12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 307
Date: 11/03/2013
Instrument: Tenor saxophone
Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)
Notes:
While practicing briefly this morning, I began improvising melodies that used heavy ornamentation, specifically centering around grace note gestures with occasional trills. I approached my improvisation today in a similar fashion, performing a piece that stayed within the given range of the horn, maintained a heavy amount of ornamentation throughout, and used freely improvised melodies. However, I also decided to incorporate 3 multiphonic fingerings with specific melodic cues to help give the piece further grounding.
Multiphonic Figure 1 was only executed after having played a Concert E in the lower register. This multiphonic shared a concert E as the highest note in the chord voicing. This multiphonic was fingered as follows:
Figure 1. Pitches (in ascending order) G#, E.
(Left Hand) 1-3, Octave, Low B // (Right Hand) 1-2, Low C
Multiphonic Figures 2 and 3 were each played as part of a melodic shape, one after the other. The melodic figure and fingerings were as follows:
Figure 2. C-B-Multiphonic chord——
(Left Hand) 1-3 // (Right Hand) 1-2-3, Low Eb
Figure 3. B-A#-Multiphonic chord——–
(Left Hand) 1-2 // (Right Hand) 1-2-3, Low Eb
-Neil
The image “The Galde” accompanying today’s post by Roderic O'Conor (1892).