12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 206

Date: 07/25/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

My afternoon was spent working on chromatic exercises with octave displacement, arranged in angular, disjointed shapes. This largely influenced my improvisation today. I became interested in the idea of pairing more precise wide intervalic material with a loose, repetitive theme. Except for the repeated theme itself, the melodic material in this piece was fully improvised. There is inflection used throughout the improvisation, such as trilling, double tonging, extreme dynamic shifts, false fingerings and a wide array of articulation variations. However, I avoided the use of any kind of vibrato and reserved this instead for the main theme only. This was done to punctuate its use more dramatically against the other melodic material. I used fingerings for the main theme that allowed for wider bends with the vibrato. I also decided to burry the main theme inside melodic phrases so as to create an interruption each time it begins and ends.

For the main theme, the fingerings used were as follows (in the tenor key of Bb):

Pitches: B-C

(Left Hand) C key, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low C

Pitch: D

(Left Hand) C key, Octave, Palm Eb, Low B // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low C

Pitches Ab-Bb

(Left Hand) B-A keys, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low Eb

Pitch: E (quarter step low)

(Left Hand) Fork F, C-G keys, Octave // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low Eb

Pitch: E

(Left Hand) Fork F, C-G keys, Octave, Palm Eb // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys, Low Eb

-Neil

The image “Proyecto de Acumulacion de Materiales (Project of Accumulation of Materials)” accompanying today’s post by Alexandre Arrechea, Dagoberto Rodriquez, Marco Castillo (1999)