#jazz patterns

SAXOPHONE PRACTICE DAY 17

15/1/19

I'm not gonna lie, dear reader, but I am really, really starting to enjoy my daily sax practice. It's so fun creating new music on the fly that then I completely forget and never come back to (like a mandala). It's play. It's the thing I look forward to the most every day. What's more, now that I've got a couple of weeks of straight, structured practice under my belt, I can feel myself slowly getting back to my old standard. This is a relief and also super satisfying. AND I've been listening to loads of jazz and loving it. Life is good, dear reader.

Quick interjection though. Reeds. The bane of every saxophonist's/oboist's/clarinetist's/bassoonist's life. During my college years I used to get so frustrated with reeds it was unbelievable. I would buy a box of 10, pick the first one from the box and play it until it died. Because I was practising so much in those days this never took long, usually a couple of days to a week. Then I'd get really frustrated because I'd have one reed that was completely useless and 9 that were too hard to play yet. So then I'd try and use the method my teacher taught me wherein you break the reeds in gradually. And they'd die, of course, and I'd go back to my old method. Since college, with the tiny amounts of practice I've been doing, I've just stuck to one reed for months and not really thought about it. Whilst this is kind of refreshing, it's not something I'm going to be able to carry on for much longer if I'm going to persist with this new amazing thing where I practise every day. So today I took action. My grandma gave me an Amazon voucher for Xmas which I hadn't used yet, so I combined it with what was left of the Amazon voucher I had from my mum, and got myself a brand spanking new box of reeds. Vandoren blue box strength 3. I used to be on 3.5s, which I might go back to at some point in the future, but for now I'm sticking to 3s.

Something that's happened in the past few days is I've been practising longer than I meant to. This is a good thing mainly, as it's happening because I'm getting so absorbed in my practice and forgetting to keep an eye on the time. The only problem this could cause going on is I'll run out of time to practise the whole routine I've got planned for that day/week, but I'll deal with that when I get to it. Today, for example, I practised for nearly an hour and a half, when the WEEK 3 practice routine clearly states I should be practising for an hour only. But whatever. I'm in love. At the end of the day I doubt practising too much is something I'm going to regret when I look back at my life and accomplishments.

My video for you today is a demonstration of Pattern 18 from the Patterns for Jazz book mentioned in DAY 8, which I've been practising for a few days now. I've got it down in two different registers, so the next step is to practise it with different articulations and rhythms, and alternate ascending and descending chords. I'm going to try changing the dynamics up, too - I'm getting bored of playing everything loud all the time.

SAXOPHONE PRACTICE DAY 9

7/7/19

So. The backing track for jazz pattern 17 is very basic. Essentially it’s a succession of Minor 6th chords with a repetitive swing rhythm underneath, created through the medium of Sibelius 7. But it’s functional and that’s what I’m after right now. Hear me playing the pattern and improvising over the top^^

Remember my problem in DAY 8? I couldn’t get out of my head? Well this problem persists into DAY 9, although the backing track helps a bit. The only thing is with the backing track is that I find it easy to get lost, as multiple chords seem to work with one key. On one level I suppose this doesn’t really matter, as if it sounds right then that should be what matters. But I’m trying to train my ears here, so I’m going to focus on being able to hear the chord being played and knowing exactly which chord I should be playing on top of that. See how easy it is to get lost in my own head?