I’ve taken up saxophone practise again after a break of six or seven months. Giving up was precipitated by getting a new mouthpiece that turned out to be very hard to play. I could only play for a few minutes before my lip collapsed, my tone became uneven in the upper register, and my intonation went all over the place. I knew it was a good mouthpiece, not because the brand had a great reputation, and not because I’d read somewhere that it was good, and not because it was expensive; I knew it was good because it just sounded amazing, made playing across the break easy, and sounded evenly throughout the registers. For the first few minutes, that is. After that, I was beaten.
At the time, the obvious conclusion was that I was crap. I had struggled intensively for two years (after a few years of half-hearted and infrequent practise) and imagined I had become quite good, and suddenly my unquestionably good quality new mouthpiece (and my newly-purchased tuner) had revealed that it was all an illusion. I would have to go back to square one.
At the same time I was really getting into web development, revelling in the freedom of working from home, discovering new techniques and technologies like I never had done when I was doing it as a nine-to-five job. The saxophone just fell by the wayside.
Creative Tentacles
Emerging from a fairly large project recently my creative tentacles began to reach outwards again, feeling for a juicy challenge. I’ve said many times that my life lurches from one exclusive obsession to another, and it was at this time, just a few weeks ago, that I began to be conscious of this lack of balance. I remain enthusiastic about the web development, but it is less obsessive, and I’ve found room for the saxophone once again.
I went to a teacher to see if he could help me out, and I practised hard, sounding terrible most of the time. This was heartbreaking, so when I came upon my old mouthpiece one day while I was looking for something else I thought, hell, why not give it a go? As soon as I began playing, it was as if my talent had suddenly been handed back to me. I’ve been practising with this, the old, mouthpiece now for a week or so and I’m actually enjoying practise again. I sound good, and I can play tunes, and scales are pleasurable.
Even if my embouchure is generally lacking – in that it’s only fit for a particular kind of narrow jazz-style mouthpiece – I’m happy. I can live with that (for the time being at least).
Disposition
What to make of this experience? It’s the kind of thing that could easily get me down: half a year of musical progress down the drain! Six months of progress on an instrument, if you’re practising every day, is hugely valuable.
But I don’t feel depressed. I’m looking for the positives. I listen to my playing and I realize I’m paying more attention to the intonation. I struggled to keep my throat open when I was fighting with the fancy new mouthpiece, and this has helped me generally.
But really what it comes down to is that if you choose to view a period in your life as a good, useful experience, then it becomes a good, useful experience.