to’ – because I’ve got to show it to someone else. That’s what I learn from teaching at the Conservatoire and in the Sax Schoo tutor team.
But whether you teach or not, I think that’s something that’s really important to do – that self-analysis, that self-criticism. Whether it’s to tell someone else about it, or just to tell yourself in your practice planning.
Joel’s computer obsession
J: But I didn’t set out to do that, as I was saying. I was into computers I was massively, massively into computers. So when I was kind of 13, 14, – bearing in mind this is a long time ago – I wrote the entire computer system for my school! And I did a GCSE exam in it when I was 13 or something. I was seriously into computers.
N: Hang on, hang on. So, just for context here – I think I’m a little bit older than you. So what are we talking about? Is this the nineties?
J: Eighties.
N: really?
J: Yeah, mid-eighties.
N: Computers, that was all the thing. I finished high school in ’86 and yeah, computers were just happening, right? All my mates were going off to do computer science. It was like – this is the future.
J: Yeah, Atari ST, I had a BBC Micro, if you remember those. So it was that kind of time, but I was really into it and coding and stuff.
Learning Clarinet
And it just happened at the same time – I’ve always had an interest in music, I like listening to music. What I wanted to play was guitar, there were no guitar teachers. So they gave me a cello and I wasn’t lugging that around. So that was it for another year. And then I thought ‘I quite fancy saxophone’. I’d seen it on TV on Top of the Pops and thought, ‘Oh, that’s pretty cool’.
There was only one saxophone at my school at the time, so they stuck me on clarinet, which I quite enjoyed. And I think I already had that mind of becoming a musician because my first instinct was I needed to listen to some people playing clarinet. Now, I see students all the time that just don’t listen to other players. And it’s just so important, and it was one of the first things I thought.
So I went out to my local Woolworths in Bolton in the UK. I was scouring all the tapes, just looking for anything with a picture of a clarinet on. And I found two things. I found a Benny Goodman tape and I found an Acker Bilk tape.
N: Oh, legends, yeah.
J: So, I got my pocket money and I got these tapes and I listened to the Acker Bilk. It was nice but it wasn’t up my street. And then I listened to the Benny Goodman one and I had never heard anything like it.
Discovering Jazz
I remember the next week going into my clarinet lesson and saying, ‘right, I think I want to learn jazz’. And my clarinet teacher at the time, who can remain nameless for this podcast, kind of went, ‘oh, jazz – like this’. So I remember thinking, “I’m going to have to teach myself this.” And that’s where it started.
And that’s what I did. I became completely self-taught from a jazz point of view. And that’s literally what I did. I broke it down and imitated it.
N: What age were you when you started Joel?
J: 14.
N: Really? Oh, that’s interesting.
J: Yeah. So quite late really for a lot of people. So that was me hooked. And then I eventually got a saxophone and did the same thing. I went to Woolworths and got a Parker collection tape – Charlie Parker -and I listened to that. So computers went out of the window, and a very financially lucrative career turned into me deciding to be a musician!
And off I went to study at the college where I’ve ended up working now. But it was a bit of a different institution back then. It was called Leeds College of Music. And it was actually the first place, I think, in Europe to offer a degree in Jazz Studies as it was at the time.
So I basically just stayed at home for three years and practised for twelve hours a day. I didn’t turn up a lot, but the environment was great. So just like we said earlier about jams, the people I met there I still work with now, all this time later -like thirty-five years later.
N: It was the start of your network, wasn’t it?
J: Yeah completely.
N: I think it’s fascinating to hear what your first inspirations were – Benny Goodman, Acker Bilk- less so, … Charlie Parker. I’m quite envious that you discovered Charlie Parker in your teens because I grew up in a little town in North Australia and, I didn’t have access to anything like that really. I wish I had. I didn’t discover that until I actually got to music university, although I love jazz. But when I first heard it I thought, ‘well this is it’. It’s like the blinds going up and you think, ‘Oh my God, this is what it’s all about.’ But I wish I’d discovered it earlier.
