07/20/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 201)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 201

Date: 07/20/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

–Due to a mix-up in my daily count, today’s post is now Day 202.  This is correct since it’s now the 202nd day of the year.  Yesterday’s count was 200, which as it turns out was incorrect.  Each improvisation in this daily series is still accounted for, but there was a duplication in my daily count at some point in the past 202 days which has now been caught!–

Notes:

In my improvisation today, I explored quiet, sustained altissimo pitches with occasional underlying melodies.  The piece opens with three pitches that become the main source material: Concert C, C# and D.   I recorded this improvisation very quietly, and tried to make use of the tiny dots of sound that wanted to pop out in these upper octave sustained notes.  It was extremely difficult to hold onto these notes at such a quiet level of volume, and I practiced simply sustaining them for a very long time during my practice session before attempting to record an improvisation.  

A recurring theme in my music these days is the interplay between two opposing elements on the instrument.  In this case it was the interplay in volume between the high pitches and the melodic action underneath.  There are times where I tried to cross-fade from one to the other, allowing each to speak the most present in turn.  At other times the switch was more abrupt or one was temporarily phased out completely.

The fingerings for the sustained notes were as follows:

Concert C

(Left Hand) Pearl key, Octave // (Right Hand) Side Bb

Concert C#

(Left Hand) Pearl key, Octave // (Right Hand) Side Bb, High F# key

Concert D

(Left Hand) Pearl key, A key, Octave // (Right Hand) Side Bb

The melodic action beneath these sustained tones was done through slowly closing and re-opening the Fork F fingering or G key (each in the left hand).

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by Marcel Dzama

07/19/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 200)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 200

Date: 07/19/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

I felt like evoking a joyous spirit song in my imposition today.  A few days ago I played a show at Egan’s in Ballard, and towards the end of our set I took a solo that has been a long time coming.  This solo was a culmination of a recent resurgence in a desire for me to play more straight ahead jazz playing, and also my longtime study of John Coltrane’s music.  During our set we played a piece that had a feeling similar to one of my favorite Coltrane tunes, Chasin’ the Trane.  I felt free on that stage, and that solo fulfilled something in me I hadn’t known was lacking lately.  I felt liberated in this moment. My soul felt naked and my mind clear.  I felt expressive, controlled and willing to devote myself fully to the music I was a part of.  It was beautiful for me.  It wasn’t intentional during the recording of this piece, but it’s clear to me that this improvisation is directly linked to the parallel between my longtime search for a way to evoke Coltrane’s musical voice through my own means.

In this piece I used the amazingly universal scale the Major Pentatonic. This is a beautiful, versatile scale found in all musical traditions.  I channeled the joy in my heart I’ve carried with me the past few days.  The improvisation has a dance-like quality to me, and in fact I was uncharacteristically more expressive in my body movements while recording.  The improvisation had no particular melodic framework, though on repeated listenings it’s clear to me that there were several figures I referred to.  I used double tonging and false fingerings to help give the piece a percussive motion.  I didn’t follow any particular meter, but instead used these techniques to help create melodies that were distinct and full of forward motion.  The improvisation uses the Major Pentatonic scale in the key of Db. In ascending order, the pitches are: Db, Eb, F, Ab, Bb, Db

-Neil

The image “Drying Teddies, P.Q. Canada” by David Marshall Graham (1982)

07/18/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 199)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 199

Date: 07/18/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Practice Room A at South Whidbey High School.  Langley, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

During this improvisation I explored a simple melody with that used a fingering system with single and split tones.  This folk-like melody is centered around the first three notes of the major scale.  Each of the pitches was a quarter step high, making them sound tempered in relation to one another despite being very out of tune in a traditional sense.  The fingerings gave each of the pitches a very warm timbal quality that I immediately gravitated towards.  The three pitches: Bb, C and D (again, each a quarter step high) were created with only 2 fingerings.  The Bb was created as follows: (Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm D.  The C and D used the same fingering with the addition of the Side F key: (Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm D // (Right Hand) Side F key.  The sliding between pitches or occasional cross-over into two pitches at the same time was done with my embouchure.  I made it my goal to shift from the 2nd to the 3rd pitch when my embouchure naturally wanted to engage.  Sometimes is happened quickly and other times very slowly, but regardless I tried to remain immediately aware of when the shift was about to take place in order to respond appropriately.

