12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 302

Date: 10/29/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: The performance hall at Chief Sealth High School. Seattle, WA

Notes:

In today’s improvisation, I worked with tightly contained bright tones in the upper register of the horn. I wanted a thick, densely woven sound texture with an overall pitch distance of less than 3 half steps. I used some dynamic variation, but overall maintained a steady stream of medium-loud volume. I did occasional dip particular sections in volume or slightly accent specific tones in order to alter the rhythmic profile betting explored. The tones in this improvisations centered around a concert F and F#, both of which are at the bottom of the altissimo (extreme upper register) range of the horn. By using false fingerings, I pulled further microtonal pitches that existed between the F and F#, as well as some drifting slightly higher than the F#. By cycling these pitches in a variety of combinations, I improvised different polyrhythms.

The root fingering from which all the sounds are originated was as follows:

(Left Hand) 1-2, octave, Low Bb // (Right Hand) Side Bb, High F# key. To create the pitch variations and microtones, I cycled opened and closed the C key, Side C key and side Side F.

-Neil

The image “Kansas” accompanying today’s post by Tod Papageorge (1969).