Tag Archives: Practicing Saxophone

Is The Art Of Improvisation A Relative Thing?

Many musicians define themselves (or could otherwise be categorized) as being primarily interpretive musicians, or primarily improvising musicians. In other words, their main creative impulses lie either in interpreting the musical thoughts of others, or in composing their own music right on the spot. When you put it this way it seems like an either/or situation. You are, or you aren’t. Or you’re both.

But is it as simple, as black and white, as that? To me, it begs the question, “What is improvising?” I don’t doubt that lots of musicians (and critics) have very clear and ready answers for that question. Strangely enough, I don’t.

I do know that when I’m improvising, a very unique and beautiful process is taking place. For me, it’s a form of meditation, a way of finding my way back to my own internal temple of peace and joy.

I also know is that I’m making countless creative decisions (almost unconsciously) moment to moment in order to let something release from within me. But it doesn’t feel to me as if I’m creating the music, creating the flow of pitches and rhythms. It’s more like I’m just following them.

These days, I spend about half of my music listening time with classical recordings. Interpretive musicians at play, as it were. One of the things that thrills me the most is to hear the stunning differences in interpretation between various artist performing a given piece.

Even though these artists are only “interpreting” the music, I’m amazed at the seemingly endless creative choices they’ve made with the music. They, too, sound as if the music is rising up from within them, being created in the moment. It sounds improvised to me.

When I attend a great classical concert performance, it seems as if the artist is making some of these choices moment by moment, feeling the unfolding pulse of the music. Risks are being taken. The sound of surprise.

And ironically, I can go to some jazz performances where the so-called “improvised music” doesn’t sound or feel to me at all improvised. It sounds canned and far too premeditated. No risks are being taken. The sound of craftsmanship, skill, taste, cogency….but not really the sound of surprise.

So it got me to thinking, is the act of improvisation an absolute thing, or is it a direction on a path that can be followed? And are dynamic interpretive musicians, to some degree, improvisers or simply creative in another way?

If there is a continuum, a direction, toward improvisation, I think it mirrors closely our tendency toward verbal communication. It’s ironic that sometimes in the most potentially heartfelt moments (like at a wedding, funeral, or graduation ceremony) some speakers can stand up and say something that sounds absolutely pre-packaged, as if it were lifted right off of a Halmark greeting card. “I wish you health, long life, happiness and eternal blessings…..”

Nice sentiments, for sure, but are they genuinely expressed and created specifically in the moment for that occasion? More important, do these sentiments rise from that creative, emotional well within? Is it improvisation, or a regurgitation of something previously heard?

Don’t get me wrong, I think these kinds of sentiments are often sincere, they’re just so unoriginal, and thus sound startlingly impersonal. Contrast that to somebody who gets up, with no public speaking polish or experience, and speaks from the heart, improvising a moving speech. Speaking personally. The sound of surprise.

I think we’ve all had similar experiences when we’ve heard musical performances. You can’t plan magic. It just happens, or it doesn’t.

In the realm of modern jazz improvisation, there is a continuum from the mainstream, to the more progressive, to the (for want of a better word) avant-garde. Yet within each of these approaches, styles, genres…whatever you want to call them, there are degrees of true improvisational originality.

I tend to lean toward the left when it comes to jazz and improvised music, yet I’ve been on the bandstand with some really “free” players who turn the entire set into a Hallmark greeting card moment.

I’ve also experienced creative transcendence and spiritual power playing with, I guess what you might call mainstream stylists, sometimes just playing standards. To me it has less to do with the music than it does with the musicians. (I’ve also experienced the opposite phenomenon many, many times.)

If you transcribe or read through enough Charlie Parker solos, you’ll find he had many pre-packaged musical ideas (licks). On the other hand, if you transcribe a Sonny Rollins or Joe Henderson solo, you’ll be harder pressed to find a “lick”. Take down a Warne Marsh solo or two and I doubt that you’ll ever find anything like a lick.

Does this mean I think that Rollins, Henderson and Marsh were superior improvisers compared to Parker? Not at all. Parker, in my opinion was as spontaneous as they come. That music just hits you right in the soul when you hear it. It still excites me every time I listen to it.

It’s just that Charlie Parker had codified some of his own musical thinking into components. Yet he always created surprise by stepping in and out of these components, naturally, sincerely and spontaneously. And in practically any of his solos, you’ll hear absolute, first time creation of many musical ideas. The sound of surprise.

