11/21/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 325)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 325

Date:11/21/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

This morning I was thinking about an interesting topic I heard on the radio a while back.  The speaker was discussing the idea of debate as a critical process in conversation, but that it can also carry an intrinsic flaw.  For his example, he showed how two people can argue opposite perspectives on the same topic, but the topic in fact does have a definite answer.  Ultimately one of the two are indeed correct, but the very nature of two people debating one another can lead a listener to believe that the two sides of the argument are roughly equal, when in reality this may be far from the case.  One argument might be wildly off base, but through cleaver techniques it can be presented in a way that seems equally matched to the truth.  Politicians use this tactic quite often to refute an argument they know to be a truth by counterbalancing facts with slight of hand and obfuscation, warping a listener’s mind into believing that their perspective is of equal value.  

In my improvisation, I explored the concept of opposing perspectives and the gradual decay of clarity into a place where both perspectives seem of equal balance.  During this piece I began with undulating tones in the lower register, which I defined as Argument A.   I then interjected upper register flourishes with rapid single pitches and multiphonics.  This represented Argument B–the opposing argument.  As the piece developed, I began gradually moving the lower register pitches (Argument A.) higher and higher, as well as increasing the volume.  I kept the upper register flourishes (Argument B.) at roughly the same volume, but began decreasing the amount of time passing between execution of the figures.  At about the mid point in the improvisation, Argument A. finally settles into a recurring melody in the middle register, played at the same volume as Argument B.  From this point forward the two begin to overlap, until finally they begin to overlap into one broad, undefined perspective where the two arguments loose any sense of definition.  

-Neil

The image “Between the Clock and the Bed” accompanying today’s post by Jasper Johns (1982-83).

11/20/2013 (12 Moon Solo Project Day 324)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 324

Date: 11/20/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

Yesterday Bad Luck ended out Fall tour by driving from Kettleville, CA (about 3 hours North of LA) back up to Seattle.  After staying the night in the city, I made it back home to the island this morning.  Doing chores around the house and practicing, I found myself filled with a duel feeling, both of the joy of being home and a desire to be back on the road meeting new people and exploring new places.  I decided to embrace dualism in my improvisation today. 

During this improvisation I used a primary melodic figure in medium tempo.  The fingerings contained inside this melody then became the source material for faster, more indeterminate figures that I explored freely.  The melody opens the improvisation and is played 4 times, the 4th being a springboard for the improvised material.  The second and eight pitches in the melodies were the roots of larger chords, the former being a minor chord and the latter a major.  I used the dichotomy of minor to parallel major as a means to bring about my dual state of mind.  These two chords also became a point of reference during the piece to bind the improvised material to the full melody.  The fingerings used for the primary melody were as follows (written below in the order they were played):

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

Pitch Bb: (Left Hand) 1-2, Palm Eb key only, Low B //  (Right Hand) 2-3 *This was a tight, clustered minor chord*

Pitch C: (Left Hand) 1-2, Low B //  (Right Hand) 2-3, Side C

Pitch D: (Left Hand) 1-2, Fork F, Low B //  (Right Hand) 2-3, Side C

Pitch C: Same as C fingering above

Pitch Bb: Same as Bb fingering/clustered minor chord above

Pitch G: Same as G fingering above

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

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by Barthelemy Toguo. 

11/19/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 323)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 323

Date: 11/19/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: A local garbage dump.  Mount Shasta, CA

Notes:

Today Bad Luck is on our way back home driving North from Los Angeles to Seattle.  After a good 9 hours of driving under our belt, we stopped briefly for me to record in the town of Mount Shasta, CA, located at the base of the beautiful mountain itself.  We headed up a dirt road that went directly towards the smaller Black Butte mountain.  This road eventually led us to the city dump, and finally a second service road ended at a refuse pile for building materials such as old pallets and lumber.  Bordering the pile were neat rows of old oil drums.  The cold wind was blowing hard off of the mountain and it began to rain.  I decided to set up my mic inside one of the oil drums to experience the drums’ perspective on my sound.

