Practice Journal, 15-21 July 2024

So, last week’s practice was pretty solid, though I got sick over the weekend and didn’t make it to the practice room on Sunday. Again, I did a lot more alto practice than anything else, though the tenor and bari got some play too. 

Tunes-wise, I worked on a bunch:

• All the Things You Are: I’ve just about got this one down, especially on alto and bari. 
• I Can’t Give You Anything But Love: About the same, once again especially on alto and bari. One interesting thing is that lots of backing tracks exist in different keys, so I’ve been trying those out. It’s a challenge!
• Waltz for Debby: Still working on it but it’s coming along. I’m partial to the version Evans did with Cannonball Adderley, though this Seamus Blake version is nice, and so is Johnny Hartman’s sung version (among lots of others).  
• The Days of Wine and Roses: I just started work on this one, but it’s okay.  I remember my old sax teacher recommending Sun Ra’s version off Blue Delight, believe it or not. (It’s very unlike what you’d expect from Sun Ra.)
• Waters of March (Águas de Março): It wasn’t on my list, but I heard a few versions—including Susannah McCorkle’s and of course Jobim’s original (?) with Elis Regina—and decided to give it a try. Interestingly, North Americans seem to prefer to play it in Bb, whereas the original (and all the Brazilian versions I tried to play along with at the practice room) seem to be in B. Oh, and I belatedly learned why the tune is familiar: it was bastardized by the Coca-Cola company back when I was a kid.  

Beyond that, I’ve been focusing on overtones. I’m pretty happy with my (unfortunately slow) progress. Ben Britton’s A Complete Approach to Overtones: Vivid Sound and Extended Range had been helpful, especially in his explanation that for voicing overtones above the 2rd overtone, you ought to use the octave key. I’d seen people doing these extended overtone exercises with keyless saxes and was getting frustrated that I could get past the 3rd overtone, but venting with the octave key has helped make it (occasionally) possible for me to hit the 4th overtone and sometimes (inadvertently) even beyond.   

Finally, seeing that Bird used to practice Klosé’s 25 Daily Exercises for Saxophone (available here) has made me a little more willing to give them a try—and to dig out my old, water-damaged copy of the Ferling Exercises and give them a go once more. We’ll see how far I get with them, but maybe they’ll help me a bit with the one area I’m still badly struggling with: double-time playing. The other thing I’m doing to try tackle that—giving myself chances to improvise fast on tunes—isn’t achieving as much, or at least doesn’t seem to be so far. I’ve been a bit lax on scales lately, though, and I think those are part of the key to getting the necessary dexterity. 

And that’s about where I am now.