What makes Charlie Parker ultimately brilliant is how he combines these codified ideas, how he organizes them in any given solo. The variations and permutations he makes, that he discovers for the first time as he plays. Creative decisions being made by the hundreds in each solo. Again, the sound of surprise.

Warne Marsh, on the other hand, had a different approach, a different impetus with the material of improvisation. He had deeply studied and absorbed solos from Lester Young, Parker, and other greats. He’d spent a huge amount of time working with patterns, inversions, substitutions, rhythmic freedom and displacement.

But his aim wasn’t to codify his work into concrete, packaged ideas. In fact he was careful not to. His brilliance lay in the spontaneous manipulation of his musical materials as he followed his muse, rather than in the reorganization of codified ideas. Creative decisions being made by the hundreds too, just in a different way. The sound of surprise.

So where are you on the improvisational continuum?

Do you have tons of licks memorized in all keys so that you’re never at a loss for what to play? So that you never the possibility of sounding wrong or unsure? Or do you let yourself find the music anew each time you play, without any safety net? Or are you somewhere in between?

Wherever you are, one thing is for certain: to improvise more deeply, more genuinely, you need to give up the idea of playing it safe, of always sounding like you wrote out your solo. In short, you have to let go of the idea of always knowing.

I remember hearing a story by Chick Corea about Thelonious Monk. Chick’s band was on the same bill as Monk’s band at some concert in New York. Monk played first. The band starts with the iconic, “Rhythm-n-ing”. They play a stunning performance. Chick is astounded. Then Monk launches into the second piece of the concert. Rhythm-n-ing again. Chick says the second version is nothing at all like the first, all the musicians playing completely differently (yet equally brilliantly) than on the first version. And then into the third version of the same piece. Monk’s band ends up playing “Rhythm-n-ing” four times, each version stunningly different than the previous. That’s the entire set. Chick Corea is completely edified. (I was edified just hearing the story for the first time!)

In my opinion, that’s improvising at the very top of the creative spectrum. That’s the sound of surprise.

Easy Precision

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One sure fire way to get somebody to tense their bodies up is to tell them to hold a particular position. As soon as you say, “Good! Exactly like that. Now don’t move a muscle”, you can bet that they’ve stiffened themselves up and stopped (or at least significantly interfered with) their breathing, in an attempt to hold the perfect position. This clearly is never helpful for optimum musical performance.

Yet this is the same kind of mental direction many musicians employ when trying to play with a certain preconception of precision. You can even see in performance sometimes as a musician transitions from playing the “easy” parts in a piece to the ones that he or she perceives as difficult. From balanced, present and mobile, to tense, anticipatory and held. All because of a shift in thinking.

There’s no single thing, no single stimulus, that puts musicians in that “precision” mode. It could be fast tempos, challenging dynamics, elaborate articulation, breathing demands, or a host of other things.

For an improvising musician it can also be such things as unfamiliar or challenging time signatures, asymmetrical (or otherwise non-conventional) forms, harmonic complexity, etc. In these moments you can hear an artist go from intuitive and expressive to unyieldingly craftsman-like and mechanical (and that’s often when it goes “well”).

If you observe their bodies, you’ll likely see lots of holding and bracing as they try to “make the changes”, or whatever else they might be distracted by.

But if you ask most musicians (whether improvisers or interpretive musicians) about their best performances, they’ll often convey a different experience. You might hear talk about being in the zone, having an effortless freedom to play with remarkable precision.

From a neurobiological point of view this makes sense. What happens in these “in the zone” situations is that the player is simply letting all the training and practice fall into place unimpeded by the often distracting over-desire to play everything precisely. This allows the brain to most effectively send out the right messages to the body to carry out the demands of a highly skilled activity such as music. The music almost seems like it plays itself when this happens.

There are, in the simplest sense, really only two things necessary for this to happen: an intention to play the music (obviously), coupled with the clarity in thinking to send the most helpful messages from your brain to the rest of your body to fulfill this intention.

In Alexander Technique jargon we call this good direction. Specifically, using your thinking in the best way to support the best outcome.

When you ask a musician (or athlete, or any other type of performer) what they’re thinking when they’re in the zone, you might hear something like, “That’s just it! I’m not thinking at all.”

