Tone Bach cello suite

[Saxamofone]

I was just going thru a box of music related stuff that I picked up ages ago. I found the J.S. Bach cello suites transcribed for sax by Trent Kynaston. Now I have no background in classical music at all but I started working on the first couple of pages and ... wow! What a lovely piece of music - that J.S. Bach wrote some damn good tunes!

It's really difficult and no really good opportunities to take a breath --- I guess you don't play it at a steady tempo (?) so you can catch a breath.

I have been doing mouthpiece refacing work on some very aggressive tenor pieces (Dukoff, Berg, Guardala etc.) that had been damaged and needed restoration and thought this Bach piece is a really nice test of the responsiveness with all the large jumps. And while it is probably hilarious to play Bach on metal Dukoff or metal Berg I am really enjoying it a lot and it's probably going to make me a better player in the process. Now I have to figure out how to phrase these lines so I can catch some air. I suppose I could break out my old didgeridoo and see if I can remember how to circular breath again and try to apply that technique but somehow I don't think that would lend itself to the Bach suite.

I'm not at a place where I dare post a recording yet ... but maybe I'll try to record a few bars of this one of these days.

 

[jbtsax]

I performed the first movement of Bach's A minor violin concerto in a college recital, so I know what you mean by breathing. In my understanding there are 3 choices: do a brief pause to breathe in a musically appropriate spot, do circular breathing, or leave out one or more notes to take a breath without a halt in the tempo. I chose the first, but marked in the music where to breathe and practiced the same way every time.