12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 70
Date: 03/11/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
In my practice sessions lately I’ve worked on gaining greater control over my range of melodic and supporting material. A secondary point became using a wider range of volume. Today I improvised a piece that required a variety of dynamic levels for me to pull out the desired sounds. Some sounds are slight, small clusters, while others are full and resonant. In all of these shapes, I worked to contrast volume with melodicism and supporting action.
In this improvisation I developed and referenced particular themes. The concert C (quarter step low) became my touchstone in this piece. For example, the opening gesture: C, D and E immediately became a melodic focal point that I returned to time and time again. The C was used as a pivot point for select multiphonics or split tones that included this pitch. So much of my improvised material uses a single gesture, a single idea or select series of sounds. Today I worked to create a powerful melodic idea at the outset that could make the busier material that came after it seem starkly different.
-Neil
03/10/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 69)
12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 69
Date: 03/10/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
This improvisation was recorded before dawn. I decided to work today with a consistent air flow, but to pair this consistency with fingerings that created a variety of natural dynamic levels. With the use of false fingerings, a wide array of muted tones can being created. My improvisation today makes use of this device by setting these muted tones against traditional pitches, as well as incorporating other false fingerings which actually accent certain pitches, making them sound comparatively louder. The result is a tiered structure of pitches at 3 dynamic levels.
This improvisation is centered in the mid range of the saxophone. By using the Fork F and High F# keys with selected fingerings, pitches can become muted or accented. The muted tones usually have much more physical back-pressure than traditional ones, and are often much more pliable. The notes can easily be bent upwards and downwards within a range of about a Perfect Fourth. The accented notes often have less back-pressure and seem to have an initial push when they are played. I tried to explore this sonic experience in equal measure to the physical feeling of playing notes with three different degrees of back-pressure.
-Neil
03/09/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 68)
12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 68
Date: 03/09/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
In my practice session today I worked on flutter-tonging, and trying to control my use of this tonging in the middle to upper register. Flutter tonging is akin to rolling your r"s for an extended period of time. This is a technique I’ve only worked on for about two years or so, and I have a long way to go as far as control and flexibility are concerned. The challenges for me in using this style of tonging are in controlling the consistency of the sound produced, and being able to phase in and out of the tonging.
During this improvisation I attempted to have an escalating shape in energy and density of the chord. Using the same fingering, I would stop the flutter tonging and switch to straight and steady tones with no tongue at all. The fingering used in this improvisation is a multiphonic: (Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Palm Eb // (Right Hand) F-E keys, Low C. During the periods of sustained tones, I would occasionally punctuate the sound field by quickly opening and closing my left hand G key or right hand D key. While flutter tonguing, it’s far easier for me to approach it from more of a high pitch squealing sound, but more difficult to achieve these high tones while maintaining some reference to the lower octave notes. Overall, I tried to make the multiphonic chord sounds more dense and complex as the piece went on, progressively adding these upper shrill tones.
-Neil
03/08/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 67)
12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 67
Date: 03/08/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
My current reed is at a stage where it’s flexibility is beginning to fade. The clarity of tone is there, but the reed is beginning to fight me in areas such as intonation and overall ease of playability . With my particular set-up, it’s ironically at this stage in the life of my reed that staccato playing becomes the easiest for me. My improvisation today focused on staccato articulation with a declining tempo, spread over a six minute period of time.
I made an effort to try and maintain a steady stream of sixteenth notes, with the initial tempo as fast as possible, down to a medium-fast tempo at the end of the piece. There was no tonal focus in this improvisation, though I did center around the mid range of the horn, and found myself referencing a concert A to concert Bb a minor 9th above quite a bit. I did also seem to carry this concept of dissonance and chromatic octave displacement throughout this piece.
The sixteenth articulation pattern remains static, but I gradually evolved away from my initial articulation model. In the opening minute or so I would articulate the same pitch two or three times before moving. This, along with more air, made certain notes sound much more articulated than the rest. As the piece went on my articulation gradually began to focus on only note-to note articulation. This smoothed out the wrinkles and the accentuation needed to come mostly from more forceful tonguing.
-Neil
The image “circles” from painter Louise Schanker
03/07/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 66)
12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 66
Date: 03/07/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Practice room B at South Whidbey High School. Langley, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
From dawn to past dusk today was filled to the brim with teaching–changing clothes in the ferry bathroom and eating soup out of a tupperware container in my car. It was a good, solid working day that made me feel like I contributed my all by the end of it. I had attempted at various times throughout the day to sneak away and record a piece, but with no results I could be satisfied with. My improvisation today came out of the horn at the end of the day, when I was exhausted and my energy having already been sapped out of me. With every passing second in this improvisation I could feel it surging back.
This improvisation uses a single fingering: (Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Low B // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys. This fingering creates the basis of sound explored in this piece. To create the pulsations I quickly opened and then shut the low Eb and Palm D keys simultaneously. I approached the improvisation as a slow, ominous build that immediately enters from a heightened place of energy. This was not anger, but a last ditch utterance of my industry.
-Neil
Image by painter Max Ernst