J: I mean I will say that is literally the only tape I had for about five years. So that was my only reference of saxophone. I remember actually going to uni and obviously, everyone’s got their own influences. And I remember somebody playing me some Michael Brecker and it didn’t even sound like a saxophone to me. I had to take the headphones off. It’s like, ‘what is that?’
But it’s great that discovery of other people just saying, ‘Have you checked this out?’ I hadn’t had that before. I was in Bolton, all my friends were into Techno and House music. When I learned to drive and they all used to get in my car and I would put on some Charlie Parker. They would just look at me as if I was mad. but I played it anyway because I was into it.
N: So there you go. Jazzer at heart.
Professional Jazz Artist
N: So what about when you got out of university? You’ve spent all those 12 hours a day practice sessions, and built up all of your skills. So naturally, you’d go straight into a full professional career as a jazz artist. Was it a simple path like that?
J: I’d already started gigging when I was about 15. I’d started doing kind of paid gigs in Manchester, and that’s how I supported myself through uni. There was a great club in Leeds which was a jazz club called The Underground, which put on gigs three times a day. It was right across from the college. So, I used to do a lot of work there. It was a great place, it’s not there anymore. The entire club is the toilets of a nightclub now, which is very sad. But I’ve got fond memories of The Underground.
And we used to have the Leeds International Festival, so there was lots going on. So when I came out I was already working, but maybe not enough to kind of get on and buy a house and all these kind of things.
N: It’s a hard road purely as a jazz artist.
Touring with the Blues Brothers
J: It is. And I was doing a few functions and I was scraping by. But I thought ‘I need something a bit more hardcore’, let’s say. So I don’t know if it still exists – does The Stage still exist, the newspaper? Yeah, so there used to be a paper called The Stage, and it was advertisements for musicians and actors and anybody involved in the entertainment industry. And I saw that the Blues Brothers’ official tour, which was the Belushi backed official one from America, … was about to go out on tour, was basically hiring and doing auditions. So I thought, ‘Well, I could probably probably turn my hand to that’. And I went down to London, did the audition, got that job, and that’s what I did for three years.
J: When I came back to the UK after that, I just got straight back into jazz. I was ready to get back into jazz and set up my own group. And that’s literally when I got offered the job at the Conservatoire, and I’ve been there ever since, and really just doing jazz since then.
N: Wow, what a luxury. And it is important too to be able to focus on jazz like that, because that’s how you get to be as good as you are. Right? And, at the end of the day, you are one of the guys who’s helping to keep that jazz flame going with all the up-and-coming young people in the UK.
J: well, that’s the beauty of jazz and improvisation. I think people think there’s maybe a magic bullet. How do I improvise? And then ‘[they think] ‘I’ve learnt to improvise and I’m there.’ But I find that every door you open there’s 10 locked doors behind it. So I kind of feel -and I do honestly mean this -that I know less about it now than I did when I started, because I keep discovering new stuff. So it’s, it’s the gift it keeps giving. I’m never bored. Let’s put it that way.
Explore Jazz inside Sax School
N: That’s really great to hear that. And, I can appreciate that because every time you make another one of these Explore Jazz lessons for Sax School, I’m learning more. I’m loving having you on the Sax School tutor team because I’m learning so much stuff from you, too. It’s brilliant. We all learn from each other, don’t we?
J: Oh, it’s been great fun making Explore Jazz working in the Sax School tutor team. We’ve done all sorts of stuff, from improvising tactics, to looking at some tunes and everything to do with jazz and shapes and structures and different approaches. So it’s really good to get them down on video as well, and to share it with the community at Sax School. They are really engaged in that kind of thing, and there’s lots of questions and chat around it.
So it’s been lovely doing that. Teaching to a community as part of the Sax School tutor team is a very different experience and I’ve really enjoyed it.
