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?
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.
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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!
Well I figured it was as good a title as any. This is where my online musical journey begins, who knows where it will lead or what will come of it. Feel free to tag along, and I’ll see if I can’t be disciplined enough to post here regularly and do my best to avoid banality in the process
