I know the question that has been burning within you: what has Bob been practicing lately? No use trying to keep it from me. Your curiosity is eating at you.\r\n\r\nSo, generous soul that I am, I”m going to give you an exercise I”ve been toying with. No great secret, just a fun little chops-builder that I like because of its ready applicability to improvisation. It”s a simple, three-tone interval study. Picture a measure in 2/4 time with four eighth notes barred together as follows: root, major third, lowered third, root (i.e. C, E, Eb, C; Db, F, E*, Db; D, F#, F, D…and so forth).\r\n\r\nTake this little four-note cell up and down the chromatic scale. Then, as I”ve been doing lately, take it up by whole steps, starting, for instance, on Db, then, Eb, F, G…all the way up through the range of your horn, then back down in reverse order.\r\n\r\nWork the cell through the intervals of a fully diminished seventh chord and you”ll gain a nice tool to use in dominant seventh flat nine situations. This approach incorporates all the notes in the diminished scale.\r\n\r\nMove the cell roots by major thirds and you”ll have an exotic approach that sounds cool in a number of applications, though you”ll want to handle certain non-harmonic tones with care. That”s because you”re outlining the augmented scale, which is a man without a country, harmonically speaking. So you want to be careful to recognize the tension inherent in certain notes in respect to the chord you”re using it with. For instance, here is the pattern starting on C: C, E, Eb, C; E, G#, G, E; Ab(G#), C, B, Ab…all the way up, then all the way back down. You can use this with a C7b9 quite nicely–but watch the B. It”s a raised seventh, which is fine as an upper neighbor or a passing tone, but don”t stress it unless you intend to clash with the lowered seventh of the dominant chord.\r\n\r\nObviously, you can move this cell through other root movements as well. You can also expand it. Instead of going up a major third from the root and then dropping a half-step, go up a fourth and drop a half step (i.e. C, F, E, C), or go up a diminished fifth (C, F#, F, C).\r\n\r\nThis exercise becomes fun when you allow yourself to get into “the zone” of repetition, repetition, repetition. Play it over and over and over. Drive the neighbors crazy. That”s how it”s done. Make sure to focus on smoothing out awkward fingerings.\r\n\r\nHave fun…and keep practicing.\r\n______________________________\r\n* For you theoreticians: I”m choosing commonly recognized note names over theoretical correctness and consistency. There are pros and cons to either approach; in this case, I”m choosing simple, easy note identification. It”s easier to think of dropping down from F to E than from F to Fb, and in terms of fingering and technique, the result is the same.

It was the closest I”ve been to a tornado, and it was close enough. Writing now, over a month later, the experience is ancient history, but it”s worth relating even if I”m just getting around to it.\r\n\r\nI was chasing storms in Kansas on Thursday, May 22, with Bill and Tom Oosterbaan and Jason Harris. We had already intercepted our first tornadic storm of the day, watching from a distance as a beautiful multi-vortex tornado square danced with itself across the prairie. We lost that storm to one of the notorious clay roads of west Kansas, which in my opinion are worse than ice when they”re wet. By the time we caught back up with the supercell, it had gone high precipitation. We briefly viewed a large tornado approaching the west side of Oberlin, but abandoned it when wrapping rain obscured visibility and made chasing too dangerous.\r\n\r\nHeading north and then east, we targeted a second storm that was advancing from the south. Dropping down toward it, we found ourselves on a collision course with a large and intense area of radar-indicated rotation. At the very least, this storm had a strong mesocyclone, and we were heading directly for it. Our plan was to make it ahead of the storm to highway 36, a paved and dependable east-west route, but it looked to be a close shave. We were tearing along, but so was the storm, and unlike us, it wasn”t constrained by unpredictable road surfaces.\r\n\r\nWe did beat the storm to the intersection, thankfully, and headed east a little way, then stopped to get a good look. The supercell was morphing into another HP beast, but at this point, we could still make out features. Off in the distance, I spotted a small tube, and pointed it out to the guys. We watched it dance, dwindle, and dissipate–and then we spotted the real action. It was much closer: an enormous tornado, less than a mile distant, partly concealed by rain and advancing directly toward us.\r\n\r\nRetreating to the east a quarter mile or so, out of the danger zone, we watched as the condensation wedge lifted. I could now see underneath the circulation, but I felt certain it was still tornadic. Suddenly a funnel materialized on the right side of the rotating mass, broadening rapidly like a black ghost billowing up out of the prairie, and morphed into a massive cone.\r\n\r\n

