Musicality

Saxophone Doubling

A post form Neal over at the ever informative Sax Station, got me thinking.  Neal mentioned that he likes to take a Clarinet along for portability purposes when traveling, where my preference is for my Curved Soprano Sax.

Depending on who you ask, most people understand the term doubling as meaning having a main instrument, but in addition playing a similar instrument usually of a similar type.  For example, a sax player might double with a Trumpet, Clarinet, Oboe, or similar.  The argument for this is that each instrument brings it’s own challenges, style of playing and technique, that can often translate or influence variety on your main instrument.  There are many people in favour of this as bringing something fresh to their main instrument, however.  Many people (including the likes of Larry Teal and many other pro players) believe that in order to double properly you have to invest proper time and effort into the secondary instrument.

Whilst I have no plans of doubling anytime soon (beyond guitar and keyboard, which can’t really be considered doubling in the vein of this post), my thoughts are that surely serving two masters, for instance the clarinet and saxophone, splits your focus, and time you’re investing into the second instrument, might be better spent focusing purely on your main?

Obviously it’s hard to have objective experience, since you can’t be in two places at the same time, but I’d love to hear from other doublers regarding their thoughts and experiences on the subject?

Soprano Success

Per my teachers instruction, I’ve been playing Soprano almost exclusively for the last few weeks, the concept behind this is that, it requires greater focus and a more controlled embouchure, which sounds to me like it makes sense.  So this is how I’ve practicing, and to be honest the Soprano Sax is a much more portable instrument meaning that I’ve been getting more practice overall which can only be a good thing.  I’ve been paying particular attention to subtone and the higher register up towards Altissimo (but not into it).

I’m happy to report that the concept worked in practice, I picked up both the Alto and Tenor yesterday for a short session on each, and it’s safe to say that my control, intonation and quality of tone overall had increased dramatically, I almost didn’t recognise the person playing (which has to be a great thing!!).

Anyone else have any thoughts about using this method for improving tone focus and control?  I’d love to hear about it!!

Q: When is a DAW not a DAW?

A: When it’s ajar…. fnaar fnaar.

But seriously folks, the guys at Propellerhead Music have just announced a new product called “Record“, anyone that has worked with or around their flagship product Reason, will know that a complaint from many users, and non-users alike is the inability to input audio or record to the tool as you can with just about any other DAW, however Reason have always claimed that they’re not a DAW.  So now “Record” appears and promises to be a recording tool for musicians… from their website….

Welcome to Record, Propellerhead Software’s brand new recording software. Record gives you unlimited audio tracks, world class effects and mixing gear, and a whole new take on music recording. With an intuitive, straightforward interface and a hands-on approach to capturing performances, Record was designed for musicians – not audio engineers. This is recording done right.

So many people out there are now saying OK, so that makes Reason a DAW when combined with Record, right?  As with all the Props products, they seem to have made a great job of it and thought things through well, but for me, I’m not sure that it’s so compelling, firstly for existing Reason users it costs around $100 to upgrade, I’m already a good way along the path of learning how to be an audio engineer (not pro by any means, but not a novice either) so they won’t save me that hassle.  The mastering and mixing tools they provide seem really good (wait, I thought it was for musicians not engineers??), but are they likely to be worlds ahead of the tools provided by Logic or Cubase, probably not, and what about when you want to upgrade them?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the product, I’ve not used it and have only read the marketing so far, I’m just saying I’m not 100% convinced that many of the existing users will spring for the extra cash.  As someone else pointed out, if this was a Reason upgrade to version 5 and not an entirely separate product, they might consider it (with the tight integration some might argue it is an upgrade) but time will tell.  I’ll be agnostic for the moment, but with Cubase 5 just out, not to mention that it’ll now be going head to head with the likes of “Live”, etc. and Apple slated to upgrade Logic at WWDC in a few weeks, I think Props are in for stiff competition.  Time will tell.

Zen Saxophone

I was reading a post on Sax Station today called “Beginner’s Mind Child’s Mind for Saxophone” and it reminded me of a book I read recently called Zen Guitar.  It’s a fantastic book, and I think anyone playing an instrument would find it useful, to be honest the book could probably apply equally well to just about any endeavour in life.  The book focuses on the whole approach to playing an instrument, and perhaps more importantly a myriad of aspects that we may not think about in our normal day-to-day practice.  It’s not expensive and I think it has a little something for everyone, check it out, and as always would love to know what you think.

[amazonshowcase_8a0ac9b2fda8f8df45b643d91a079bc4]

Something big on the way from Propellerheads

For those that are a fan of Propellerheads Reason software, you might be interested that I recently read a post on  Computer Music blog.   They say that

something is coming and that it really will be a major launch (ie, not just another posh ReFill)

I always look forwards to releases from these guys, they’re very innovative and more than many other companies I’ve owned softare from, they write stable, and very solid code.  They say May 9th is a likely candidate for the release date, because it coincides with the Producers Conference.  Full blog post can be found here

http://www.computermusic.co.uk/page/computermusic?entry=something_big_on_the_way

Presonus Sound Interface Added (Finally!!)

