11/03/2013 (12 Moons Solo Project Day 307)

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).