Pete Thomas’s Blog

I write a lot about saxophone sound, but there seems to be some confusion over terminology, which got me thinking…Dark can be used to mean the same as warm, which some people think of as the opposite of bright. But when I say dark I mean the opposite of light rather than bright (but you might think the opposite of light is heavy). As far as I’m concerned the opposite of a bright sound is a warm sound, but you might well think of a warm sound as the opposite of a cold sound. But then I call a cold tone what some people call a clear tone . On the other hand some people might call that a focussed tone. But to some a focussed tone could be an edgy tone or maybe even a centred tone, (which are surely two different things) and then again to others it might be thin, the opposite of which you might say is fat, however it could be argued that this is unfocussed, which is the opposite of what some people call bright.Or you might like a big fat warm dark round sound, the opposite of which is…

This is something I’m working on lately. I think that long note practice is very important to any saxophone player who wants to develop a good tone, but it is not so valuable unless you can really listen to and concentrate on the sound. One way to do this is to “visualise” the sound as a colour, or often as more than one colour. Looking at sound this way may help you recognise that the tone can be made up of several components. Thinking from a scientific point (acoustic) of view this may be the fundamental note and the series of higher harmonics which sound to make up the basic tone.Practising overtones (aka Harmonics) can help you to hear these as this separates them out, though it can be very difficult to do with the very high ones.Visualising the tone can help understand this in a less scientific, but often more creative way. You can imagine a colour for the basic sound. There is no default colour, people can imagine different colours for the same sound. Once you can do this, try to see if the sound has a brighter edge, often “edge” or brightness is introduced as you play louder. If you can visualise this happening you will eventually be able to control the adding or removing of brightness more subtly, i.e. without changing dynamic.If you think of the tone as a long cylindrical shaped (but solid) tube, try to see if it has a defined “centre”, or if the outside wall is smooth or fuzzy, either of which could be good or bad depending on what you are aiming for.I’m keen to get some comments on this as - how it works for different people - what colours you see and  how the tone appears in general.

Probably the hardest recording session in my life was for a Michael Caine movie, Blue Ice. My brief was to compose and play a tune in the style of Charlie Parker. I assembled some great musicians for this including Bobby Orr on drums, Steve Rose on piano and Guy Barker on Trumpet. I was quite confident about the tune as I’d studied a lot of be bop in my time, but to play and sound like the great Charlie Parker was rather daunting. Of course, Bird improvised his solos on the spot, but I cheated slightly by preparing quite a lot in advance. I wasn’t expecting anything to quite equal the quality of Bird, that would be impossible for most players, let alone me, but in the end I got something that would do, although would never fool anyone who knows Charlie Parker’s music.However the piano player, my friend and trusted be bop expert Steve Rose, mentioned that my playing sounded flat. Not what you want to hear when you are a professional musician who should be able to play reasonably in tune. I checked my saxophone against a tuner and guess what - bang in tune. So I tried again (more or less the same solo, by now I’d practically memorised it). Same problem for Steve. I pushed the mouthpiece on to sharpen the instruments and tried again. Slightly better but still flat. So I pushed on even further and tried again. This one got the thumbs up from the control room so I breathed a sigh of relief and settled down for a cup of tea, but not without first checking my saxophone. It was actually about 12% sharp according to the tuner, but so what? It sounded reasonably like Bird. It just shows that being in tune does not always mean being in tune.Mind you, in the movie, Michael Caine crashes his car while listening to the track in this scene.

The previous entry about practising what you preach got me thinking. I decided that in this case I would let myself off, I eventually did get back to finishing the warm-up exercise plus I got a tune composed. (But did I write it down, is it in my subconscious or have I totally forgotten it? More on that later)The question got begged though - how do you make sure you can always (or as far as possible) keep your practising ordered and not jump from one thing to another so nothing really gets achieved?The important thing is to set various goals - aim for something you can achieve and always keep this in mind. It may just mean learning one scale, or it could be learning a certain pattern in all keys, or it could be working something up to a specific tempo.You can have various smaller goals, but also one big one, e.g. by the end of this week I will learn a harmonic minor scale in the keys of Am, Dm, Gm, Cm and Fm, but by the end of the year I will play all major and minor scales in all keys.You will find it’s incredibly useful to be able to measure your steps forward, using a metronome is invaluable. Once you have learnt a scale for instance, that’s not the end of it. You need to play it

• In time with the metronome
• Gradually be able to play at faster tempos (always staying in time)
• Playing it with different articulations (tongued, legato, staccato etc - and always staying in time)

Important:The goal must be just right. Too easy and you achieve nothing, too hard and you will get frustrated, lose concentration and possibly get depressed about the whole idea of learning the saxophone. If you are not able to work out these goals (and at first it can be difficult to evaluate possible improvement), then this is something you must do with the aid of a good teacher - who (ideally) would already be doing something like this.

When you find yourself in the position of being an educator, you often feel the spotlight is on you to follow your own advice, it seems hypocritical not to. This morning I started off with some soprano practice as I aim to do another shootout article on soprano mouthpieces, I have quite a selection sitting on my shelf just itching to be tested, but I thought I should work at building up my soprano chops first.I generally start any practice with the exercise I recommend on the lessons page. This exercise is great as it covers all arpeggios in all keys and covers the whole range of the instrument. It’s also great for getting the sound and relationship of the arpeggios as chords into your brain.So far so good - I start off and I’m concentrating on what I play, but when I get to F#, I notice a short sequence of notes which didn’t work too well - there was a bit of a squeak and I felt intonation wasn’t spot on (well let’s be honest, intonation for me often isn’t spot on, but this seemed a bit “spot off” to coin a phrase).Of course I always recommend “focussed” practice, ie keep your mind on what you are doing. Ideally I would have made a quick mental note to work on this problem later and continue with the warm up exercise. But no, I repeated that phrase a few times and suddenly a little tune popped into my head that was inspired by those three notes so off I go playing around with a tune and bang goes the focussed practice regimen.I could argue that I benefitted because I wrote a tune that I might not have done otherwise, on the other hand how can I advise people that they should focus 100% on the task at hand. Answers on a postcard please.

Since the trek I have continued with fundraising, most of it for APEC and Leukaemia Busters. Currently I am not raising for APEC as administration changes there mean that the very helpful people there I was dealing with are no longer there. The forum is not continuing so I have decided to channel everything into Leukaemia Busters at the moment.  Currently I am donating all the money from CD sales, Advertising revenue, saxophone exercise downloads, audio sample downloads and all the profit from the saxophone instruction DVDs (I have to buy those from the producer). 

Yes, that’s how we spell it here in the UK. The noun is “practice”, the verb is “practise”.You’d think somebody who has a very large part of their website devoted to learning the saxophone would practise daily and efficiently, a case of “practising what you preach”. How far from the truth, but I think I can be forgiven. Apart from the fact that my “day job” of composing music for TV etc. can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, I think many players get to a certain level, not necessarily of competence, but at least of familiarity with the instrument that daily practice, though always beneficial, is not quite as necessary as it is for beginners. I find that I can leave the insrument to gather dust for weeks, then come back to it slightly rusty, but usually get my lip back in after only a couple of hours, whereas when I started playing (forty years ago!), such a layoff would have been disastrous.Still, every now and again I get the time and a desire to practise routinely, and as I don’t have composing work for at least 3 weeks, I intend to settle into some serious saxophone work, so I’m hoping to keep a bit of a practice diary here for a while.