Author: zingblog

Last weekend we had a big ol’ snowstorm, over two feet in 24 hours. Clearing out was just fine. We went out Saturday just before dark, with about a foot on the ground, and cleared the front steps and a narrow path down the driveway to the street. Sunday morning it stopped snowing. The snowblower started on the first pull and took less than two hours to clear everything out. It immediately got warm after that, up above freezing every day, with some days in the 40’s or 50’s. Even though it’s been melting fast there’s still plenty of snow on the ground.

Toward the end of the week I finally had the chance to take my Mark VII tenor to my repair guy. His name is Virgil Scott and lives in Yonkers and works out of his house. He’s fixed everyone’s horn from Michael Brecker on down, and also runs one of the few remaining swing big bands on the scene. Been playing sax for over sixty years! So you know he knows what he’s doing.

My man replaced all the pads on the upper stack, plus a couple more on some side keys. Now pretty much the whole horn has new pads. He also replaced a few random bits of felt and cork, and made some adjustments. He even knocked out a couple of minor dents. I had thought he would need to take apart the horn at the bow to do this, but since the last time I visited him, he invented a special tool that goes in thru the neck.

After I got the horn home I took it pretty much all the way apart, cleaned and polished and oiled everything, and put it back together. Along the way I put on a few more bits of felt and cork, and got rid of the last of the clacking. It’s never looked nicer, shiny but well worn like C3PO. It plays much better too, especially in the low end of the range.

One or more of the new pads in the upper stack – I think it’s the B – may not be closing fully on all combinations of notes. Virgil says this is to be expected, as there’s lot of mutually interdependent things to adjust, and that I should bring it back in a couple weeks, after I’ve played on it a few times and it’s had a chance to break in, for him to give it a final once-over. Meanwhile, I clamped those keys shut before I put the horn away so as to give them a chance to seat better. I’ll bring the horn to jazz this week and see how it goes.

I bought a new saxophone today. It’s a tenor, a Selmer Paris Reference 54. Very nice, great condition, almost like brand new, all golden and shiny, and it plays just fantastic.

My old horn is a Selmer Mark VII, and it it’s getting pretty long in the tooth. I just had a worked on a few months ago, and then first band practice of the new year a pad fell off. Oy! I was able to put it back on with tape, but the sound isn’t quite the same, and now it’s got to go into the shop again. In general the horn is fairly clackity, and it’s difficult to sound the low notes softly without using subtone. Like I said, the horn is old. Like forty-five years old. And I’ve had it and been playing it in working bands for almost twenty five years now. I think it may really need a complete rebuild.

So, the other night I was feeling kinda down about the situation, this being my main axe and all. On a whim I decided to look on craigslist to see if there were any saxes for sale. I’ve been looking off-and-on over last couple years for various things like PA equipment, a soprano sax, a bass clarinet, and even a tenor, but haven’t found a deal I wanted to take. The really good horns only go by rarely. There’s lots of crap out there, and sometimes some pretty good stuff, high-end second-rate stuff that tends to be really expensive. I figured for a tenor I’d never find a Mark VI or Mark VII that is good shape that I can afford, so maybe I’d look for a Super 80, or a Japanese model.

So I was pretty surprised when I saw this horn listed at reasonable price, and what’s more the guy selling it is right in my neighborhood. The Selmer Reference 54 is the current Paris model, based on over 100 years of saxophone making, the direct descendant of the Super 80, Mark VII, Mark VI, Balanced Action, Cigar Cutter and all those. It’s based on a Mark VI, the most legendary horn of them all, but with modernized design and manufacturing. Literally the best you can get. And beautiful engraving too. I have few other Selmers but none have the fully engraved bell like this one.

And I gotta tell you it plays like a dream. Butter and cognac and molten gold. Lots of little refinements mean the intonation is better and the tone is more consistent throughout the range, and the action is tighter, which means you don’t have to move your fingers as far and it just plays faster. Best of all the tone is rich and solid at pianissimo all the way down to the low Bb. I can play Lush Life again! The tone is clearer than my old horn, but still sufficiently dark and smoky, at least the way I play (I only played about three bars when the dude says to me “Wow, you’ve got a huge tone!”). And like I said, very shiny. Like new, just one or two tiny scratches.

Dude even threw in a second neck. I don’t know where he got it, but it’s not Selmer. But is makes the horn sound pretty different, more open and brighter. I’ll have to experiment with it.

As for my old horn, well it’s still a classic. People generally prefer the Mark VI over the Mark VII, but to me that’s a great horn. It’s got everything the Mark VI has plus a high F#. Mine has a great, tone, smoky and edgy, although that’s partly cuz it’s a but leaky, creaky, and squonky, and I’ve gotten used to its idiosyncrasies. Someone told me a long time ago that horns tend to improve their sound over time because the crystals in the metal actually reoriented themselves to align with the resonant energy patterns of the horn. I don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds like it could be.

