Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Saxophones - The Old, the New and the Baritone

The question “what make of saxophone is right for me?” is one that most saxophonists have pondered at one time or another and it is a subject about which some players hold very strong, almost religious views. Particular makes, models and serial numbers are sort after and paid for with ever increasing amounts. And thanks to the advent of eBay, that holy grail of horns may just be a click or two away, with “Buyer beware” being the maxim to keep in mind at all times if this is your preferred means of acquisition.

By and large, I was spared the prolonged search for a quality instrument. Thanks to my saxophone teacher at the time, who located an instrument for me, I have played the same Selmer MK VI alto since the late 1980’s. It was built towards the end of this famous run of horns and so doesn’t belong to the mythical period of manufacture sort after by many, but I always liked the sound I could make on it and to my ears anyway, it does seem to be improving with the passage of time.

In essence, it is true to say that if you play the alto, there is a large choice of quality makes and models, modern and vintage horns, to choose from.

For players of the soprano saxophone, the modern instruments do have a number of clear advantages. Yes, there is a wonderful quality to the sound that a MKVI soprano can produce, but there are tuning issues with many of these horns. Technology has without doubt improved since the time of their manufacture and so in turn has the general construction and intonation of the soprano saxophone. You could say that this once wild and uncontrollable horn has been somewhat domesticated and there are now a number of modern instruments available to a contemporary soprano saxophonist. The fact that Soprano masters David Liebman (a Keilwerth) and Wayne Shorter (a Yamaha), choose to play modern instruments speaks volumes in support of this evolution.

The tenor saxophone is an instrument that I choose not to play for reasons that I won’t go into here although, I could make the claim that I have listened to the tenor more than any of the other saxophones. (yes, John Coltrane would make up a substantial amount of that listening time, but perhaps that is a topic for a later blog!)

For players of the tenor, the vintage horns do seem, still, to be the instrument of choice. This is providing that a; you can find an instrument and b; once found, you can afford the price tag.

Many of my friends are Selmer devotees and within this group I would say that the Super Balanced Action (SBA) would be the prize horn to play. Of course many years have now passed since the last one of these rolled of the production line and finding one of these instruments is becoming increasingly difficult.

The MK VI is of course the best known of all the vintage horns and as this was the model preferred by so many of the past greats including John Coltrane, I don’t imagine the popularity of this saxophone to ever diminish.

The American horns have certainly had a revival during the past decade or so and whether this can be attributed to the scarcity of Selmers or not, they are certainly worth considering. A good Conn is undoubtedly a beautiful saxophone.

This brings me to the last of the big 4, the lowest of the mainstream saxophone models and in terms of the vintage versus modern debate, the most interesting and slightly confusing of them all. This is, the wonderful world that is the baritone saxophone.

The baritone is a horn that I have come to rather late, but, perhaps in part because of it being in the same key as the alto, I have fast developed a great affection for the tone and feel of the “plumber’s friend”( as a certain Sydney bass player likes to refer to my baritone).

Before I settled on my old low Bb Buescher, I searched high and low (perhaps that should be low and lower) for a horn and I didn’t have any particular preference for old or new, low Bb or A. I just needed to find a baritone that I liked. As my search progressed however, I started to realize one fundamental thing about the baritone saxophone and that is that is that all of the current manufacturers seem to have forgotten how to make them.

I think this regression began from the moment that the low A became part of the standard range (one semi-tone lower than that of the other saxophones). This truly was a Spinal Tap moment in saxophone design. It is the saxophonic equivalent of “amps that go to 11” the classic “one more must be better” approach.

I confess that I have played a handful of baritones that do play well down to low A. The MK IV in particular does seem to cope with this extension, but nothing that is currently made seems to be able to achieve the richness that is routinely achieved by the vintage horns.

My other complaint with the modern instruments is the weight. A modern low A baritone is not a soloing horn to be played standing for two or three sets, not without some serious gym sessions in preparation! These modern instruments seem to be built for some other purpose entirely and I suspect that this is to produce the inevitable and all too frequently occurring low A. Baritone players should stand together on this overuse, put the note up an octave and be done with it! Or, you could choose a low Bb horn and save yourself the trouble of lugging that extra couple of kilos of brass around for one extra semi-tone. Save your back AND get that beautiful low Bb baritone sound!