After the initial exploration of the Bb, C and D, I began adding the altissimo G in the upper register.  This tone was created with the traditional fingering, and therefore with tempered tuning set against the non-tempered notes below it.  As with the split tone fingering above, I tried to let it naturally speak based on the conditions of my embouchure at that moment.  This accounts for the variation in volume and character of the note (bright, dark, muffled, etc.). Eventually I added another chord to the sound field, which used the following fingering: (Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Palm D // (Right Hand) F key.  This tone was first introduced at 1:42 (the sustained tones).  As the improvisation progressed I began intertwining the chords more freely and stretching the harmony by adding other tones from outside the chord shapes.

-Neil

The image “no world from An Unpeopled Land in Uncharted Waters” by Kara Walker (2010)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 198

Date: 07/17/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: The loading dock behind a Target Store, at the Westwood Village Mall in White Center.  Seattle, WA

Notes:

I was in the South-West side of Seattle by 8am this morning, and spent a bit of time thinking about a site-specific location for an improvisation.  I originally planned to record in White Center at the Pea-Patch community garden.  White Center is one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in the Northwest.  When I walked through the community garden there were already folks out enjoying their little plots.  I decided to leave them to their solitude and look for another spot.  I ended up at the Westwood Village shopping Mall in a freight loading dock behind a Target super store.  The space turned out to be one of my favorite performance locations so far in the 12 Moons project.  

As with most modern big box stores, the building was made of cinder block.  The loading area behind the store had a retaining wall at least 200 yards long, and I would estimate to be 15 feet high.  This retaining wall held out the hillside beyond the shopping area.  There were baseball sized holes all along the wall which I believe were actually water drainage pipes inset into the wall.  I recorded at the far edge of the building in a 90 degree corner between the building and the retaining wall.  During the recording a sound similar to the rustling of leaves can occasionally be heard.  These were actually small piles of trash that were being caught in tiny tornadoes spinning around me.  In the distance garbage trucks, semi trucks and busses can be heard, as well as two separate car alarms.  

I approached the improvisation without a pre-scripted idea in mind.  The result was a piece that balanced the reverberation inside the retaining wall with aggressive swatches of sound that filled the vacant space between the Target and the wall.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by Joseph Crachiola (1973)

07/16/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 197)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 197

Date: 07/16/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

I practiced for a very long time this morning before arriving at this improvisation.  I woke up and started my day feeling a hollowness in me.  I’ve slept badly the past two nights, which I’m sure is related to it, but more importantly I felt this morning like I was in a constant search for something I couldn’t fulfill.  I carried this feeling into my practice session.  It seemed that no matter what I worked on, or how I hard I worked at it I could not be satisfied with the results and did not feel invested in what I was working on.  After following dead end after dead end in my improvisations, I eventually abandoned what I had been practicing and tried to open myself up.  What came out in this improvisation I feel very much represented a culmination of my life energy this morning.  It was almost a cry to purge this mood from me, or at least to embrace it with creative energy instead of allowing a destructive mental state to continue on.

After creating a fingering cycle and listening to the spirit of it, I set out to record this improvisation with no plan except to sing into the horn.  I gravitated towards two pitches, the Concert Bb and C (each a quarter step flat), and used them to sing into the horn with my voice.  As the piece progressed, the return back to the Concert Bb became almost a sonic respite for me that I just yearned to return to.  I built three developmental sections during this piece, each time climbing higher in pitch and letting the sound begin to fracture instead of center inward as in the lower tones.  After each build, on the return back to the Concert Bb and C the sound is noticeably more tense.  This improvisation uses a cyclical fingering system based around two fingerings.  

Fingering 1:

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Low B // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys.  Open and close the B, and side C in a cycle of 4 actions.

Fingering 2:

 (same as above, but open the low C# in the left hand instead of depressing the Low B).  This fingering was used during the three building sections where the sound begins to climb and distort.

-Neil

The image “Untitled” accompanying today’s post by Jose Antonio Suarez Londono (2005-2007).