12 Moons Solo Saxophone Project Day 310

Date: 11/6/2013

Instrument: Tenor saxophone

Location: Home studio in Clinton, WA (Whidbey Island)

Notes:

After finishing my practice session this morning, I decided to record a piece that complimented what I had focused on. I devoted my time today to working with single pitched material with more of a melodic profile overall. In thinking about what to record today, I decided to maintain the singular pitch approach but through the lens of rapid execution. In this piece I wanted the sound profile to be transparent, so I shied away from giving the impression of polyphony very often, except for brief moments in the piece. I felt these small impressions of polyphony helped to further elaborate the reality that the bulk of the material took a more arpeggiated approach, and again, was in reality only single-pitched without any true harmony at all.

During this improvisation I used some dynamic and articulation shaping to help bring about changes in the piece. This also included occasional accenting of pitches to give moments of respite from the thick nest of sound. I approached the piece from the vantage point of a root fingering shape, which was played in the following order:

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2, Side Bb

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb // (Right Hand) 1-2

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb, Palm D

(Left Hand) 1-2-3, Low Bb

This was only a jumping off point, and I began diverging from this actual pattern almost immediately. Other alterations include putting down the D and Low C keys in the right hand, opening and closing the G key in left hand and Fork F key in the left hand, among others.

-Neil

The image “Mushroom Book” accompanying today’s post by John Cage, Lois Long (1972).