Chris Curtis Web Site

The alto sax was (a kind of) 50th birthday present to myself but I have bought a tenor sax as sheer self-indulgence! Actually, it could have been worse.

The beast in question is a Walstein tenor sax from woodwind and brass. It is gorgeous with a deep, rosy phosphor-bronze body and brass keywork and sound divine too. It has had rave reviews all over the place while being made in China and being far cheaper than you would believe possible. I love it already though it will take me a while to adjust – it feels like pushing an awful lot of air, though that mellow, smoochy sound is to die for!

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.