Sax

Gawd bless the internet and all who sail on her! Last time I (briefly) owned a sax I don’t think I even got a proper note out of it. I sold it to buy a motorbike. Priorities.

This time around, twenty years later, I have t’interweb! Straight on to YouTube where there are posts on how to wet and fit your reed, embouchure (how you hold your gob, if you’re not down with us saxophonists) and which buttons make which notes.

I was giving it all a go today. First impressions are: by god it’s loud! Obviously it’s a lot to take on board, and it’s really tricky, but not impossible. I was stringing together a couple of notes at a time and I’ve been practising fingering the sequence B,A,C,G,F# (never thought I’d get to use that on my keyboard) D, B (I think).

I’m loving it.

It’s been a splendid day off; Wendy’s mum and dad have been staying with us but they’ve buggered off to Wales for the weekend and it’s lovely to have the place to ourselves again. I had a good Taekwondo work-out this morning, sax in the afternoon, and chilled ‘twixt and ‘tween. Lovely.

I’m going to have to price up a soundproof mini-room tomorrow. Apparently making a big box lined with egg trays reduces the sound emissions to a whisper. (According to one source on the never-wrong internet.) I can get the requisite 140 foot square cardboard egg trays for about twenty three quid, but I will have to find the price for that much plywood/ hardboard and sixty four foot of 2"x2".

Really I suppose I should research further the efficacy of the proposed project before I commit to further spending.

I’ve re-applied to our local music shop to set up a starter of  four, hour long, lessons (after Wendy thoughtfully tidied the tutor’s name and ‘phone number into the bin).

They way I’m progressing I’ll probably have mastered it by then!

Anywho, just to say I love my sax!

I have a new obsession. In the old days that would have meant ‘flavour of the week’, but as the driving and martial arts have shown, I can stick at things now. OK, so the Russian has slid off the radar for the moment, but that is a lifetime’s commitment to learn (well, it is the way I go about it!). And it is just a whim. Hmm, better not go there with that argument, everything I do is on the basis of a whim or impractical desire. Some yuppie shop was flogging it’s elitist tat with the slogan ‘Desire, aspire, acquire’. That is how my life goes!

As I’ve said before my teen dreams were to be a black belt, play the tenor sax, and ride a really nice Harley chop. When the telly sells you these dreams they don’t mention the years of graft you have to put in to get them. Harley is pure cash, that isn’t quick or easy to come by (not legally, anyway) the black belt requires years of work, training your body to react without conscious volition in ways that are practically impossible for the untrained, and the sax is the work of an afternoon.

(I think there may be a bit more to it than that, actually.) You can see the Matrix’s  appeal, you want a skill set that requires years to learn, but can’t be arsed moving off your sofa? Just upload the programme and hey presto, "I know Kung Fu."

Reminds me of an advert where they were exhorting people to save, quoting a survey that said ‘**% of people wish they had saved’. Of course they do, so they could spend it now, but it was the spending it now, then, that means they didn’t save! Stupid bloody thing.

This is why I have issues with inane adverts and misleading ‘news’ reports. Back to me seeing further than other men, again. I refer to the quote that some Noble prize winner made ‘ If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants’. I prefer to think of it as ‘I have seen further than other men because I am surrounded by pygmies.’

Which is doubly negative, as it says I’m no great shakes, but the common herd is bovine. Contemptuous of self and society. I may adopt that as my motto! This is not to say the people I know are morons, but the people at which this stuff (against which I rail) is aimed must be. The Jeremy Kyle crew.

Well it’s getting on, and every word I type takes me further from Buddha, time for bed.

Buck.