But that’s not quite true. (As long as you’re not unconscious, you’re always thinking). What these people are really talking about is that their thinking is seamlessly integrated into their performance. In essence, they don’t notice their thinking. More important, they’re not distracted by it.

Now of course, any good performance is dependent upon good preparation. And even in practice (or especially in practice!) this issue of rigid precision is a challenge that must be dealt with. It’s a matter of how you think when you play. And a key principle in helpful thinking is this: Ease supports precision.

When people say the masters make it look easy to play, they’re quite right. To the masters, playing music is easy, precision and all. It mostly involves, balance, release and clear musical intentions.

Here are a few things to aim toward in helping you find your easy precision:

Notice your thinking and notice your reaction-When you are trying to play something that seems to demand from you great precision, take note of your thoughts. Where does your attention go? What is your self-talk like? What are you aiming for specifically? Then notice your bodily reactions. Do you stiffen your neck and shoulders? Do you hold your breath? Do you lock your knees? Do you tense your hands? What happens to your balance? Whatever your habit is, remember that it is preceded by your thoughts. Change your thoughts, change your habits.
Let yourself move-If you’re playing something that tends to put you into that “held” precision mode, see if you can change your response from rigidity to release. If you watch the great classical virtuosi, you see this time and again during performance. Let yourself move. That doesn’t mean you have to move in any particular way. Just allow for the possibility of movement. Allow yourself to respond to the demands of the music, to the ebb and flow of the music. You might move a little, a lot, or hardly at all. It’s all good as long as you’re not bracing yourself into place.
Take in the bigger picture-If the precision demands of the music seem to involve one particular part of your body (like your fingers for example) don’t fall into the trap of putting all your attention there. Sure, you need to be cognizant of the particular part, but you also need to expand your awareness to take in other things: the rest of your body, the sound of the music itself, the response of the other musicians you’re playing with (or the click of the metronome), etc. As a musician it is imperative that you actively practice building an inclusive, expanded awareness as you play (as opposed to a compartmentalized hyper-focus that works against your brains best functioning).
Don’t try to get past the precise part-Don’t let yourself get wrapped up into trying to get to the end of the difficult part. That should never be your intention. That just takes you out of the present moment, out of the zone. Always stay with process. Process means putting the quality of how you make the music at top priority. The process that will help you the most is what I’ve outlined above: managing your reactions, aiming toward release and easy movement, and utilizing an inclusive attention. If you practice staying with the process, the end result will always take care of itself in the best possible way. Always.

In reality, it might seem like this so called easy precision is elusive, inconsistent and difficult to find. In principle, it is available to you at any moment. And it’s all starts by changing your thoughts.

Be Wary Of Good Advice

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One of the biggest challenges that arise when I teach the Alexander Technique to musicians is to get them to consider ideas about playing their instrument that seem to be contrary to what they believe to be absolutely true. Some of these ideas were imparted to them by well-meaning teachers.

Unfortunately, a certain amount of those ideas are adding to (or causing!) the problem that motivated the student to seek my help in the first place.

I try never to directly contradict the advice that they’ve taken from their teachers. Rather, I aim at helping them have a different kinesthetic experience by not following that advice. (I of course am using my hands and words to direct them into a more efficient, natural use of themselves. This helps significantly.)

After they’ve experience this different, seemingly new way to play, I usually tell them something something like this: “So now you have a chance to go home and experiment. You can do it the way you’ve been doing it, or try it this other way. Then you can choose which you prefer, which way seems to help you the most.”

And that’s pretty much it. Far more often than not, the student chooses this newer, clearly less strenuous way to play. But it’s the student’s choice, not my insistent command.

For us as musicians, it’s natural to seek out advice from someone who has already solved the problems of playing our instrument that we still struggle with. And to be clear, most of the advice that master musicians give their students regarding pedagogy is immensely helpful, often saving the student years of misunderstanding and frustration.

But you always have to come back to this one question when taking advice from a great instrumentalist: Is this musician playing well because of what he or she is doing, or despite what he or she is doing? (I ask my regular visitors here to forgive me for raising this question so often, but it really is fundamental.)

For example, you can play saxophone quite well if you curl your toes and grip the floor with vise-like effort. But this doesn’t help you play well. It doesn’t help you produce your sound. It’s not necessary at all to playing the saxophone. (In fact it actually interferes with your ability to play your best.) It’s a simple matter of the principle of cause and effect. Curling your toes is an effect of your habit, not a cause of your good sound.

