06/15/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 166)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 166

Date: 06/15/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

This morning I practiced creating melodies and chords that could change without disrupting a held tone underneath.  I worked at this in a variety of different ways, from loud, busy clusters of screeching tones tone to very quiet, sustained pitches.  In my improvisation today I decided to work with the latter and explored more subtle sounds.  I used a static fingering to create the Concert D drone.  This is actually a very common multiphonic fingering, but by playing with a smaller, more concentrated air flow a bottom fundamental can emerge without the rest of the chord. 

Almost a year ago this month my family had the chance to go to Sicily, and during this improvisation I visualized a particular stretch of road on our second day on that island.  It was a long highway road that cut through flat, green fields.  In the far distance there were occasional mounds–green hills in various sizes on either side of the long fields.  In my visualization of these “mounds” I brought this to life with three separate gestures.  The first was the natural multiphonic played by adding more air and pressure to the drone fingering.  The character of this chord was very stable.  The second gesture was a fluttering of tones, again with the drone beneath it.  The third and final gesture was a combination in sound concept between the stable chord and fluttering tones, creating busier, more tumbling pitch interactions.

The create the Concert D drone, I used the following fingering:

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

The three gesture fingerings played on top of the drone were as follows:

Gesture 1 (stable chord)

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

Gesture 2 (fluttering tones)

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys // (Right Hand) F-E keys, Low C.  Trill the palm Eb key only with Left Hand.

Gesture 3 (combination of stable and fluttering)

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys // (Right Hand) F-E keys, Low C.  Trill the palm Eb key only with Left Hand and the High F key in the Right Hand, each in turn.  (Open Eb key // close it // Open F key // Close it.  This creates a “1 e & a” grouping of four sounds.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post is the Sicilian countryside.

06/14/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 165)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 165

Date: 06/14/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

This afternoon I spent time working on very clear, specific concepts on my horn.  One of those concepts was the separation of pitches through extreme octave displacement.  This is an area I’ve spent quite of bit of time practicing, and today I began by creating simple melodies and “displacing” pitches by placing certain notes into the extreme upper or lower register.  I eventually became interested in the use of a single, fixed pitch which I used in a touch-and-go kind of fashion.  I used the altissimo D, which is a very clean, bright high octave tone.  During the improvisation I focused my melodic energy from the mid to lower register.  This created a specific framework and helped establish expectation for my ears amidst the disjointed dots of color.  When I would eventually move into the mid or upper register, it had the effect to me of having come from a second instrument. 

As the improvisation evolved I began exploring other numerical combinations and dynamic devices, the most obvious being the shift towards incorporating longer whip tones amidst the short ones.   I would try to place these longer pitches very far apart from one another, and play a quick crescendo in volume with an abrupt cut off of the tongue.  At other times dynamic variation became a focus.  I would play the upper fixed D at a high volume, and play nearly all of the lower tones at a very quiet volume.  I also explored more of a wiley sound with the melodic tones, or a very evan balance between the pithces.  

During the first half of the improvisation I stick to a 1:1 ratio with the use of the altissimo D, and a melodic tone of my choosing.  I then began exploring a 1:2 ratio with the altissimo D and 2 melodic tones.  I eventually began briefly exploring 1:3 ratio, and also incorporating the occasional long whip tone as well.  Near the end of the piece I returned to the 1:1 ratio.

-Neil

The image “Pastry Case” accompanying today’s post by Claes Oldenburg (1961-62)

06/13/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 164)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 164

Date: 06/13/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Practice room B at South Whidbey High School.  Langley, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

I’ve come to feel very natural recording inside the small, mostly cement Practice Room B at South Whidbey High School.  The room is very bright and reverberant without distorting the sound of the saxophone into a wash.  Performing loud, abrasive improvisations seems to be a recurring theme for me in this space.  I love being encompassed by sound in that room until my ears are ringing and pulsing with the sound filling it up.  Today I decided to work with a wide spanning, bendable sound concept with a few sympathetic fingerings.  

I aimed the bell of my horn directly at the microphone, standing about 4 feet back from it, nearly against the rear wall.  The slight changes in fingering and embouchure movement created a multidimensional sound that seemed to fill the space from floor to ceiling.  I experimented with some slight declines in volume, but overall the improvisation was performed at maximum volume.  The wide upward and downward bends were achieved mostly by rapidly “chewing” my lower lip embouchure to pull out the full range of sound.  Between fingerings there were internal pitches that crept up or down by semi tones that gave the piece a tightly held range of harmonic motion.  The fingerings used were as follows:

(Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm Eb, Low B // (Right Hand) F key, Low C

-Same as above, but put F-E keys down in the Right Hand

-Same as above, but put F-E-D keys down in the Right Hand

The image “The Crouched Ones (Los agachados)” by Manuel Alvarez (1934).

06/12/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 163)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 163

Date: 06/12/2013

Instrument: Soprano saxophone

Location: Sharpe Park, outside Anacortes, WA

Notes:

My wife and I spent the day driving North on Whidbey Island, and eventually found ourselves in Anacortes.  This is a beautiful, thriving community that values art and wilderness, and I could think of no better place to record for this project than in this area.  A few months ago, the fantastic musician/composer Karl Blau took my friend Bill Kautz and I out to record in the woods at the Sharpe Park.  This heavily wooded, fantastic nature preserve bustles with wildlife, and is just such a calm space.  My wife and I drove around outside the city until we finally stumbled on the park, and we walked a short distance in.  I set up camp next to a small lake that was filled with cat tails and reeds.  It was a beautiful, clear Spring day, and I improvised with the call of birds all around me.

Anacortes is situated very close to the city of Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, where a large US naval air base is stationed.  Throughout the day the tranquility of nature intermingles with the pervasive thunder of fighter jets souring through the air.  At 3 points during this improvisation airplanes can be heard in the audio.  However the planes were at a significant distance to my location and their sound was mostly peripheral.  During this improvisation I tried to open myself fully to the environment around me.  The constant sound of airplanes became one player in a symphony of sounds.  I spent 20 minutes or so playing before finally beginning to record.  The bird calls around me began to sound very familiar, and I could easily distinguish one type of call from another, and also one bird from another singing a common call. 

I explored upper whistle tones to put myself in the same octave range as the birds.  Some of the birds seemed to use the natural reverb in the forest more than others.  I noticed that the simpler, more pitch-oriented bird calls would ring out much more than the quicker, percussive sounds of other birds.  I tried to explore both ends of this spectrum during this piece.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post is the woods of Anacortes.