Lesson 10/08/03
I hadn’t had much time to practice this past week (migraines Thursday, Friday, and a near one on Sunday, and we spent Saturday at the Renaissance Festival, so I could only practice Monday-Wednesday), so I was just sure this lesson was going to suck.
After I set up my horn, I reminded Fred that I’d gotten the new mouthpiece last week, so rather than starting on new material, I practiced some old stuff to get myself accustomed to it. He had me play a few things — mostly scales — to hear how I was coming along with it. His comment was something like, “You’ve only had that mouthpiece a week?” To which I said yes, but that I really only was able to practice with it since Monday because of migraines.
He seemed quite thoughtful about this, and said that we were at a point where we needed to think about moving into longer pieces or something (I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was along those general lines). I’ve expressed some interest in doing more classical type pieces, which may take some research, since there isn’t a proliferation of classical music written for saxophone. Then he seemed to get an idea, got up and started out of the room, and turned to say that he knew what we could do, and that I would find it a bit scary. When he returned, he had a book of sax duets. He opened it up to the first page, and said that we’d try a couple right now. And he knew that I found sight reading scary.
After we got ourselves in tune with each other, we started on the first piece. After one false start (I was supposed to be playing lead, but true-to-form, I was playing quietly because I wasn’t sure of myself), we played through the first two lines. And frankly it sounded pretty darn good if I do say so myself.
Fred turned back another couple pages to another piece. This one was a bit more complex, and we weren’t playing the same thing as much as the first piece. Unfortunately I got lost after the first line or so, and had to wait another line to jump back in. But when I jumped back in, I was playing the wrong notes (reading a C as an E for some reason).
This week I’m going to look through the book and pick a couple to try next time. I’m also going to continue through my old book, because I still have several scales to learn, but I’m looking forward to continuing with the duets.