Low Eh!

Last night, I was fortunate to sub in with the Capital City Stompers for their monthly show at Art House Café – Fever Pitch Hot Jazz. It was my first gig on bass saxophone where I was responsible for holding down the bass line for a group.

Up until this point, I’ve used the bass sax on some film scores, in saxophone choirs, jazz projects – all situations where I was still a (very low) melodic functioning instrument.

Here are three things that I learned from preparing and performing on this concert.

1. Endurance – I was really worried about not having enough face to get through the whole gig. Typically, I’m playing 25-30% of a night of music when I’m in a jazz quartet setting, and I knew that I was going to have to work on having the horn on my face for a full set at a time. Nearly every day for a a few weeks before the gig, I would practice playing quarter notes for 45-60 minutes. I’m glad that I did, because I made it through two sets with very little fatigue. It also wasn’t just the physical endurance, it was also maintaining focus for a full set. I found that playing bass lines at first (in my practice) was not hard for a few choruses, but I would lose focus after a while. Training my brain for this first gig was really important.
2. Off Book – I was a sub, so I was sent charts for the show, and I was more than happy to have them. My former teacher, Tim Price used to say to me, “fogginess makes no friends on the bandstand”. Making sure that we were all playing the same changes is essential. One of the things that I noticed was that as I became more comfortable with the changes and stopped looking at the charts, my lines became more relaxed, and I could sit in the pocket much better with the guitar. I also found that my lines became more melodic, and had better flows and natural arcs to them, which also kept my focus up – I was able to be more creative while still representing the harmony for the soloists.
3. Solos – Playing solos with the support of a bassist underneath to provide the harmony. As I was functioning as the bass (with no drums) in this group, I had to approach my solos differently – I had to simplify. I will definitely be carrying some of this into my playing moving forward. Maintaining the feel of the song that we were playing, using melodic fragments from the melody, and keeping the forward momentum of the piece are all things that I try to do on a regular basis, but were definiteyl accentuated while functioning as the bass voice in the ensemble.

I had a blast last night, and I learned a ton preparing for this gig. I can’t wait for the next time!