Thursday, February 17, 2005

doing exercises

was rather a tired, foggy-headed bunny today - so didn't make it into LAT today - possibly after-effect of long day yesterday.
That meant that, as both my saxes are there, I haven't played either of them today :(
I did, however, use the time to write out 2 little exercises for yself on Sibelius.
  1. Tonguing - took the riff from The Simpsons title sequence and wrote it out in every key - starting with B major (written), then going up by semitones until I hit B major again. I wrote in articulation above each note - either an accent, a semi-staccato (as in . & - over the same note), or a fully blown staccato. The purpose? To look at tonguing, to get used to awkward keys & scary key signatures (transposing instruments often end up lumbered with F# major or some equally stupid constellation at the beginning of their staves!). It also cover the whole range (as in tessatura) that I've done so far - the first incarnation goes down to the B-flat below middle C, the last up to the C# just over 2 octaves above middle C (written). I printed it in 2 versions - tenor & alto, although both parts are written the same, I've printed off a concert-pitch version alongside each of them (well, an 8ve-up concert pitch version in the tenor's case) of the part so I get used to seeing the transposition from the transposing-instrument-reading-concert-pitch side rather than the concert-pitch-instrument-reading-transposed-part side. It also appear that if I should ever take a saxophone into a school, I will have to be able to play the theme tune from The Simpsons!
  2. C (!) - a simple little thing, theme & variations on the old Teletubbies theme tune, in (written) F major - which means it uses C quite often - approaching from different notes.
not a total waste of a day then, hopefully.