12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 146
Date: 05/26/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: My family house where I grew up. Edmonds, WA
Notes:
In today’s piece I wanted to explore the idea of tiny variations within a predictable form. While improvising I tried to focus on the constancy of evolution, and the idea that life may appear to be static but even the most predictable of human actions continues to evolve in time, often without our knowing it. To represent this idea, I chose a two-part figure as the primary building point, and then introduced a second two-part figure that slightly augmented the first. The First action was the concert Ab, played with a false fingering against it at a consistent tempo. The Second action was the complimentary major chord mutliphonic, which I played at will after stating the First action for a duration of time. Instead of allowing one action to dominate the other, I approached the playing of each figure in a natural way, simply moving from one to the other as I saw fit.
The variation occurred in the Third and Fourth actions. The Third action included the use of a multiphonic that had a similar pitch and range distribution as the Third actin, but also included a more gritty half-step motion in the lower end. The Fourth action included the same concert Ab fingering as in the First action, but also used momentary dots of lower register concert Ab’s.
The fingerings used were as follows:
First action
(Left Hand) Bis Bb key, Octave, Low B. Trill open and closed the F-E-D keys in the right hand
Second action (major chord multiphonic)
(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Low B // E-D keys
Third action
(Left Hand) Bis Bb key, Octave, Low B. Trill open and closed the F-E-D keys in the right hand, and also occasionally take off and reapply the Octave keys in the left hand.
Fourth action (multiphonic with half step in the lower range)
(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Low B // E-D keys. Same as the fingering in the Second action, but without the octave key.
-Neil
The image accompanying today’s post by Milton Resnic