How are you getting on with the bass clarinet?
Jimmy, to tell the truth I was digging it and then took a few days off to play alto and tenor and when I went back to the BC I had problems with my finger memory that made me put it back on the stand. What I mean is that I have no finger memory yet for the BC because my fingers are very strongly stuck in Sax Mode. I was hoping I could adapt, but hey after only knowing a sax keyboard for 57 years it's a hard habit to break I guess. I was hoping that trying to learn it as an older....much older adult....read geezer....I could get it but it's proving to be more difficult than I thought.
There is a disparity between just free playing the thing and improvising as I can by ear and digging the music I am able to make for the fun of it and actually trying to learn it by the standard method of reading and playing from pages with dots. When I do the former it is fun. With the latter it becomes like being 11 again and feeling tortured by the chart and the instrument not coinciding in my body. What seems to be going on when I focus on the dots their layout on paper doesn't click with the mind/finger connection. I do know in my mind that RH3 is G etc, but then if I go to the next register I have to remember that I am now up a 5th and playing a layout like the sax again, unil I go up another register when it's another 5th above etc etc......That's even assuming I can voice those higher register notes and not have the goose come out and honk like on my own personal gong show.
The Other difficulty is that the pinky levers (I won't dignify them by calling them keys, because they are not) are a minefield waiting to honk if I mi**** the wrong one (the LH ones when your right hand i123 are not engaged). Given that there are more of them and they are not on any kind of logical table like on a sax and some of them are alternates stuck here and there in the bushes, I have to keep discovering them and remembering which ones they are. So trying to play songs I started getting bogged down (especially if the chart went below Eb which is the lowest note on my BC) just finding the notes on the horn that matched the chart. Too slow going and my brain overloaded that day.
So I began playing sax a lot, fell in love with my alto again because I have a new wonderful mpc for it. I began playing my Sop tons because I got a great Morgan Classic mpc for it and of course my Comm III tenor is always a joy. So I guess what it is that I felt like I was being rebuffed by the new love and went back to long time steadies who love me no matter what, and I them.
As typical of me, a long answer for a simple quetion.
I hope you are well and staying safe and having a good winter/fall/spring or whichever it chooses to be today. Here it's almost the end of November and I'm still wearing shorts and a tee.
