I was working on an alto saxophone arrangement of the hymn “Softly and Tenderly” by Will L. Thompson last week, as I am planning on playing it for Chapel this week at school. I’ve always liked the hymn, and I recently attempted it on sax for a Sunday night singing at my old church. While playing it, I realized I was unclear one some of the notes in the melody, so there was a chunk where I was kind of adlibbing my way through.

That being the case, I thought it would be worthwhile to have a version for alto sax as sheet music. This arrangement is really more of a transcription; that is, I attempted to put on paper what I play when I am noodling the hymn on sax. I tried to replicate the various ornamentations that I add on when I play.

Once I had the transcription I wanted, I didn’t grab my alto sax right away. Instead, I grabbed my bass! I played bass with our new church’s praise band for the first time this past Sunday, and I needed to practice some of the pieces for service. Since I had the bass out anyway, I decided to play the alto sax arrangement on the bass!

The result is the feature of today’s post. The typical key for “Softly and Tenderly” is concert Ab major. That puts it in the key of F major for an alto saxophone (for transposing reasons I won’t explain here, because while I think it’s cool, it’s also kind of tedious and boring). So, by playing on the bass (which I think of a concert-pitch instrument, but which technically transposes everything down one octave), I was shifting the key to concert F major (meaning if I played it with a pianist, the pianist would have to play in F major, not Ab major).

See? Kind of tedious. The bass rendition, however, is not:

I do that weird thing with my lips when I’m really concentrating. Part of the fun of playing this piece on bass is that I was reading treble clef sheet music, while the bass either reads bass tabs or the bass clef. I’m more comfortable in treble clef, so it wasn’t too hard for me, but most bassists would have found it a bit more challenging, since they’re not used to playing from the treble clef.

Here’s a PDF of the alto sax arrangement/transcription; it’s easily played along with most hymnals, which (again) tend to put the hymn into the key of Ab major:

What did you think of this low-end cover of a classic hymn? Let me know in the comments—and if you want to hear the alto sax version!

Happy Tuesday—and Happy Listening!

—TPP