So I guess I’ll take it to my man in Yonkers and at least have him replace a few bad pads and whatever bits of felt and cork have fallen off since the last time, and see how far that goes. Who knows, maybe that’s all it needs. I can ask about the rebuild, how expensive it is and how long it’s likely to take. If it’s not outrageous I’ll probably go for it, since the work goes straight into the value of the horn, and I have another horn now, so I don’t need it back in three days or less.

Meanwhile I’ll spend time some exploring my new horn and getting used to it. Next up, I need a new mouthpiece too. I don’t even know if they make the kind I use anymore.

Happy Holidays everyone. I’ve been having a good break with lots of parties and travel, and two trips to the movies. I had a bit of downtime too and I’m finally getting around to a few random tasks. Today I put up a web page for my Saturday jazz group, now known as the Haven Street Quintet, or Haven Street Five. It includes an official band photo and a bunch of audio.

http://zingman.com/music/havenstreetfive.php

Most of the work was actually mastering the audio. The recording was actually quite good, done old-school style with a single microphone in the middle of the room. It came out well balanced, and I didn’t need any EQ, just a bit of dynamic boost, and trimming the beginnings and end, and converting it all to mp3s. Here’s our take on Giant Steps. Enjoy!

Lots and lots of music this time of year. The LEFT HOOK played at Fisherman’s Net last Saturday nite. We even learned a bunch of Christmas songs, including a nice jazzy duet of Chestnuts by Gary and me, but we ended up not playing them. It was our third gig there, and the place is starting to feel like a home base. It was a good crowd, including a bunch of familiar faces, including a few from Bryn Mawr. Looks like we’re starting to get a following. But despite everyone having a good time and mostly being cool, seem like there’s always one crazy and/or obnoxious drunk guy (or gal) at every show, who wants to get in your face, and act like he’s with the band. Usually mostly harmless, but I guess you never know.

My UPS guy was there again too, and I ran into him twice this week taking a morning walk. Makes it fun and cozy walking around the neighborhood.

Even though it was a really good show, the gig wasn’t even the music highlight of the day. We had jazz that morning. The Saturday jazz group is a quintet, and has Gary from LEFT HOOK On guitar. We’re trying to get some gigs with that group, so Gary brought in an audio recorder. We rehearsed six or so song, among them John Coltrane’s Giant Steps. For those of you who don’t know jazz, this song is considered like Mount Everest. It’s extremely hard to play, being very fast and having wicked chord changes, being the maximal expression of Coltrane’s sheets-of-sound phase. And it’s not enough to be able to negotiate it technically, you have to have something to say.

I’ve been studying Giant Steps for years, and was psyched when the piano player called the tune a few rehearsals back. We do our own arrangement, which is a bit slower and with a piano and bowed bass intro and outro, really laying on those harmonies. That means you can’t just slalom over the changes, you have to get in there. For the past few weeks I’ve been working toward an approach to the solo that’s less an imitation of Coltrane and more hard bop, more my own. But I was still in the zone of being focused on not loosing my place. Well over the course of the week I took out my horn a couple times and woodshedded the piece, which is something that I rarely do. So when the time came on Saturday I was much more free and relaxed, and more able to find and string together and develop ideas. We did two takes, each better than the last. Everyone in the band said I nailed the solo. I can hardly wait to hear the tapes.

Lizzy’s had a couple concerts as well. One night last week was her school’s Christmas concert. The new school has a much bigger music and arts program than her old one, so the lineup included a brass choir, a dance group, the chorus (in which Lizzy sings) a string ensemble and a concert band. Heavy emphasis on classical music including alot of Germans: Mozart, Handel, Bach, Hayden and those guys. A pretty high level of musicianship overall. The concert band did Leroy Anderson’s Fesitval of Carols, which I really enjoyed since I played that in my high school band.

Then last night was a vocal performance by the advanced singers in Lizzy singing and theatre group. Again a heavy emphasis on the classical, including some operetta and some legit heavy opera. The performance was in the church with the amazing reverb. I’d never heard Lizzy do a recital piece before, but she’s gotten really good. A high, strong soprano. A-level on a grade 6 NYSMA piece. Two of her friends in the group are senior and both are starting as music majors in college next fall. They did three songs each, very excellent. One more show to go, which is the Pageant at Michelle’s school.

LEFT HOOK is now on break for the holidays. We have a list of seven or so new tunes to get together for January. I’m amazed at how much audiences like Blue Oyster Cult, so I want to get another hard rock, proggish 80’s tune on the list. Look for us to start gigging out again in the New Year!