Greetings from graduate school!
Should I change the name to Ye Olde Grad Student? Nah! We'll leave it like it is.
First, shameless plug for my new major professor, Mark McArthur, and his podcast The Modern Saxophonist. Mark has fabulous interviews and roundtable discussions and the info which can be attained from listening is worth your time. Besides, it's FREE! Free is good!
I don't put this as a kiss up to my professor. There is a point to me mentioning the podcast. I'll get to that in a minute.....
Anyone who reads this blog knows that the articles I post are a combination of things. First, there are random musings that I have about anything music related. Second, things that I've noticed with my students or classmates and third, and perhaps most importantly, my own struggles down the path to mastering this instrument.
Let's be frank about my level on the instrument. I'm ok. Clearly, I was good enough to get a degree in saxophone pedagogy and was also good enough to get attention from a few graduate schools; eventually even getting an assistantship. NO trained musician, though, is going to mistake me for a virtuoso, at least not yet. That is, after all, the goal here.
Now, there are some things I do well and there are some issues that I still need to work through. (This might be a long blog. Hang in there!)
I'm a very musical player and in lyrical passages from niente to forte I have a good, no, REALLY good sound. Where my problems arise are my fingers (more to the point, the amount of pressure I use), my air (to this point I've treated air as a blunt object...just a ton of air all the time) , and my tongue. Thanks to a recent podcast by Mark, there was a point that I likely knew to a degree subconsciously which was really driven home.
Those problems all tie in together and, moreover, they affect my sound in a very negative way!
So, here's what happened....
I was in a fairly frustrating lesson with Mark. It's frustrating because Mark is pragmatic and direct enough to say "These are areas keeping you from being what you could be. Let's just get them addressed before anything else happens." Great, I get it. The road to mastery ain't paved, folks. That said, it has been a frustrating first few weeks here due to fixing issues that I should have addressed years ago.
At one point in the lesson Mark said "I did a podcast yesterday with James Barrera on the Lindeman Method. You should listen. I think it would be very beneficial to you." I took his advice and following my lesson I popped in the ear buds.....
So, James Barrera is the professor of saxophone at California State University - Long Beach. He's a former student of Leo Potts and Otis Murphy and received his Master's degree from Indiana. More important to this blog, he's a proponent of 'The Lindeman Method'.
So, what is the Lindeman Method?
Henry Lindeman was an early saxophone/woodwind guru who, among others is reported to have given lessons to jazz legend/great/deity Charlie Parker. One of the major tenants of his philosophy was one that the fingers, air, and tongue, though being separate, all tie in together and that the fingers actually have a huge impact on tone production. You know what? He's absolutely right and I don't know why it took me so long to internalize it. So, how do fingers affect tone? It all comes down to tension...
Let's take my situation for example. When I face any really challenging passages, my body's reaction is to try to go into HULK SMASH mode and muscle through things. As a result, my left hand clamps down like a set of vice grips. This large amount of tension in my hand then causes tension in my forearm, upper arm, shoulder, and neck. What's part of the neck? That's right, the throat! Oops, my throat just got tense. For tone production, kids, that isn't good!
Look, to go into a full blown dissertation of Lindeman's methods would be beyond the scope of this blog but the moral to the story is this:
Your air, embouchure, tongue, and fingers are all separate parts of technique BUT......they all work together and each impacts the other. If your tongue and air don't match, it affects your sound. If your fingers and tongue don't match, your sound becomes for lack of a better word, spastic. If your air and fingers don't match up, sound issues.
It all adds up. Everything is everything.
Pay attention to the details, not only in your music but in your fundamentals. The earlier this is addressed the easier it is to correct and the more quickly you move down the road to mastery.
Get in there,
Get it done.
PS- Seriously, check out Mark McArthur's Podcast http://themodernsaxophonist.libsyn.com/ . You'll get a ton of valuable information.
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