Random Notes

Holy time warp, Batman! Week three is done and I haven’t even gotten my week two entry done!  The whole idea of starting this blog was to organize my practice time, but I’m finding the more I practice, the less interested I am in writing. I guess that makes it a good thing that I’ve fallen behind, since it means I’ve been practicing!

Heiden is coming along nicely, maybe even a bit ahead of my schedule. At any rate, I was looking over what I wrote last week, and I realized I failed to mention why I started this piece. That’s sort of central to my point in journaling my progress on this one!

When I was at IU, I was one of Eugene Rousseau’s students, and believe it or not, he turned 76 this year. In honor of Dr. Rousseau’s 76th birthday, there is going to be a “Rousseau Celebration” hosted at the University of North Carolina – Greensville. As one of Rousseau’s former students, I have the opportunity to perform a piece either recorded by or dedicated to Dr. Rousseau. The Heiden “Solo” was dedicated to Rousseau back in 1969  — AND he recorded it. It also happens to be reasonably approachable, which is really important to me since I’m still in the “rehab” phase of my performance. Although I perform nearly every week, it’s been about 8 years since I’ve done any sort of high profile/major performance, so I want to be sure that this is successful for me.

So, here’s what I’ve been up to. One of the things I’ve been really focusing on has been identifying and working out what I’ll call, for lack of a better term, “nuisance” passages. One of the biggest nuisances in this piece, at least for me, is at the top of the third page:

If you look at this passage at the level of a single beat, there isn’t anything really hard about it. What does present a challenge, at least for me, is that each beat is similar, but enough different to trip me up. One of the strategies that I find especially helpful with sections like this is to work out each beat, then start building the passage by practicing two beat blocks, then three beats, then four … until I’m comfortable with the entire passage. I also prefer to start at the END and work back towards the beginning so I’m always playing to something I know and am comfortable with — really helps to keep me relaxed.

The other things I’ve been really focusing on are pushing tempi and identifying what fingerings I want to use when there are alternates available. Those two things — tempo and fingerings — are not only important, but they are also related.  Tempo first….

Now, I know, the common wisdom about tempo is to practice as slowly as you need to to play without making a mistake. I’ve repeated that mantra to students and to myself over and over and over and over again — and it is extremely important. Don’t think for a minute that I’m not spending a lot of time working out the kinks slowly and methodically. The other piece of the equation, though, is that you need to spend some time teaching your fingers to move at the performance tempo and, when a piece has technical passages that extend of several beats (or lines or pages!), you really need to get your brain thinking and processing all of that information at the speed you need it to go. I’m not say this very eloquently, and I’m not sure if that was really clear, so if you don’t understand, leave a comment!

The other thing I need to do is to at least get to the point that I can play passages a couple of beats at a time, at or above performance tempo, fairly quickly so I can really hone in on fingering decisions. Take this passage, for example:

If I’m plugging away at a nice, slow tempo, I’m inclined to just use standard fingerings the whole way through this, but as I approach performance tempo (somewhere around quarter note = 120 bpm) the palm key E down to the F and back up to palm key E is a bit of a pain.  The biggest problem for my fingers is in my right hand, moving from right side key 3, getting my first finger down for the F, then shifting back up to get back to RSK3. Simple solution — don’t use the first finger to play the F, just use the middle finger. That simple shift keeps me from having to move my right hand/wrist to get to and from RSK3. If I’d taken my time gradually easing the tempo up, yes, I would have eventually made that decision. In the process, who knows how many times I would have played it using my first finger before I made the decision, which in turn would have meant having to UN-learn before I could LEARN. Plus, when I get nervous, I find that if I haven’t been 100% consistent in my use of specific fingerings, I have a tendency to make mistakes simply because I choose the wrong one, drop a note, then break my concentration and drop a few more notes.

So, I started a new piece this week — Bernhard Heiden’s “Solo for Alto Saxophone and Piano” — and I thought it might be interesting to chronicle my process as I learn the piece. I won’t go into all the minute-by-minute details, but aside from helping me to organize my preparation of the piece, I think it is valuable to see how other saxophonists go about learning new literature. As I go through this, I want to point out that this is my process, and far from the only way to go about learning a new piece. What my experience has taught me, however, is that it is important to have some sort of process, regardless of what that process is. Learning literature (or new skills, or etudes, or whatever) shouldn’t be a random process, but rather should be approached systematically. So, what is my approach….

