05/21/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 141)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 141

Date: 05/21/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Small Theatre at Chief Sealth International High School.  Seattle, WA

Notes:

The physical landscape outside looked like a perfect grey scale today, and the radio was filled with harrowing stories from survivors of the devastating Tornado in Oklahoma.  This improvisation is dedicated to those folks now recovering.  This sound exploration surveyed a mood of melancholy that I carried with me through most of the day.  I seemed to feel every physical motion and mental experience very personally today and with an unusual amount of sensitivity of thought.  In my improvisation I tried to capture this depth of mood as best I could, exploring brooding melodic figures mixed with the constancy of a continuous, slow trill in the lower end of the instrument.  

This is an unusual melodic and harmonic action, in that the continuous whole-step melodic figure in the low end was achieved but pressing and releasing the octave key.  This created a muted figure that was only audible at a low volume.  At the same time, the fingering produced quiet bends in the upper register from a Concert Eb to an E.  This forced me to split my mind completely, focusing simultaneously on maintaining an even tempo in the slow trill, and bending, warping and sliding melodic figures in the upper register.  It truly was a marriage of two completely different trains of the thought.

The fingering was as follows:

(Left Hand) Fork F, A keys, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E keys, Low C.  To create the trill, open and close the register key with the thumb.  The melodic shapes above are achieved with the embouchure.  Other rhythmic and melodic cycles were made by opening and closing the side Bb, C and High F keys while also trilling the B key in the left hand.

-Neil

The image “White Painting” by Albert Kotin (1950’s).

05/20/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 140)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 140

Date: 05/20/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

The use of double-tonging was a focus during my practice time this afternoon.  I’m still a relative novice at the use of this technique as I’ve really only delved deeply into it for about two or three years.  I’m currently surveying my ability to use the technique within specific ranges of the instrument, as certain regions have higher or lower relative levels of natural resistance.  This results in the technique having extremely different overall levels of fluidity from one part of the horn to another.  Today I worked with specific alternate fingerings in the mid range of the instrument that allowed for an extremely rapid exchange of pitches.  These particular fingerings are of interest to me because closing or opening a key will only adjust the pitch minimally, but the actual changes in volume and presence of sound can be much more drastic. For example, one pitch may be muted and stuffy where another may be bright and medium volume.

I approached this improvisation as though I were playing traditional chromatic fingerings spanning a middle octave D to middle octave F#.  However, the the Fork F and Low C keys were pressed down throughout.  This created quarter tones resulting a larger number of intervals between this major third intervalic range.  As stated above, this fingering system allowed some pitches to naturally speak more than others and to provide drastic variations in sound color.  I attempted to maintain a consistent and persistent use of double-tonguing throughout the improvisation.

-Neil

The image “Shadow Dance” accompanying today’s post by Nicolas Carone

05/19/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 139)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 139

Date: 05/19/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

Today I explored an oscillation of pitches made by a slow finger cycle and humming into the horn.  I worked to control the pitches being pulled out by focusing on specific pitches contained within the overtone series of the fingering.  When using this technique I generally play much more aggressively than the recording captured here, but today I aimed to maintain an overall dynamic level spanning pp to mp, both to challenge myself and to try and discover new colors.  The fingering used was as follows:

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) E-D keys.

While using the above fingering I would alternate opening and closing the Side Bb and Fork F keys, one at a time in a continuous, slow cycle.  I sang into the horn a Concert B in the lowest octave of the tenor’s range, and would occasionally also move between this C and a Concert C above it.  During the improvisation I would at times briefly pause the finger cycle and hold the root fingering while singing the Concert B.  This would result in a beautiful, de-tuned major chord, which I used to pivot from one section into another.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by American painter Norman Bluhm

05/18/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 138)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 138

Date: 05/18/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Small bathroom inside my house.  Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

I struggled in my practice session today.  I struggled for hours without focus, without direction, and for the bulk of it without desire.  This was incredibly frustrating, though an experience that is just simply inevitable on some days.  I generally split my practice session between concrete musical etudes, exercises, etc. and free improvisations,  but today both ends of this spectrum felt hollow to me.  I eventually decided to split the difference between the two practice worlds, and I created scales and etudes that utilized concrete motions with irregular sound shapes.  After spending some time with this concept, an hour of solid practice soon slipped by and this piece took shape.

This improvisation uses a seven note “scale,” which if looked at in physical action in the fingers would appear to have a single downward shape, but because of the fingering system it’s a multi-directional scale with tempered pitches, muted tones and multiphonics.  The fingerings were are follows:

1. Palm Eb key, Octave

2. Palm Eb key, Octave, Bis Bb, 

3. Palm Eb key, Octave, Bis Bb, A key

4. Palm Eb key, Octave, Bis Bb, A key, G key

5. Palm Eb key, Octave, Bis Bb, A key, G key, F key

6. Palm Eb key, Octave, Bis Bb, A key, G key, F key, E key

7. Palm Eb key, Octave, Bis Bb, A key, G key, F key, E key, Eb key

Using the theme of “7” I would often, but not always play the scale a total of seven times before pausing.  This was also true of the longest developmental section of the piece, which had puckish notes played with equal spacing.  During this section I followed the pattern 1 // 12 // 123 // 1234 // 12345 // 123456 // 1234567, doing the cycle a total of 7 times.  

-Neil

The painting “Barge Peniche” accompanying today’s post by Joan Mitchell (1975)