12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 153
Date: 06/02/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: A small wetland preserve in Bothel, WA.
Notes:
Immediately after leaving a student’s house this afternoon I drove past a small cement trail that led into a patch of greenery. It had a sign above the entrance that read “Bothell Wetland Preserve." I pulled the car over and walked down the path a little ways, never really finding an ideal spot to record. I set up shop on edge of the cement path a few hundred feet into the trail.
During this improvisation I was very conscious of my surroundings. The preserve was against a busy, 40 mile per hour road with housing developments and residential homes surrounding it. My ears were filled with the sounds of traffic, kids occasionally shouting and birds chirping in the trees. I maintained my melodic action tightly within the range in which I began the piece. I worked with false fingerings to create a variety of rhythmic cycles and one-off melodic ideas, being very careful to balance these two contrasting areas. I focused on combining muted tones with more resonant ones and found myself constantly referring back to a specific fingering that had a muted split-tone. This tone did not seem to want to clearly speak the second pitch, but there were tiny traces of it that my ear was drawn too and helped to focus the improvisation.
-Neil
The image "Red Circle on Black” accompanying today’s post by Jiro Yoshihara