Fourth of January

Well, it's the first full week of the new year so, as I resolved, I'm back into the practice.
After not having touched my sax for weeks, which I don't really have any excuse for except I wanted a break, it felt pretty damn good to be playing again. Even if all I did was a bunch of long tones and some articulation work.
I'm breaking my practice up into 48 minute blocks with a 12 minute break in between. I'm not sure if this is the best amount of time but I figure it's worth a try and I'll change it if it's not working.

Now I said I was going to do one hours practice every day for the first week but since I'm only doing 48 minutes out of the hour that's not exactly true. The plan is, once I get to multiple hours, to do the saxophone practice, with breaks, then afterwards do ear training, and rhythmic exercises for the time taken up by the breaks. So today I did 48 minutes of sax prax before moving on to 12 minutes of ear training.

Now... Down to what I worked on today. Like I said it was all long tones and articulation, in this case tonguing, and 48 minutes of that is quite enough.
Long tones are interesting. Any type of practice is better if you're really focused on what you're doing, regardless of weather it's taking basic digital patterns around a cycle or, say, learning a full on big band chart.
But long tones... If you're not paying attention then you might as well just sit down and stare at a wall. Listening to yourself playing an A over and over again before moving on to an Ab might not be all that exciting a prospect but if I closely listen I get to hear things that I just don't have time to pick up, at least consciously, when I'm playing a tune or a taking a lick around through the extended diatonic cycle.
The saxophone tone seems to me to be made up of three distinct sounds. You have what I think of as the core sound, which is just a rather bland sounding note, then you have that saxophone buzz which sounds like anything from an angry bumble bee, low notes, through a frustrated blow fly, midrange, on up to a particularly blood thirsty mosquito when you hit the top of the horn. The third sound,which is one I can only pick out clearly on a few notes, are the harmonics above the fundamental.

My understanding is that the differences in tone between sax players depends on these three sounds and how strong or subdued they are. I would love to have recordings of say Kenny Garret or Art Pepper playing long tones just so I could listen for, and hopefully hear, all the subtleties that make up their very different tones.
Maybe if my ears get better I'll be able to pick it out of their recordings.

Anyway, now that I've gone off on a tangent I should really look at what I'm trying to do with my long tone practice. The two things I want to do are a: get a much bigger, fatter, tone and b: work on my tuning.
My tone has always been a weak point and although that's largely to do with air speed I want to make sure that I'm aware of what is happening to my sound as it develops so I need to make sure I'm not just putting more air through without listening closely to what's coming out. I doubt I can have all that much concious control over my tone but if I have an idea of what I want and am listening for it hopefully it will come.
As far as tuning goes it's the same old story. Listen, listen and listen. I'm going to do some work with a tuning CD although I didn't get to that today.

In non-music related practice I'm trying to learn how to juggle four balls with the aim of working up to five at some point. I did a bit of practice at this as well today so yay.