But if you believe that you need to do that to play well, it’s likely you’ll pass that advice on to one of your students as gospel truth. And this is often how bad advice is passed on from teacher to student.

Here are three guidelines you can follow when given advice about playing your instrument (from me or anyone else) to help you make better decisions for yourself:

1. Does it make sense with the laws of nature? Part of my job when I teach is to help my student better understand the music making process with respect to their bodily structures, and basic principles of physical science (mechanics, gravity, acoustics). I want them to have a clearer and more accurate body map, and want them to understand how their overall general coordination affects the specific coordination of playing music. I also want them to understand what it takes to produce sound on their instrument from an acoustic point of view, then always ask themselves if, or how, their habits might be affecting the production of sound. Again, the “because of/despite of” question. So many myths of pedagogy can be dispelled by simply cracking a book on human anatomy, or reading up on the acoustical princples of your instrument.

2. Does it mostly involve adding, or subtracting strain? This is an important question to ask, especially if you feel pain or fatigue after carrying out the advice you’ve been given. I’ve never yet taught a student who wasn’t creating enough muscular effort to play. In fact, it’s usually a matter of getting them to stop working in such a strenuous, misdirected way. So when advice has lots “doing” words, as in, “pull your shoulders down”, “grip the floor with your feet to ground yourself”, “push from your diaphragm”, “tuck your chin in”, etc., go back to asking if, and how, these kinds of things work with respect to the laws of nature. Many times, well-meaning teachers are describing the perceived effect of what good playing looks like, as opposed to the bigger picture of what the cause of that visible bodily change is. For example, as a saxophonist, if I let my neck release my head into an upward balance off the top of my spine, my chin will appear to move inward toward my throat. But here’s the thing: muscular release is what is causing the change. That’s something entirely different than me trying to tuck my chin in toward my throat (muscular tension). Generally speaking in my experience, the more the pedagogical advice has to do with release and expansion (as opposed to added effort and contraction) the more effective the result.

3. Do you clearly understand the advice in the same way the advice giver does? This is quite often where things start to go wrong. I’ve many times encountered students who are not understanding and carrying out the advice the way the teacher understands it and carries it out. This has to do with the limits of language. I often find myself saying to my students as I teach, “You’ve just done what I’ve asked you to do, but it’s not what I want you to do. So, let’s see if I can ask again in a different way.” There’s no such thing as one ideal way of expressing your own movement experiences so that another person will experience them in the same way you do. This is where the art of teaching becomes fundamental. If you get advice and it seems to defy the laws of nature, and/or mostly involves more muscular effort, make really sure (in the most respectful way) that you ask your teacher to help you better understand.

And on that note…of course, any time you take a lesson or seek advice from someone, proceed with the utmost respect. Never argue. Simply ask genuine questions until you understand. But ultimately, you have to decide for yourself if the advice given is helpful or not to you, no matter what anyone says. It’s your choice.

The Problem With Studying The “Jazz Language”

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The other morning I was giving a first lesson to a jazz guitarist ( a university student) and was struck by something I notice quite often: Young jazz students spending a seemingly disproportionate amount of practice time learning and memorizing jazz lines and improvised solos.

When I asked this musician what he practices, he said that most of his practice time is spent learning new tunes, heads (like Donna Lee, Milestones, etc) and transcribing and playing improvised jazz solos by the “masters”.

This is all good stuff to do if you’re studying jazz. It lets you go deeply into the heart of the jazz tradition, giving you perspective and context. It gives you insights about how the musicians formed their ideas. It helps you develop technical skill that you can use as an improviser. It improves your ear. All good stuff.

But then when I asked my student what else he practices, his face went blank. He said, “That’s pretty much it. I want to really absorb the jazz language. All my teachers tell me this is the best way to do that.”

Then I listened to him play. He was very competent, very fluent, had a nice time feel, clearly showing how much, and to whom he had listened.

He was also stunningly unoriginal, and rather disconnected from the improvisational process. Everything he played sounded like an excerpt from one of the lines or solos he’d memorized. I don’t mean he was copying things note for note. It was…well, as if he weren’t really feeling at all what he was playing. It was as if it came from some external source, foreign to him.

As I pressed on in my questioning, he said that he already knew his scales and chords thoroughly. As I sort of tested him on this, he showed great competence with his scaler and harmonic knowledge. So why the disconnect?

