Jam sessions- the mad scientist at the threshold

I just got back from a bad jam session. I didn't have any gigs this weekend so I wanted to play a little. It was at one of those clubs that is so smoky that you have to leave your clothes on the porch when you get home and run straight to the shower. For some reason I thought that it was going to be good. As I unpacked my horn a saw that there was a conga player sitting in on just about every tune, no matter what style. He had but a single evil conga drum and he knew how to instantly destroy any groove with it. Even without Dr.Chaos on the conga, the band wasn't locking up. I wondered why I torture myself over and over again. Why do I think that it is easier to go out to a shitty session than to call guys over to my house to play? Laziness of course. An evening of Aebersold would have been more productive. I feel so empty after a playing experience like that. I rationalize to myself that jam sessions are a good place to experiment with new concepts. I did plenty of experimenting there tonight. I was working on my chromatic concept all evening. Because in my mind the music was already sucking I went ahead with some major research.

Here were the parameters of my experiment:

• Don't try to gravitate to any note just because it is consonant
• Don't think about what the changes actually are, ignore them as much as possible
• Dissonance needs no resolution unless it happens totally by chance
• The longer dissonance can be maintained the better
• Odd groupings of notes should be used to destroy a sense of bar lines
• Strange shapes should be the rule
• Try to hear the next note, it can be anything

Hey, Call Steve Colman I just discovered M-Base!

If you don't make a point to practice giving up rational control and turning it over to your ears then it will never happen on it's own. Don't wait for a modern modal tune to practice navigating in the ozone, do it on a Blues or Stella. It takes a conscious decision let the reigns go. It is a different mode of thinking altogether and a very definite shift needs to happen when the rational mind takes a holiday and the reactive ears dictate. Of course you can't give a shit what other people are thinking of your playing if you want to do this. Usually we only go out to the outer realms when we go all the way 'outside'. It's rare for a player to be able to drift back and forth between these two modes, from the dream state to waking consciousness and back.

Think about that time when you are on the sofa fighting off a full nap while watching TV. First the words coming from the TV are making sense, then all of a sudden the words do not have a strict meaning, they are only tones carrying emotion. These tones may also connect with images or the may bring images into being. Even the images that start to form in your mind do not have a particular meaning. They may have emotional content but they are not related to anything solid. Then all of a sudden you wake up a little and the words lose their abstract quality. Now they are talking about beauty pageants for young girls or how to fry a turkey. The words were so much more artistic and beautiful when they were drawing images out of the unseen and across the threshold of your consciousness.

Music can drift across this threshold of abstraction too. First every note is related in some way to the the chords, then each note may or may not have direct relation to the harmony. It is a shift into an abstract realm that is like the moment when you drift off to sleep. You can of course wake yourself up at anytime and enter back into to chord/scale universe, but isn't it nice just to drift off a little.

If I was going to totally take it totally outside I'd just go to bed and take a full siesta and dream about Albert Ayler or Archie Schepp. Instead, I'll just recline here on the couch with the TV on and pretend that I'm awake, sliding effortlessly between Bebop and clouds that look like farm animals.

My latest mouthpiece strategies-original and small

Lately I've been trying to find backup pieces for my alto and tenor. I know that I need old hard rubber Otto Links or I just will not be satisfied. My first thought was to find an early Babbit HR for alto, rather than pay the big bucks for a slant Link like my main piece. If you haven't noticed early Babbit hard rubber pieces are going for as much as $700 lately, insane. I found a mint condition original 6 early Babbit on eBay and pounced on it, getting it at a great price. It turned out to be too bright for me, though a good candidate for a refacing. Brian Powell has all my measurements for my Slant Link and can put the same facing on any alto piece that is close to the same shape. I getting ready to send that one off to him.