I blasted into the oil drum at a high level of volume.  The mic was placed directly onto the bottom, and I tilted the bell of my horn into the hole at the top of drum to play inside.  Throughout the piece, and particularly so at the end, there’s a great deal of distortion from overwhelming the microphone.  This has yet to happen during this project and was not intentional.  This was the result of a miscalculation on my part as to how loud my sound would reverberate inside the drum.  However, the distortion itself is really interesting.  The brightest clipping takes place on the denser multiphonic clusters versus the straight tone.  During these high volume pieces, the highest recorded levels tend to be at the moment of tongue articulation after having have breathed, rather than during a cluster of some kind.  The fact that the clusters themselves overwhelmed the mic is really interesting to me, and something I’d like to explore more in the future.

During this piece I used a single fingering action and articulated my sound with both my tongue and key flicking on the low C.  The fingering was as follows:

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2-3.  Flick closed, then opened on the Low C key.  This helped the multiphonics to emerge in denser shapes.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post is Black Butte mountain, Oregon.

11/18/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 322)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 322

Date: 11/18/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: An outdoor walkway at CalArts (California College for the Arts).  Valencia, CA

Notes:

This morning Bad Luck drove down from San Francisco to Valencia for a clinic and performance at CalArts.  After the workshop, I walked around the main floor of the building for some time before finding a large outdoor walkway that wrapped around the South side of the building.  A busy, 4-lane road was a few hundred yards beyond the school, and the constant murmur of traffic could be heard while I improvised from the walkway.

Our clinic was a very productive and energy-filled experience, and I wanted to carry this spirit into my improvisation today.  During this piece I explored pockets of action with punctuations of my own silence.  However the constant hum of traffic had its own kind of persistence, with natural ebbs and flows as traffic increased or decreased.  I used my own silence as a very specific barrier to separate my trains of thought, while allowing the traffic noise to act as a bridge between these statements.  There was thematic material that naturally emerged from me while playing, but overall I worked to create a variety of sound textures and stylistic approaches, including hollering, screaming, false fingerings and multiphonics.

-Neil

The image “Orange, White, and Blue” accompanying today’s post by Ger van Elk.

11/17/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 321)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 321

Date: 11/17/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: My brother’s apartment in the Haight district.  San Francisco, CA

Notes:

This morning Bad Luck had a two hour clinic in Berkeley, discussing our music, compositional process, and specifically the mixed use of electronics and acoustic playing in our band.  All of my playing is amplified in Bad Luck, and while practicing a bit during a free hour this afternoon I was happy to find myself back in a fully acoustic setting.  I practiced in a small room in my brother’s apartment, with my bell against a wall in front of me.  I improvised a piece that used constant tonging, exploring slight changes in my articulation and the harmonic profile of the improvisation.

During this piece I avoided allowing any of the resonating tones to emerge above a very low level of volume.  For this reason the recording was amplified quite a bit in order to clearly hear the intricacies of the improvisation.  This accounts for the disproportionately louder breathing.  The improvisation uses three fingerings and a light articulation with my tongue against the reed.  The three fingerings were chromatic, and I began with the second of the three.  As I moved from Fingering 2 towards Fingering 1, the harmony descends.  I then ascended back to Fingering 2,  and moved the harmony upwards into Fingering 3, and finally back to Fingering 2.  I followed this basic shape throughout the improvisation, moving at a flexible tempo.  As the piece progressed I began incorporating heavier and heavier articulation, which began gradually slowing the tempo down and adding harder tongue articulation.

The fingerings used during this improvisation were as follows:

Fingering 2 (the fingering which opens the piece) Mid range.

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

Fingering 3 (Low range)

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

Fingering 1 (High range)

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

-Neil

The image “The Shadow of Tragedy” accompanying today’s post by International News Photo (May 16, 1932.