Well, as we went further into the lesson, it became clear: He wanted everything he improvised to sound as if it came squarely from the jazz language, the jazz tradition as it were (or at least his conception of those things).

That got me to thinking about what exactly that might mean. Especially, the jazz language. Is there a jazz language? If there is I don’t know how to define it.

Is it certain harmonies used in modern jazz? Nope. All those extended harmonies are found in many different pieces of 20th century classical music.

Is it the chromaticism? No. There’s plenty of chromaticism from other forms of music. Beethoven used it to great effect.

Is it the types of rhythms that are predominantly used in jazz? Not that either. There’s no such thing as a “jazz” rhythmic figure. Even syncopation has been around forever.

Is it the time feel? Now at least were getting close. Jazz musicians have a certain way of feeling time and expressing it rhythmically that is immediately palpable.

But what is it exactly? The so called “swing” eighth note feel isn’t even close to being codified. Some musicians (I’m thinking of Clifford Brown here) play jazz eighth notes virtually “straight”. Yet when you hear them play, you can easily tell it’s jazz.

And that’s usually the case. You might not be able to define what the jazz language is, but you can sure recognize it when you hear it. But the bottom line is that for every rule or principle of the jazz language there are countless exceptions. So why all the “learning the jazz language” emphasis?

If you examine the work of the great innovators in jazz they all had one thing in common: They redefined, edified and expanded the so called jazz language. Sure they might have spent quite a bit of time copying other players and learning tunes and heads and so forth.

But they also did one other very important thing. They spent the vast majority of their time improvising (truly improvising) to find what they had to say as artists. In fact, many had to actually ignore the jazz language of their time. They needed to free themselves from it in order to find a more personal expression.

Miles Davis was famous for this. As was John Coltrane. So was Lester Young for that matter. They were constantly pushing back against the established jazz language of their day. And they were consistently finding newer, more innovative ways to express themselves through what we still call the jazz tradition.

How did they do this? Well, if we take Coltrane as an example, he spent a huge amount of time re-mastering and exploring the materials of music: new ways of stacking chords; new ways of thinking about scales and modes; new ways to imagine rhythm and its relationship to harmonic tension. He in essence stopped looking at jazz and started looking at music in the much broader sense.

It’s important to keep in mind that, if you’re an improviser, your also a composer. You compose spontaneously, but you compose nevertheless. So follow the path of great composers. Study the tradition. Absorb and understand what has been created before you. But get down to the business of finding out who you are.

In my experience both as teacher and performer, I’d say you’re best off giving this top priority, even when you’re at the stage of development where you’re mimicking and studying others. Don’t wait for some magic moment of creative maturity. You’re ready right now. Cultivate those moments every single day, no matter what level of proficiency you’re at. Make the music yours.

For you this might mean spending a great deal more time creating and learning your own distinctive scalar, intervalic and harmonic patterns, building your own language. It could mean spending the next few years of your practice life devoted nearly exclusively to broadening your rhythmic conception (polymeter, odd meters, time feel, etc.). Explore the materials of music deeply.

Use your imagination, intellect, musical knowledge and ear to find (as the great jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano would say) “your own melody.” Don’t let an over-emphasis on language limit your self expression.

Exploring Being Wrong To Find Improvement

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The errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one

– William Stanley Jevons, Economist

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.

– John Coltrane, Jazz Saxophonist

There is no musician in this world who has flawless technique, because there is no such thing as flawless technique. For an artist, technique is the means toward self expression. As the artist continues to grow, the technique must evolve to serve this expression.

The pursuit of perfection is more a direction to move toward rather than a destination. (It’s not about perfection so much as it is about improvement.) To paraphrase the great cellist Janos Starker describing his continued growth:

“All of the sudden, everything I worked so hard for is wrong, because I’ve found an even better way. A new level. But when I work hard and finally reach that new level, it too will become wrong.”

The fact that even very accomplished musicians still practice, still study, still strive, is, in a sense, an admission that they’re not completely right about their approach to playing music. There is always more. There is always a different way other than the way they already know.

The only way you can possibly reach your potential as a musician is to explore the possibility of being wrong. (But keep in mind that wrong might be nothing more than your immediate reaction, your perception, of something that is unfamiliar.)