Around the same time I found a rubber Slant Link tenor piece for $450, which seemed like a good deal. It was an original 5* and I had it sent directly to Brian. I also bought an old rubber Dukoff alto piece that looked really close to a Zimberoff. This one also had great old hard rubber. For those on you who may not know the rubber formula that was used for mouthpieces
up to the slant Link period is much different than the rubber that was used after that and up to the present. The manufacturing process to make the old rubber was too toxic and dangerous and it was made illegal sometime in the sixties. There is no comparison between the old and newer rubber, the old rubber sounds much warmer and darker, with much more complexity. Some mouthpiece makers today use a compound with a higher rubber content than other manufacturers, like Zinner and Vandoren. But even the best hard rubber today is nothing like the old stuff. I say- why not just more the Otto Link factory to China or Mexico where environmental laws are more lax? A small sacrifice of Mother Earth for better saxophone tone is a small price to pay. Better a sacrifice for saxophones than for SUVs, right? Are you with me?!?!?!?

Anyways, I got both the slant Link and the Dukoff back from Brian and they didn't play great. You can't expect anyone to read your mind when refacing a piece and it may take a few tries to get it just the way you like it. I decided to put a longer lay on the Dukoff and to take some baffle out of the Slant Link. At this point I have almost a thousand dollars tied up in vintage rubber mouthpieces and none of them really work well. The potential is there though. I will give updates as this saga progresses.

The theory that I was operating under this time was that it is better and more affordable to buy vintage pieces that had original facings that were too small rather than pieces that had been worked on by master refacer Joe Schmo. Who knows what Mr.Schmo did to the piece?! Who really knows for sure if Mr.Schmo knows what he's doing. I know one thing for certain, some of the guys who are working on pieces and are even well known have no idea what they're doing. Do they even have a good concept of what a saxophone should sound like? Can they get a good tone themselves? It's too much of a crap-shoot to buy refaced mouthpieces.

It's not really a slant Link anymore if Theo Wane carved it up like a pumpkin, is it now?

Art without a frame- Joshua Bell busks the subway

How much of an audiences reaction to a live performance is influenced by preconceived expectation? If everyone tells them the music they are about to hear is going to be incredible, how much more likely will a person be to think that it is good? Would people gather round if Trane was blowing a 30 minute unaccompanied rendition of Countdown in the subway?

I've had the experience recently of hearing a band that had been hyped up like crazy. The audience didn't seem to be the usual Jazz crowd. The seemed to be Yuppies who had been drawn in by the media hype. The music wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't anything amazing. Yet the crowd was hanging on every note. I felt like the audience had been fed the story that this band was the greatest thing ever and they bought it, lacking the discrimination to judge the level of the music or the musicians. It made me wonder if a musician could ever get ahead without a good PR agent working for them.

The Washington Post ran an article about a very interesting sociological experiment involving one of the world's greatest violinist pretending to be a busker in the subway at morning rush hour. Joshua Bell played his 3.5 million dollar Strad violin for exactly one hour and only one person stopped to really listen, and this person recognized who he was because she had just seen him at the Kennedy Center.

Of course Joshua Bell was not prepared for what happened.

"It was a strange feeling, that people were actually, ah . . ."

The word doesn't come easily.

". . . ignoring me."

Welcome to the life of a JAZZ musician Joshua.

Pearls Before Breakfast-Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.

Thank you Damien Masterson for this article.

Transmission of Ellingtonia- Bill Berry

Below is the obituary of Bill Berry, one of the most influential mentors in my musical career. Bill was probably the person who 'set my course' as a Jazz musician. I always knew that I wanted to play music, but Bill became a role model for what a real Jazz musician lives like. He took me under his wing just as Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves did for him decades before. It sounds funny, but Bill showed me what it was to be cool, in an old school gracious gentlemanly sort of way.

Since Bill was the librarian for Duke he had copies of the entire Ellington library. Bill taught me how to play it correctly, how to swing! I was getting undiluted Ellington straight from Bill! He was too cool to even flinch when he would get introduced as 'Beer Belly' in Japan. I really miss that little guy with those ever present reflective sunglasses and red face.

Bill's style was his own and as his obituary says he had so many influences and took so little from each influence that he always sounded fresh and original. In his playing you could hear Bix, Clark Terry, Miles, Roy Eldridge, Pops, Cootie, Herb Pomeroy and more. For me the most important element of Bill's style was how hard he swung.

His L.A. Big Band recorded to little to really get the recognition it deserved but it was probably the best big band ever assembled on the West Coast. The all-star roster included- Cat Anderson, Gene Goe, Blue Mitchell, Jack Sheldon, Britt Woodman, Jimmy Cleveland, Benny Powell, Tricky Lofton, Marchal Royal, Lanny Morgan, Richie Kamuca, Don Menza, Jack Nimitz, Monty Budwig, Dave Frishberg and Frankie Capp.

