05/10/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 130)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 130

Date: 05/10/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Dead end of a service road off I-5 between Los Banos and Merced, CA.

Notes:

Now on day five of our Bad Luck tour, this morning Chris flew back to Seattle to play a show and I drove the car from San Diego up to San Francisco.  I struck out by myself at 4:45am.  There’s nothing like waking up early and driving away. 

I recorded this improvisation about 9 hours into my 11 hour solo trip, between Fresno and the turn off onto the highway towards San Francisco.   The landscape is consistent, marked by almond and citrus tree groves, dusty fields with brown and tan hills in the distance.  At one point the Freeway began cutting through the hills, and I found a good spot to exit off.  I followed a service road until it stopped well into a cattle grazing area.  To the East the highway was clearly audible, but to the West the hills seemed to go on infinitely in their independent environment.  I decided to record an improvisation inspired by the urban promise of the freeway and the stark natural beauty of the hills.

I explored a two-fold shape, the first being an ascending sound that quickly worked up from a concert E into the altissimo range, exploring a combination of tempered pitch and noisy embouchure flutters.  The second shape was the sustaining of an indeterminate chord, where I would balance the low register with altissimo pitches. During both shapes I growled or hummed into the horn against the low E fundamental.  It’s also of note to say that I was plagued by tiny black sand flies that bit my face and arms as I recorded.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by Peter Brotzmann.

05/09/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 129)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 129

Date: 05/09/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Small bedroom in an acquaintanceâs house. Los Angeles, California

Notes:

This morning I found myself with an hour of time to practice while out on the road. This is a rarity made all the better by a quiet room to focus in. During this improvisation I explored two altissimo pitches: Concert Bb and Concert B, using atypical fingerings to produce a quiet, muted tone quality. By gently closing particular keys against the body, I was able to arch the airflow to create evenly descending pitches while maintaining the upper tones. This particular descending motion is an area Iâm exploring with pretty novice ability, and the descending shape is much more audible from behind the drivers seat. However, the gesture was captured during the recording process.

In this piece there is an imbalance of sound. The upper register tones carry about 99% of the sound space, with the breathy descending shapes and other dots of sound take up the remainder. I anchored my sound on the two upper tones, being careful to maintain them the bulk of the time. As the improvisation progressed I began pulling other overtones and chord clusters out of these fingerings to momentarily break off from the high tones. The fingerings used were as follows:

Concert Bb:
(Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm Eb // (Left Hand) E-D keys

Concert B
(Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm Eb // (Left Hand) E-D keys, Side F

To create the downward bending arches of sound beneath these sustained tones, as well as to explore other chord sounds, I would slowly bend side keys closed, most often in the following order: Low C, Low B, Low Bb, slightly close the Palm Eb.

-Neil

The image “New York 1912” accompanying todayâs post by. Max Weber

05/08/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 128)

12

Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 128

Date: 05/08/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: A field near the freeway outside Gilroy, CA.

Notes:

I’m always struck by the bare, earthen expansiveness of Southern California.  The fields look so pristine from the freeway but underfoot the dirt is clotted, cracked and smells of manure and chemicals.  The piece was recorded in mid-day, on a sunny, clear afternoon outside Gilroy.  I had my band-mate Chris drop me off at the side of the freeway on his way to the gas station.  I recorded at the base of a small hill that separated the freeway onramp from a brown, dusty wheat field that went on for miles.  I set the recorder in my case and knelt on the ground to record.

During this improvisation I created puckish sounds on the horn, selecting tones that had a ringing quality when articulated short against one another.   I indeterminately selected pitches to create these melodies, and as the improvisation evolved I began threading the pitches together.  I used a new technique to do this, lowering my jaw considerably while using a great amount of back pressure.  I held my tongue against the reed and used my air while cupping the back of my tongue against the reed to create pops of sound.  I was surprised to hear the sustain between the percussive pops and smears. 

 -Neil

The image “Ram’s Head” by Georgia O’Keeffe

05/07/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 127)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 127

Date: 05/07/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Bathroom at the 7 Feathers Casino rest stop in Canyonville, Oregon.

Notes:

Today is the second day of the Bad Luck West Coast tour.  Last night we decided to keep driving after our show in Eugene, OR and ended up sleeping in the car about 80 miles from the California border.  We stopped for the night at a rest stop tucked in the green hills of the Calf Creek area in the southern region of the state.  We woke in a hybrid landscape, surrounded by thick, lush forest to the North, East and West, and a massive parking lot and casino to the South.  I decided to respond to the landscape this morning by recording in a bathroom at the rest stop.

This improvisation focused on the surprisingly beautiful resonance of this bathroom.  The room had an approximately 15 foot ceiling, with a floor space of about 6’ x 10’.  I centered the piece on a single multiphonic fingering that punctuated specific pitches within it.  They were punctuated with both embouchure adjustments and by adding or taking away a new key.  The primary fingering was as follows:

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Low Bb //Right Hand F key.  Trilled keys included the Side C, Low C, G key, Side Bb and Middle C.

I would occasionally hold out selected pitches or lightly dot them amidst the clusters of sustained notes.  The beginning of the piece focuses on the mid to upper range, but near the mid-point I began to introduce action in the lower range and fade out the upper.  The space seemed to welcome the tight clusters of pitches and smaller singular notes in equal measure.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by Arthur Dove.

05/06/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 126)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 126

Date: 05/06/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

This morning I found myself thinking about a study I heard a few months ago which sampled people of various age groups, who were asked to quantify their social values, and then asked if they think their values will change drastically over the next 10 years.  It was found that most people believe their values are for the most part largely fixed, and that they will be maintained over that period.  Interestingly, in every age group studied, from those in their 20’s to their 80’s, in each decade of a persons life there is a gradual transition that takes place. This shift in values is not dependent on age and there is no lull in the shifting nature of it.  With this fascinating topic on my mind, I decided to record a piece with two phases, the first being an initial set of “values” and the second being the transition of those values.  

I made it my aim to create a two-part piece with a similar shape.  The piece begins with the fullness of a beautiful chord that is played in repetition, which then gradually fades out into almost inaudible silence where it holds still in a moment of limbo.  The second phase then enters with complimentary chord tones, but augmented with a new whole step till in the lower end as well as dots of bright high tones in the top.  I view it in comparison as a grittier, almost diminished version of the former beauty.  This again fades into a shadow of what was before it.

Phase 1: Pitches E (quarter step sharp) C, E (quarter step sharp)

(Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm Eb (slowly trilled) // (Right Hand) quickly trill the F clutch key

Phase 2: Pitches D, C, E (quarter step sharp)

(Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm Eb (slowly trilled) // (Right Hand) quickly trill the G key

-Neil

The image “Transition of Virgin into a Bride” by Marcel Duchamp (1928)