In my quest for a baritone saxophone, I played close to 30 instruments over a period of about 5 years. The vast majority of these new baritones were just plain ol’, downright terrible. This was and is alarming for such a mainstream instrument! It really does seem inescapable that the low A fundamentally changes the shape and proportions of the instrument, and therefore changes the entire character and response. Far too much is lost and not enough is gained to justify this one note.

I played an alto with a low A when I was in New York many years ago, it was a MK VI and it was so out of tune, it may well still be for sale. Thankfully, for the alto, the low A experiment has been long forgotten. Why is this not the case with the baritone?

I know that there are a couple of present day manufacturers that do still produce a low Bb baritone, but I suspect that the market being the size it is, not enough research and development goes into these instruments, and the examples I managed to find and play were nowhere near the level of a vintage Bb Conn Transitional or 12M, Martin, Selmer, King or Buescher.

I sincerely hope that one day in the not too distant future, the folly of the low A is put aside and a manufacturer is able to re-discover the lost art of making a baritone saxophone with the tone and power of the instruments of yesteryear. Perhaps of equal importance, is that saxophonists demand this of the manufacturers. If the lower notes are so attractive there is always the option of playing these and many more even lower ones on a bass saxophone, an instrument vastly underrepresented in the ranks of saxophonists since its demise between the two world wars. I would also put out a call to all arrangers and composers to resist the urge to write low As for the baritone and perhaps together we can return this instrument to its former glory. Otherwise I fear that the next step may be some bright spark suggesting that the answer to all our problems is to add a low Ab to the baritone, I mean, it’s one more, surely it’s got to be better?

Thursday, October 7, 2010

The Composer’s Notebook

Having just completed my first folio of compositions for publication, I thought that I would post some thoughts and reflections about the process, hoping that this is a good use of the medium and that it may be of some interest to someone somewhere.

Many of the pieces that I have included in this volume of 30 compositions were among the first that I composed upon my move to Sydney in the early 1990s. Some of these are still in my repertoire. Nevertheless, the process of preparing a final manuscript, ready for print was a long and sometimes arduous one.

Ultimately, it has been a valuable exercise re-visiting these early works. The fact that all but two of the pieces, have been recorded by various groups greatly assisted the process, providing, along with my original hand written charts, a point of reference.

There were numerous changes to melodies, rhythms, forms, harmonies, even titles. This was one of the many positives of the project as it revealed a clear path of development. Having to make definitive choices was a challenge and throughout I was often reminded of why I love to improvise. The ability to work through ideas in real time, manipulating rhythms and notes and never having to settle on a final solution to a musical dilemma – unless you want to. This approach is obviously tricky in printed form, so decisions had to be made.

After a lot of thought, I decided to select only alto pieces for this first volume. Mainly because the Alto is my main horn and the bulk of my compositional work has been for this instrument. It was difficult to leave out Bb compositions, the melodic ranges of which didn’t fit easily into the alto key. The soprano has been a feature of my trio and the Mara Ensemble and it is an instrument on which I am trying hard to achieve my own voice. But in terms of a coherent and concise volume of original pieces, it seemed that focusing on the alto was going to be the best solution. There are ways around the publication of multiple transpositions. Separate editions for each key, as in some Real Books and the Charlie Parker Omnibook or multiple keys in the same edition, as in the Jamie Abersold playalongs. In the future, I do hope to offer Bb, concert and bass clef editions for download, but this is still some way off.

The advent of powerful music software has been such a giant leap forward for musicians, that life before their introduction is almost unimaginable. I am in complete awe of the great composers of the past, dealing with the processes of composition and arrangement without the latest version of Sibelius or Finale. What would Mozart make of all this? I recently wrote an arrangement for a quartet of improvisers and string orchestra. The learning curve here was a straight line jutting straight up in the air and even with the assistance of Sibelius 6 I had my work cut out!

The double edge sword of technology is that for all its power, you still have to learn how to use it. Moreover, you have to learn how to use each new version of it, and God forbid that you make the jump from PC to Mac, but surely this is a topic is best left for another day!

In my case, I had a pretty good knowledge of how to prepare an arrangement with Sibelius. However combining 30 separate pieces into a single, printable form, complete with title page, index, appendix and page numbers, well this is a slightly different undertaking! Let’s just say that next time the procedure will be a much quicker one.

I have been through the process of preparing a CD for manufacture a number of times, and have always taken the view that because a small run, independent CD is going to be sitting next to the latest Blue Note or ECM titles, spend as much as you can and make yours look at least as good. A tall order indeed!