Here's link to the Band's MP3.com page of the album Hello Rev.
An interview with Bill
Bill's Shortcake album on Artist Direct

Obituary: Bill Berry
Independent, The (London), Nov 15, 2002 by Steve Voce


BENNY GOODMAN and Artie Shaw wrestled with the insuperable problems of employing black musicians in a white band when, at the end of the Thirties, they hired Billie Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson. Duke Ellington was later to be the first to take on the similarly fraught reverse problem by bringing first Louie Bellson and then Bill Berry into his otherwise black band. So it was no surprise when the cosmopolitan Berry employed ex-Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton soloists when he came to form his own big bands.

There is a powerful posse of great cornet players stretching back to Bix Beiderbecke in the Twenties. The others included Bobby Hackett, Ray Nance and Ruby Braff. "Stretching" is the right word, for they were all men of small physical stature, who took advantage of the cornet's shorter length when compared with the trumpet.

Berry's rugged touring career with some of the most demanding of the big bands gave him an accomplished technique on the instrument. Coupled to his imaginative improvisations this made him well- regarded amongst brass players and he ranked highly in the styles of both Swing and Bebop. While Braff, Nance and Hackett, like Berry, played Mainstream, Berry was one of the few to use the instrument also as a Bebop player.

He claimed to have drawn his style from elements in those of all the leading trumpet players from Bunny Berigan to Miles Davis. It was perhaps because he took so little from each that his own playing sounded so fresh and original

Berry's father was a bass player in a touring dance band and Bill was born in Benton Harbour simply because that was where the band was working that week. It was the beginning of a life spent largely on the road. Given his first trumpet when he was 15 and the family was based in Cincinnati, he was soon good enough to join in 1947 the "territory" band led by Don Strickland which toured continuously throughout the mid-West. "All the bands had sleeper buses," he said,

because they didn't pay enough to afford hotels. We used to check in once a week on Mondays, just to take a bath.

When the Korean War began in 1950 Berry volunteered for the US Army so that he could enlist in a service band. After his discharge four years later he enrolled at a Cincinnati music college, but soon transferred to Berklee College in Boston, where he studied under Herb Pomeroy, a trumpet player who also led the college big band. Berry was a voracious student and in 1957 progressed to his first "name" band, that of Woody Herman. More endless touring followed, with Berry's favourite trombonist Bill Harris with him in the brass section for much of the time.

Berry's ambition was to break into the New York scene and eventually he joined Maynard Ferguson's Band in 1960 because Ferguson spent six months of each year playing there. This gave him the opportunity to play with other bands in the city and his reputation grew.

On a Saturday afternoon in 1961 he went to see the Duke Ellington band at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. After the show Berry was taken to Ellington's dressing room and introduced to him: "There were about a hundred people there, but I was gassed to be in the same room as Ellington." As he left, Berry was grabbed by the arm by someone who turned out to be Ellington's manager. He asked if Berry would leave on tour with the band. "Yeah," said Berry, "I'll leave town with you. How much money?" The question was never answered but Berry joined anyway:

My time with Ellington changed my life in every respect, not only musically but socially, philosophically, everything. One of the reasons was that while the guys in Woody's and Maynard's bands were about the same age as me, these guys were 20 years older. They were 20 years older and 20 years hipper. Johnny Hodges, Paul Gonsalves, everybody took me under their wings and showed me how to live. It was marvellous.

Berry became the "modern" trumpet soloist with the band and can be seen to good effect in the film Duke Ellington and His Orchestra (1962). He played on innumerable Ellington recordings during the period.

Finally leaving Ellington in 1964 Berry returned to New York and work in the studios. He played in the band for The Merv Griffin Show on television and ghosted the trumpet playing for Frank Sinatra in the 1966 film A Man Called Adam. Studio work left him free time during the evening and he became a founder member of the highly regarded Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, working with it from 1966 to 1968. Two years later Berry drew on his own vast experience to form the New York Big Band, which included colleagues from his Ellington and Herman days and some of the cream of New York's finest jazz musicians. But his leadership was short-lived because, when The Merv Griffin Show moved from New York to Los Angeles that year, Berry and many of the musicians went with it.

