Another long day

Yesterday was exceedingly similar to another long, long day.¹. On the day before yesterday (i.e. Tuesday), the acoustic line-up (more on this later) had a rehearsal that lasted until 10:30 pm. As a result, I didn't get much sleep that night. Yesterday morning I was up at 5:30 am to take the dog for a walk, then I went to the swimming pool for what is now a short swim - only 28 lengths. After coming home, showering and breakfasting, it was into the car for a doctor's appointment for my wife. I had hoped that there would have been a break after lunch for a short lie down, but one of my clients requested my presence at 14:00 and the work with him lasted until 16:00. 

Then it was time to walk to the local arts centre for my second saxophone lesson. During the week between lessons, I had watched some YouTube videos concerning the first steps: how to put the ligature and reed together with the mouthpiece, and how to blow. Despite these videos that helped somewhat, I was barely able to get a note out of the neck, let alone with the neck connected to the saxophone. The picture shows the neck without the mouthpiece but one gets the idea.

At the beginning of the lesson, I asked my teacher to show me exactly how to put all the parts together and I filmed him doing this. I tried blowing again after he had put the saxophone together, but once again couldn't get a note out. So he replaced the reed with a thinner one (2 mm) and also replaced the ligature. Then I put all the pieces together, despite my three left hands, and finally managed to get some sounds out of the saxophone. These were much better than the previous week's sound that had shades of David Jackson's avant garde playing for VdGG.

Then it was time to do some exercises. My teacher put some sheet music on a stand and I started playing - or at least I tried to start playing. It took a while to get going but eventually I played several of the exercises. There are two main problems: I don't have enough breath necessary for playing some of them, and I have difficulty with the low C (this requires using the down octave key). But generally the playing went well, and the teacher said that I was doing very well for someone who was having only his second lesson. Of course, he didn't have to explain to me how to read music. The top jaw has to bite quite hard but the bottom lip has to be fairly relaxed: pressing too hard will close the reed and so no sound will emerge. The mouthpiece also has to be at a specific point within the mouth otherwise notes are liable to be out of tune. I am sure that this will become much easier as I continue.

There are a few major differences between playing the guitar or piano as opposed to playing the saxophone. On my instruments, one plays a scale from the lowest note to the highest note, whereas on the saxophone, the scales are mainly played in a descending manner. One idiosyncratic point to note is that the top note C (it's actually Eb as the alto saxophone is a transposing instrument, but we won't go into that) is played by pressing the second key in the left hand whereas the B is played by pressing the top left hand key, and A is played by pressing both those keys. The other major difference is that playing a note on the guitar or piano is not particularly dependent on which note is played, whereas the lower notes on the saxophone are considered harder to play than the higher notes.

By 17:15, the lesson had finished and I was all blown out. Then it was time to go home, pick up the 12 string guitar then walk down to the dining hall where the New Year ceremony would be held. It has occurred to me that this is the third time that I have played at this ceremony in the past four years (I don't remember what happened last year) and that every time I have played a different guitar: the Washburn, the Stagg and now the 12 string. I doubt that anyone else would have paid attention. This year we were what I call 'the acoustic line up of the House Band', and played three songs.

When the ceremony finished, it was back home to take the dog for her evening walk, by which time I was totally wiped out. I went to bed early and slept for a long time. My phone tells me that yesterday I walked 11,476 steps which is more than enough.

My saxophone teacher sent me a link to a shop where I could buy thinner saxophone reeds, so I ordered last week. The parcel came today - a shame that it wasn't yesterday. Today was a much easier day, mainly consulting work. 

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