Inevitably, when stocked, my albums are to be found somewhere between Rollins, Sonny and Surman John. Not that I mind this, but they certainly a couple of heavyweights to be sitting beside.

For those interested enough to purchase a copy of my book, I would assume that you already play the saxophone and have got this far owing to an interest in my music. I dare say that the cover design will not be the most important consideration in your decision to buy. So provided the charts inside are correct and legible the cover artwork may not factor too highly.

The overall cost and size of the print run was also a consideration as was binding and the paper stock. As with most things, there are many ways to self publish and I have learnt from years of releasing independent CDs, it is easy to spend far more on a project than you could ever hope to recoup.

Many people seem generally surprised at the small scale at which the majority of artists operate. Most musicians I work with do everything themselves and by this I mean they are their own publicist, graphic designer, composer, producer, IT consultant, accountant, photographer and band leader. This is why it is so important that if you find an artist whose work you enjoy, support them and in the case of musicians, don’t illegally copy and distribute their music. My previous blog contains a few thoughts about this very subject.

I have titled this blog ”The Composer’s Notebook” because this, ultimately, is what my new collection of pieces is, just in a very refined form, but the phrase “Composers Notebook” is also an image that I find mysterious and romantic. For me it conjures up images of dusty rooms filled with books and manuscripts piled up in towers, old pianos, roll topped desks, music stands and ancient clockwork metronomes, collections antique instruments and gongs and cymbals. All this generated by two words. An amalgam of all the studios I have ever been in, from my first piano lessons to now.

I do have a notebook by the way and I do use it to store up ideas – some of the most seemingly insignificant scraps have metamorphosed over many years. I am in the process of writing new repertoire for a recording in December so will be revisiting the notebook once more…

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

What’s mine is yours?

What follows are some thoughts on a topic that has fired up the grey matter of a many before me. In fact, you might like to skip the next few hundred words and be content with the following statement.

“If you copy music that you have not paid for you are stealing.”

OK, simple enough. So if you are happy with that, I’m happy too.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that and since the arrival of cheap mass-produced audio technology capable of copying music in the privacy of your home, this has been a growing problem, albeit a relatively insignificant one until the ground breaking, world changing, life altering, arrival of digital audio. Combined with personal computers and the internet, mass illegal downloads have become the new reality.

Now, we aren’t talking about the music piracy of the 1980s. More often than not this amounted to making a dodgy copy of "A Kind of Blue" on cassette so that you could listen to it in the car for a couple of weeks until it got chewed or it melted. Today, the piracy we are talking about is the ability to make an absolutely perfect replica of the original in a matter of seconds, add to this the technology that makes this replica available, via the internet, to whoever wants to download it free of charge, anywhere in the world and we are talking about a change to the musical landscape of colossal proportions.

Why am I concerned about this? Well as a professional musician, believe it or not, I do attempt to make a living from my music, and this includes the sale of my music via recordings.

It seems to me that a change is taking place in the attitude of music consumers. There are now many music fans around the world who know nothing about life before the digital age. They have no direct knowledge of the technologies that were in place before the digital revolution. An ever growing percentage of the music buying public don’t know what it’s like to order an LP from the local record shop, wait for six weeks for it to arrive from a warehouse somewhere in Germany and then crowd around a turntable with a bunch of friends to hear it reveal it’s mysteries.

I’m not saying that this is necessarily a good thing; I’m not arguing that vinyl is the only format for audio, and I could certainly have done without the six week wait, but one thing for sure, we appreciated the value of the music, it was not cheap. If you wanted to hear Eric Dolphy live in Berlin, you waited and you PAID for it.

Today, it is not uncommon for students to be listening to their ipods where every track in the play list has been downloaded illegally. This is not hearsay; I know it to be true. I also know that the students in question would have no difficulty in purchasing the music legally – but why bother when they can get it for free? And there you have it, the mind-set has shifted, music has become free, a valueless commodity! This philosophy is, of course, completely at odds with that of the musicians who have invested vast amounts of time, creativity and money in producing the music in the first place!

As I mentioned in my opening, many people have pondered this and related topics as the technology has evolved. Check out Tenor saxophonist and composer Ellery Eskelin’s thoughts on the subject. http://tiny.cc/8x7IV

You can also check out British pop singer Lilly Allen’s blog here http://tiny.cc/iH3rQ but even more eye opening are some of the comments below it!

For a different approach, here is a link to a rave on the subject by altoist and composer Steve Coleman. http://bit.ly/1cGfuf