12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 37
Date: 02/06/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
Over the past month I have focused largely on textural pieces. These do have very concrete and qualifiable qualities to me but lately I’ve begun craving single note melodies. My piece today focuses on repetitive, single pitch shapes and irregular, but repeated rhythms.
During this improvisation I use a fixed scale. In concert key and in descending order the pitches are B-A-G-F-E-D-C. These are the 7 pitches in the C major scale–perhaps the most often played scale in the world. By limiting myself to such a strict set of pitches, I decided to work with the repetition of disjunct rhythms. Throughout this piece there are 3 melodic/rhythm sets that use all 7 pitches, as well as the quickly descending scale played between the motives. I attempted to perform each of the 3 rhythmic sets in exactly the same way with each repetition.
Pitch order in melody/rhythm 1: B-F-C-A-E-G-D
Pitch order in melody/rhythm 2: G-E-A-D-B-F-C
Pitch oder in melody/rhythm 3: G-C-F-D-B-E-A
Because the rhythms were so disjunct, I was also curious to see if I could return to each motive and play it in exactly the same way again. There were certainly some mistakes, but overall I felt that my rhythmic integrity and accuracy remained clear. After playing each motive, I return to the descending scale shape as kind of a mid point between the phrases: B-A-G-F-E-D-C. This shape in this particular key was a favorite of the saxophone master John Coltrane, who played it many times throughout the album “Interstellar Space.”
-Neil
02/05/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 36)
12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 36
Date: 02/05/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Choir room at Chief Sealth high school. Seattle, WA
Notes:
In my improvisation today I decided to try and explore an equal use of melodicism and harmony. The overtones and multiphonics I work on are often very colorful, filled with complex chords and rich clusters of sound. I find this complexity to be beautiful unto itself, but at times my ear is also drawn towards particular pitches or sounds. With this shift of focus I begin to hear more melodies coming out than actual chords. I can often times even momentarily trick my mind into believing that another sources is playing the chords, and I’m merely accompanying these chords with melodies of my own independent creation. While blindly setting out to perform this improvisation I found myself searching for this balance today.
This was a free improvisation piece with no particular performance model or preparation ahead of time to set in motion. After choosing a basic fingering as a jumping off point, I let my subconscious be my guide. While performing this piece I was surprised by the percussiveness in many of these gestures. Muted tones in the lower register seemed to set their own pace, while melodies and chords navigated a grid above these rhythms. Within the first few seconds of this piece my attention was drawn towards a balance of chordal sound and melodic shape as being a unified goal.
-Neil
02/04/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 35)
12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 35
Date: 02/04/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
A technique I often hear brass players use is blowing air through the instrument and using tongue articulation to create a hard stop to the sound. When done quickly, a fluttering sound is created. A recent addition to our Seattle creative music scene is Christian Pincock, whose tongue-stop sound explorations where at the forefront of my mind on this piece. I have spent little time with this technique as a woodwind player. I have however practiced single, double and flutter tonguing, as well as slap tonging, but I’ve spent comparatively little time focusing on the more common brass player technique described above.
In this improvisation I never sounded an actual pitch above a whisper volume, but instead made my air and tonguing the focus. While either screaming or playing very delicately through my horn, in the past I’ve used a particular technique of cupping my tongue. I raise up the center, then lower back to a flattened position and repeat the action continuously. When combined with air in rapid succession, this action actually makes an audible sound of “oh, ee.” In my improvisation today I use this technique but at times also combine it with a stop-tonuge action. The resultant thud creates a larger sound than the “oh, ee.” In this piece I attempted to explore a full range of sound while exploring this new territory, and at times I tried to intentionally make my air more present than the thud of my tongue against the reed. In the mid point and again at the end of the improvisation, I use a series of fingerings meant to pull more tones out of the horn. These tones sound very clearly when the tongue strikes the reed and forces the air to stop.
-Neil
Neil Welch in the Ravine
From his new album Twelve Tiny Explosions (available Feb. 15th) Welch performs “Willing Joy” and “Song Cycle for Missouri” in Ravenna, WA.
Recorded, produced, and edited by Jake Knapp and Andrew J.S.
02/03/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 34)
12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 34
Date: 02/03/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island
Notes:
This was a pre-dawn improvisation today, and I woke up feeling an impulse to work with a familiar technique. Part of my daily practice routine involves singling pitches and matching this pitch on the saxophone. I work on singing from the bottom-most note on the horn (low Bb) to a high F with accurate pitch. I find that this helps to strengthen my mind towards a goal of hearing each note on my horn as though it were coming from my own voice. The next step in this process was for me to begin singing pitches while I played. My improvisation today uses this technique.
My goal in this improvisation was not to sing with crystal clear intonation, but instead to kind of create an atmosphere of pliable unison pitches. The idea here being that at times I lock into the intonation, but have the flexibility to bend the pitch towards the next note my mind feels like exploring. I begin this improvisation with unison pitches and then briefly enter into a small period of harmony. After having sung and played a pitch, I hold onto this fingering while singing a new note. I would then move to the pitch that I had sung. This is an amazing process, as the mind is forced to think of a number of pitches at the same time: the pitch you are singing, the fingering needed to produce the same pitch, then the harmony between the pitch you are sining and pitch you are playing, and finally to match the fingering of the pitch you are now singing. This is a kind of mental labrynth that seems to take me deeper every time I explore it.
-Neil