When I started, this player mechanic befriended me. He only told me to really worry about 2 things: tone and throat vibrato.
Accuracy is the centerpiece of practice, the field you groom, then play on. Where is the note? When is the note? Where is the space? Are you going too slow, or actually, more often, too fast?
I remember thinking tone and vibrato were tricks. They weren’t. They were breathing. Soft or loud, fast or slow, playing is breathing, and it’s everything that happens between your diaphragm and the mouthpiece, and sometimes your nasal passages.
Given tone and accuracy, especially the latter, you get faster. You get to stop digging up notes, and just start hitting them. Given that you know a piece, or know it stripped down, filling moments in it usually sounds faster, even though the song has but little changed.
Most often, for instance, Stevie Wonder sounds fast, but often that speed is in trills, scales, or runs. Those things are either things in his little black book of song stuff, like favored girl friends, or just stuff one hears. Of course there’s more, but the point is that what you bring into a song may fill space without actually making you pick up the tempo on a song.
I guess most think of all that as phrasing. Kinda like what’s called voice in writing. So many beginners are looking for their own voice. So foolish. Turns out your voice is . . . You, and unavoidable. My phrasing is where the song goes when I just play the thing.
I knew a guy who wanted to play sax like Coleman. Hot, fast. Every time he practiced, he played more like himself, and less like Coleman, until he quit.
Still, I’m pretty sure if what you have in your heart and hear in your head is fast, and you will not be denied, you’ll get there.
Best regards,
Ed