The sound I currently have on tenor saxophone is a result of lots of physical changes and equipment choices that were wrong at one point in my development. And as right as they are now, they (thinking of what Janos Starker said above) may possibly become wrong at another point in the future.

Much of your sense of what is right is based upon belief and habit. F. M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technique) said:

Everyone wants to be right, but nobody stops to consider whether their idea of right is right.

In regard to postural and movement habits, Alexander found that most people’s sense of right was based upon something he called a “faulty sensory awareness.” In essence, an inaccurate sense of what’s really going on in your body as opposed to what you think is going on.

Alexander found that because people are creatures of habit, they’ll typically cling to the feeling of their habit, whether or not that habit is counterproductive to their desired intention. They’ll do so because their habits always feel familiar. They feel right.

To change, Alexander said, you need to go from the known, to the unknown. (From the habitual and familiar, to the new and unfamiliar.) This can only happen by exploring the possibility of being wrong. By allowing yourself to explore wrong, you set the stage for change.

According to the principles of the Alexander Technique, the only time you’re ever actually “wrong” is when you interfere with the natural poise and coordination that you already possess to function well.

If you make something more complicated by excessively straining muscles, rather than using a more efficient coordination based upon your bodily design and its relationship to gravity, you’re probably wrong, whether or not it feels right.

Your wrong because ultimately, it doesn’t help you play any better. It in fact makes good playing even less likely. You’re wrong only because your reaction is in conflict with your desire (and with your design).

For many, it’s not always easy to notice habits in this way. (This is where a good teacher can help immensely.)

But if you can learn to avoid a few of the truly wrong things (according to this Alexander principle) you’re left with a vast field of possibilities of things that might be right, might be better.

And of course being different isn’t necessarily wrong.

In fact that’s part of the point I’m trying to make here. Paul Desmond had a sound on alto saxophone that was as different as could be from David Sanborn’s alto sound. But that doesn’t mean that one sound is right and the other wrong. They’re just different (and both highly unique and beautiful).

You can apply this same kind of open-mindedness to your own exploration of right and wrong as you practice.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind to help you explore your musical practice in this way:

Notice how you respond-What do you do when you play something that didn’t come out they way you intended? Did your body become tense? Did you stop breathing? Did you make a scowling face? Learning how to accept the unintentional with grace and balance is a great skill to cultivate. Besides making you a better performer, it will keep you much more open-minded in your practice. If you find yourself getting tense after trying something in a different way, stop and do it again with a less tense, less reactive response. You might be surprised to notice that it doesn’t seem so wrong after all, and is perhaps even better than what you had before.

Don’t rely exclusively on what feels right-Like Alexander said, what often feels right is your habit. Sometimes to really find what’s “right” (or at least better) you have to allow yourself to feel wrong (out of your habit). In exploring new techniques, approaches and equipment, try to base your assessments on discernible, objective criteria. “Am I able to control the pitch more accurately?” “Am I able to play with less strain on my entire body?” “Can I more consistently produce my altissimo?”, etc. Make a list of your objectives with of anything new that you try. Keep track of the pros and cons. Take your time and use your reasoning.

Understand why you do things the way you do-If you hold your posture, position your instrument, form your embouchure, practice in a certain sequence, etc., because some well-respected expert told you to do so, I encourage you to ask the deeper question of “Why?” The better you understand the physics of your instrument, your bodily structure and design (and your thinking), the better you’ll be able to discern the best choices for you. This is where honest self-inqury and basic scientific reasoning come into play. If you’ve been doing something the same way for years because of your deferment to a respected source, explore the possibility of not doing it that way. See what happens. Measure the results.

Let yourself sound bad-Sometimes to find a better way to play, you have to let go of your desire to sound good . If you start with discernment instead of judgement, you might find that sounding “bad” doesn’t really sound bad at all, just different. And even if you do sound bad (bad intonation, articulation, etc.) understand that it might just be a matter of you getting used to a less seemingly familiar coordination. It could be that as you get to know this new coordination, you play better than ever. (The current mouthpiece I play on tenor saxophone is a prime example of this. The only way I could make this mouthpiece work for me was to play in a more efficient, less strenous way than I was used to habitually.)

So as always, let yourself explore, have fun, be different, be wrong. Aim for a right direction (growth and improvement) instead of a right destination (perfection, which, as Janos Starker might say, doesn’t exist). Being wrong might just be the right thing for you. Let me know what you think!