12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 127

Date: 05/07/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Bathroom at the 7 Feathers Casino rest stop in Canyonville, Oregon.

Notes:

Today is the second day of the Bad Luck West Coast tour. Last night we decided to keep driving after our show in Eugene, OR and ended up sleeping in the car about 80 miles from the California border. We stopped for the night at a rest stop tucked in the green hills of the Calf Creek area in the southern region of the state. We woke in a hybrid landscape, surrounded by thick, lush forest to the North, East and West, and a massive parking lot and casino to the South. I decided to respond to the landscape this morning by recording in a bathroom at the rest stop.

This improvisation focused on the surprisingly beautiful resonance of this bathroom. The room had an approximately 15 foot ceiling, with a floor space of about 6’ x 10’. I centered the piece on a single multiphonic fingering that punctuated specific pitches within it. They were punctuated with both embouchure adjustments and by adding or taking away a new key. The primary fingering was as follows:

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Low Bb //Right Hand F key. Trilled keys included the Side C, Low C, G key, Side Bb and Middle C.

I would occasionally hold out selected pitches or lightly dot them amidst the clusters of sustained notes. The beginning of the piece focuses on the mid to upper range, but near the mid-point I began to introduce action in the lower range and fade out the upper. The space seemed to welcome the tight clusters of pitches and smaller singular notes in equal measure.

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by Arthur Dove.