Thursday, March 14, 2013

January 23 NYC

Here's another older entry from the journal.....

January 23 2013 - NYC
Interesting practice today. Woke up the horn -improvising, long tones, multi-phonics, overtones - all as quiet as I could play them. Not sure how long it lasted but it was an intense start to the day (in a good way). Today's quiet playing came out of me not wanting to wake my hosts downstairs (it was early when I started and I couldn't hear anyone up and about). Lacy mentions some exercises in his book 'Findings' that deal with quiet playing - they did come to mind when I had the urge to play. Quite intriguing, I intend to do more of quiet sessions. I was using a new-ish reed and it seemed to respond well to the warm-up. Really opened up as I brought the dynamics up. Today I just felt playing.... taking my mind off this afternoons meeting at a graduate school I am looking at. Played a couple of tunes 'The Nearness of You' & 'Just Friends'. Was enjoying my tone - still struggling up top. It seems worse/harder when I'm working on scales/technical stuff compared to when I am playing tunes/improvising. A lot of it is mind games (when I didn't think about about it they popped out). Anyway... to finish off I revised a Bach invention (#13).. a bit rusty but fun.

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