10/07/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 280)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 280

Date: 10/07/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: The rec room of my childhood home

Notes:

Between rehearsals and teaching this morning I stopped off at my families house.  With just a half hour or so before I need to leave I suddenly found myself in a calm and quiet space by myself.  I had just finished up a rehearsal for Bad Luck, my collaborative duo project with drummer Chris Icasiano.  Though we try and keep a light spirit, our rehearsals are marathon sessions filled with music that challenges us mentally and physically.  I carried this energy into my 12 Moons improvisation today, bringing this residual heightened state of energy into what would normally have been a calmer mood at my families empty house.

This improvisation was based off of an improvisatory section in a new Bad Luck composition.   I worked with the theme of clustered activity, both in the played material and space itself.  I wanted the microcosmic space between pitches to resonate as much as the short pitch punctuations themselves.  This improvisation begins with a heightened state of energy and activity that continues to builds on itself.  I used single and double tonguing, and despite the gritty textures I worked to stay particularly aware of the range and timbres I used while playing.  The bulk of the pitched material uses the palm keys which I would overblow to create bright crackles of sound. 

-Neil

The image “Crawl Space” accompanying today’s post by Jane Wilson and Louise Wilson (1995).

10/06/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 279)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 279

Date: 10/06/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

I’ve spent time with more aggressive sound executions the past several weeks, and while practicing a bit this morning I focused on tiny, subtle sound worlds.  I became interested in a combination of small sound constructions where I combined elements of varying levels of stability.  For example, the two pitches that begin the improvisation were extremely solid despite being played very quietly, but by adjusting my embouchure at :49-1:04 a brittle major chord emerges that at all times hinges on collapse.  It was extremely difficult to make it speak, let alone sustain it.  The bit of warbling in this chord was not intentional but was instead a bi-product of trying to hold it out as long as possible.

During this piece, movement between the F–quarter step flat, and Eb–quarter step flat became the central melodic figures.  I worked to balance this direct note-to-note melodic motion with chords that emerge from each of these pitches.  This included, for example the middle octave F opening up to become the fundamental of a Bb minor chord/multiphonic in 2nd inversion.  This can be heard at :38-:43.   The upper octave Eb then moves down slightly from time to time to take on a major chord shape.  The fingerings used during this improvisation were as follows:

F–quarter step flat (middle register)

(Left Hand) 1-2-3 // (Right Hand) 1-3

Eb–quarter step flat (upper register)

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Palm Eb key only // (Right Hand) 1-3

Bb minor chord

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low B // (Right Hand) 1-3

Major chord (slightly loosen embouchure pressure)

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Palm Eb key only, Low B // (Right Hand) 1-3

-Neil

The image “Haley’s comet as It Looked in 1910” accompanying today’s post by United Press International (1910).

10/05/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 278)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 278

Date: 10/05/2013

Instrument: Soprano saxophone

Location: Outside my cabin at Mt. Index.  Mt. Index, WA

Notes:

My wife and I spent the day up at our cabin.  It’s located at the foot of Mt. Index in the Central Cascade Range about 7 miles past the town of Gold Bar.    The weather was too good to be inside the cabin, so we spent the day keeping ourselves warm around the fire ring to spite the chilly alpine wind blowing down off the mountains.   With no set agenda or obligations I spent many hours of my day practicing and improvising.   However, even though I came to the horn easily I found it hard to tackle my 12 Moons recorded improvisation. 

The mood of the day was light but the my surroundings were so extraordinarily grandiose, I wanted to honor the space with an appropriate improvisation.  After over an hour of false leads I naturally came to this piece.   Staring straight out at the craggily-toped peaks of the Cascades I tried to improvise a piece that mirrored their severity and amazing statliness.  During this improvisation I used quick, wide angled single pitches with rapid single tonging and slap tonging.  As one large mountain peak has many smaller ridges and bumps I worked to give this improvisation that character.  The piece maintains steady pacing overall until the conclusion, where the density of sound begins to dwindle away into unaccompanied single pitches with wider gaps between their execution.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post is Mt. Index and surrounding peaks in the Central Cascades.

