One Hot Saxy Moment

So if you think you are not good enough, why not just play on your porch and see who throws kudos and who lobs rotten veggies at you so you can tell?  That's kinda the thing that happened to me a little earlier during my first practice session today.

There's this guy, he walks around the neighborhood every now and then, might be a little hard on his luck.  Well, anyway, he was walking by my house while I was working on connecting the chorus and Coda of "Sara" and trying to get my breath back (had been playing "Sara" and "Heart" most of the session, plus just got back to seriously playing last week after a week of the blues).  The guy grins and goes, "Hey, don't stop on my account, that sounded awesome!" and gave me a huge thumbs-up.

He's like the second neighbor who's given me positive feedback in as many months, but only because the neighbors around here tend to keep to themselves unless they need something.  But it still felt good.

Plus, I've been figuring out songs in my head, called "playing by ear", mostly just stuff that already exists.  Learned "America The Beautiful" that way, still working on the tweaking for consistency.  But today was amazing, because I wanted to play a cool-down ditty that helped me break the habit I sometimes get -- playing notes consecutively instead of jumping -- and "The Ants Go Marching" popped into my head.  It was hilariously funny, and I got the rough version of it down in three keys (starting at G, then A, then B) before I had to stop for breath.

Yeah, I know, there's a G# and an A# in there, so technically it wasn't a clean jump, and there's one or two notes that require a half-step into a #/b, but the fact that I pretty much nailed about 95% within 10 minutes is incredible.  Plus it's a funny song too.

I honestly think that Lucy (my alto sax) is my ticket out of Florida.  I don't know much about what sax playing consists of, but I'm learning a lot even in the past 10 weeks since my last lesson, and I'm taking another session of classes in January.  Really hope I can get the hang of more stuff before then.  But I would love to write and play music, maybe do a few gigs.  Even if I have to travel to do it.  Sounds like fun.

Gotta go for now.  Have a good evening!

Fox (starfoxdreamsax@gmail.com)