02/07/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 38)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 38

Date: 02/07/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Practice room B at South Whidbey High School. Langley, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

Practice room B at South Whidbey High school is one of my favorite spaces. This room, like it’s next door partner practice room A, is very small. Room B is no bigger than a closet and has 8 foots ceilings. The bulk of the room is made of concrete with some sheetrock, giving the space an alluring reverb and a quick response to any sound produced. 

To explore the small and reverberant sound of this concrete space I often practice at either very high or very low volumes. Today I explored the creation of extremely high pitches and tight intervals at a medium to loud volume. I would consider this improvisation a controlled noise piece. In my improvisations and performances I spend very little time focusing on what I would define as controlled noise music. Often I perform pieces that might sound akin to this, but unlike this improvisation I generally set particular actions in motion that I predict will create a result. An example of this would be a muliphonic fingering where I might make a slight embouchure adjustment that I’ve practiced many times over, that will create a pitch or pitches within a particular register. These pitches are often indeterminate, but more often than not I have some expectation as to what might come out. My improvisation today instead had the “controlled” element of a known fingering, but a noise component of indeterminate pitches. You will hear that when I come across certain sounds I did tend try and explore them in repetition. I would not define that practice than as being completely noise-oriented.

The fingering for this piece creates vibrant clusters of pitches and a very stable mid octave concert Eb drone. I used absolutely no vibrato of any kind on this piece, but instead focused my attention on air speed, mouth shape and lip pressure. My aim was to make the extreme upper register pitches the main melodic element with the clusters and chords as supporting elements. The fingering I used for this improvisation was as follows: (Left Hand) B and A keys, octave and Low B // (Right Hand) F key, Low C and side high F.

-Neil

02/06/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 37)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 37

Date: 02/06/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

Over the past month I have focused largely on textural pieces. These do have very concrete and qualifiable qualities to me but lately I’ve begun craving single note melodies. My piece today focuses on repetitive, single pitch shapes and irregular, but repeated rhythms.

During this improvisation I use a fixed scale. In concert key and in descending order the pitches are B-A-G-F-E-D-C. These are the 7 pitches in the C major scale–perhaps the most often played scale in the world. By limiting myself to such a strict set of pitches, I decided to work with the repetition of disjunct rhythms. Throughout this piece there are 3 melodic/rhythm sets that use all 7 pitches, as well as the quickly descending scale played between the motives. I attempted to perform each of the 3 rhythmic sets in exactly the same way with each repetition. 

Pitch order in melody/rhythm 1: B-F-C-A-E-G-D
Pitch order in melody/rhythm 2: G-E-A-D-B-F-C
Pitch oder in melody/rhythm 3: G-C-F-D-B-E-A

Because the rhythms were so disjunct, I was also curious to see if I could return to each motive and play it in exactly the same way again. There were certainly some mistakes, but overall I felt that my rhythmic integrity and accuracy remained clear. After playing each motive, I return to the descending scale shape as kind of a mid point between the phrases: B-A-G-F-E-D-C. This shape in this particular key was a favorite of the saxophone master John Coltrane, who played it many times throughout the album “Interstellar Space.”

-Neil

02/05/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 36)

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12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 36

Date: 02/05/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Choir room at Chief Sealth high school. Seattle, WA 

Notes:

In my improvisation today I decided to try and explore an equal use of melodicism and harmony. The overtones and multiphonics I work on are often very colorful, filled with complex chords and rich clusters of sound. I find this complexity to be beautiful unto itself, but at times my ear is also drawn towards particular pitches or sounds. With this shift of focus I begin to hear more melodies coming out than actual chords. I can often times even momentarily trick my mind into believing that another sources is playing the chords, and I’m merely accompanying these chords with melodies of my own independent creation. While blindly setting out to perform this improvisation I found myself searching for this balance today.

This was a free improvisation piece with no particular performance model or preparation ahead of time to set in motion. After choosing a basic fingering as a jumping off point, I let my subconscious be my guide. While performing this piece I was surprised by the percussiveness in many of these gestures. Muted tones in the lower register seemed to set their own pace, while melodies and chords navigated a grid above these rhythms. Within the first few seconds of this piece my attention was drawn towards a balance of chordal sound and melodic shape as being a unified goal.

-Neil

02/04/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 35)

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12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 35

Date: 02/04/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

A technique I often hear brass players use is blowing air through the instrument and using tongue articulation to create a hard stop to the sound. When done quickly, a fluttering sound is created. A recent addition to our Seattle creative music scene is Christian Pincock, whose tongue-stop sound explorations where at the forefront of my mind on this piece. I have spent little time with this technique as a woodwind player. I have however practiced single, double and flutter tonguing, as well as slap tonging, but I’ve spent comparatively little time focusing on the more common brass player technique described above.

In this improvisation I never sounded an actual pitch above a whisper volume, but instead made my air and tonguing the focus. While either screaming or playing very delicately through my horn, in the past I’ve used a particular technique of cupping my tongue. I raise up the center, then lower back to a flattened position and repeat the action continuously. When combined with air in rapid succession, this action actually makes an audible sound of “oh, ee.” In my improvisation today I use this technique but at times also combine it with a stop-tonuge action. The resultant thud creates a larger sound than the “oh, ee.” In this piece I attempted to explore a full range of sound while exploring this new territory, and at times I tried to intentionally make my air more present than the thud of my tongue against the reed. In the mid point and again at the end of the improvisation, I use a series of fingerings meant to pull more tones out of the horn. These tones sound very clearly when the tongue strikes the reed and forces the air to stop.

-Neil