N: Yeah. And it’s nice to have that record like you say. So for anybody who’s listening, who doesn’t know what we’re talking about- at Sax School, we’ve got thousands of students learning with us. And Explore Jazz is just one of the categories of lessons that we’ve got inside the massive lesson library.
And by the way, if you want to go check it out, we do have a 14-day trial running. You can come and try it out and see if it’s right for you. It’s a great way to kick the tyres, try a bunch of lessons, get some help from Joel and myself and the rest of the Sax School tutor team, because there’s a bunch of us – and have some fun. Come and see if it’s the right thing for you.
So that’s all over at saxschoolonline.com.
Unlocking your development
N: People are listening to you talk about your journey, and you talk about how how you locked yourself in your room and you practiced for 12 hours a day. And I can remember going through the same process. It was such a luxury if I’m honest. Now that I’m in my fifties, I dream of having that much time to actually practice every day. But it’s easy for somebody who’s new to saxophone to think that that’s just such an unattainable thing for them. It’s maybe something that they’ll never have the opportunity to do either.
But I’ll bet there were some things unlocked your development as a saxophone player. Maybe you’ve got a couple of things that you could share that were big triggers for you in the way that your learning improved. That might be helpful to somebody who’s new to their journey.
J: Sure. I mean, the reason I ended up, practicing so much was that was all I had to do at the time. The purpose of my life was to practice. I was at university studying music, so that’s what I should have been doing as well. It was a bit extreme. But the thing is, I’d found a way of getting addicted to practice.
Addicted to practice
And what I realized was, it wasn’t practising stuff I could do. So a lot of people will find some tunes that they enjoy playing and they can play well and they play them again and again and again. What I realized is I sought out things I couldn’t play all the time.
So I’d literally flip through books or come up with exercises.And as soon as I found one that I literally couldn’t play the first bar of, that’s what I commit to. And that seems a little bit extreme and I’d slow it right down and speed it up. But the thing is, in two weeks’ time I go from not being able to play something, to being able to play something. And you know that you’ve improved. That is the addictive quality of practice– because you start to think ‘well – what else can I do?’ Like, ‘can I do anything?’
And yeah, you can do absolutely anything you want. You’ve just got to practice it and dedicate to it. And the reason I ended up doing those hours was I was just addicted to that feeling of – ‘where could I be if I practice all this stuff I can’t do? Look at all this stuff I can’t do’.
And obviously, I’ve realised over time that there’s always going to be a lot of stuff I can’t do. I think back then being younger, I thought at some point, I’d actually reach some kind of critical mass, and know everything there was to know. As I said, it is the gift that keeps giving, and I’ve accepted that, and now I’m a bit calmer in my approach to it. But that’s why I was doing that then.
How your brain works
One thing that, I really struggled with it back then – I was doing all this practice, and I was learning all this great stuff, but when I went and did the gig none of it came out. And I used to find it insanely frustrating. How come I’m so comfortable with it in the daytime practising but it just doesn’t even appear in my playing?
And I wasted years of my life just trying to get this gap down, between how quickly can it be naturalized in my playing. Eventually, I realized that it takes as long as it takes. Your brain works in funny ways. It has to be interpreted emotionally – the sounds of things – not just the motor action. And it’s got to be interpreted aurally. So when your brain’s ready and it understands that nugget of music, then it’ll come out in the right place.
And I still gauge it in this way now. So If I’m playing something, let’s say one of the YouTube lessons that I’ve done s part of the Sax School tutor team, – say, triad pairs. So I remember practising triad pairs and I loved them. I could do them all and I knew where to play them. But when I’d be improvising on a gig, I’d see a chord coming up and I’d think, ‘ooh, I can do a triad pair there’. Now that is not me performing. That’s not natural, that’s not musical. That’s me still practising on stage and you don’t want to do that. You want to enjoy your time and it should be natural and flowing.
