Practice Log, 22-31 July 2024

This entry is part 14 of 18 in the series 2024 Practice Log

Last week, practice was a bit of a mess. I had trouble booking the room on a couple of days—the practice space I use has been getting busy!—and I also caught a cold, which usually occasions time off practice for me.  On the days I did practice, I spent time on tunes as usual, but also on some Ferling Studies (yes, really!). I still am not sold on the idea I need to get these perfect, but they have some handy fingering exercises and challenges in them, even if they’re not really my kind of thing to play. It’s wild …

Continue Reading

Back to the Woodshed

This entry is part 12 of 18 in the series 2024 Practice Log

So, I took a hiatus from practicing sax there for a while. In May I got quite sick for a few weeks, and practicing was out of the question. Then I got really busy between work and a big translation project my wife and I took on, plus working out the reservation system at the practice room I use was just a bit too complicated for me to wrap my brain around.  The good news is that I’m back at it. However, now that I am, I’m going to change up how I write about it here. Specifically, I’m not …

Continue Reading

14 April–27 April (Sunday–Saturday, 2 weeks running)

This entry is part 9 of 18 in the series 2024 Practice Log

This is my regularly updated practice log, mostly for accountability with my saxophone practice. Below you can see my practice for the week. If you’d like to check it out, here’s my goal list of tunes for the year.  This update is a little behind: I’ve been mired in preparing and grading exams and gotten less practice done than I’d like, so there’s been little to report. (I even considered doing three weeks in this summary, though I decided against it.) I’m still working on “Four”—trying to get used to playing at at higher tempos—but I’m now also working on “But …

Continue Reading

Practice Log: 31 March–13 April (Two weeks, Sunday–Saturday)

This entry is part 11 of 18 in the series 2024 Practice Log

This is my regularly updated practice log, mostly for accountability with my saxophone practice. Below you can see my practice for the week. If you’d like to check it out, here’s my goal list of tunes for the year.  I’m still working on “Four” but I’m pretty much happy with my progress on “Skylark.” I’ll be choosing another tune this week. (The second week covered in this post, for reasons covered below.) Below, you can see a log of my practice sessions for the week.

Continue Reading