Practice Log, 8 August–3 September 2024

Practice continues apace, or maybe just a little heavier than before. My soprano sax got a basic tune-up last week and it plays a lot better than it was. It was previously a struggle to play, but now any problems that exist are down to my own chops and breath support. For that reason, while I was concentrating on tenor for most of August, I’ve been playing almost exclusively on soprano the last week or so.  

I’m still working up personalized altissimo charts, with my Teal book all marked up in terms of what works for alto. (Tenor’s next, then baritone.) That’s what I dive into as soon as I’ve done three or four of the first five or six Ferling exercises, which are getting pretty close to, well, not quite perfect, but presentable. I don’t spend a lot of time on them, but I do a little work on them bit by bit. 

Earlier in August I was doing a lot of overtone exercises instead of scales (and finding some real benefit in them), but something tells me I need to get back to scales and transposing patterns across the horn in addition to some overtone workouts. I feel like that’s what is going to help me with building speed, though I’ve also been doing something I saw recommended: giving myself more chances to practice playing fast. It’s… well, painful, but I guess that’s what growth feels like, right?

The tunes I’m running these days mostly are on the following list:

• All the Things You Are
• Bemsha Swing
• Black Orpheus
• But Not For Me
• Days of Wine and Roses
• Four
• I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
• Waltz for Debby
• Waters of March (Águas de Março)

I also added a few more tunes to the list:

• Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise
• Star Eyes
• Stolen Moments
• Without a Song

Still struggling to keep straight what key what tune is on what horn, something that’s not helped by the fact that alto is so damned fun to play now that I have a good mouthpiece for it. (Nice problem to have, I know.) For this reason, I’ve refocused on my tenor and soprano, and am playing on those Bb horns a lot more lately. As soon as I have a little more clarity with this, especially on tenor/soprano, I’ll be moving some of these tunes to the learned this year list over on the tunes page. 

I’m mostly focused on working up my double-time skills. I’m specifically working on improvising in double time. I know a common approach is to transcribe a lot and memorize some useful II-V-I licks, but I’ve found I get relatively limited use out of that. I’ll try some more, but for now I’m working on speed and flexibility in improvising, as well as in following my ear when playing at high speed. 

I want to get back to overtone exercises, as well as playing scales and arpeggiated chords. I do this quickly when working through a new chart—especially focusing on running scales so I can land on the right leading tones—but I don’t play my scales regularly anymore, and I probably should be. I do sometimes do long tone exercises, but I could do with a little more consistency in warming up with those, too, I think. I like the tone I’m getting on soprano but I want to widen the dynamic range at which I can stay in tune for long tones on that instrument, and long tones are a great way to solidify that. (I have found as my embouchure tires I slack off a little and things go out of tune.)