saxophonist
It’s amazing how the coronavirus pandemic has shaken the world, and rocked the lives of so many people the world over. I’ve thought a lot about how the necessary measures of social distancing have isolated us and in many cases curtailed, postponed, or at the very least altered the pursuit of our goals and dreams. This is the inspiration for this song.
This composition is part of my years-long project of learning to write music for solo (unaccompanied) saxophone.
I’ve wanted to learn this whole solo for quite some time. I’m a huge a fan of Tigran Hamasyan, on whose album this song appears, and Ben Wendel takes such an amazing solo on it!
I tell my Jazz Improvisation students about the importance of transcription in learning jazz all the time! Though it occurred to me that while I’ve done a ton of solo transcriptions where I write it down as I go, I’ve done very little where I work only aurally, memorizing as I go. I believe that the process of solo transcription for education is certainly valuable doing it either way, but the second method allows you to internalize the material more fully.
I also think that transcription alone is only worth so much–it’s what we do with it afterwards that is at least as important. I’ll be experimenting with different applications and analytical techniques in the next couple weeks, but so far I’ve applied a lot of these lines to Bb rhythm changes with great success.
Christopher Herald 