It was little trouble to reform as Bill Berry and the LA Big Band. Virtually every member of the band was a star jazz soloist, and Berry's natural gravitation towards Ellington music was immeasurably helped by the presence of his fellow Ellingtonians Cat Anderson, Buster Cooper and Britt Woodman. The finest musicians on the West Coast queued to join the band. Berry now began to tour abroad and, with the help of his wife Betty, began to organize workshops for young musicians and eventually in 1991 the International Jazz Party, an annual Los Angeles festival featuring musicians from across the world. He toured Britain as a member of the Louie Bellson Big Band in 1980 and made several visits, a notable success being a front-line partnership with the Scots tenor player Jimmy Thomson.

William Richard Berry, cornettist, bandleader and music educator: born Benton Harbour, Michigan 14 September 1930; married (one son); died Los Angeles 13 November 2002.

____________________________________________
Not mentioned in the above obituary is that Bill is also survived by his daughter Lisa McLaughlin and her son.

Vintage Otto Link Mundstücke Gallery

Mike Duchstein's Saxophon-Service in Berlin has a great looking web site, one of the best. On his site these is a very nice vintage Otto Link mundstücke (mouthpiece) gallery. There are several pics of each piece, from different angles. Here is more saxophone porn for all you gear heads out there: Saxophon-Service Vintage Otto Link Mundstücke Gallery

What my students are working on.......

Some of the things I've been having my more advanced students do lately are:

• Keeping a detailed tune list of all the tunes they know, all the tunes the sort of know and all of the tunes they need to learn. This master list should be in a digital format so it can be constantly updated and organized. This master list will become the index for the student's personal gig book. Students should have enough copies of this book to give a rhythm section at a gig, rehearsal or jam session. If you don't want to bring your whole book to a gig/jam then you can at least bring this master list to show the other players. This ensures that you will be able to find acceptable and interesting tunes with any combination of players. No more,"Duh, what do YOU want to play?" I would stay away from plastic sheet protectors because they're usually more trouble than they're worth, plus they're expensive.

• Put together a three ring binder of solo transcriptions. These could be your own, things you've downloaded off the Internet and printed or solos that you've copied out of books. Just use the blog search engine in the upper left hand corner of this page and search for 'transcriptions', you'll find hundreds. Don't practice the same few players all the time. Go for a wide range of cats, especially look at transcriptions of musicians on instruments other than your own. You'd be surprised how many solo transcription books your public library may have. Pack your binder with solos! Keep adding to your collection! Play through them all!

• Take a lead sheet for a tune and for each chord change write several pentatonic scales that would work over that chord. A great book to help you figure these out is Pentatonic Scales For Jazz Improvisation by Raymon Ricker. Also take a look at my post called Pentatonic Lines- Navigating outside harmony. Try soloing over the tunes using only these pentatonic scales. Don't forget to do plenty of chromatic side-slipping.

• Practice playing some slow ballads and really concentrate on the ends of all the notes. Try to get the vibrato to speed up slightly as you cut off each note. Shape the cut offs, be conscious of the exact shape that you're trying to create on the ends on notes.
  

• I have just gotten my students back into an old stand by called the Universal Method for Saxophone by Paul Deville. It was written almost a century ago and it still kicks ass. If you want to fix any problem you are having with technique then the Universal Method has what you need. The exercises on difficult fingerings and exercises on mechanism can make drastic improvements in a student technique in a short amount of time because they isolate every single problematic fingering combination on the horn. The etudes will whip any sloppy tongue into shape by hammering it with different articulations.
  

• Sing, sing, sing! If you can't sing it then you won't be able to play it in tune. Try singing phrase first, listening for perfect intonation, then play the same phrases. Once you know what a note sounds like intimately, meaning you recognize that note like the face of a friend in a crowd, then your oral tract will be able to position itself automatically as soon as you imagine that note in your mind's ear. You don't need to be born with perfect pitch to recognizes pitches in this way! You can introduce yourself to just a few notes at first and become very close friends with them. When you know everything about them (how they feel when you sing them, how they feel when you play them, how the different octaves sound and feel) then they can introduce you to the other notes. This is a learned form of perfect pitch that starts with one or a few notes, I call it relatively perfect pitch.

