Saxophonists?

[David]

Any other saxophonists out there? Care to discuss your thoughts on this instrument and it's potential in modern music (improvisation)?
I myself play mostly the tenor, but also alto. I've dabbled a lot with multiphonics, circular breathing, beating tones but it seems like everyone is starting do that nowl.. So I'm searching for a more creative use of these techniques - maybe through live-looping or other electronical means...

[RFKorp]

Nobody's starting to use those techniques all of a sudden now. They've been doing it for decades. But that doesn't mean you can't continue to make exciting new music with old sounds.

Looping on the other hand, while it's a technique with an ever-so-slightly shorter history, has already proven itself to produce boring music most of the time.

[David]

With multiphonics and beating tones I'm referring to people like John butcher, Stephane Rives, Bhob Rainey, christine sehnaoui - not Evan Parker, Peter Brötzmann or any of those guys. I think that while the former saxophonists are great musicians the techniques and structures they use are sort of limiting. Its understandable that a saxophonist tries to break free of monophony, but the saxophone's possibilities of multiphonics are not as vast as, say a string-instrument. so, the techniques of multiphonics form the performance and its structure - simply because there are not that many decisions to take.

the idea of overdubbing different recordings of improvised solo sax came to me when a reedtrio-project I tried to launch (and was very excited about) didn't work out.
A great example of this is Thomas Ankersmits solo 3". There are a couple of tracks of great multiphonic solo sax, but the real masterpiece is when he on the last track mixes all the previous tracks to one wonderfully insane screech.

[Charon]

there's plenty of multiphonic potential on the saxophone

I myself have been working away at a technique of playing two independent lines at once through multiphonics (not cross-fingerings), and it works. You can play and hold notes in the low end while consciously playing a different line in the altissimo at the same time, it's an interesting technique

don't think all's been done with the multiphonics just yet

[Dohol]

With multiphonics and beating tones I'm referring to people like John butcher, Stephane Rives, Bhob Rainey, christine sehnaoui - not Evan Parker, Peter Brötzmann or any of those guys.

I dunno..I wouldn't clump Parker and Brotzmann together...A lot of the techniques the present generation use passed through Parker first..Although he can be a bit uhh..overwhelming..

At least to my taste, Parker can often be a bit too much, but as far as his contributions to the instruments vocabulary..well..you've gotta give the man a lot of credit..

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

can someone explain me the nuts&bolts of circular breathing? how does one do that?

[Dohol]

can someone explain me the nuts&bolts of circular breathing? how does one do that?

Inhale..fill your lungs..blow into your instrument...before your lungs empty, expand your cheeks, filling them with air ( think bagpipe bag )..inhale while forcing the cheek-air into your instrument ( an act of coordination requiring lot's of practice )..
Repeat ad infinitum..

You can practice by bubbling air through a straw into a glass of water..

[gohleekwang]

i m happy to know how circular breathing actually work too, thanks.

[faster]

You can do it with your neck, not your cheeks, too, by the way.

[gohleekwang]

You can do it with your neck, not your cheeks, too, by the way.

hi, care to share more detail?

[David]

I dunno..I wouldn't clump Parker and Brotzmann together...A lot of the techniques the present generation use passed through Parker first..Although he can be a bit uhh..overwhelming..

Well they both use multiphonics, but Brötzmann not in a very controlled way. I'm no expert on Parker but I think that his tenor-technique is quite clumsy compared to John Butcher, and on soprano most of his sound is based on constant motion (chatter).

[Richard Pinnell]

Inhale..fill your lungs..blow into your instrument...before your lungs empty, expand your cheeks, filling them with air ( think bagpipe bag )..inhale while forcing the cheek-air into your instrument ( an act of coordination requiring lot's of practice )..
Repeat ad infinitum..

You can practice by bubbling air through a straw into a glass of water..

I just tried to do this, nearly choked to death, and sprayed the wall opposite with banana milk.

[Charon]

I just tried to do this, nearly choked to death, and sprayed the wall opposite with banana milk.

I remember having similar experiences when I was learning to do it!

took about 3 months all up in the end, but well worth it (great trick to use at parties if nothing else)

[Dohol]

You can do it with your neck, not your cheeks, too, by the way.

Every time I've ever seen Roscoe Mitchell do circular breathing, his neck would swell up to match the diameter of his head....What a mystery..

[faster]

You can do it with your neck, not your cheeks, too, by the way.

hi, care to share more detail?

Exact same principle, but your neck puffs up like a fucking toad. Pretty gross.

[David]

Exact same principle, but your neck puffs up like a fucking toad. Pretty gross.

how is that possible? when you use the cheeks the air passes through the nose, but it always has to pass through the neck.

back to what I was talking about in the beginning: what I was aiming at was that I don't think it's very interesting just to hear saxophonists (or other instrumentalists) just line up weird sounds, but how they use them. this is a something I myself have battled with a lot. - trying to invent new ways of playing solo sax, making the microscopic details stand out even more through slow and repetitive playing. I find this very hard to do though - trying to make the listeners aware of sounds they usually unconsciously dismiss is a hard task. Amplifying the sax a lot could be a way to approach the problem, though I don't have a rehearsal space where I could do that right now... But the question remains: is a sound interesting just because it hasn't been discovered by other musicians yet?

[Charon]

is a sound interesting just because it hasn't been discovered by other musicians yet?

Is it 'interesting'? To most other open-minded saxophonists (and others ): yes

but the question really should be does it make good improvisation (in the improvised music context)?
and, more broadly,
does it make good music?

[faster]

Exact same principle, but your neck puffs up like a fucking toad. Pretty gross.

how is that possible? when you use the cheeks the air passes through the nose, but it always has to pass through the neck.

Well, not sure ("I just do it," says the bumblebee when told he's not aerodynamic enough to fly), but maybe it's an area of the neck above the intake valve. All I know is I have a lot of extra jowly skin and I can puff my neck up all gross-like.

Really I'm a bad person to ask because I stumbled upon the few techniques that I use and don't really understand them very well.

[gohleekwang]

is a sound interesting just because it hasn't been discovered by other musicians yet?

Is it 'interesting'? To most other open-minded saxophonists (and others ): yes?

i think it is not about has been discovered or hasn't been discover, it is about how you make the contact of the sound you got and why / how you interpret with it.

[David]

i think it is not about has been discovered or hasn't been discover, it is about how you make the contact of the sound you got and why / how you interpret with it.

still the problem with novelty shouldn't be ignored. take for example stephane rives' impressive (and great!) solo album Fibres. A lot of those tracks are just based on a particular technique and sound - it stands and falls with those. If those techniques would become common knowledge among saxophonists the magic would disappear.