08/17/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 229)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 229

Date: 08/17/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

During my practice session today I worked with the theme of orchestration.   I combined clusters of sound in a variety of different textures and fingering cycles.  These ranged from very controlled sound concepts to more abstract sound-color improvisations.  My recorded improvisation today lies somewhere between these two spectrums.  I used a single fingering as a springboard, which was as follows:

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

From this fingering I also added the Side F#, Low D and Low F (all in the right Hand) in vary combinations to create recurring cycles of sound or abstract one-off textures.  At the beginning of the improvisation  I added or took away keys more indeterminately, exploring colors of sound in the aforementioned abstract approach.  The patterns and melodies played in this piece were improvised, but as is clearly heard, there are many recurring patterns.  These shapes became my point of departure to begin balancing tones within the sound clusters, orchestrating them based off of what struck me from moment to moment.  At times I would begin to pull out one tone more than another, particularly when I used more complex poly-rhythms.  The high E and high F (each in the tenor key) became integral in centering my ears towards concrete elements from which to privet on.  I worked to cross fade tones in and out, with a particular emphasis on the crescendoing of sound.  Variations in tempo from slow to fast, fast to slow, or more abrupt changes also became improvised elements used to help accentuate the orchestration of sound by punctuating recurring themes or helping to transition from one section to another.

-Neil

08/16/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 228)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 228

Date: 08/16/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: A forested area at my childhood elementary school.  Edmonds, WA

Notes:

Before heading to my family’s house, early this morning I stopped and walked around the forested areas at my childhood elementary school.  I grew up across the street from this school, and the grassy fields and small, wooded areas were my daily spots for exploration growing up.  One of the small forests was my particular favorite as a kid, and I walked through it this morning for the first time since I was in elementary school 20 or so years ago.  What once was untamed and densely packed with tress and other foliage has now been turned into a hybrid forest and learning environment.  There are still towering Maple, Doug Fir and Cedar trees, but rough-hewn wooden benches now form a half circle around a large bare patch of ground.  It’s a calm, quiet spot.  

The cleared out ground in the center of this wooded area created a beautiful acoustic environment that held the sound tight within the space.  The reverberation from the trees seemed to bounce more in a circle around me than disperse into the woods and disappear.  This helped guide me towards my improvisation today, which was an exploration of double tonging pitches.  In this piece I balanced linear, that is note-to-note lines, with more disjunct interruptions from high octave chirps.  At other points I also centered within the extreme upper register and then interrupted this region with interjections from the register below.  The double tonging remained consistent throughout this piece, and despite the gritty pitch combinations explored here, I played relatively quiet until the end of the piece, where I began to increase in volume and intensity considerably.  

-Neil

The image “Mediatheque, Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, Scale model 1:150” accompanying today’s post by Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, Japan (1995-2001)

08/15/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 227)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 227

Date: 08/15/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

This entire day I’ve felt a storm in my mind.  My thought processes have felt scattered, with periods of obsessive cycles on the same topical theme over and over.   I woke up thinking about the current conflict in Egypt, listening about it all morning and reflecting on it all day, and frankly all of the past two full days, but the news of it I feel has little directly to do with my internal knots.  It must be playing a role, but I’ve felt my own problems trump those of others today, which, given the terrifying reality of life in that country at this moment this seems indulgent and selfish.  But none the less, this is my state of being today.  The sounds captured in this improvisation were developed first thing in the morning, but because of their striking similarity in sound and overall approach to yesterday’s improvisation (Day 227), I decided to wait to record until the end of the day to see if I would evolve a bit.  I did not, and the piece did not.  This improvisation, I can truly say was a full, unswerving reflection of myself on this day.