Tim Hagans on the artist's role in society

I've always loved the way Tim Hagans played. His highly developed chromatic concept gives him a sound that is very modern, yet still highly melodic. Swedish saxophonist Thomas Trulsson wrote me today and mentioned that he recently attended a Tim Hagans clinic. Tim's chromatic concept seemed to be very similar to Rich Perry's concept. Here's what Thomas had to say about Tim's workshop:

"Two weeks ago I attended a clinic with Tim Hagans were he talked about his concept in improv. For him there is only one chord scale, the chromatic scale. Through the years he practised only playing a note and then listen in his head what note he would like to play next. Which for him was a way to get into his quirks, or style of playing. He also talked about practising playing and listening to what every note sounds and feels like for every chord. Very interesting indeed. He is a wonderful improviser."


The following was taken from Tim Hagan's own website.
He has some great music streaming on his page also.

• Tim Hagans::THE ARTIST'S ROLE IN SOCIETY

Every successful dictator/control freak/power monger knows that the masses can be controlled if the catalysts of freethinking are removed. That is why in any repressive movement it is the artists, regardless of their race, ethnicity or religious affiliation, that are neutralized first…either by physical or mental imprisonment. Without the artistic community and their works, urging society to remain open minded and examine all issues from all points of view, the controlling powers can easily sell their ideas with little resistance.

Artists are scary. They celebrate individualism. They portray the nuances and emotions of life in abstract terms. Music is the most abstract art form and improvised music creates the intangible in the moment. An artist’s mission is not to entertain although entertainment can be a desired by-product. Their mission is to give the receiver of the artistic statement emotions and impressions to reflect upon. Whether the receiver likes or dislikes the statement is secondary.

This is an enormous point of confusion. Often an artistic statement’s worth is judged by its marketing ability and selling power. Unfortunately, the lower the quality, the higher the sales. (for a great dissertation on the subject of quality please read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). Although there are some incredible artists in the pop music (the Beatles, James Taylor, Steely Dan, Moby, the Police), they are in the minority. And, in the era of formula bands, the same franchise business groupings every five miles and the lowest quality food being offered, society is loosing its taste and appreciation for diversity and quality.

A major reason for this is the stressful everyday with little time available for contemplation and reflection. Listening to Coltrane at the Village Vanguard or a Bruckner Symphony is rewarding and enriching in the long term, but it’s easier and more comforting to play something familiar that one can sing along with. And again, there is nothing wrong with entertainment statements, but the balance is way out of proportion.

The artist’s role in society is to remedy that balance by making statements that demand attention. Statements that inspire the receiver to examine a subject from all angles, that encourage confidence in one’s own interpretation and that encourage flexibility and allow change in those interpretations. Otherwise, a society will base its group decisions on 10 second sound-bites, half-truths and fear-based initiatives. The loudest voice will be assumed truthful and, most tragic of all, beauty, the underlying common denominator in all art, will go unappreciated.

At a workshop in Reno, Nevada a few years back, a gentleman asked me what the point of Re:Animation Live was…..a Blue Note recording that I can best describe as free electronica. He said he had listened to the recording several times and still could not figure out what was going on. He said that he didn’t even know if he liked it and had to come to the workshop to ask me for an explanation. I replied that he had given me (and Bob Belden) the greatest compliment. Better than great reviews, this is the desired reaction….a musical statement that requires repeated listenings. In fact, I replied that I had no idea what the recording was about either. It was a musical description of how six musicians interpreted their collective life experiences leading to and including that exact moment. Improvised abstract emotional statements that influence the thought process. No wonder artists are so feared.

For students sitting in practice rooms wondering what the point is, for music teachers discouraged that their message may not be valued, for performers who are tired of the hustle and the travel…please remember…..any thing as feared and uncontrollable as art must be an incredibly important force and a vital ingredient for a healthy society and cool place to live.

George Garzone and Kenny Brooks with Ratdog

Garzone sitting in with KB and playing the music of Jerry Garcia?!?!

Jerry must be proud, first his own ice cream flavor and now George Garzone is playing his music. Thanks Pat Tucker.

