12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 208

Date: 07/27/2013

Instrument: Soprano saxophone

Location: The rec room of my childhood house. Edmonds, WA

Notes:

For reasons of a personal nature, this was a very difficult day for me. As this series has progressed my improvisations have more and more taken on an critical role in helping me understand these days. I decided to confront my reality with a more uplifting piece. This improvisation was of the kind that I could embrace for use as my medicine, in the astounding way art is able to fully transform us, if even for a small period. This brief, very active improvisation centered around the Concert C major triad, and a multiphonic with three diatonic tones inside of it. The multiphonic was fingered as follows:

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) F# key

This fingering created the middle octave tones E,D and the upper register C. Though they were a bit flat in intonation, I would balance these diatonic pitches primarily against the C major triad. In the upper register, I also developed an improvised figure with the pitches E-F-E-C— which I would interject between the split tones and the arpeggios.

-Neil

The image “Hide and Seek, Derby, Vermont June 1940-June 1942 and New York” accompanying today’s post by Pavel Tchelitchew