And eventually, you get to the point where you play something, you go, ‘Ooh, I just played a triad pair there’. And you know, now it’s in your vocabulary. But it takes as long as it takes. And that saved me a lot of heartache, that realisation. It sounds like a small thing, but I think a lot of people do that.
N: It’s a massive thing. Because it’s about understanding the way your brain works. It’s the psychology of the way that we learn, and remove ourselves from trying to force that thing in and then letting it just happen.
Keep practice and performance separate
J: Yeah, completely. I’m a big believer in keeping practice as a work mode and performance as a fun mode. And as soon as you start to mix those together, where you try and bring your work into your fun time or the fun into your work time, it’s quite detrimental. Because it’s frustrating.
It’s frustrating from the point of view of doing a gig and trying to do what you’re working on when you’re not ready. The work’s not done. And it’s unmusical – it’s not good for the listener. But it’s also bad to bring too much of the fun into your practice, because you just practice what you’re comfortable with and you don’t progress.
So I’m a really big believer in keeping those two things very separate in my mind, and having two modes of thought while I’m in those two different environments. Then I enjoy the gigs and I enjoy the practice. Just in the same way as if you’ve got a job that you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.
Record everything
And I think this is really pertinent as well to this era because now we record ourselves a lot. We are putting ourselves on social media or if we do, for example, the ACCELERATOR at Sax School, which is a video exchange tuition. So my students have got to record themselves, and it comes up all the time. ‘Why when I practice, I play it perfectly. But then when I record it, it all goes to pot.’ So this kind of thing occurs still, but maybe in a more up-to-date format. So there’s lessons to be learned there.
N: Yeah. Wouldn’t it have been amazing if we had that video tool when we were teenagers?
J: Indeed, or just the ability to record yourself without wheeling in a massive rig like it was back then. It costs nothing to record yourself these days, whether that’s video or audio. So my advice, is just to record everything. So it’s not ‘Right, I’ve done my practice and now I’m into the recording bit’. Why not just press record when you walk into the practice room and forget about it? And if there’s some gems in there afterwards, that’s great. If you never listen to it again, just delete it. You know, it’s no big deal, but it doesn’t cost anything anymore and it’s so easy to do. So, why not?
N: Yeah, that’s really great advice. And I like what you’re saying about the separation of the work mode and the play mode. You know, something we talk about lot with our Sax School members is about the structure of your practice. We talk about the four-part practice routine, where the fourth element is doing something fun. That’s playing the music that you love. But then the other elements are challenges for you that you’re working on, building your skills, working on something new.
Balance in your practice routine
And I think if you can get that, – exactly what you described was finding a way to balance that out in your practice routine. And in the sax School tutor team that’s something we really encourage our members in Sax School to try and do.
I found the same in my practising. And I think when I was younger, I tended to spend all of my time working on stuff that I couldn’t do and less time working on the performing aspect. And I think as I get older, it’s not that I can do everything. I’ve still got loads of stuff I need to learn and get better at. But I’m better at balancing my practice so that I do more of performing type practice, where I’m thinking more about as if I was talking to an audience playing. And the other half is where I’m actually working on my skills and pushing the limits. So how far can I go with this thing? How high can I go? How well can I improve my tone? All these sorts of things.
J: Sure. And that’s a really good point. I think if I were to give an overall philosophy for practice, I’d say you’ve got two sides to your practice. You’ve got the creative side and you’ve got the technical side. And I think it’s really important that you never let one of them get ahead of the other.
So if I learn some technique, I try and learn something creative to do with that technique. And if I hear something creative I can’t play, I learn the technique to play it. So I’m trying to always keep that balance. Because if you end up really technically proficient, but you don’t know how to use that in a musical way, no one wants to listen to that.
There’s a lot of examples out there of great saxophonists, but they don’t make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. There’s just no emotion there. It’s not musical -it’s like a robot… so that’s no good. And from a creative point of view, if you’re hearing all this stuff you want to play, but you can’t play it, that’s really frustrating.