KB & Garzone w/ Rat Dog video on YouTube

More Garzone Videos of YouTube!!!

Jazz Dispute

Thank you to Jakub Dolezal for this link to a great YouTube video. I've heard people talk about this for a while. It's sure to become a classic. You have to see it, I won't even attempt to explain it.

Jazz Dispute

Dexter Gordon & Woody Shaw on the web

You can never get too much Dexter and Woody as far as I'm concerned. The official Dexter Gordon website and the official Woody Shaw website were recently launched by ShawNetDesign. You'll find a FREE Lead Sheet of an original Dexter Gordon composition when you sign up on the mailing list, an iTunes Exclusive Album INVITATION: Dexter Gordon and Woody Shaw - Live and Unreleased!, links to official MySpace pages, audio interviews, newsletters, transcriptions, composition catalogues, streaming audio and video, photo galleries.

Coming Soon: More Live, Unreleased Recordings,Audio and Video Streams, Podcasts and RSS Feeds, Round Midnight page - Dedicated to Dexter Gordon's Oscar-Nominated performance.

www.woodyshaw.com
www.dextergordon.com

Mouthpiece Room

I've got to say that I'm not the only mouthpiece nuts on the internet. I must admit that I did recently overextended my finances with some eBay buys (an early Babbit HR alto piece, a slant Link tenor piece and an old HR alto Dukoff). There are guys far worse than me, and I can prove it! A friend of mine recently hipped me to a site by a Japanese saxophonist who takes the cake.
On his site Eji has sound clips of himself playing about every mouthpiece ever made. He isn't the greatest player, so it's kind of hard to get a clear idea about the sound of a particular mouthpiece. He also clearly favors metal over hard rubber. None of the mouthpieces are for sale either!

How can one person have so many pieces?
Is he an eccentric billionaire?
Does he work at a huge music store?
How many does he keep at one time?

I don't read Japanese and his site may answers these questions, but I'll never know the whole story.
Saxophone Mouthpiece Room

Steve Neff, who I went to school with, also has a site that has clips of him playing different pieces. Steve is a much better player than Eji so it easier to tell what the mouthpieces are actually like. He also has a very interesting selection of pieces, a bit more to my liking. He even has a clip of an alto piece that I sold him (I still miss that piece).

Steve Neff's clips
Steve Neff's clip archives

Autumn Nocturne session

Sorry about not following up on questions and comments. I've been engrossed with a new CD project that I just recorded last week. A few weeks ago I heard that Alan Jones,one of my favorite drummers, was coming back from Bavaria for some gigs in Portland. Even though my last CD project 'Oasis' hadn't even pressed yet, I didn't want to miss the opportunity to record with Alan because there is no one else in the area at his level. We recorded with pianist Randy Porter and a 17 year old tyro named Jeff Picker on bass.
Before the session I went through about a hundred boxes of reeds to find something playable. Luckily the Rigotti Golds came through and I found a couple of decent reeds. I don't know about you, but I've never been much of a morning person and the session started at 10a.m. When you start to record in the morning you don't even have time to warm up before you start tracking. It took two hours to get set up so we only had four hours to record and entire CD. It usually takes me at least a couple hours of playing to warm up, so by the last hour hour I was actually warm and feeling loose. We got through nine tunes, not too shabby. With 54 minutes of music it was about enough for a CD. I even considered the possibility of recording a duo tune with Randy at a later time to add a couple more minutes. This session was also the first time I would ever bring my tenor into the studio on one of my own projects.

I have already mixed about four tunes my Sean Flora, the engineer who recorded and mixed my last project. Like a flash the new tracks are already on my MySpace page for the world to hear. Take a listen and let my know what you think.

Hans Groiner: The Music of Thelonius Monk

Here is an incredibly funny YouTube clip of Larry Goldings in a blond wig playing Austrian pianist Hans Groiner. Hans has made the music of Monk more accessible by making every tune totally diatonic. He has done what "Monk meant to do". We're anxiously awaiting episode 2 Hans.

Harder reeds?

This was a question in response to the last post on reeds. It deserved it's own post.

