Strangers In The Night

Like yay! Took forever to get this out, as I shipped my sample drive on the ship to Montreal. Also my first mix with the MSP5s, I think they worked well to tell me what the bass is like. Will need loads of mixes to learn this monitors though, I think I felt more comfortable with headphones as that's what I've used for years.

Saxophone Log: October 2012

Very rushed, only practiced an hour-ish yesterday, and another hour or so today for practice + recording. This is more or less the sheet music being used with a few bars of improv. Ergh.

Upright Bass: Kontakt Factory Library
Piano: SampleTekk Rain Piano
Addictive Drums

Lips sore, etc.etc

Lips are bloody sore as I type this.... had a great (if short) saxophone practice session today. Due to work/life commitments - the sax has had much less play time. Been plodding along, and I think after two weeks my tone is right back to where I want it to be.

But... the embouchure has definitely weakened - doing some aebersold exercises that feature high notes prominently had my lower lip blister. Didn't want to further injure my lip so I decided to cut it short.

Damn man, it feels so good to belt out some notes at ff :)

Saxophone Log: April 2012

Pretty please with this arrangement, I can't believe it only took today an a bit of yesterday evening. I did spend some time waffling about how to arrange this track, as it's kind of.. iconic? For awhile it was a ballad, then blues, then went to bebop, then back to blues again. Gah. I actually set it up so that some bars from the original were removed in order to fit the 12-bar blues feel.

I started recording once I had the drums, pad and basslines down. After recording, I tweaked the bassline to flow better with the melody, added in some tambourines starting from the 2nd chorus, and added a counter melody on top. I'm quite happy with how the counter melody turned out, as I played the main portion just once, and that's what you hear.

Apart from Addictive Drums, all the instruments used were built into Logic Studio.

It is practice, isn't it?

Due to my holidays, and various illnesses (damn you dry cough) I didn't touch my dear alto till today. And damn, it appears that my embouchure has suffered greatly in these few weeks >.>

Apart from tiring easier, I think my articulation and dynamics took a turn for the worse.

On the flip side, I though my improvisation is now much better - most likely due to the piano practice. More ideas, though really, I need to memorize the scales.

Ah well.

Saxophone Log: March 2012

Hmmm not much to say here, this is my first and only take, not really into the song. Did practice a few times before though. I did spend about two hours on the mixing, ensuring that the basslines came through. Mmmm...

The End of the world

So this is what I've been working on for the last week or so, sequencing and mixing a backing track for the monthly saxophone ballad thing. I think the VRM box is doing a good job here, my go-to testing speaker setup is the Computer Speakers in the bedroom environment. The very lofi sound brings up issues with levels and tone very quickly. I look forward to learning more about mixing with this vrm box thing, but for now I will probably need to check my mix on other outputs.

Inside Logic, I took the arrangement and split it into multiple tracks, bass harmony, treble harmony and rhythm.

Originally, I'd taken the string sections in GPO4 for either harmony, but they felt somewhat sterile on their own. Instead of relying directly on the sections for direct harmony, I decreased them to provide the meat of the harmony, but relied on individual instruments. Hence, my treble harmonies include:

- Cello Section
- Violin 1, 2

For the bass harmonies, I had
- Bass section
- Bass 1, 2
- A very deep bass played one octave lower via a synth.

Rhythm wise, I had the ride cymbal played and panned hard left, with tambourines on the right.

Haven't used this bad boy in a while, and decided to get 'em used in the mix. I actually haven't done an A/B test with this reflexion filter, definitely something I need to do down the line.

All in all, I've learnt alot from this exercise, and am looking forward to next month!

Arrangement for the monthly sax ballad

More harmony practice, took about 6 hours for this >.> Every month Cafe Saxophone has a monthly ballad, the past few months I've made it a point to sequence the backing track on my own.

This month, the song chosen is "The End Of The World" by Arthur Kent and Sylvia Dee. I decided to use strings for my mids and bass to test out how they would work with the sax, as I really enjoyed the string/sax pieces from Art Pepper's Winter Moon.

On the other hand, this song did not feel right without the 12 beat rhythm, so instead of using a harmonic part for that, I put the rhythm section up to it. Planning to get a pair of latin shakers to record for the percussion.

Hopefully I will get my macbook back in time then I can put all of this into Logic.

One thing I really like about Musescore is that it highlights instrument ranges that are not available on actual instruments in RED, a feature that, from what I understand is not available on Finale Printmusic 2011 (which is what I have. And can't use with the macbook dead. hah.). 

Piano to get better at sax

It's only a few weeks since I started putting time into the piano, and I think I am starting to see results: some really difficult pieces I can actually play them (woo!) and learning about chords on a harmonic instrument gave me several oh wow! moments, especially about scales.

Googling for the hell of it led me to this post on SOTW that seems to correspond with my experiences.

Parallelisms: Flute and Saxophone - a newb perspective

It's been about 2 months give or take since I've properly begun flute lessons - 3 in total so far.One thing that stands out to me is how different the embouchures are between the sax and flute.

With the sax, is more about how I deliver the air against the mouthpiece by shaping my tongue, as well as the tightness of the sides of the lips. Changing the tone from piercing to a more mellow sound is again dependent on the airflow shaped by my tongue, and with subtoning, dropping the jaw.

Comparatively, the flute focuses more on the actual lips, in controlling the stream of air being blown against the cutting edge of the headjoint. Using the lips themselves to focus the airstream seems to be key here, and the more I experiment with the lips and placement of the joint, the more resonant a sound I get. The lips going dry here is a big issue though.

As either embouchures don't seem to get in the way of each other in terms of shape, I can see improvements on both instruments without seemingly affecting either in a negative way.

In practice terms, armed with this knowledge, I can focus my effects into getting a good strong focused airflow. Being the flute is my secondary instrument, I only dabble with it a few hours a week - like maybe giving it a quick blow whilst I fry some eggs or waiting for tea to brew.

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The flute also exposes me to a different side of music - classical. This was unplanned, as my main requirement was - I have flute, find teacher that is nearby. My teacher is from a pure classical (french, iirc) school, and is not at all into playing jazz. In retrospective, I think being exposed to different viewpoints would probably help expand my perspectives. I'm personally not that interested in classical music, but just a few minutes ago, playing Bach's Minuet in G just lit up my heart. A simple melody (obviously, I butchered it) - but the delivery of emotion is so strong.

Down the road, I intend to take the flute down the celtic side, which is why I got it in the first place. Celtic music just resides in another realm, and I wish I had the concentration and time to study that area of music as well. Perhaps down the road.

I leave you with a rendition of Yasunori Mitsuda's Time Scar played on Flute, accompanied by guitar. It is a piece I hope to be able to play a few years down the road.