04/06/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 96)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 96

Date: 04/06/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: A private residence in Everett, WA

Today is the first day of the project that I’m recording and uploading while away from home for the weekend.  I’ve had small amounts of time to practice spread throughout the day, and the inception for this piece grew out of a brief but productive bit of time on the horn.  In this improvisation I aimed for a joyful quality, with centers of tonality that lay within two multiphonic chords.  I set out during this piece expecting to explore these two chords with more a stable, unwavering quality.  Quickly after beginning the piece I mistakenly trilled one of the chord shapes, which then became my center of interest.

The two multi phonics are major chords and complementary in tonality.  The fingerings are as follows:

Multiphonic 1.  (Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave // (Right Hand) E-D keys.  The Low B, and/or octave key is trilled at will.

Multiphonic 2.  (Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave // (Right Hand) F-D keys, Low C.  The alternate F# is trilled at will.

While trilling and holding out the multiphonic chords there is melodic movement that takes place.  In the tenor key, Multiphonic 1 moves between a high D and high C#, low A and G, and an F# is maintained as a drone.  In Multiphonic 2, the high octave F moves to an F#, and the middle octave C# moves to a D.  I approached these two chords as the main, consonant base of action.  As the piece evolved I began to fracture out from the two chords to begin trilling shapes that stepped outside the established key centers.

-Neil

04/05/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 95)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 95

Date: 04/05/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

With the return of Spring my spirits are feeling high, and I woke this morning feeling calm and strong.  I wanted to explore a common feeling–a sound of brotherhood that is innately in all of us.  I feel that there are specific melodies, gestures, scales and chords that are universal to all musical traditions which I qualify as “root” sounds.  To explore a root improvisation today, I worked with the most joyous of all chords, the major triad.  

From the outset of the improvisation I entered with a high level of energy and volume.  I made it my aim to maintain or build on this energy throughout the piece.  My root melodic/chord shape used the concert key pitches of F, D and Bb.  This is a Bb major chord, which overall had a downward–5-3-1 motion.  I explored the F and D for some time, including a chromatic, ornamental motion that linked the F and D before moving onto the low Bb.   I then branched off into textural exploration and occasionally returned to the root chord.

-Neil

04/04/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 94)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 94

Date: 04/04/2013

Instrument: Alto saxophone

Location: Langley Middle School band room.  Langley, WA (Whidbey High School)

Notes:

A week ago I found myself with a few minutes between sectionals at Langley Middle School.  I noticed a large, vintage looking timpani drum and I couldn’t resist playing into it.  I was amazed by the deep, lasting resonance inside this drum and particularly so compared to the other two kettle drums on either side of it.  By moving the tuning foot pedal, I created some incredible sounds inside that instrument which could bend up and down based on the direction I moved the pedal.   I decided that this morning I would make the time to work with this particular drum again.

Though I was tempted to use the foot pedal in this piece, I decided it would stretch the boundaries of this project beyond my ultimate intention.  My aim is to make this a solo project, and I believe that incorporating the resonance inside a drum is of course utilizing a second instrument.   However, there is something quite different about intentionally manipulating the sound with an additional apparatus on a secondary instrument, rather than allowing it to naturally resonate.  It feels fundamentally different to me to do this, than it would to augment my sound based upon the acoustics of a room.  The room, and in this case the timpani is a secondary instrument, but it feels like an extension of my horn rather than a separate tool.

I improvised this piece freely without any pre-concieved material.  Whole-step split tones and overtone fingerings yielded beautiful contours inside the drum.  In order to capture as much of the drum’s perspective as possible, I placed my mic setup beneath the base, so the saxophone itself was about 4 feet from the mic.  

Special note: I think this recording would be experienced the best at high volume.  

-Neil

04/03/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 93)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 93

Date: 04/03/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone 

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

Notes:

A high F (or F# if the horn has it), is the ceiling of the saxophone’s common range.  Above this is a region called the alitssimo range, which has chromatic pitches akin to those in a lower octave, but the fingering system and embouchure technique are very different.  During my practice session I worked with the tenor note F in the altissimo range.  I decided to utilize this pitch in my improvisation today, where I explored the common pitch F in four octaves with a repetitive rhythm. 

I tried to make the rhythm in this improvisation very declarative: 1 2 3—.  Because of the limited number of notes at my disposal, I pre-determined certain criteria I wished to cover.  These included: 1.  A wide dynamic range, from very soft and controlled to very loud and almost blatty, and with abrupt transitions and smooth transitions.   2.  A variety of vibrato tempos, from gentle wavering to tighter pulses.  3.  Space.  However, the space between action seemed to be fairly static, which was not necessarily my intention at the outset.  4.  A variety of cutoff’s, including fade-outs and more abrupt stops of the air.  Overall I worked to maintain a balance between the above criteria to add a limited yet noticeable amount of variety to the improvisation.

-Neil