LOWdown

another day over - this time with around an hour's socksaphoning done, which is nice. Stopped because the sides of my mouth were starting to lose the ability to seal the air into the mouthpiece, might try gaffa-tape or duck-tape to elongate enbouchure time tomorrow...

or not.

I discovered 2 new notes tonight!
B flat & A sharp
:)
or C sharp & D flat in concert-pitched currency.

ok, so they're the same note really - but it sounds twice as impressive if I give it both names.

anyway - the B-flat I explored today was the low one - at the bottom of the bottom of the sax's bottom register. It's the lowest it goes - and it's a luvverly feeling - everything in you vibrates - it's like being hugged by a giant friendly jelly that's wearing a big fleecey poncho while you're both standing on a vehicle crossing a cattle-grid. VERY nice!

I just wondered if I could get the note to come out if every orofice on my shiny friend was covered, and it came out LOUD & pretty clear on my second go (1st effort produced a sort of half-hearted duck doing a bad impression of the Clangers on a wet Tuesday morning).
I liked the sensation, and it seemed to be a fairly nice sound - so incorporated it into my long notes & the

C-D-C-E-C-F-C-G-C-A-C-B-C-C'-C

and its predictable antithesis
C'-B-C'-A-C'-G-C'-F-C'-E-C'-D-C'-C-C'

& the playing around and experimenting stuff.

Somehow I seem to make a less odd tone on the lower notes than I do on the higher ones - maybe that's why I got promoted from violin to viola?

Should small pieces of cane excite you, tonight's reed was the "zz" one - a name with definate soporific overtones to it (although and soporification would be swiftly dispeled by the sound of me 'n' my sax honking and parping within a 20-mile radius of the place you'd chosen to sopor in)

[who needs the OED when you can just make words up out of thin air? ;) ]

It seems nice - although it seems like a sensitive little soul - the teeniest change of anything makes a huge difference to the sound - even found out I could pop D, E,& F up an 8ve just by faffing about with my mouth (admittedly not the intention of said faffing - but interesting all the same!).

I've been seeing what happens if I have the mouthpiece not at all enthroned in splendour atop my bottom-lip (atonal/untonal/antitonal/nontonal sqawk, like a giant purple stork&emu hybrid getting exceedingly disruntled), then moving it gradually further & further in until I see what happens when it's stupidly far in (my head looks like a sax-bell, you can change notes by pressing on my tummy, ribcage & chest and there's a mouthpiece-shaped peak in my lower-back). It's been an interesting process, and it's beginning to help my mouth (whose sense of direction is no better than the owner of the head it is inset in the face of) find where it should go a bit better, and to work out what to do to improve things. Squeaks and extraneous tootings are a little less frequent - but there are still sounds of ankylosaurus eggs being laid happening a bit!

Liz says it's improving (she's out tonight, so my practise this evening sounded great to her as she's too far away to hear it, over at the Nordoff Robbins Centre doing her evening course) - maybe she's just being a nice encouraging person though...

Gave my little pads a very light coating of the "pad dope" stuff that alleges itself to be a magic life-giving elixir for pads. Hope it is - maybe it does magic on the player too!

Definately like the new strap though - although I seem to need them to be as short as they can possibly go.
Maybe I'm a mutant.
oh well.