03/19/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 78)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 78

Date: 03/19/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Performing Arts Hall at Chief Sealth High School.  Seattle, WA

Notes:

My reserved mood was welcomed by an improvisation to match it today.  The use of drones to elicit mood in music is a very powerful tool in my mind.  I’m interested in exploring drones with melodic counterpoint, and this improvisation makes use of a very simple example of this.  The physical nature of creating this particular sound requires a very breathy tone from the horn, which accounts for so much ambient sound captured in this recording.

I attempted to maintain a Concert Eb drone at all times while playing.  The melody above this drone focuses on a repetitive motion from a Concert B to a Concert Bb.  The Concert Eb and D pitches above the melody were played with a single fingering, though the sum total of sounds was created by using two.  In the final 20 seconds or so of the piece there is a momentary shift in tonality up a half step.  This was not intentional, and though the mistake is obvious I felt the overall spirit captured in this improvisation was stronger than other recorded attempts I made at it.

The Concert Eb drone can remain fully unbroken between the two fingerings below:

1.)  Concert B, D and Eb pitches plus drone: (Left Hand) B-A Keys, Octave Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E keys, Low C and Side F

2.)  Concert Bb plus drone: Same fingering as above but add the D key in the Right Hand.

-Neil

The image “Le Nu Sombre” accompanying today’s post by Pierre Bonnard (1941)

03/18/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 77)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 77

Date: 03/18/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone 

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

Notes:

One of my continuing personal challenges is to discover news ways to play a repetitive melodic gesture with non-traditional fingerings.  I worked with four fixed pitches in my improvisation today.  The pitches, in concert key are: Ab, Bb, Db, Eb.  After briefly practicing the sequence of fingerings, I began with no particular shape or melody.  As is almost always the case, after the first few moments of the improvisation a great number of ideas sprang into my mind. 

The fingering sequenced I used creates a spoken note and a “false,” repeated note.  It’s false in the sense that I phrase the melodic figure as though the note produced would be completely separate.  In this way it sounds like a momentary hick-up in the phrase, though the tempo and spacing between notes actually remained even.  This can be heard in the concert Bb pitch, where I would often play the Bb, the “false” Bb, and then move to the Ab.

The are four pitches used in this improvisation, not counting the repeated false Bb.  To create these pitches I used fingerings which had deeper overtones in them.  This can be clearly heard every time I move back to the bottom most note, the concert Ab.  The tone seems to pop out because there are actually a number of separate notes that are capable of being played with that particular fingering.  The fingerings used are as follows:

Concert Ab: (Left Hand) B-A keys, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low C

Concert Bb: (Left Hand) A keys, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E-D Keys, Low C

(False Bb add the Side C to the above Concert Bb fingering)

Concert Db: (Left Hand) Fork F, C key, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E-D Keys, Low C

Concert Eb: (Left Hand) Fork F, C-G keys, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E-D Keys, Low C

The photo accompanying this post is of artist Marina Abramovic, who I was fortunate to see perform live in her real-time installation “The Artist Is Present” at the MOMA in 2010. 

-Neil

03/17/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 76)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 76

Date: 03/17/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone 

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

Notes:

After a long rehearsal a few days back with my comrade Chris Icasiano, I’ve had motivic development on my musical mind.  Chris recently performed a solo drum composition which has several pre-scripted rhythmic cycles that are repeated, then altered and repeated.  These rhythms were orchestrated to highlight specific areas of the drums.  We performed an improvised version of this composition later that night where I would create a solo gesture and repeat it at will until moving on to another gesture to be repeated.  Chris’ work was partially improvised but mostly composed, whereas mine was intended to be fully improvised.  One of the many challenges with this approach included finding ways to effectively interact with one another despite the limitation of not knowing each others cycles would sound like ahead of time.  

As Chris had certain compositional areas of the instrument determined ahead of time, in this improvisation I decided to select a specific multiphonic sound.  To ornament this sound I limited myself to only a few possible fingering moves and within these parameters I would create indeterminate cycles to be repeated.  These cycles had a variety of independent focal points in my mind, including rhythm, harmony, melody, or just raw pockets of energy.  I would try not to consider with too much thought what my next move would be, but would instead just allow it to come out, then repeat and explore the sound until the moment felt right to move forward.

-Neil

03/16/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 75)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 75

Date: 03/16/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

The blues is on my mind tonight, and for this improvisation I decided to work with a patient, calm spirit I explored in my first month on this project.  

I chose a slow pulse in a four beat cycle, with two pitches as the foundation.  The pitches are a concert E and a concert G.  I depressed the Low C key for both notes, and when playing the concert G I would also leave the F# depressed as well.  In specific repetitions of the melody I began to quickly open and close the low D keys as well, opening the sound field to include clicks, clacks and overtones to accompany the melody.  

When the improvisation began I used little or no tongue at all, but as the volume begins to climb the tongue becomes more essential in escalating the energy of the piece.  About two thirds the way into the improvisation I began articulating harder and blowing more air while opening and closing the low D key.  This began to pull out the gritty overtones and wails that become introduced with the melody.

-Neil

03/15/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 74)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 74

Date: 03/15/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

I felt an immediate impulse to conjure gritty, gravely clusters out of my horn this morning.  Like most young students, when I started playing the saxophone I would explore this sound by doing bluesy growls in my horn.  More often than not I would end up hollering or humming into the horn before I could control more of the wheezing sound necessary to growl.  It was years later that I backtracked to start gaining control over the other colors possible by throat manipulation of different sorts.

This improvisation uses a single, common mulitphonic fingering that I’ve used in a prior day on this project.  (Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Palm Eb // (Right Hand) F-E keys, Low C.  This multiphonic creates a wide range of tones all its own, and in this improvisation I hummed either directly within or slightly against specific pitches within the chord.  Humming in tandem with pitches tends to create more low difference tones that broaden the chord, while humming slightly above or below pitches tends to create more grittiness in the chord.  It’s also the case that humming into the horn in the middle to upper register weeds out many of the lower tones and begins creating more high pitched buzzing tones.  The mid section of this improvisation focuses in this mid to upper range.

-Neil

Image accompanying this post by Alberto Giacometti