Day One

For me, the first day of working on a new piece is THE most important day of the first week. I use the first day to really identify the things that I will need to focus on not only during the rest of the first week, but throughout the whole learning process. I start with the obvious: major structural sections, tempi, key signatures. I also look for anything that I need to do some research on (e.g., a strange, new term or new type of notation … pretty rare to run across these for me at this point, but every now and then, there’s a new foreign word to learn or some new, strange type of notation….) With that done, I look for specific skills or problems that I know I’ll need to work on in some way. Some of the key things I ran across in the Heiden:

Intervals

Many of the technical passages are fairly disjunct, with some reasonably large skips. A typical section:

I usually don’t have much difficulty with the leaps up … it’s the leaps down that can give me fits. Spots like this get turned into long tone exercises with the intent being to focus on embouchure and voicing so the intervals both speak clearly and are in tune.

Diminished scale vocabulary

Typical of most advanced saxophone literature, this is a fairly chromatic piece, and as I’m first starting it, there seems to be a fair amount of diminished scale vocabulary. Although the piece is far from being based strictly on diminished scales, no other specific scale vocabulary is immediately obvious to me. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there, I’m just not catching it on day one. Translation — good opportunity to review those diminished scales!

Articulation Patterns

There are several spots that make fairly extensive use of articulation patterns similar to this:

What I think is especially fun about these is the register and the dynamic marking. It could certainly be worse, but those first two E’s need to be crisp AND quiet — not the easiest thing to pull off. If I find I’m having problems with this, aside from isolating the sections, I’ll add some of the articulation patterns that aren’t as clean as I’d like into my scales.

Days 2-7

Depending on the overall difficulty of the piece, the remainder of the week on a new piece could be spent getting all the notes securely under my fingers so the piece can start to ‘gel’ (fairly easy pieces) to just focusing on a few of the most difficult sections and trying to gauge just how much time it’s going to take to learn the piece. This piece isn’t easy, but it isn’t horribly difficult either. My goal for the ‘Solo’ was to get the bulk of the passages to at least 75% of the performance tempo cleanly, and identify the sections that are most likely to cause problems. I came pretty close to the 75% of performance tempo goal.

So, now I’m on to week two. More to come….

Ran across a great link with a Cannonball discography and quite a few solo transcriptions. Haven’t had a chance to go through everything and check it out in any depth, but it’s worth a look.

http://www.cannonballjazz.com/Cannonball.htm

but… well, most times when something comes up about my degree, my response is along the lines of “Well, you know, rectal thermometers have degrees, and you know what we do with them….” BUT, there are times when that Dr. is a good thing … like when it comes time to discuss wedding music with a bride that isn’t too sure about what’s appropriate. I’m actually looking forward to this wedding now … able to sell the fairly traditional Trumpet Tune/Trumpet Voluntary processional/recessional pair and get carte blanche for pre-service music! Yippee! So I guess wedding aren’t all that bad …. and hopefully we don’t get rained on.

So, I got something I’ve been wanting … I have an actual gig coming up … a wedding. Ugh! Should’ve been more careful what I asked for! Don’t get me wrong, weddings aren’t that bad, and I’ve played a few that were actually pretty fun. The fun ones have been things like, oh, quartet gigs, or services where there is a really good organist or pianist. This one is going to be interesting  — it’s an outside wedding, no keyboard instrument of any sort, and a couple of “family friends” to work with — vocalist and an acoustic guitar. So this is my problem… I’m a classical saxophonist (I know, a bit weird…) which works out well for some wedding services, but without a keyboard? Hmm, how’d you like to process to Ryo Noda Improvisation I? No? How about a sprint down the aisle to the Bozza Caprice? I know, we’ll do “The Massacre of My Funny Valentine by a classically trained musician”!!!! I’ve got a couple of days more to come up with something, so we’ll see what happens….