10/24/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 297)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 297

Date: 10/24/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

After spending a few hours practicing this morning, the inspiration for a 12 Moons improvisation was not flowing through me.  I decided to give myself 5 minutes to compose a theme that I would draw my improvised material from.  I quickly began writing a series of pitches with no overarching harmonic or melodic relationship, but which were very dependent on one another purely on a note to note basis.  I took the route of constantly looking forward and choosing which note to move to next based solely off of a gut reaction of what I found to be pleasing.  I naturally gravitated towards chromaticism with the displacement of octaves.  

While notating this series of pitches, I suddenly stopped at the arbitrary number of 38.  I then decided to approach the improvisation by playing each note with the following progressively larger shape: 1 // 12 // 123 // 1234 // 12345, etc.  All 38 pitches were played a total of two times to finish the improvisation.  The challenge during this piece was to sculpt the pitches into melodic material through dynamics, articulation shaping, and variations in rhythmic motion.  There was no set tempo, but in the faster passages in particular I felt the gravity of a flowing pulse.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by Jockum Nordstrom.

10/23/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 296)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 296

Date: 10/23/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

In this improvisation I worked on pulling aggressive sound textures out of the horn through singing into it with a fixed drone pitch beneath.  The main points of tighter, gritty oscillation occur a half step above the root in the lower register, as well as a half step below the root in the upper register.  I purposefully wanted an imbalanced approach during this improvisation.  I heard the quiet storm that opens the piece as a pre-cursor to the more overt sound aggression to come.  

During this piece I kept my singing range within the span of an octave.  I chose a range that was comfortable to sing, and a pitch that I was able to hold as static as possible while singing.  The range spanned the low register F to the mid register F, with the Low F being the drone pitch.  I avoided singing intervallically and instead snaked my way up and down the horn.  Despite the high amount of sound density in this piece I wanted to limit the spectrum of sounds to be introduced.  There is one bright chirp near the end of the piece, which was unintentional.  I avoided allowing the horn to begin squealing or squawking, and tried to sing with a more pure tone quality to see what sounds could be created with a more fundamental approach to air flow in and out of the horn. 

In the last 30 seconds of so of the improvisation, I held out the low F in unison with the fingered F pitch.  There was a specific vibration in my chest that was occurring, possibly due to my tired vocal chords, and while playing I could hear another F speaking a full octave below.  It entered the sound spectrum in fleeting moments that were difficult to hold on to.  

-Neil

The image “Orange Sound, project” accompanying today’s post by Lauretta Cinciarelli (1999).

10/22/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 295)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 295

Date: 10/22/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: The main performance hall at Chief Sealth High School.  Seattle, WA 

Notes:

I had very little sleep last night, with an early morning wake-up call and a full day scheduled.  Between students and classes I slowly developed today’s improvisation during several attempted takes.  I began recording 4 times throughout the day, but various interruptions stopped the recording process–students erupting into the room, custodians needing to clean, the class bell going off.  These were basic, human occurrences and a good reminder that the world does not revolve around my artistic process.  These frustrating moments provided an hour or so between recordings, and gave me a period of reflection to really define and sculpt the recording documented here.

In today’s improvisation I wanted a busy texture with thinner strings of sound.  While playing this piece I aimed to be able to see through my lines of thought at all times.   I worked on the initial sound-scape that opens the piece throughout the day, becoming very aware of its sound profile and  gained confidence in the chirps and various combinations of colors that could be created in and around it.  I heard this initial sound as the core of the improvisation, and tried not to loose sight of this for a moment during the recording process.  In addition to thicker textures I wanted to explore a wide range, and to pull tones from the mid to altissimo range at will.

The core sound action centered around the following fingering:

(Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Palm Eb only // (Right Hand) 2-3.  The primary alterations made to the sound-scape were done so by opening and closing the Palm Eb, High F#, and F keys as will.  Other keys were added into this spectrum as I moved towards uncovering other colors.   

-Neil

The image “Montserrat Crying, No. 2” accompanying today’s post by Julio Gonzalez (1938).

10/21/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 294)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 294

Date: 10/21/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

After Simon Henneman’s excellent performance last night, I was inspired to improvise a piece today that weaved pitches together through bending.  This is done with embouchure and air motion in union with false fingerings.  This allows one tone to speak, while the note essentially ready’s itself to move on to another.  In these false fingerings there is a high amount of back pressure involved, which also helps the notes to move with more of a sliding fashion between one another.  I thought about these musical statements as “interrogative” sentences.  To contrast this interrogative sound approach I also used tighter, walking–trills with double tonging between a few selected pitches.  These pitches were directly note-to-note with no bend between them whatsoever.  I interpreted these as sound statements with more of a “declarative” structure.  

The pitch content in this improvisation was improvised but the range was pre-determined.  I used mostly palm key fingerings without the octave key, since these fingerings are much more pliable than their traditional fingering counterparts.  For the walking-trill–the “declarative” statements–I moved between the B–Bb, and G#–F# (in the tenor key of Bb).  The trill took place on the F clutch key with my index and middle fingers in the right hand.  The declarative, trilled sections interrupted the established sound spectrum in the midst of the pitch bends.  After working with the interruptive concept a few times, I began blending the “interrogative” and “declarative” models by using the aggressive walking-trill with the more pliable palm key fingerings.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post is a super storm in the North Pole of Saturn (NASA).

10/20/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 293)

12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 293

Date: 10/20/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

This morning I woke up fairly early, gathered some wood from the shed and walked into my practice room to record.  Because of the early hour, as with my recording last Sunday, there was the strict limitation of low volume.  I decided to work with a phasing piece, using a single fingered actio but divide the improvisation into scope between two sound areas.  I used a multiphonic chord with the following fingering to do this:

(Left Hand) 1-3, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) 1-2-3, Low C.   Throughout this improvisation I also trilled the Octave key continuously.

The first sound area involved presenting and exploring a range of pitches from the lower partials of the multiphonic up to about an altissimo C.  Some of these sounds were cross-faded, such as the transition between the first pitch to the second.  Other approaches included “dotting” the sound, such as the altissimo C which is presented at 1:38.  The second sound area included pushing the sound colors out instead of phasing between them.  With this approach I would blow into the horn with many different air flow patterns and embouchure shapes, trying to varying them with each execution.  This second sound area was far more indeterminate than the first.

-Neil

The image “Untitled” accompanying today’s post by Burk Uzzle (1975).