(Photo courtesy of Jason Harris)\r\n\r\nI”ve read plenty of descriptions of tornado sounds, both by ordinary people caught in a tornado”s path and by fellow storm chasers. In a thread on Stormtrack several months ago, many chasers–some of whom had experienced very close encounters–agreed that they often had heard no sound at all. From a whisper to a roar and all points between: tornado noise likely depends on a number of things, ranging from location relative to the tornado, to surface features the winds are interacting with, and no doubt to other factors I”m unaware of.\r\n\r\nThis tornado was silent as it advanced. No roar, no freight train noise, no waterfall sound, nothing other than the hiss of inflow winds around us rushing over the prairie grass.\r\n\r\nBut as the funnel crossed the road within a quarter-mile from us, moving at a rapid clip, suddenly the sound came–a massive WHHOOOOOSSSSHHHHHHH!!!!! Then the rear flank downdraft hit, along with drenching rain wrapping into the circulation and cloaking the tornado from view.\r\n\r\nWe headed east through the wind and wet, gabbling excitedly, working off the adrenaline and feeling a certain sense of disbelief. It had been a close encounter. A good number of chasers have been closer to a tornado, but we were close enough to satisfy me. I wouldn”t have wanted to be any closer–at least, not in a high-precipitation supercell where more may be happening with the parent circulation than readily meets the eye.\r\n\r\nAll in all, an amazing experience. Can”t wait to do it again.

Do I have to learn all twelve keys on my saxophone?”\r\n\r\nGood question, young ”un. Here”s a good answer: yes.\r\n\r\nTrue, most jazz is played in a relative handful of keys. But modulations can take you all over the musical map, and there are plenty of tunes written in keys that just might not put a smile on your face. If you plan on playing in any kind of a situation involving guitars as the lead instrument–and, trust me, you will, whether it”s a blues band or a church worship team–you”d better be on friendly terms with the concert keys of E, A, and D.\r\n\r\nBut while mastering all twelve keys can admittedly be a pain in the keister at first, once you build up enough familiarity with the different keys to the point where your learning curve starts to snowball, you”ll find that you actually enjoy the challenge.\r\n\r\nBy “mastering,” I don”t mean just acquiring enough technical proficiency to play intervals and arpeggios up and down a given scale (although that”s a part of it). I mean being able to play real music as an improviser in any key, and to connect different key centers to each other creatively and convincingly.\r\n\r\nThat”s a tall order, and it doesn”t come overnight. After forty years of playing, I”m still not where I”d like to be in my command of every key. However, I have learned some approaches that can make learning effective and fun. Here are a few tips:\r\n\r\n1. Practice dominant patterns around the circle of fifths. Getting a few V7s under your fingertips will not only foster your ability to smoothly connect one key to the next, but it will also open your ears to hear the movement of chord tones, such as the seventh of one dominant resolving downward to the third of the next.\r\n\r\n2. Mix it up. Work a pattern or two through all twelve keys, but then pick one key and saturate yourself in it. Run a few licks through it till they lay easily under your fingers. Transpose part or all of a favorite solo into that key, and get it down cold. Woodshed the blues in your key of focus, paying particular attention to accidentals and borrowed chords.\r\n\r\n3. Or pick a tone center, such as F#, and run your major scale, Dorian mode, mixolydian mode, melodic minor scale, diminished scales, and altered scales off of it.\r\n\r\n4. Learn tunes that are written in less common keys. “Wave” by Carlos Jobim, normally played in concert D, is a good example. Or transpose a few tunes to different keys. Start with a simple tune, such as “Cherokee.” After a while, you may want to try more complex numbers. I once spent a few months taking “Donna Lee” through all twelve keys. I couldn”t do that now, but there was a time when I owned that tune in every key.\r\n\r\nThe point is to combine both the shotgun approach–doing exercises that take you rapidly through all twelve keys so you become comfortable with voice leading and rapid key shifts–with the saturation approach, so you increase your ability to connect your inner ear with the technical demands and “finger feel” of a given key.\r\n\r\nSo…you”ve learned the first thirty-two bars of “Anthropology” in the standard concert key of Bb. Very cool. Now why not try transferring it to concert A? Go ahead, give it a shot–just the first eight bars to start with. You”ll be surprised at what a difference it makes in unlocking your chops. And what”s really interesting, not to mention rewarding, is the way in which hammering out a key you”re not familiar with bleeds over into other keys. Your playing can”t help but improve.\r\n\r\nStop thinking of some keys as easy and others as hard. The “hard” keys aren”t hard–they”re just less familiar to you. And you can change that. Use your creativity. Tinker. Experiment. Listen analytically. Practice the demanding stuff–but don”t forget to just lighten up and jam.\r\n\r\nDo you really need to practice all twelve keys? If you”re serious about excelling at jazz, absolutely. But there are ways to enhance your learning and have fun in the bargain. So quit dodging the inevitable and get down to it today. The sooner you start, the sooner you”ll start reaping results you”re going to love.

