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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chris98" data-source="post: 1581" data-attributes="member: 113">An Average Week - Day 1I thought I’d try something a little different this time and do a daily diary for a week, and breaking with convention I’m starting on a Tuesday, because that’s when I came up with the idea.Tuesday 6th October 6:45 - 9:00Tuesday evenings are the social side of my sax playing life, from 6:45 - 7:30 I go to SaxPak, a sax only band, (currently missing a Baritone player) and from 7:30 - 9:00 it’s the Swing Band. I have to be careful here as Mr PeeDee from the forum also attends these sessions and as I sit next to him, he must be painfully aware of my interesting note selection and timing issues! So alas I can’t go off on deluded visions of grandeur and will have to resort instead to the truth.Timing is everything on these Tuesday evenings, if I eat too early I feel hungry during Swing Band, eat too late and I just don’t feel like playing, choice of food is equally important, anything greasy just isn’t nice and a light salad is insufficient, I’ve generally decided that pasta fits the bill well.Tonight was the first SaxPak since July and we had a reasonably good turnout, 2 sopranos, 4 altos and at the back driving the whole thing forward, the 3 tenors, you can tell  I’m one of the tenor players can’t you, along with PeeDee and Graham. Kate decided ABBA might be worth a go but was a little unsure how we would take it so tentatively offered round the music.I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that playing the tenor in SaxPak is harder than I had initially expected. Because we have no baritone player the tenors provide all of the bottom end and if it’s a little flaky it stands out. There were a few humorous moments when a noticeable hole appeared, apparently the tenors were the only ones playing in that bar so if, as had happened, they'd fallen by the way side it was a little empty. To be fair we were sight reading the whole time and it was new music.The Swing Band was good fun and the room was interestingly arranged this time with the four piece rhythm section facing the rest of us sax and brass players, normally they are behind us but I rather enjoyed getting the full blast this time. Jo is bringing in a few new arrangements each week and tonight we had ‘Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars’ and ‘Stompin’ At The Savoy’. Jo thought ‘Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars’ would be good to do after our success with ‘The Girl from Ipanema’. After a few initial teething problems with the beginning we were off, and I’m always amazed at how the lead players can just play new material as though they’d always been playing it, one day I hope to be able to pull that off.The swing band is doing me good I’m sure, I’ve started to count out of necessity, as there is nothing more embarrassing than jumping back in a bar early when the trumpet solo is still going on. The first couple of times I relied on the visual clues of the players getting ready to come back in but it’s not a fail safe system.I can’t remember which tune it was but we had just got to the bit where it was opened up for solos and Jo was looking round to see who the next taker was going to be, I was appreciating the tenor solo and then looked up only to catch Jo’s eye, so I quickly looked back to my music not wanting to give any indication that I was looking to do a solo.At the end of the two and a quarter hours of playing I’m pretty sax-ed out and usually buzzing a bit from the feeling of being part of a band and making lot of noise!</blockquote>