All language subtitles for iSaxTip 8. Three ways you should be using Key Function on the Roland Aerophone

Hi, I'm Alistair Parnell, and I've been
playing and teaching wind synths for

about four decades now. I hope you find
this video useful, and if you do, please

remember to like and subscribe.

The Aerophone is a digital wind
instrument. That means it doesn't have

limitations of a typical acoustic
fingering system.

It's a good idea to take advantage of
these additional features.

it might help you play some of those
tricky passages a little bit easier.

Now, any of the side keys or palm keys
or the little finger keys

can be used with something called key
function.

What that does is it allows us to say
that we want that key to do

something in particular. So rather than
it just being the same as a regular

saxophone key,

We can make it do something slightly
different to enable us to do some new

things with the fingering system.

Now, some of this will be a bit new to
you, and some people might say, ah, but

hang on, we should be able to do those
fingerings.

Without making these changes, you're
probably right, and ultimately learning

of your scales and keys correctly is by
far the best idea.

But, you know, even top professional
players sometimes like to use a little

-out -of -jail -free card by using some
of these special tricks.

We've talked about some of these
settings before. Now, you'll find key

just as... fingering mode. I usually
have mine set to sax.

If you go a little bit further, you'll
get the user fingering settings. But

we're looking today at key function.

Let's just see how we change that
setting if we want to.

Firstly, we're going to press the key
that we want to change the function of.

for this first example, I'm going to
press the lowest right hand side key. I

call that the side B flat key.

And then in the display, you'll have
some options. If we press menu,

we can change this option from being
either a sax key, which is the

default position.

But if we go on to the right, you'll
also see we can make it be a semitone

a semitone up, a whole tone down or a
whole tone up.

And going back the other way.

we can actually turn that key off.

So let's have a look at why some of
those might be very useful to us.

The first one is we could use it to turn
a key off.

Now, why might we want to do that? Well,
personally, I don't use this, but I

have sometimes had people get in touch
and say that they're finding...

perhaps the palm keys they're catching
by mistake.

And in order to just see if that's
something that's happening, it might be

useful for you to touch the side key, D
key, and in the settings, make the key

function be off.

That way, you won't affect any of the
notes if you accidentally press those

keys. Of course...

you won't be able to use those keys
either. That might not be a problem for

But it is a way of checking out whether
you are accidentally pressing a key or

simply you just rather would have that
key deactivated. The second use for key

function would be to set one of your
side keys perhaps as a trill key.

Now, the way we would do this is we
would set one of those keys to, for

instance, always play a semitone up.

Now, going back to my first example of
the side key B flat, of course, usually

on a saxophone, if we press two fingers
and add that right hand side key, we

would get an A sharp or a B flat. OK,
that's a very standard fingering. But

actually. Some of the trills, if we're
doing them for a semitone, can be a

little awkward.

For instance, if we're going from G to G
sharp with the left little pinky,

that's a little bit awkward key to use.

I can do it, but I'm a little bit
limited with that.

Well, if we set our side key B flat to
always play a semitone higher,

now any note that we play, We'll trill
up by a semitone using the

side key B flat.

We can do that on any note we choose.
And don't forget, you can set any of

keys to be a semitone up.

Now, I think using the side key B flat
for that is probably the best choice.

But you can use others as well.

The third function would be to take the
idea of what is sometimes referred to as

EWI standard fingering.

So we can make our own combination of
sort of saxophone slash EWI fingering.

And the reason that can be very useful
is we can kind of use it as a little bit

of a scale cheat or an easier way of
playing some of those most difficult...

scales.

Again, I can't emphasize enough, if you
really want to be able to get into

playing an instrument well, knowing all
of your scales properly in all keys is

very useful.

But even some of the most professional
players I've spoken to occasionally want

to use this little trick to get them out
of difficult situations when they're

playing certain passages.

So how do we do it? Well, I'm just going
to show you a little version here that

I use.

In this one, I'm setting my left pinky
key, this is actually the C

sharp key, and I'm setting that to
always be a semitone up

from whatever note I'm playing.

Now, to give you a quick example of
this, if I play a scale of C major.

If I play C major scale again with my
pinky holding down that C sharp key for

all of the notes, I magically get C
sharp major or D flat major, whichever

you want to think of it.

So here's C, and then I'll play the C
scale straight again, but with the

finger on, and I get D flat.

By the way, my instrument is transposed
to B flat, just in case that gets you a

little bit confused with what scale
you're playing. But you can start with

transposition. But doing this will save
you having to change the transpose knob.

And it's a much easier way of quickly
switching into different scales if you

want to.

If we take advantage of the
possibilities here.

You could learn the four easiest scales
on the Aerophone, but actually be able

to play in all 12 keys very easily.

Yep, it's a cheat, but hey, if it helps,
let's incorporate it. If you want to

know how to do that, make sure you like
and subscribe, because that video will

be coming along very soon as ISAX tip
number nine.

Thanks again for watching, and don't
forget, if you want to find out about

great courses for the Roland Aerophone,
then visit www .isacs

.academy. I'll see you there.