Q:
"Hey David - This brings up the question regarding how one moves from one reed strength to the next. I usually play 2 or 2.5 and am always astounded that people playing my same size mouthpiece are sometimes playing 3, 3.5 or even 4. I've read that the harder the reed, generally the better the sound and the longer the reed life. But if forcing yourself to play on a harder reed is not recommended, what is the process that a player goes through that allows them to one day play on a harder reeder? I've tried working out on harder reeds, and you're right, it really does not make practicing fun. And you're not the first person that I've heard of that suggests it's not like lifting weights - that forcing the issue with brute force is not necessarily the way to go. Can you offer any more insight on this process? Thanks, Roman."

A: Roman,
Great question. I usually forget that a reed that feels perfect for me is probably a little too hard for my students. I'm generally against starting students out on really soft reeds. I don't think that it is very helpful because it trains you to play with a much different embouchure than a professional would use. There is some amount of muscle and air-stream control that needs to be developed over time, but it's not like you need to become iron-lips in order to have a good sound. I was talking to Ralph Morgan, the master mouthpiece maker and former head engineer during Selmer's Mark VI production, and he was saying how he thought that no one should ever play anything harder than a 2 1/2 or 3 reed on a 5 tip opening mouthpiece.
He didn't think there was any way to have enough control pieces like 8s and 9s with hard reeds. In fact he was thought that there was no way I could possibly have control over my Slant 6 Otto Link and my 3 1/2 reeds. Of course I disagree with his assessment of my set-up, and I even think I could move to a 6*. He does have a point in general though. So many of the Jazz greats used softer reeds and smaller tip openings then many players today and they sounded amazing. Cannonball played on a 5 tip opening with a 2 1/2 or 3 reed, so did Phil Woods and many other great players.

You must remember that the strength of the reed varies from brand to brand and always must be considered in relation to the mouthpiece. A smaller tip opening, shorter lay, smaller chamber or larger baffle will make a harder reed easier to play. Also an stuffy immature 3 reed may feel harder than a 4 reed from really good cane. Dead and stuffy can't always be fixed be sanding or shaving. If the reed looks green after you soak it then it most likely will play like a much harder reed.

Personally I don't recommend extreme set-ups, like a 9 or 10 tip opening, which is what George Garzone sounds so great playing. He runs 10 miles every day to keep up that king of air-stream. I think student should start out on a strength or reed that is close to what a seasoned professional would play, unless of course the student is a little kid. I wouldn't suggest that anyone play anything more open than around a 7 tip opening, and that's even kind of extreme for alto. I was playing on an Early Babbit 7 alto piece for a while last year and it felt like I could put about twice as much air through it. My sound was MASSIVE! I ended up selling it after a few months because it was just a little to hard to control. I could have gone down to a softer reed, but I didn't want the extra buzz that would have added to my sound.

If I were your teacher Roman, I would probably move you up to a hard reed (3 or 3 1/2) and if you really couldn't cope I would have you get a mouthpiece with a smaller tip opening. I also like the warm dark sound of a large chamber piece, and dislike the overly buzzy sound of a high baffle. I recommend a 5-6* tip opening on alto and a 6-7* tip opening on tenor, with
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 strength reeds. This will get you a sound closer to Zoot Sims than Lenny Picket, and closer to Cannonball than Sanborn. If the reed is not hard enough then you won't have enough resistance to control it as as well, unless of course it a 4 reed. There needs be be enough resistance from the reed in order to be able to make subtle timbre changes.

If you are still having real problems playing harder reeds, even though you have a reasonable mouthpiece, then you need to get into the woodshed and spend some time doing overtone exercises. Overtone exercises are the fastest way to develop air-stream, embouchure, and upper oral tract control. There is no quicker way to a gain control of of your set-up. Here are the exercises that Joe Viola gave me to practice overtones-
OVERTONE EXERCISES from the Bb fundamental. Continue them from Bb up to low C#.

More reed problems

Q: "I play on Vandoren Java's. My M.O. is to go through a box of reeds and find the good one's; maybe practice/play on a good reed for a short while after it manifests; then mark an "x" on it's plastic holder and put it back in a box with the other 'good ones' as arsenal for my upcoming gigs. The "bad" (more stiff, difficult, cumbersome) reeds I save to practice on - sort of like baseball player swinging 2 bats in the warm-up area before going up to the plate. This of course makes my practicing less enjoyable. My question is: is this a bad philosophy? Reeds aren't cheap. I'm mainly doing this to make sure I have good reeds to play gigs on without buying boxes and boxes of reeds each week with money I don't have. But I'm also wondering if it makes sense, if it is constructive, to practice on more difficult reeds."
Thanks
- Adam

A: First of all, sorry I haven't written much lately. I've had the flu, it kicked my butt.

