12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 262
Date: 09/19/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
I wanted to create a sound landscape in today’s improvisation that brought to life the amazing feeling of being up well before sunrise, where you feel like a participant in an alternate world no one else knows about. I love being awake while much of the world is asleep. I feel like the day is full of possibility and can be shaped as I want it to be. Generally these days I’m up at about 5:45am, but this morning I slept in until 6:30am. I looked outside and saw that it was already light out. A car were driving by, and lights were already on in other houses. This entire morning I’ve felt like the world is 1 hour ahead of me, and I wanted to capture in sound that extraordinary feeling that I was unable to experience today. A new day in early morning.
During this improvisation I simulated the use of reverb by using both muted fingerings and split tone fingerings. The only editing I do to these tracks each day is clipping off the dead air at the beginning and ends of the improvisation, and occasionally boosting the volume a bit. Other than that there is zero editing. I actually re-edited this piece after finishing it because I was convinced that I had accidentally added reverb at the beginning of the track. The bleeding of the the pitches in this piece, particularly in the first 30 seconds sound so beautiful to me, and I was amazed at the horns response to my shaping of the sound.
I wanted to capture the calm, clear-headedness of early morning. The melody used here is somewhat melancholiac, and I worked to create harmonic support for it that contributed to a floating, malleable sound world. The pitch content in the melody used three pitches/chords and was as follows (in the tenor key of Bb):
A (quarter step flat)
A/B split tone (each a quarter step flat)
Eb/F (the Eb in the upper register was a quarter step flat)
E (upper register), A/B split tone (each a quarter step flat)
This last chord was added to the end of the phrase as the piece evolved. This was the sustained chord that breaks away from the primary melody.
The fingerings for these pitches/chords were as follows:
A (quarter step flat)
(Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-3
A/B split tone (each a quarter step flat)
(Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2-3
Eb/F (the Eb in the upper register was a quarter step flat).
(Left Hand) 1-2, Eb and D palm keys, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2-3
E (upper register), A/B split tone (each a quarter step flat)
(Left Hand) 1-2, Octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2-3. Same as the second A/B split tone chord fingering, but apply more pressure with the embouchure and focus on a gentler, higher air flow in the mouth.
The image “Christmas at Kennedy Airport” accompanying today’s post by Joel Meyerowitz (1968).