Chris Curtis Web Site

This week, I will have been playing the saxophone for a month. What progress? Quite good really (if I say so myself!) but I am at that depressing stage where I am good enough to know that I am not very good but not good enough to know how to improve. It might be time to organise some lessons with an expert.

Anyway, in a month (practice every day except one), I have learnt the fingerings for all the notes from low C to high C (two octaves) plus one or two notes above and below these. I can sound all these notes and quite sweetly, but not necessarily when I want to or in the sequences I want. In particular, there is a tendency for the low notes to sound an octave high, especially if I try to play one “straight-off” (as opposed to dropping down a scale to it). I can play scales and arpeggios fairly confidently in C, D, E, F, G and A major and I can sight read and play quite a number of tunes and they are recognisable. I can play for 30 - 45 minutes without my lips or mouth “dying” (which happened after ten minutes or so a month ago) I am about 11 chapters (half way) into the John O’Neill Jazz tutor and the first few chapters (which were so hard a month ago) are easy now.

So, a good start, but there is so much further to go. I have to say that I love the sax though. I simply love playing it and cannot wait until I am good enough to play with others or to solo. I am even having thoughts about a tenor to go with the alto!

It has been ages since I went orienteering (or had much of a training run) and it showed!

It was a glorious morning with bright sunshine and real warmth. The first part of the course took us through open woodland carpeted with bluebells. There is nothing more wonderful in nature than a southern English bluebell wood in May. The planner encouraged us well off the paths to enjoy it more and it was a privilege to be there. The woods were very wet from recent rain, which made the first few controls a little tricky: what the map showed as wet ditches were rushing streams and there were lots of places to be caught in mud. At one point I managed to go knee-deep (literally) into a marsh which was marked on the map but not very visible on the ground.

I made two huge errors both for the same reason. Going to control six, I chose the optimum route to control 11. My eye caught the circle on the map and I was fixed. I had to go from finding 11 (which was not easy from that direction) to six. I did a very similar thing at control 14. I left control 13, but read the map as if I was going from 12 to 14 - I managed to convince myself that the ground agreed with the map until, after quite a long way, I could not pretend any more and had to backtrack because I could not remember if I had visited control 13. Just lack of concentration but these two errors cost me over 20 minutes.

Thankfully, the terrain slowed everyone down, and my performance did not look quite as disastrous as it really was. I was 21st, but was beaten by all the “usual suspects”.

I thought the course was very good. There was a huge variety of terrain and you had to navigate every step - shame I could not keep my head together.

I have wanted to play the sax since I was small. It is such a cool and expressive instrument. I keep seeing and hearing excellent sax solos (most recently from the guy in Elkie Brooks’ band) and the idea would not go away, so it is time to take the plunge.

I drove over to Crowborough, to the nice people at saxophones.co.uk and talked about an ex-hire sax in perfect condition. An hour or two later I was very excitedly on my way home with a horn in the boot of the car. It is a Trevor James Revolution II Alto. It looks gorgeous and came with a good case, stand, a tutorial DVD, a couple of reeds and some cork grease. I had to buy a box of reeds and a tuner/metronome. I also bought John O’Neill’s “Jazz Tutor”.

The first attempts were both easier and harder than I expected. I was delighted to be able to get notes from the sax straight away, but my lips and face are very quickly tired, I am not always in tune and it does not sound that much like a sax yet. Still, early days.

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Parham Woods is a very nice area with a lot of variety in a small space, along with some technically tricky ground and more than enough to confuse the unwary.

I was fairly fast to the first control, but was thrown by how wet my route was to the second and spent time trying to avoid getting my feet wet. Once I just decided to run up the flooded ride (and once the water in my shoes had warmed up) it was fine. After that, things were OK, though my navigation was not as sharp as I wanted and I found it a struggle compared with recent events. I did not feel at my best, vaguely ill and out of sorts, but I was around in 52 minutes for 19th place, which was better than I expected.

The woods are still quite wintry in appearance. There were daffodils in places, but no primroses yet. There was a little sunshine, which made a big difference to the cold wind.