[crazydaisydoo]

It has been a while, but I have been busy on youtube, doing some collaborations with other musicians..

This is my latest, a bit of a departure:

This is me on Alto, Tenor and Guitar

The backing is Aebersold's "with strings"

I am using my Martin "The Martin" alto with a selmer c*, a cheap Walstein Tenor with an otto link HR 5* and a Guild X-150 guitar, straight into a multitrack.

I was after a sort of 50's film soundtrack feel to the swooping alto (normally used in romantic scenes!) but it is surprisingly difficult to do, any advice gratefully received.

As usual all comments welcome.. good or bad.

If you get time check out some of my other recent clips (just click on more from this user)

 

[gary]

Beautiful. Just Beautiful!

Veeerrrry tasty. Isn't it wonderful what a few notes can do if they're done right?

I'm just not in a very good place tonight and that really made me feel nice. Thank you, Matthew.

 

[crazydaisydoo]

Beautiful. Just Beautiful!

Veeerrrry tasty. Isn't it wonderful what a few notes can do if they're done right?

I'm just not in a very good place tonight and that really made me feel nice. Thank you, Matthew.

Well Gary, my first post here was last December, and I had only been playing for 8 weeks. I was nervous of the response I would get. You posted a very encouraging and intelligent reply

http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?t=49649

I have basically done as you suggested, and I am really pleased with my progress. The only advice I ignored was the "great mouthpiece chase" which you will be upset to hear I have fully participated in. In fact if it were a race, I probably would win, having amassed 7 in 10 months.

Thanks Gary, and get yourself out of that bad place, we all need your common sense advice....

 

[saxjd]

Nice!

 

[Conrado]

You just started last Dec? You have an amazing beautiful tone - especially on the alto - very artful inflection...amazing!

 

[tonyh]

Hey crazy,

We have had some correspondence in the past and you know what a fan of yours I am, again you have done yourself proud, to me you sound like a true professional player, this one will be going in my CDD folder with the rest.

I have started on summertime myself and wanted to hear how you sounded on your first take, but you have removed it from youtube, I was only interested in hearing it so i could make sense of Gary's advice to you at the time.

Gary told you this back then:
(Quote)
Also, time to work on your chromatics. Your playing is diatonic and it's time for you to take it to another level. Diatonic playing=guitar pentatonics, etc influence? Also, listen to other players and learn how to "ghost" notes. They make a big difference in articulating characteristically. I'm not sure how much actual ghosting goes on in your guitar playing, but it's much more characteristic on wind instruments.

I have your second take of summertime and think it is great and was wanting to see what changes you made to it.

Keep up the recordings they are a pleasure to listen to, soon I will have a complete album of you

cheers
Tony

 

[crazydaisydoo]

Tony,

Thanks for the kind words, very flattering, I removed the first take of summertime because I got some seriously stupid comments. That is the problem with youtube, there are some very ignorant people out there. I think the worst comment was "give up", along with some nasty language.

I kept on pointing out that this was an early clip, but people could not seem to work out how to find later clips, so they would just post these comments regardless. I seemed to spend half my time deleting messages so the best thing was to take it off. I don't mind constructive criticism, but some of was just plain crazy.

I have worked a lot on playing more precisely, transcriptions helped the most, particularly with introducing ghost notes, slurs and runs. Try saxsolos.com, very cheap and good quality.

Keep up the hard work Tony, I am sure it will pay off.

 

[milandro]

Matthew, :shock:
you are the man! Wow! I'm runnig out of exclamation marks! Seriously it's incredible how well and fast you have been growing into a very proficient player! The alto sound is very beautiful (even though, if I can be very critical, a couple times in this take there is some unintentional loss of clarity and control in the sound) but you have been working on in (and very well) for some ( relatively short, anyway....that's incredible!) time, but the truly amazing thing is how well you adjusted to tenor and so quickly (you just got the Walstein not so long ago!). The guitar solo is beautiful and shows where all your music comes from, long years of very good playing!

Also the recording and video publishing technique deserves a more than positive comment. Very, very nice indeed, professionally done. You have been single handedly outranking any other video I've seen published here.

 

[Saxmusiclover]

Hey Crazy,

Nice guitar and sax playing. What set up did you finally end up with? Or are you still searching?

Ben

 

[rcwjd]

Matthew
Very nice sound on alto and of course the guitar. Any comments that I might have would be purely stylistic. To steal and paraphrase a line from Pygmalion - 'By George, I think he has got it."

 

[Wilbur Weltklang]

Woah!!! yet another fine performance.
Ignore the mindless cretins Matthew...even buskers don't get the level of mindless abuse that's a regular feature on the internet.

..and like Milandro, the actual movie producing side also deserves plaudits.
cheers, Mark.

 

[crazydaisydoo]

Hey Crazy,

Nice guitar and sax playing. What set up did you finally end up with? Or are you still searching?

Ben

Yep, still searching I like my Martin "The Martin" with a selmer c* but the selmer is starting to close up on me with rico royal 2.5 reeds, and stronger/different reeds sound too shrill. I am after a very dark jazz piece, so I am going to try the Runyon SR on a 5 or 6. Most "Jazz" mouth pieces are quite bright, and that is not something I want. I like the old 50's West Coast sound. My Meyer and Jody Jazz have too much edge, though the meyer is slightly softer.

Basically I need to play under a blanket

The guitar set up? That is easy, any old jazz box into a 1974 Fender Vibro-verb. I have got over the GAS thing with the guitar.......after 20 years!!

The movie making bit is fun... I have to do the whole song in one take, which puts a lot of pressure on me, but is similar to live playing (apart from I might take 5 takes ) If I drop in a guitar part or tenor, I have to spend a few minutes with imovie (or windows movie maker) syncing it all up. My top tip; I record all audio separately but simultaneously on a multitrack, and only bring it together with the video on editing. I discard the camcorder audio track. A lot of people struggle on youtube because they try and use camcorder microphones, or webcams. To me there is no point in spending $$$$ on saxophones, reeds and mouthpieces and then recording it al on a $5 microphone.............Just my opinion...

 

[milandro]

Matthew, I have had some very good results (still not recording anything... ) with a Otto Link STM, remember I told you I had a 7* and I liked the sound? Well, I lacked control and things weren't all that great after all. After reading a comment which Phil Barone made on this forum about using metal pieces on a alto, I went 5*, and things became very different. I believe this could be for you a combination worth trying.

If mouthpieces/reeds start closing on you try also different reeds, not only a different strength. I got great results with a Vandoren V16 2 (which is slightly more resistant than a Alexander 2,5).