12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 215

Date: 08/03/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

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

Notes:

In today’s improvisation I focused on the use of continuous double-tonging with crescendoing shapes. The piece maintains a root fingering system that sustaines the Concert C heard throughout. The continuity of the sound becomes momentarily interrupted by sound dots from additional grace note pitches, as well as longer interruptions on slightly de-tuned Concert C pitches. I generally used the longer pitch interruptions to sustain a false Concert C fingering by adding the palm D to the root fingering. This false fingering has a much brighter tone color, and was used to help accentuate the fingering sound as I crescendoed through it.

(Left Hand) B-A-G keys, Low B // (Right Hand) F-E-D keys. Open and close the B key in the left hand, while simultaneously opening and closing the side C key in the right hand.

While performing the cyclic action above, this fingering creates a muffled, ambient sound when the tongue strikes the reed. This can be heard immediately as the recording begins. It however does not seem to occur when the Palm D key is added. I suspect this is because the root fingering has a great deal of back pressure, whereas the inclusion of the Palm D has very little back pressure. This results in the tongue striking the reed more easily by comparison.

-Neil

The image “The Communicating Vessels” accompanying today’s post by Diego Rivera (1938)