Tag: Back to the Sax

Altissimo and Productivity

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In middle school, and early on in high school, I remember loving Saturday Night Live… which, for me, means “classic” SNL which, because I was born in 1974, means John Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Dennis Miller, Victoria Jackson (sigh) Jan Hooks, and Dana Carvey, mainly. But a highlight of the show–and what I always wished they’d include more of–was seeing (or at least hearing) Lenny Pickett wail on the tenor saxophone, as he did on the closing tune, week after week: I’d wait through the R.E.M. and Randy Travis and Linda Ronstadt for those little clips of the house band… they were almost …

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Altissimo Chart for Yamaha YTS-32 Tenor Saxophone

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UPDATE (11 February 2024): Eleven years later, I’m now a parent who’s about seven years behind on practicing. I’ve lost my facility with altissimo, but am working on regaining it.  In the meantime, two observations: Experiment with adding a G# pinky key for these fingerings. Per a post over on Everything Saxophone, this definitely helps with getting the tone clearer and the pitch easier to play and more stable on the 3rd octave G, and may help with more, too.  On my (Antigua BS3220) bari, I find that the G# pinky key helps so much that altissimo G comes out even …

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On My Practicing: An Update

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Original Post (updated at end of post): I have stopped posting here regularly about what’s going on with my return to playing the saxophone (because my practice log notebook, though no longer daily, is publicly available to anyone interested), but I’m in a contemplative mood about it all now, so I figured I’d post. In exciting news, the overtone exercises I’ve been doing at the advice of Phil Barone had been paying off. I really am a lot happier with my tone than I have ever been, and I’m getting a richer sound. Not only that, but I’m getting pretty …

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Out from the Sinews

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In a book I read long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Christopher Dewdney wrote in his book of poetry The Radiant Inventory about neurology, using the most brilliantly poetical and beautiful language. He wrote about all kinds of things, of course: books of poetry are like that. But among the things he discussed in the book was the neurobiology of break-ups, and why they are so difficult. I can’t quote the book, or even paraphrase it in any way I’d regard as trustworthy–my copy is somewhere in that other galaxy where I read it, in a box, floating …

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Practice Notes Shared at Evernote

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One of the things that has been surprising about moving to a new computer is being able to access social network/media services so much better than I could in the past. While my first instinct is to blog everything as a way of putting information into accessible storage, it’s not really the most efficient way to do everything. So I’ve been exploring, and one of the services I’ve found to serve a purpose I needed is Evernote. While I don’t think posting about my music practice here is a terrible idea–and I will be posting sometimes as part of my …

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