Working on Those Chops

Another update on my practicing saxophone, mostly an accountability post but hey, maybe someone out there is following along. 

One reason I got a lot more reading done last month is because I wasn’t able to get to the practice room during my wife’s illness with the flu—I was busy taking care of our son while she isolated. Falling out of habits makes it hard to get back into them again, at least for me, but I’m back on the horse. 

It felt good, but that’s not to say it has gone particularly smoothly. As I get older, I find it increasingly challenging to memorize new tunes, even ones that I’ve worked on for months. I think I need to change up the way I work on memorizing them. For one thing, I think I should be forcing myself to play the heads of tunes without a lead sheet—shutting my eyes and making sure I play them from memory—rather than being lazy and reading the head everytime I play it. (Duh.) I also think I need to do some more aggressive ear training, because I think it’ll help me internalize the chord changes a little better. (Funnily enough, this part is less hard for me than remembering little bits of the head for some tunes.)

I’ve also stopped working on tunes on all saxes. When I learn a tune, I decide whether I’m going to learn it on my Bb horns or my Eb ones, because switching back and forth is too confusing—I find myself wanting to play songs in the wrong key on the wrong horn, but also I’m exploring how playing alto makes me approach improvising differently from soprano, tenor, or baritone. For example, last night I dug into “Sophisticated Lady” just out of curiosity about how I would play it on alto, especially having listened to Johnny Hodges playing it (on alto, obviously). 

Anyway, I’m working my chops back up from where they ended up after a few weeks out. It shouldn’t feel like such a long time away, but it does. 

These days, my practice setup is pretty complicated compared to what it was before: I use my phone for backing tracks, my wireless NUX B-6 clip mic for the sax, and then I feed both into my ancient Zoom H4N. This lets me hear the backing track and my own playing clearly at the same time, which is a lot better than how I was practicing before—headphones right out my phone for backing tracks, and kinda-sorta not hearing myself very well. (OR variations on that, like having one earphone in and one out, and not hearing the backing track very well. It takes a few minutes to set up, but it’s probably the best I can do if I’m not practicing in a space I completely control myself… though I may experiment with a portable little speaker and see if I like that better, as well as whether it disturbs people in nearby rooms. 

For studies, I’ve set aside the Ferling and I’m now doing the Klosé exercises, using the free PDF reinscription available over at The Saxophone Academy. The Ferling is fine, but it’s kind of built around unidiomatic playing tricks and I don’t find it’s as useful to me as the Klosé in terms of working up key dexterity. I’ve seen a pretty rapid payoff, too. 

Mostly what I’m working on these days is double-time playing. It’s a challenge but I’m finally making some headway with it, without memorizing a bunch of licks. Improvising at that speed is hard, but I am getting better and better at it. I still might do some lick-memorizing, though, just as a bridge for when I hit a wall, which seems to happen with double-time playing. 

I’m still working on my altissimo range, especially on tenor. I’ve had some trouble with reeds, which is what’s held me back a bit. I think I’ll spend a little more time exploring alternate fingerings and see if I can’t find some that are a little easier to move between, before doing up a new altissimo chart for each of my horns. When I’ve done that, I’ll make sure to share.  

I plan on hammering home the tunes I’m working on now and moving on to a new set by the end of the month. I was at least pleasantly surprised by how much I retained in terms of chord progressions even despite my time away from the horn. 

I really, really need to replace the ligature on my tenor sax. I love the Theo Wanne mouthpiece I’m playing on these days, but the ligature is a cruddy pseudo-Rover thing and I find it’s annoying me more than it should. I figure I’ll get a Theo Wanne lig in the new year.

Meanwhile, I’m still really happy with my GetaSax New York alto mouthpiece—yes, one of those pieces printed in dentalin. It looks like the price went up a little since I picked up mine, but I still think it’s an absolute steal. It gets me that Meyer alto sound that I want, and cost me just a fraction of what a metal or hard rubber piece would cost (let alone an antique Meyer which would probably not sound as good as this one).  

Anyway, all of this is to say I’m back on the horse now. The expense of practicing isn’t a problem either: the place I use for practicing is the same place my son takes piano lessons in English, and they just started a special program where a student’s family members can use the practice room for a modest extra fee, which is a pretty good savings for us. 

Finally, I need to do a transcription sometime soon. I’m thinking about doing Sonny Rollins’ “Without a Song” even though there are copies available online, because I really want to study it. I like that tune and Rollins’ playing on it so much.