Chris Curtis Web Site

Time for an update.

I have had a couple of lessons and learnt far more than I thought possible in the hour (total) with a proper saxophone teacher. He is very happy to work to my agenda for him, which was to tell me what I am getting wrong and tell me how to fix it, while still leaving me to do the bulk of the learning.

There’s plenty that I am getting wrong. The first was (as I perceive it) not being firm enough with the sax. He has helped me feel that my embouchure needs to be very much firmer than I thought, and so does my diaphragm – he pointed me to slightly harder reeds and we did some exercises on long notes and blowing through. All of which was a revelation and has made an audible difference very quickly. He has also helped me to work on articulation and breathing, with good effect.

The best, and scariest, experience is trying to play things with him accompanying on the piano. We’ve had a few goes at “Watermelon man” by Herbie Hancock. I can sight-read this pretty well when I am on my own, it is fairly rough when I play it with him listening and I always fall apart at some point when we play together, but boy what a rush! It is a blast – loud, joyful and glorious.

He’s even managed to get me to the beginning of improvising: we did some question and answer work around 3 notes and I began to realise what it is all about – lots and lots more to do, but it feels like it might be for me, rather than an alien universe.

It must be summer. Southdowns Orienteers have come out of the woodlands, where the brambles and bracken are head-high at this time of year, and for the next few months we will be running around parks and adjacent terrain.

In recent years the traditional “Park-Os” have developed into the Sussex sprint series – thanks mainly to Rob Lines’ great organisational skills. The sprint orienteering format uses these areas well, and allows good navigational challenges when the terrain is not as technical or physically demanding as some “classic” areas. The idea is to make competitors go very fast, with tight small-feature navigation on detailed 1:4000 maps. In that context it is very easy, and very costly, to make mistakes like coming along the wrong side of a wall.

I thought the course was excellent. I can’t believe it was the planner’s first (though he says it was!). There were lots of changes of direction and changes of style, from simple straight-line running to obvious features to micro-navigation in a tricky quarry and in a complex parkland and set of buildings. I never felt the interest wane and with 19 controls close together, you had to think all the time.

Well, how did it go?

Better than I feared and a little worse than I hoped! I have missed a lot of orienteering and training recently. I am terribly unfit and out of practice. The last couple of outings I have missed controls or become hopelessly lost at some point. I was very pleased that neither of these things happened. I had a cleanish run apart from being rather vague in the quarry (it was tricky!) and not spotting from the map that there was a path round a building – which meant going up a high embankment and having to go round to find somewhere to climb down when I saw the reality on the ground.

I was terribly slow despite feeling the pace and came back in 41 minutes for 3.5 km – well behind the average but I have been worse.

I thoroughly enjoyed it though – which has not always been true recently. Things should allow more training and orienteering soon so improvement must be on the cards.

Amazingly, this blog is four years old today! I started it when I was convalescing from an operation and it has kept going since then. Thanks for reading.