As an amateur musician with some undergrad schooling towards it, I've enjoyed a hobby over the last seven years in audio recording and production. A transition to other interests, notwithstanding a rather abrupt end eighteen months ago to the most involved and musically intimate ensemble I've ever been in, has left me working on this little sidecraft only occasionally. (Though not without a recent triumph or two.) It's also left me with a penchant for sifting through old bits and pieces every now and then, from ditties to demos to full mixes of classic songs I and the boys (or just I) did, while I work on the computer. Tonight I dug up a goof-off made with layered saxophones, from the doldrum days in January of 2001; playing at first against a heavily compressed drum sample of distance acquaintance Mike D., then to recordings of myself. By then I had been playing saxophone only a few times a year for four years, leaving the eight years of study in elementary, middle and high school behind as a toy in the chest — to bring out on rainy days or for the rare musical need and ride like a bike, hopefully not falling off.
Here it is. Goofy. A little sloppy. Playful? I've always liked it, never one for too much spontaneity. (It actually came with a voiceover track running an inside joke, but you'd have to ask me very nicely to get that cut, and then risk not finding it funny.) I never cared for virtuoso work, in 11th grade squeaking through on the first movement of Jacques Ibert's Concertino de Camera only when without altissimo and an entire eight beats per minute. Jazz is only something I've begun to wade into as a listener the past year or so; back in the day I was content with a single Charlie Parker transcription and otherwise regarded jazz and jazz musicians as one does Formula One racers as they whip past. Paul Hindemith's Sonata for Alto Horn I loved. Meant for the frumpy Eb horn, the sonata was much more charismatic, mysterious and colorful on the alto saxophone (as evidenced by this performance on Amazon, track number four). Paul Hindemith at his most melodic was more romantic than Romantic. Technique was less important than understanding and inflection. Earnestness got you far.
