06/30/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 181)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 181

Date: 06/30/2013

Instrument: soprano saxophone

Location: A trail on the edge of Mountain Lake in Moran Sate Park.  Orcas Island, WA

Notes:

This morning I woke up early and my wife and I walked to Mountain Lake to take in the morning calmness.  The lake is large and clean, so much so that I could toss a rock off the edge of a bluff and watch it sink fully to the bottom.  I walked about a quarter way around the lake on a trail that followed it’s edge.  I stopped to play beneath a large pine tree on the edge of a bluff that overlooked the lake.   Though this recording does not accurately capture it, the echo from my horn traveled an amazing distance, bouncing and pulsing with a warm sound around the lake.  I was at least ½ of a mile away from our campsite, and when we walked back in I was told by our comrades that they could hear me practicing, and thought I had walked just a little ways into the woods.  

During this improvisation I focused on tight sound clusters in various combinations.  A recurring theme became the major chord multiphonic which I would hold out and increase in tempo before abruptly cutting it off with my tongue.  With the clustered pitches, I worked to create simple, almost folk-like melodies with tiny chord flutters.  I would set these against the more severe but steady multiphonics.  Mid way in the piece I worked to bridge these two approaches by unifying the clusters into quick melodic actions that combined various chords.  

-Neil

The image “Tatra Mountains” accompanying today’s post by Emil Orlik (1898)

06/29/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 180)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 180

Date: 06/29/2013

Instrument: Soprano saxophone

Location: A forest clearing inside Moran State Park.  Orcas Island, WA

Notes:

This weekend my wife and I are staying at Moran State Park on Orcas Island.  Orcas is located in the San Juan island chain, about a 1 hour ferry boat ride from the mainland, and another hour and a half to Seattle from there.  The island is accessible only by boat, and is filled with pristine old growth forests, mountains, and several lakes.  Today we’re staying at a camp ground, the bulk of which is dug out of a steep, thickly forested mountain side.  This morning I decided to take my horn and trudge up the mountain in search of solitude and inspiring natural surroundings.  I did not follow any established path, and instead carved my own straight up the hill.  I had to climb over recently fallen timber, old nursing logs and thick underbrush.  I hiked for about 20 minutes, until the campsite below was far behind me, and the feeling of it–the laughing children, camp fires, parents and cars were out of sight, mind and earshot.  

I arrived at my recording location as though it were prepared for me.  Playing from the top of a hill, a gully below made a steep, cup shaped downward slope that pushed my sound outward.  I placed the mic about 50 feet below me, and listened to my surroundings.  The birds were out in abundance with their variety of calls, and I decided to create my own recurring melodic shape by using upper register overtones.  I stayed within an octave or so range, dipping the sound up, and occasionally down and up to settle on a pitch that the horn called out for.  I tried to pace my melodic action based on the duration of silence between the other calls around me.  I used a single fingering in this improvisation, which was as follows:

(Left Hand) Fork F, G keys, Low B or Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E keys.  To help facilitate a more even downward to upward bend, I would occasionally slowly trill the Low C key in the right hand.

-Neil

The image “Graphis 89, for a drama” accompanying today’s post by Dick Higgins (1961).

12 Moons Day 180 delayed until Sunday

Tomorrow’s 12 Moons post will be delayed until Sunday. I’m off to camp in the woods on Orcas Island and won’t have an internet connection. Expect some maddening recording from the wild!

-Neil

06/28/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 179)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 179

Date: 06/28/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

While practicing this morning, and during my recorded improvisation today, I worked on orchestration within dense clusters of sound.  I explored several fingering systems before arriving at the one used here.  I was particularly interested in this system because of the half step clusters that were placed at various points throughout the registers.  The piece centers around the upper to extreme upper register of the horn.  While improvising I looked for markers in the sound–those being particular colors, melodies or rhythms that caught my ear and then became developmental tools.  An example of this is the upper octave Concert Bb pulse that is used in repetition at various points.   The pulse also became a recurring theme in sections of the improvisation where upper register bright tones were the focus.

I worked to maintain a tight sense of control over the sound clusters, but at certain points I would loosen my embouchure to allow extreme upper register tones to enter into the field.  These pitches are much more unstable than the lower tones, but are also more flexible in how they can be bent or combined together in tight groupings.  During these events I would then pull down the lower tones in volume, or cross fade back into the lower tone clusters after exploring the upper tones for some time. My fingers kept a fairly regular cycle of movement throughout, even in the areas of the piece that were much lighter in texture.  While improvising a piece like this, I often try to detach myself from the fingering cycle taking place, and even let it evolve a bit into a slightly new rhythmic feel.  To detach my brain from my fingers allows me to focus more on sound.  To work on doing live orchestration in an improvisation like this, I’ll often let my mind latch onto a sound and see if I can combine it, or let it interact with other sounds of interest.  In this way orchestration feels compositionally central to the improvisation, even when the overall sounds are abstract in nature.

The core fingering system used below was flexible in rhythm, and to which keys could be trilled at any given time:

(Left Hand) Fork F, C keys, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) F-D keys, Low C

Trill options: Fork F, Side Bb, Side C, Low F#.

-Neil

The image “Untitled"  accompanying today’s post by Ad Reinhardt (1938)