Yesterday, as is my wont from time to time, I drove out to one of my favorite small, nearby towns. With the price of gas what it is these days, Portland lies on the outer fringe of my comfort zone. It”s a pleasant place to visit, albeit sparingly. I love to go there, park my car by the linear park, and practice my saxophone by the riverside, letting the sound bounce off the buildings on the far bank.\r\n\r\nOn this occasion, storms had been working their way across Michigan. Most of them had passed on to the east, but one low-topped straggler snuck up behind me, pushing up into the crisp blue sky and spreading a small but beautiful anvil downwind. Photographs were required. No need to write many words when image and color can tell the story much better.\r\n\r\n

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Heading north out of Dighton, Kansas, on Friday, May 23, we pulled aside to see what was happening with the wall cloud we had first encountered on the west side of that town. Though rotating rapidly, the cloud had moved very slowly, taking an almost stationary position for quite a while. But evidently the steering winds finally grabbed hold of it, because it suddenly decided to pack up its bags and head north at a pretty good clip. We skedaddled out of Dighton and took off after it.\r\n\r\nWhile it was hard to tell at the time, from the following video it appears that the wall cloud may have put down a tornado that rapidly wedged out. This checks out with another video I”ve seen on YouTube of a wedge near Dighton that same day, which most certainly was the same storm from a different angle.\r\n\r\nAt any rate, while you can see the rapid cloud motion on the outskirts of the mesocyclone and a suspicious, rain-wrapped lowering to the left of the screen, keep your eyes on the center. A sudden, nearby spin-up surprised the bejeebers out of us by blowing the roof off a small building roughly 150 yards away. I got video of it, but so did fellow chaser Mike Kovalchick, and I like his better. Check it out. We were in the white Suburban. That”s Bill in the baseball cap.

A couple years ago, I was in the thick of practicing my horn daily. Then life hit, and hit hard. I lost a close relationship, and in the process of grieving that loss, I lost all interest in the horn for quite a while. Then, while still climbing up out of that valley, my job of fourteen years as the copy manager for a Christian publishing house got lopped in a restructuring. The company played fairly toward me with a gracious severance, but still, it was another significant loss. The older I get, the more the losses accumulate, and in the face of them, sometimes the last thing I feel like doing is playing my horn.\r\n\r\nThe plain truth is, there”s a lot more to life besides playing the saxophone. And yet, I was made to play the sax. It”s a passion, and more than a passion–it”s a gift from God. No matter what gets thrown my way, sooner or later I always seem to come back to the horn. Not that I”ve ever gotten totally away from it. There”s an ebb and flow to practicing for me that corresponds to patterns in life, but I”ve always at least played in church and kept my chops in basic working order. However, reestablishing a diligent practice routine takes effort. Licks and scale patterns that once were second nature may still be there, but they lose their quicksilver fluidity without consistent maintenance. You just don”t hop back on board a Bb diminished whole tone scale the way you do a bicycle.\r\n\r\nStill, the good news is, the chops do come back. I suppose, once you”ve laid their original foundation, you”ve got something you can return to that you didn”t have when you first started. The fingers don”t need so much to be re-taught as reminded of what they already know. The brain rapidly responds to a few ii-V-I”s in all twelve keys, and to dominant patterns around the circle of fifths. It”s fun. The challenge is, life is still life, and these days, it has a lot of demands. Sometimes those demands can be exhausting. Another day can escape me before it seems like it has even started, and I realize–as I do right now–that I haven”t practiced. That”s the tough part: carving out time for my instrument. It”s important that I do so. And I want to do so.\r\n\r\nI guess that”s one of the things that makes me, or anyone, a musician: the desire to keep at it. Sometimes the desire goes underground for a season, and that”s not always a bad thing. There have been times when I have purposely taken a “music fast,” setting aside my horn to remind myself that Jesus, not my saxophone, is the one I serve. Other times, when I”m down, I simply don”t have the heart to practice. But I always come back to the horn.\r\n\r\nLast spring, I attended my friend and fellow storm chaser Kurt Hulst”s wedding down in Louisiana. At the time, I was really feeling grief-stricken over the lost friendship I mentioned earlier. I had hardly touched my horn in quite a while; I just didn”t have the heart for it.\r\n\r\nBut Kurt and Abbie had asked me to play for their first dance, and of course I said I would. When the time came, I took the stage and played an acapella ballad for the newlyweds while the jazz quartet took a breather. After hearing me play, the band leader–a sax man from New Orleans–invited me to sit in with them. I was a bit hesitant, knowing how rusty I was, but I accepted his gracious invitation. And I surprised myself.\r\n\r\nI can”t tell you how good it felt, after having not played jazz for so long a stretch, to play it once again. The music was still there, and releasing it was like coming alive. The band moved from a blues to Rhythm changes, and those were there, too. The band leader and I traded fours in a brief and enjoyable tenor-alto battle…and on it went for the rest of the set, and part of the next. We cooked.\r\n\r\nThat afternoon with the band was a gift, and the frank approval of those Louisiana musicians was much-needed affirmation. Afterwards, I realized how badly I had needed it all.\r\n\r\nThis coming weekend, I”m playing with two different groups at the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts. Am I preparing myself? You bet. I want to be at my peak when I do one of the things I love best: play my sax. And I will be. I”m working those patterns, those altered scales and arpeggios so they”ll fly off the buttons when I need them.\r\n\r\nSoooo…Friday I hope to chase storms, then Saturday and Sunday I play at the Festival. I can”t imagine a better way to spend the first weekend in June. And if you”ve got the jazz in you, you know what I”m talkin” about.