06/01/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 152)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 152

Date: 06/01/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Meeting room inside the Good Shepherd Center.  Seattle, WA

Notes:

The Good Shepherd Center is a space that I’ve performed in many, many times over.  The massive, historic building was, until coming under the ownership of Historic Seattle, a Catholic girls school long ago.  The main performance space is located on the top floor of the building, formerly a chapel with 30 foot ceilings.  However today I recorded in one of the many old school rooms on the lower floor.  Though this was one of many such rooms the acoustics were simply outstanding and I couldn’t resist performing an improvisation.  The room was approximately 20 feet long by 10 feet wide, with old hardwood floors and at least a 15 foot ceiling.  

It is strictly off limits to perform in any other area of the building other than the main performance hall, but I’ve found time and time again throughout this project that I can generally pull my horn out any place I become inspired to play in.  I’ve found no one stopping me from doing so in most cases.  Maybe it’s because I’m often in and out of these public spaces so quickly, but no matter what the reason for my sucess I’m very encouraged to know that I can play this music just about anywhere I feel like.  

During this improvisation I worked with the natural reverberance of the room.  I used split tone fingerings to make close-knit sound clusters, bending and pulsing them with tongue articulation.  Immediately after beginning the improvisation my mind gravitated towards creating tiny dots of higher octave pitches in between these clusters, and this become a point of reference during the piece.  This device was used no matter if the chord clusters were being held out, double tongued or played in rapid motion from one to the other.   

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by comic artist Robert Tinnell.

05/31/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 151)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 151

Date: 05/31/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

This morning during my practice session I worked on challenging intervalic sixteenth shapes with no tonal center.   When tackling exercises of this kind it’s amazing how familiar the most abstract shape can become.  My improvisation today was influenced by this theme and identification of “markers” in a line that the ear becomes drawn to once intimate familiarity has been established. 

These markers were brought to life in this improvisation by using two finger cycles with the same tonal territory.  This improvisation makes use of triple and duple subdivisions.  There is a steady underpinning of quarter note pulse overall, but I tried to let the time be a little malleable depending on the shapes coming out of the horn. By making adjustments in my air flow and embouchure new tones would emerge into the grid, changing the order of the pitches being played.  It was also the case that completely different rhythmic feels would emerge even while moving my fingerings in a steady pattern.  This was due to multiphonic/overtone chords being caught inside the overarching rhythm and finding their own place within it.  These new rhythms and chords became markers in my mind to reference back to within the improvisation.

The two fingering cycles were as following:

Triple Subdivision (1-2-3)

1.  (Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Low B (Right Hand) F-D keys, Side C, High F#

2.  Same as No. 1 but release the Side C in the right hand

3.  Same as No. 1 but release the Side C in the right hand and B key in the left hand.

Duple Subdivision (1-2)

1.  (Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Low B (Right Hand) F-D keys, High F#

2.  Same as above, but lift the B key in the left hand.

-Neil

The NASA image accompanying today’s post is an “Aurora Australis, or Southern Lights” as scene from the International Space Station.

05/30/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 150)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 150

Date: 05/30/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

After working some time with more controlled textures during my practice session, I decided to improvise a piece that explored gritty tones and screaming through the horn.  The end result was an improvisation that balanced clustered block sounds with dipping and diving muted tones.

I structured the improvisation to make constant reference to the screamed tones as the primary point of action.  The secondary action, that being a lightening of tension filling more of a transitional role, included middle register pitches using the Fork F fingering with the right hand down.  In these phrases I included extreme dynamic shifts from medium loud to nearly inaudible levels of quiet.  I tried to make the phrases like swallows darting in and out of sight–full of action and constantly in motion.  This contrasted the block, screamed chords, which I viewed as having more of a stable point of action.  I used the Low B fingering with the Side Bb and Octave key depressed, which in and of itself creates a multiphonic major chord, but by overblowing the horn and screaming into it extraordinary colors are possible.

-Neil

The image “untitled film still #16” accompanying today’s post by Cindy Sherman (1978)

05/29/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 149)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 149

Date: 05/29/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

During my practice session today I worked at finding fingering systems that naturally had some kind of counterpoint to compliment a melody.  I ended up working with a chain of fingerings fairly close to those used in my composition A Song Cycle for Missouri, which I’ve previously recorded on a separate project.  Unlike that composition, in this improvisation I worked to maintain for the most part a fairly regular rhythmic cycle in a 6 beat phrase.  The piece was improvised and I was exploring most of the material for the first time, and because of this I would occasional break off from the strictness of 6 beats to search for new sounds or as a result of just making mistakes.  

The piece centers around two fingering systems, which can be found in an additional image in this post.  The focal point of each system is a melody in the upper register.  They were played with non-traditional fingerings capable of producing two or sometimes three to four simultaneous pitches.  I worked to fade in and out these additional pitches, which when incorporated into the fingering cycle produced polyrhythms that pushed against the main melody and altered the feel of the 6/8 groove.  My aim then was to create a melody with rhythmic counterpoint and additional melodicism.  

Before recording this improvisation I worked with the fingering cycle for some time to stabilize it into a meter, which ultimately became 6/8.  By adding more air and adjusting my embouchure I was able to bring in and out the conterpoint and its melodic material.  This would at times move above or below in range what I heard as the primary melody being explored.  There were six different fingerings used in the first melodic cycle, and six fingerings used in the second melodic cycle, some of which were common to both cycles and internally repeated some fingerings.

-Neil

The image “Balzac Toward the Light, Midnight” accompanying today’s post by Edward Steichen (1908)

05/28/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 148)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 148

Date: 05/28/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Performance hall at Chief Sealth High School.  Seattle, WA

Notes:

Although I’ve now recorded in the main performance hall at Chief Sealth high school at least seven or eight times, I’m still trying to figure out how to effectively play in this space.  It’s such a gift to have access to the hall for a half hour or so once a week, but I’ve had trouble finding inspiration from the sound of the room.  The acoustics feel very warm but ultimately not very thrilling to me, and up until now I’ve used it more as a blasting zone than something to work directly with.  Today I decided to improvise a piece that truly utilized the gift of this room, which is its warm reverb it produces as a medium to low volume.  

I decided to zone in on two fingerings as points of departure, the first of which is capable of producing two pitches that move up and down in a way that I assume must be similar to the physical feeling when playing a partial on a trumpet.  I used this fingering to create an echo like sound with either escalating or demising shapes with the two pitches Bb and Eb in the upper register.  The second fingering created a concert Bb (quarter step flat), which I would then slightly alter with two additional finger motions to create a descending melody with the pitches Bb, A and G (all a quarter step flat).  When paired together in various fingering systems, I then take these two fingerings and crate cycles which had a sound concept to me similar to Gamelan, which I kept referring too in my mind as I played.  

Fingering 1 (Bb and Eb):

(Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low C, Side F

Fingering 2 (Concert Bb quarter step flat):

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low C, Side C

Fingering 2.a) secondary fingering (A quarter step flat) same as above but take away the Side C key.

Fingering 2.b) Same as above but take away Side C and G in the left hand

-Neil

The image “Untitled from 88 maps” accompanying today’s post by Mat Mullican (2010)