Got a sax today. I put it together and slapped a reed on it, then went into the bathroom to make some noise. I ran a couple of scales and then a couple of bars of "Night Train," and I heard my daughter call through the door, "Daddy, you're not horrible. You can come out of the bathroom."
Also....
I went to Sam Ash this morning and got a couple of books and some reeds. They didn't have the reeds I wanted to try, so I'll have to order some. I did get some reeds, although they were not my first choice but I'm sure they'll still work for me. Got some soaking now to break them in, but didn't do any real practice today because all my reeds are still new.
Several years ago, when I still had an old sax in the house, I played around with one of those Rovner ligatures and I liked it WAY more than the traditional metal lig, but it has become misplaced as well. Wherever it is, it's probably with the mouthpiece that I also misplaced. I also want to get another mouthpiece; I don't have a whole lot of confidence in the stock mouthpiece that came with this horn, but that may change as I use it. Anyhow, mouthpieces are like guns & ammo: you can never have too many.
You can get a pretty good sound in the bathroom, especially if the rest of your house has carpeting and drapes. Back when I used to play musical instruments, I also found the tiled entryway of the house where I lived to be decently resonant.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I just read somewhere that playing against a hard surface will help you a lot in picking out the overtones.
ReplyDeleteMy college teacher was extremely focused on what they call "classical" sax, and there are a lot of things that I am only now learning about because he just wasn't interested in jazz. Which seems quite strange, to me. The piece he mostly had me working on learning was an ancient sonata originally written for viola. I probably still have the sheet music around here somewhere.
I got a big kick out of it when I played a little "Night Train" and my daughter started dancing a little and said, "Hey! That's a real song!" That was one of our standards in high school jazz band.