The improvisation hinges on a 6-pitch gesture, with each note played with the same fingering: (Left Hand) B-G keys, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Side F

Written in the tenor key and in ascending order, this fingering creates the tones: Eb (quarter step sharp, E (quarter step sharp), C#, E, F#, B.  The Eb and E create a wonderful tight-knit cluster which is capable of sustaining beneath each of the pitches above them.  Though I did stray a bit from these 6 pitches, I generally tried to maintain the bottom Eb and E while exploring the upper tones.  As the piece evolved, I began adding slight pulses of sound by flicking open and closed the Palm Eb and Low Eb keys.  I also focused on using an extreme amount of air and higher whistle tones from air interacting with my reed.  I felt this contributed towards the quiet torrent of sound used in this improvisation.

-Neil

The image “Self Portrait"  accompanying today’s post by Jackson Pollock (1931-1935).

08/14/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 226)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 226

Date: 08/14/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: A park across the street from Chief Sealth High School in White Center.  Seattle, WA

Notes:

This morning I recorded in a recently created park across the street from Chief Sealth High School.   The park is built atop the grounds of what used to be Denny Middle school and is now a series of large, open grass fields, baseball diamonds and small islands of manufactured natural landscapes, such as rockeries with cattails, maple trees alongside ornamental grasses and varieties of shrubs and herbs.  These islands are pleasent but look strikingly artificial given the cement pathways that carve through them and the lush, lime green grass that surrounds everything in sight.  I recorded in the park because I craved to play outdoors and was looking for a more natural landscape to become a part of.  I ended up improvising today’s piece hunkered down underneath the branches of a small maple tree in the middle of one of these simulated environments.

I began playing around 8:30am, and because of the early time I played as quietly as possible so as not to disturb any sleeping neighbors.  Curious joggers and Mom’s with kids stared at me as they went by, and eventually a police car parked a hundred or so yards away, and the officer stared me down for a good half hour.  It occurred to me how strange a reality this was, that a police officer was called by a concerned neighbor due to the presence of a person playing the saxophone in the park. And I, the saxophonist was witnessed by the officer as a man hunched underneath a tree at 8:30am in the middle of a cluster of plants with a saxophone in hand.   In recording this improvisation I opened myself to the reality around me.   I looked for the solitude of nature while in the city and found a strange little manufactured bit of it inside this park. 

This improvisation does not use any particular compositional model or any preconceived material, but was a piece inspired by my surroundings, the hour of the day, and my experience in this place.

-Neil

The image “a: funken 4z, b: funken 13z” accompanying today’s post by Carsten Nicolai (2003)

08/13/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 225)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 225

Date: 08/13/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

I spent a great deal of time working on my improvisation recording today.  The coming together of this piece was a culmination of many dead end concepts and recorded attempts. Some days an improvisational focus seems to come effortlessly to me, and in others it is a slow, gradual process.  

I began by recording pieces with colorful, melancholic chord progressions.  There was one two-chord series that was just begging me to record it.  The sound was so evocotive of my mood, but I could not find the right method of expressing it through sound.  After many attempts, my ears were yearning for an absence of chords.  I began improvising melodic pieces where I worked to develop very strict tonal centers with individual pitches.  The melancholic state in the previous series of chordal pieces seemed to be a fleeting feeling in me, and I worked to overcome it by filling my improvisations with joyful songs.  This included several recorded attempts with the Major Pentatonic scale.  In this scale I stayed strictly on the 5 pitches, but freed myself to explore in any octave.  In my last recorded attempt with the pentatonic scale, I explored folk-like melodies with slight phrasing interruptions by occasionally using double tonging.  The simple concept of “interruption” from the pentatonic piece led me towards my final concept.  

In today’s improvisation I used sliding low octave pitches, double-tonging and a swiping of the pitches indeterminately.  Within these textures I began adding upper octave interruptions.  Except for a few select multiphonics, there is no actual harmony taking place here, but rather the illusion of overlapping sound.  Beyond the described attributes for the piece stated above, the material was fully improvised.

-Neil

The image “Poster For National Bunraku Theatre” accompanying today’s post by Tadanori Yokoo.