So you’ve got to do it in this really stepped motion – hear something, learn to play it. Learn something, learn to make it sound good. And that’s kind of the overarching philosophy I’ve got in the way that I approach all my practice. So when I’m laying planning out my practice, I’m really conscious of making sure that that kind of balance is there.
It’s all about balance, however you practice. We all practice in different ways, but as long as it’s balanced, I think I think you’re good to go.
Member Question – Middle C Sharp
N: So, we’ve had a question this week from one of our Sax School members called David. And David says that he finds on his saxophone, that middle C sharp is the worst note on his saxophone. And he’s wondering if we’ve got any tips on how you can alleviate that.
J: Okay, the open C sharp quandary.
N: Do you find that on your saxophone?
J: I think it depends on the saxophone. Not so much on my current one, but I’ve definitely played horns in the past where it’s been an awkward note.
And I think just from a kind of mechanics point of view, it’s because it’s the entire open tube. I think there’s maybe some kind of balancing issues there. It can’t be tempered with key work and things like that, so if the saxophone’s not perfect, I think that’s where it kind of shows a little bit.
However, we’ve got the tools we’re given, so we have to find ways of making sure that that we can play this in tune. And really, to me, these things come down to referencing from other notes, it’s pitching. You’ve got to learn to pitch that note well. Know what it should sound like, rather than just blowing and hoping it sounds that way.
It should be something that you’re practising as soon as you can, to be honest – actually working on the notes – depending on your level. The first overtone from your low C sharp is a great way of pitching it. It’s kind of the opposite in a way, because with low C sharp, you’ve nearly got everything closed.
And when you get that first overtone, you get that middle C sharp and it’s a really in tune C sharp. So it gives you that reference for the opposite of everything open. I think it’s an interesting note in a weird kind of surreal way – everything closed, but everything opened up.
N: Yeah, that’s interesting. I think also it can be challenging if you are a newer player. I’m presuming David, you’re quite new to saxophone and I don’t know about your setup, David, but I have played some less expensive saxophones that may have leaking issues or just be not a great design where that C sharp does stand out. The timbre of it is different, – the quality of the sound. And so, like you’re saying, working on the overtones will help. You can even just work on building a great sound that you love on your G, A, B, leading up to that C sharp, and also the D above it. And then our job as a saxophone player is to try and even out the quality of that sound, so that we get a consistent sound over the whole range.
So if you’ve got a problem note on your saxophone, it might be that C sharp, it could be the D sharp, it could be an F sharp. It could be a B. It depends on your saxophone. Then it’s about trying to get that to be as consistent as possible. So I think David’s halfway there because he’s actually identified that that is a problem.
J: Exactly. Just noticing these things is the beginning of the correction of them to some degree. You’ve got to imagine what you want the note to sound like before you blow it. There’s no point in blowing a note and then thinking, ‘Oh I wish it sounded like that.’ It’s too late, you know.
So, as you said, get those notes around it sounding good, and then hear it in context of those notes – how you’d like to sound. Then you’d be amazed how your body and your larynx and all these things that you don’t need to understand – things happen as a reaction to the imagination.
If you hear what you want it to be like, suddenly little things change and it starts getting better and better. And, you know, it may take a bit of time, but eventually, you’ll be as happy with that note as any other.
Final Thoughts
N: Yeah, awesome. Hey, it’s been a great conversation today. I really enjoyed actually learning a bit more about your background before you joined the Sax School tutor team. I learned some stuff today that I didn’t know.
So I hope everybody else has enjoyed this episode as well.
J: Remember we’ve still got the 14-day free trial over at Sax School. So come along – there’s thousands of lessons in there and you can get help from the Sax School tutor team. You can get started right away.
N: Awesome. Hey, thanks so much for spending some time with us today. Keep practicing hard and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
