07/25/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 206)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 206

Date: 07/25/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

My afternoon was spent working on chromatic exercises with octave displacement, arranged in angular, disjointed shapes.  This largely influenced my improvisation today.  I became interested in the idea of pairing more precise wide intervalic material with a loose, repetitive theme.  Except for the repeated theme itself, the melodic material in this piece was fully improvised.  There is inflection used throughout the improvisation, such as trilling, double tonging, extreme dynamic shifts, false fingerings and a wide array of articulation variations.  However, I avoided the use of any kind of vibrato and reserved this instead for the main theme only.  This was done to punctuate its use more dramatically against the other melodic material.  I used fingerings for the main theme that allowed for wider bends with the vibrato. I also decided to burry the main theme inside melodic phrases so as to create an interruption each time it begins and ends.

For the main theme, the fingerings used were as follows (in the tenor key of Bb):

Pitches: B-C 

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

Pitch: D

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

Pitches Ab-Bb

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

Pitch: E (quarter step low)

(Left Hand) Fork F, C-G keys, Octave // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low Eb

Pitch: E

(Left Hand) Fork F, C-G keys, Octave, Palm Eb // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low Eb

-Neil

The image “Proyecto de Acumulacion de Materiales (Project of Accumulation of Materials)” accompanying today’s post by Alexandre Arrechea, Dagoberto Rodriquez, Marco Castillo (1999)

07/24/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 205)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 205

Date: 07/24/2013

Instrument: Soprano saxophone

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

Notes:

This morning I attempted to record a piece around 6am but was discouraged by the results.  My aim was to create a palette of whisper soft upper register tones, but after many attempts at an improvisation I decided to take the day to think about how better to shape the piece.  I tried again around 7:00pm, and found myself feeling fully inspired and prepared to record.  The improvisation I decided to tackle used three primary pitches at its center: altissimo F#, G# and A (in the soprano key of Bb).  Alternating beneath and above these tones I created additional layers of melodic activity.  I worked to balance thin with thick textures while trying never to loose sight of the 3 primary pitches.  Instead of playing at a whisper soft dynamic level I recorded at medium volume.

Notated below, the fingerings for these pitches allowed for a wide array of textural shaping, including traditional pitches, split tones and full multiphonic chords.  I also occasionally added the C# in middle octave to help punctuate the extreme difference between the brighter high whistle tones and this comparatively fuller middle octave tone color.  Sometimes I chose to create tight melodic cycles, and at other times thinned the textures to explore repetition with more subtle elements.  The simultaneous use of varying layers of action in several octaves became central to this improvisation.

The fingerings were as follows:

Altissimo F#

(Left Hand) Fork F, C key, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) Low C

Altissimo G#

(Left Hand) Fork F, C key, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) High G key, Low C

Altissimo A

(Left Hand) Octave key, Low Bb // (Right Hand) High G key, Low C

-Neil

The image “Gargantua” accompanying today’s post by Sam Kaner (1954)

07/23/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 204)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 204

Date: 07/23/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

An improvisation with a steady pulse of energy was my aim today; something that began with action and maintained it throughout.  During this piece I explored chord clusters with a variety of tone colors and tried to immediately begin the improvisation with hightenened energy.   The larger sound picture gave me the impression of multiple musicians interacting at the same time, and I used three fingering actions as points of departure to do this.  Fingering action 1 uses a simple major chord shape.  Fingering action 2 is a split pitch gesture that bends up from a Concert D  (quarter step flat) to a Concert F (quarter step flat).  Fingering 3 is the single pitch F (quarter step flat) which is noticeably more accented than the other tones.  These fingering actions are stitched together with a recurring intermediary fingering cycle described below.

While playing this piece I found myself focusing on textural themes in Gamelan music.  I imagined a symphony of mallet percussion with interlocking melodic figures that combine in equal intimacy with rhythmic cycles.  In that music I hear a great deal of individualism, but only insofar as the larger group will allow for this without compromising the vision of the entire ensemble.  I worked to balance these overarching themes as I played.

The fingerings and pitches were as follows (all notated in the tenor key and in ascending order of pitch)

Fingering action 1: Ab muted difference tone, E quarter step flat, C

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

Fingering action 2: E quarter step flat, G quarter step flat.  Use embouchure to bend from E to G.

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) F# key, Low C, High F# key 

Fingering action 3: G quarter step flat.

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

The intermediary finger cycle that combines Fingering action 1 and 2 is done by opening the F key (right hand), followed by the B key (left hand) and finally the B key is then put back down (but the F remains open), each in turn with the overall cycle happening very rapidly.

-Neil

The image “Pan (C-337)” accompanying today’s post by Marco Breuer (2003)

07/22/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 203)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 203

Date: 07/22/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

In my improvisation today, I explored the concept of moving forward through the lens of our own experience.  As an improvisor I draw from the well of my own knowledge and those around me.  Every day I’m so encouraged by the thought that for every bit I draw from myself my knowledge becomes replaced ten fold by life experience.  In relation to my improvisation today, I wanted to encounter my own work in real time from a place of acceptance, and allow the piece to push forward at all times.  I tried not to second guess in any way my thought process while playing, and to use this bit of ego to help fuel the decisions that came in each new moment.  During this improvisation I didn’t have a starting or ending point in mind, but instead made it my goal to allow my thought process itself to point me towards something of a complete whole.  

From the initial sound that begins the piece, I was struck by the beautiful dissonance of the chord and the upper register Eb that spoke so much clearer than the other tones.  I then began a fingering system that exploited this high octave Eb, which created a recurring melodic action during the piece (pitches written in ascending order): G-Ab-Eb.  This became the dominant fingering action:

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

With this sound color I began incorporating rhythmic cycles into the improvisation, as well as several small events.  These events would include a few seconds of focus within a particular register, sound clusters, shifts between octaves, extreme dynamic shaping, etc.  An additional action which became a recurring theme was the held multiphonic with accents on each beat.  This can be heard for the first time at 2:42.  This accented sound was created by taking away and then re-applying the octave key in time, using the central fingering notated above.

-Neil

The image “Untitled (4 days, 3 nights, 1 sumer) accompanying today’s post by Joey Kotting (2001)

07/21/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 202)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 202

Date: 07/21/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: A trailside clearing in Ravenna Park.  Seattle, WA

Notes:

I spent the day on the mainland teaching, rehearsing, and playing.  On Sunday’s I generally feel fueled by the energy of the city and look forward to participating in it, but today I felt swallowed up by the pace of it.  Several hours of my day were spent commuting by car and bus, and my improvisation was a sound reflection of over 100 miles of city and suburb commuting, a beautiful sky overhead, piles of trash, friendly strangers and endless lines of houses.  I decided to record in Ravenna Park, which is a wonderful wooded space located in Seattle’s University district.  I set up the mic next to a babbling creek on the edge of a walking trail.  Airplanes occasionally flew overhead, trucks drove by, couples walked and talked with one another in the distance and birds sang overhead.

During this improvisation I explored tiny sound clusters without any melodic center.  I tried to let tones  within the clusters naturally poke out with more presence than the others to help further this feeling of instability. I bound the small, nondescript points of action together with swooping floods of air to carefully swell the volume.  I thought about creating extreme dynamics below a very low ceiling of volume.  A point of interest to me lately in my practicing, it trying to explore the furthest limits of an idea, in this case volume, when the limits themselves are very restrictive compared to what is actually possible on the instrument.  I find that with such a low ceiling for volume, I feel liberated to explore the quietest of figures up to simply “lower volume” figures and experience very clear definition between them.

-Neil

The image “Sade for Sade’s sake” accompanying today’s post by Paul Chan (2009)