Ah, the constant reed struggle, the bane of all reed players. Now that you have a baby, I'm sure that reeds are even less a priority than before.

Your tactic is to practice on the shitty reeds and save the good ones for gigs. Bummer, who wants to really practice on a bad reed? It seems like if you always practice on bad reeds, then your chops will be unprepared to play on a good reed. I could be way off here. Personally, I can't even practice on a really bad reed. It's no fun.

I don't think that it is helpful to 'work your chops out' by using a reed that is too hard. If you do this regularly you may get used to putting too much bottom pressure on the reed. Contrary to some opinions, the saxophone embouchure should be very relaxed and almost loose. How can you practice relaxing properly on a stiff reed? My answer to your question then is to adjust your reeds to where they are no longer too stiff. These reeds may still not be concert worthy, but they won't force your chops into any unnecessary contortions.

When I first play reeds I categorize them with two factors in mind, hard or soft and good or bad cane. If a reed is too hard or too soft but the cane feels and sounds good to me, then it has the possibility of being playable. If the cane is immature and feels dead or chirpy then no amount of adjusting will make it good. I'll first pull the playable reeds out of the box and put them in a reed holder. Then I'll ditch the really bad ones back in the box, which goes to the bone yard in case a day of pure desperation arrives. Then I'll separate the reeds that have potential, except for the strength. If I were you Adam, I would be practicing on these reeds. Once your reed adjusting skills are honed, these reeds will even make it to gigs. The next time I practice I will soak these questionable reeds again and see if they're any better the second go 'round. Remember the thing that breaks down hard reeds the most is going from wet to dry. Each time you dry out a wet reed you really break down the Xylem and Floem (the fibers in the reed that carry water up and down the plant).

Break out your reed tools! You should never really need to play on a reed that is too stiff or too soft. A reed clipper, fine water proof sandpaper, a reed knife, reed rush and a piece of glass is everything that you will need to work on reeds. I also recommend Vandoren's reed resurfacing glass also. This is simply a piece of glass with sandpaper on both sides. They also have a model with rough glass instead of sandpaper.There is a strip of glass at the top that has no sandpaper on it. This is so that when you resurface your reed your can leave the tip as it is. The re-surfacer is a great way to make the entire reed softer and also to flatten out any warping on the bottom of the reed. Many times it is a safer bet it take a little off the bottom of the reed than to sand down or shave the top of the reed. Make sure you also have a reed clipper that fits the tip of your mouthpiece, or at least the reeds you like to play. For example if you always play Javas then buy a Vandoren reed clipper. Remember only to clip the tiniest sliver at a time off the tip of your reed!

Always check to see if the rails are equally hard. To do this turn your mouthpiece at at 30 degree angle and blow normally so that only one side of the mouthpiece is really touching your bottom jaw. Then do the same thing on the other side. You should be able to tell which rail is harder, then make adjustments with a knife or sandpaper. If a reed is shitty, then what do you have to lose by experimenting on it? Go town, carve the f%&# out of it! There have been many very strange things done to reeds for the sake of good tone. People have methodically split the tips of reeds with razor blades, carved circular divots out of the tops of reeds, cut channels into the tops and bottoms of reeds, and reeds have been treated with everything from Hydrogen Peroxide to highly refined Pig oil. Bacon flavored reeds aren't really my thing, but I'm willing to try just about anything else in order to get a reed to play.

Here is a very helpful reed adjustment chart to help get you started.

Remember these things abut reed adjustment:

A little at a time, not a lot.
Keep trying, you'll never run out of bad reeds to practice adjusting.

Terrible cane will always sound terrible.
Die Vandoren, evil scumbags! You'll burn in hell for all the suffering you've caused!

One more thing Adam, do yourself a favor and switch to Rigotti reeds.
Order them from Roberto's or WWBW. You'll never go back to Vandorens, I promise.