10/04/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 277)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 277

Date: 10/04/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

A few days ago my life force felt incredibly depleted.  There was a hollowness in me that wasn’t exhaustion or depression but something deeper and older.  I described it to my wife that I felt like a human puzzle with a missing piece. There was some indescribable thing that I was yearning for, and I came to realize that I needed the healing medicine of John Coltrane’s music.  I listened to the album “Infinity,” which features music released posthumously with beautiful string arrangements by his late wife Alice Coltrane.  I let the music wash over me and I felt this missing piece of life force fill back up.  The profound human searching in Coltrane’s helped guide me towards what I was looking for.  

In gratitude to Coltrane’s music and it’s importance in my life I recorded this improvisation today.  In the last period of his music Coltrane often talked about a trying to achieve a universal sound–a boundless sound that could unite all music together.  During this period nearly every composition of his uses the major or minor pentatonic scale in some form.  From the folk sounds of Appalachia to traditional music of Ghana, this magical scale is found in all musical cultures.  It’s my feeling that Coltrane used this scale so frequently because he believed in it’s universal power.  Today I explored the C Major Pentatonic scale through singing and hollering into the horn while playing a harmonic accompaniment. 

The first two pitches in the improvisation: G-E became the fulcrum of this improvisation.  Setting off from there I then improvised the remained of the improvisation, filling it in with the full C Major pentatonic scale.  To create the bulk of the harmonic material I used a single fingering, which was as follows:

For the pitches (in ascending order from lowest to highest played/sung): E, G, A, E, G, A

(Left Hand) 1-2, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 2-3.  Continuously cycle in a staggered motion the G key (left hand) and the Side F (right hand).

The remaining Concert C and Concert A used the following fingerings

Concert C:

(Left Hand) 1-2, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2-3.  Continuously cycle in a staggered motion the G key (left hand) and the Side F (right hand).

The A minor chord created on the low octave A used the following fingering:

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low B // (Right Hand) 1-2-3, Low C.   Continuously cycle in a staggered motion the G key (left hand) and the Side F (right hand).

-Neil

The image “A Palm Sunday Painting” accompanying today’s post by Kai Althoff.

10/03/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 276)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 276

Date: 10/03/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

In today’s improvisation I wanted to explore the idea of stationary sound with accompanying motion.  To do this I structured the improvisation around two specific chord clusters and found fingerings that would allow the main chords themselves to ring out despite a variety of action around them.  There are some melodic and rhythmic cells where the chord is only used sparingly, but during these points the pitches used would move quickly back into the chord, or were used to contribute to the larger theme. There are components of the chord voicing that come in and out, or even morph into more dynamic roles within the “motion."  But there are some common factors that remained as stationary as possible, such as the muted Concert E in the lowest part of the voicing that almost functions as a drone throughout the entire improvisation.

Other techniques akin to the idea of stationary versus motion sound included holding the chord and suddenly bursting into fast melodic and rhythmic cells.  An example of this could be heard at 1:30.  The two chords contrasted in their sound profiles but shared the common lower octave, muted Concert E.  The first chord is dense, with a tight half step cluster in the upper octave.  This is the chord that opens the improvisation.  The second used only the Concert E, with each pitch split in octaves between the mid and upper register.  An example of this second chord can be heard at 2:38.  Each chord was referenced and developed several times and often dovetailed from one to the other.  The fingerings were as follows:

Chord Shape 1 (dense)

(Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Palm D // (Right Hand) 1, Side Bb, Side F

Chord Shape 2 (octaves)

(Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Palm Eb only // (Right Hand) 1, Side Bb, Side F

-Neil

The image "Snow Pattern” accompanying today’s post by Kenji Tadamoto (c. 1959).