12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 144

Date: 05/24/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

After an amazing afternoon spent outside in my yard watching birds darting around the trees and overhead, I went inside and was transported to a very different place. It dawned on me that I needed to take care of an insurance issue, and my high spirits suddenly became plagued and ill by searching online and making phone calls. This improvisation was a response to the aftermath of this abrupt shift and my attempt to transition myself back to a place of calm and control. I decided to work with delicate textures, using only a few pitches in the difficult altissimo range of the horn.

This improvisation uses primarily the pitches Ab, Bb, and occasionally C. I tried to play these pitches as carefully as possible, and they were recorded at a very low volume. When returning to the Ab at the end of a phrase, I would use my embouchure and the slow depression of keys closing to bend the note evenly downward some distance. There were pitches that seemed to naturally speak on their way down, and at a few points during the piece I paused and held one of these lower tones out to let it resonate

-Neil

The image accompanying today’s post by artist Kunie Segiura