12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 289
Date: 10/16/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
This is my second day of being sick during the project, but I’m feeling considerably better than yesterday. My lungs are hurting a bit more today than the past couple of days, and because of this while practicing I worked with gestures that had less physical back-pressure and quieter dynamic levels. This helped me to find a comfortable physical state in which to approach the horn. Since yesterday’s piece explored a darker, more brooding mood that fit my life state that day, today I wanted to execute a piece that responded to the welcoming feeling of being on the mend.
In today’s improvisation I explored freely improvised melodic lines with multiphonic, chordal interjections. I kept ornamentation to a minimum during this piece, the only exception being the occasional grace note passage. I wanted the chordal passages in these piece to take on many roles. At times the harmonic structure of a mutliphonic would be complimentary to a passage before or immediately after. I generally approached this by anticipating what multiphonic I would like to play next, and to then tailor my melodies to end on a pitch that was either in the multiphonic chord, or an upper or lower neighbor. At other times I included these chordal interjections more indeterminately, their harmonic language bearing little to no relationship with the melodies surrounding them.
-Neil
The image “16 Millimeter Earings” accompanying today’s post by Meredith Monk (1980).