I finally got around to installing the sound interface I’ve had kicking around for so long, this was mostly driven by my need to DI my Telecaster, combined with a recent update to Guitar Rig. First impressions of the Presonus Firestudio are great, but there’s enough articles and reviews out there, so there’s no need to regurgitate them all here. So this evening I’ll be trying out the DI functionality, and sometime next week (due mostly to XLR lead fail issues) I’ll be trying out the mic pre’s on the interface to see if they’re all they’ve been hyped up to be.

Presonus Firestudio Project

Book Review – The Art of Mixing by David Gibson

I’ve just finished reading this book, and I have to say, it’s not full of groundbreaking industry secrets which is very refreshing, but perhaps the best thing about the book is it’s use of visual imagary to help the reader understand the sound-stage that you’re mixing within.  The text itself is full of really useful day-to-day information, full of mixing common-sense.  Things like why certain parts are placed in the mix in a particular way, how to keep an ear on your audience, and still take into account the client and their mix wishes for the end product.

Much of what makes this so great is the fact that it’s almost a complete source useful studio mixing & production information, that would be really useful on any studio bookshelf as a reference, it has a clear methodological approach to the subject, and presents all of the informational clearly and concisely, it’s clear that David has a great deal of experience in the music production and engineering field.

I’d give this book 4.5 stars out of 5 losing only half a star because some parts get a little repetitive; especially the section about homework for listening to the relative volume levels for each part in the future, but that’s a subjective thing I guess, in some cases I feel a chart or two more might have been able to cut down on some of this.

Top book, for both beginners, home producers, and intermediate non-professional sound engineers.  I doubt that any practicing pro’s would get a huge amount from this as a lot of it would be picked up from working daily in a studio with other professionals.  For me, this book was worth every penny!!

[amazonshowcase_0135454d85b5d62b0b1b7f629e7cba79]

Alone with Saxophone Subtone

I’ve spent the last week or so practicing my subtone technique, and I must say that it’s coming along quite nicely so far, with substantial quantities of Lee Konitz, Stan Getz and Paul Desmond on the iPod and Hi-Fi (is that term even relevant any more??) I’m getting plenty of inspiration.  I’ve gotta say though, my technique is a far cry from that of the aforementioned greats, I wonder how long it’ll be before I can get this technique down sufficiently to pull it off in public?   Hey, back to the practice we go

Any other subtone listening recommendations are warmly welcomed

Inspiration Exfoliation!

I find that inspiration comes from the strangest places, for me I find for some unknown reason that I most often wax lyrical in the shower, I’m not sure if that’s relevant to anything in particular, but I found myself in the shower today with a bunch of social commentary type lyrics in my head.  Trouble is, it’s not really convenient to take pencil and paper into the shower, for obvious reasons, so I found myself rushing the shower (don’t worry I cleaned everything well!!) so I could get out and scribble down my lyrics before I lost them.

On the opposite side I find myself unable to come up with a tune without some kind of trigger as inspiration, like a loop, drum break or some kind of musical hook that gets my creativity flowing.  I envy those I know that have music, literally spilling out of their heads all day long, and are never lost for a tune.

I’m curious where other people get their artistic inspirations from, doesn’t have to be musical, if you’re a writer, artist, poet, whatever, if you feel like sharing please drop a comment at the end of this post, and share!  Inquiring minds want to know!

Saxophone Embouchure and Lip Support Help

Obviously when playing a saxophone, or any reed instrument for that matter embouchure and lip support play as big a role as diaphragm and air support in your tone, when any of these things are lacking you lose the clear, clean and controlled tone that allow you to articulate your sound and your tone well, so this posting is more of a post looking for feedback about how you get around the issue of controlling your tone when your embouchure begins to slacken due to endurance issues.

Obviously for each person it’s different, I personally start to suffer somewhere between 1 and 2 hours, which by some peoples standards is a bit poor (I see you nodding your head), which is simply because my time commitments don’t allow me to play nearly as often as I’d like to!  Whilst I’m sure there are those of you out there who can play for hours on end before it starts to have any affect, and I suppose it’s the people that have suffered and moved through it that this post is aimed at.

When my embouchure begins to tire, I’ve gotten into the very bad habit of using my teeth to push against my lip to provide that extra bit of support which is not only a bad habit but also cuts the inside of my lower lip to pieces, not good!!  I do try pushing more of the lip up when this starts to happen, but it doesn’t last very long before even that gets difficult (since you’re using the same muscles in a slightly different way, right?).

So my question to all of you marathon sax players out there is this:

“How do you keep playing in a controlled manner once your embouchure starts to flag?“

All suggestions and help gratefully received, obviously I realise that more practice will overcome this with time, but I’m thinking more of a band-aid remedy that will help you pull that extra 30 minutes out of the bag to finish the set you’re playing.