Yes indeed it has been awhile since I have had a chance to write anything for myself. I am hoping everyone is managing to stay healthy, and finding creative ways to keep their saxophone skills up. Quite frankly, for me the latter has been rather tough.
For the last month or so I have been working on developing the COVID-19 Response Plan for Matterhorn Music. All businesses in BC are required by Worksafe to have one. Given we work with a lot of tools in our shop, and we do have customers in the store, it was quite a complicated process. My initial work on this will be finished this coming Saturday when I conduct a two-hour workshop for the staff.
Before I ended up neck-deep in COVID-19 policy, I had an opportunity to do something that very few of us have had the chance to do since March: I actually got to perform in front of a live audience!
My first pandemic performance
Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March, working musicians have for the most part, well, not been working. Venues we play in have been closed, and gatherings of 50+ people are not allowed in most places.
Concerts, dances, performances of all stripes, have all been postponed or cancelled while the world’s scientists try to figure out a way to stop this fast-spreading virus. Ask any musician what their availability is for a given day, and they will most likely say: I’m free.
This is what happened to me in mid May when I got a call asking if I could would be available to perform a 45 minute set at a physically distant birthday party 4 days later. The forecast for the evening was good, so I said sure.
However, given that I would have to perform outside—about 20 or so feet away from the party guests who were sitting in household groups, and those groups were socially distancing themselves from each other—and access to power was sketchy at best, I opted to do this as an unaccompanied solo act sans my regular piano player.
I knew what the setting for this was going to be. I also knew I would have no time to figure out any battery-powered, midi-track accompaniment. So I just decided to wing it, and see what unaccompanied jazz standards on a tenor saxophone, performed at a lakeside setting would sound like.
A couple days after the show I realised the last time I played anything unaccompanied like this was likely when I was in Grade 7. I used to sit on the front step on a stool and play saxophone for the neighbourhood.
Just a side note here, in hindsight, I do feel for the neighbours. I know how badly I must have played back then with all of about 8 months experience. A much belated: I’m sorry to any and all our neighbours who lived in the Brundige area back when I did. Please forgive me. 
But I digress…
While I realise that of course I play better than I did when I was 13, playing unaccompanied is not for the faint of heart. There is no one or nothing to cover a bad note; your attacks and releases have to be bang-on. Furthermore, playing a monophonic instrument leaves you with limited options for filling the airtime, while at the same time making the song interesting and keeping it from becoming repetitive. Oh, and if you encounter any mechanical issues with your horn or reed, you are fubared.
Was it the best show I have ever done? Nope. It was OK, but it certainly would have benefited from having my pianist playing some lovely fills—not to mention all those chords 😉 —behind me. I missed you Christine!
Here are some nice shots from the evening taken on my iPhone.
On this side of the ocean we also start playing music for and with other people. I missed it.
During the interlude I did a lot of work on different saxophones . One of them is an early Robert Keilwerth alto (no 1585). The applicature looks a lot like the Van Hall tenor, so I think it is from the same period of time. When changing the not original pads the sound changed from a boxed in beginners level sound to a more interesting sound. As I change the pads top down , I can hear the sound change on the border of old and new pads. Probably the van Hall saxophones and the RK alto are on the same level. The RK alto does not have the wide bow of the van Hall.
My suggestion for a flute exercise is to practice on a beer bottle until you can make a painful loud noise.
More volume will make it easier to go from the flute head to the whole instrument.
Robert Keilwerth? I have only heard of Richard Keilwerth. I am assuming we are referring to the same person?
Thanks for the tip about the beer bottle. Someone did suggest that to me, but I must admit I had forgotten about it again.
What I find interesting about the flute is, is how much more supported air it needs compared to say a saxophone. I think I’ve gotten lazy—or more to the point, my diaphragm has. 😉 It does the least amount of work possible to produce the best sound on my various horns. I suspect that for the flute it is just not enough.
Indeed, it is Richard and flutes need more air at a lower pressure.
Nice to hear this!
I have used Lockdown to bring myself out of ‘Beginner’ phase on Tenor Saxophone. I have done about 540 hours, now, 250 of which I did under lockdown. I am up to 3 hours daily, now, and at that rate, improvement is noticeable daily
I can de-stress a bit, now, as I found teaching myself Saxophone quite stressful
But I am now up to High F, and feel more that know one end of it from t’other
Wow!!! That’s A LOT of hours! I should be so dedicated!
Yes, destressing is good. I have been telling a number of my friends to use music for exactly that reason. They’ve been picking up instruments that they haven’t used in years, and just playing a bit as a way to engage a different part of their brain for a while.
Congrats on learning the full range of the horn.
I completely understand what you say about teaching your sax stressful. I have a flute that I have had for over 6 months now that I have tried to teach myself. I have been struggling with getting a decent sound with the instrument attached. I get a good sound with the head joint alone, but attach the rest of the pieces, and the sound goes to shit. 😉
I have had some pointers from some great flute players on embouchure and so forth, but nada… So whenever I try to play this thing, yah, I get rather stressed after about 30 minutes. I give up and pick up a sax or clarinet. It gives me some instant gratification.
So, is a flute harder to play than a Saxophone?
Well to produce a sound is definitely harder—especially a good one. 😉
The fingerings however, are very similar.
Thank you so much for the great pictures. i would love to hear your set up. What Mouthpiece and reed are playing!
Thanks Bob.
My set-up is a vintage Dukoff S7. My normal reed is a Legere Signature 2 1/4. Unfortunately due to COVID, shipping has been rather problematic, so our reed shipment got stuck who-knows-where for weeks. I ended up using a reed I bought to try out: a Harry Hartmann Hemp Fiberreed M (MS?). I can’t remember off the top of my head right now.
I use the Hartmann Onyx reeds for my Durga MP on bari, as well as on the Lakey Apollo MP for my Old Super tenor, so I thought I would buy some of the other Hartmann reeds to try out.
I like the Carbon ones, but for a Dukoff in jazz, they are just a bit too much—if you know what I mean. The Hemp reeds on the other hand, are a nice sound, but quite different from the Legere.
The Hartmann reeds offer more resistance, and respond quite differently to the Legere. That was one of the reasons I wasn’t as happy with the performance as I would have been had I had a new Legere. I wasn’t as familiar with the Hartmann reed, since I only had 4 days of playing on it, and my very familiar Zeph didn’t quite play the way the always does.
In a perfect world I would liked to have gotten a full week of practice in on the new reed to figure out all its nuances…. But… Well… Stuff happens. 😈 …. Ya have to roll with it, and adapt on the fly. The performance was fine, it just wasn’t my favourite ever.