This last week I was so preoccupied with chasing storms that I hardly blogged at all. When I did, naturally it was about weather. Jazz, music, and the saxophone have languished in the background, at least blogically speaking.

Not, however, in practice. When I headed out west for some dryline action, my horn went with me. It always does. My chase partners know that when I head for any chase over a day in duration, the sax is as much a part of my travel gear as my suitcase, laptop, and camera. Some folks toss a baseball or football while waiting for storm initiation; I practice my saxophone. Any time is a good time to get in a few licks.

I have several reasons for bringing my horn along on chases, all of them having to do with eventualities. The most likely scenario is, as I’ve just said, that I’ll get a chance to woodshed my instrument. Far less likely–but still, ya never know–is the possibility of winding up in some restaurant where a band is playing, and it’s the kind of band that makes me wish I could sit in for a tune or two. Like I said, unlikely; most Great Plains towns aren’t exactly jazz hotbeds. Still, as I learned back in the Boy Scouts, it pays to be prepared.

My main reason for taking my saxophone with me on storm chases, though, is because of a particular life goal of mine: I want to get a good photo, or maybe some video, or even both, of me jamming on my sax while a monster wedge churns away in the distance. For that matter, I’ll settle for just a nice, photogenic tornado of any shape or size. I just want some kind of visual record that captures the raison d’etre of Stormhorn and the essence of who I am as a storm chaser and jazz saxophonist.

Assuming that a storm is moving slowly enough to make a photo shoot practical, my preparations once towers start muscling up are:

* Rain-X windows

* Remove camera from case and make sure it’s ready for action

* Get tripod out of trunk

* Assemble saxophone

Just a handy checklist. Reasonable enough, wouldn’t you say?

So cross your fingers for me, or better still, pray. This season could be the one where I fulfill an ambition and get some very cool photos to show for it.

I’m a maniac, you say? Of course I am. A maniac is just someone with a different kind of dream.

It’s good to see the trains again.

As a jazz saxophonist who loves to practice his horn in his car parked by a set of railroad tracks out in the countryside, I noticed last year that something was missing. Used to be, I could count on seeing the distant semaphore light turn green and watching as a white pinpoint of headlamps miles down the tracks brightened, drawing closer until I could hear the rumble and then the roar of the locomotive and the clatter of freight cars rushing past. I enjoyed that experience at least once, and normally two or three times, during most practice sessions.

But as the bottom dropped out of the economy and Detroit’s auto industry languished, the giant spigots that sent the trains hurtling along the pipeline between Lansing and Grand Rapids closed to a trickle. Those hundred-car, three-locomotive strings I was so used to became, just like that, a thing of yesterday.

Until lately. It gives me much pleasure to say that the trains are returning.

I still don’t see them with the frequency I used to, but I am noticing that there are more of them, and they are growing longer. Two days ago, parked by the tracks in Alto, I paused in my practice to watch as a train boomed by in front of me…and kept on booming. It was one of those hundred-car affairs, just like in the good old days, which really aren’t old at all but certainly were enjoyable.

Now those days seem to be on the way back. It may be a modest return, but the spigots are reopening. It’s heartwarming to think, as I sit by my beloved tracks working out my saxophone chops, that I’m once again likely to hear the sound of another horn, far off in the distance and growing closer, and to feel the powerful, exhilarating, reassuring rhythm of a train rushing by.

As I’ve continued to spend time incorporating the augmented scale into my working vocabulary as a jazz saxophonist, I’ve made one recent discovery which simplifies its application, at least in part. It is this: the same augmented scale used with the tonic chord in a major key also works beautifully for the altered dominant.

For example, in the key of C, use the C augmented scale for both the tonic C Maj 7 and the G+7(b9, #9). Just keep in mind how you handle the root of the scale when the G dominant is sounding, same as you would do if you were playing a G Mixolydian mode.

The reason this same-scale approach works is because every augmented scale, being symmetrical by design, is actually three different scales spaced a major third apart, all sharing the same notes and interval relationships. The C augmented scale also functions as an E and an Ab augmented scale, and each version works nicely with an altered dominant seventh chord built on its leading tone. Thus the Ab augmented scale is the scale of choice for imposing the augmented sound on the altered G7 chord.

Try the above tip with a blues as well. It works fine, adding color and enough “wrong notes” to sound right, providing you bring the free-floating augmented sound back to earth by resolving it properly to a chord tone and maybe adding a nice, earthy dash of the blues scale.

If you have other ways in which you like to use the augmented scale, please drop a comment and share them. And check out my jazz page for more articles and transcriptions geared for the practicing jazz musician.

If you’re a budding jazz saxophonist, this post can make a huge difference in your playing. If you’re a seasoned player, you can probably skip it. Then again, you just might find it valuable, in the manner that hearing your mother’s voice in the back of your head asking you whether you’re eating your vegetables can be valuable.

Are you practicing your intervals?

They’re so good for you.

Oh, I know, you’d rather shove them aside and concentrate on the steak and potatoes of memorizing jazz licks and solo transcriptions. But if you want your instrumental technique to grow up big and strong, then don’t forget to sit down with your Larry Teal workbook, or whatever technique book you’re using, and invest some serious time memorizing and maintaining interval exercises along the chromatic scale. Seconds, thirds, fourths, all the way up to sevenths and even beyond…unless you plan to play nothing but scales in all your solos, all of the aforementioned are building blocks that you really need to get your arms around. So don’t ignore interval practice. Do it because you’ll acquire a greater command of your instrument, speed up your thinking, and enhance your creativity. Do it because your mother would want you to.

Increasing your dexterity is of course an important objective of interval exercises. But don’t make that your sole focus. As you practice, also think of application.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’re spending some time taking diads of a minor sixth up and down the chromatic scale. What are some practical uses of that interval that you’re likely to encounter?

For starters, you can use it to ascend from the third of a major triad to its root. Also, in an augmented triad, a minor sixth (or, enharmonically, an augmented fifth) is the distance both from the root to the raised fifth of the chord, and from the third to the root. With a V9, you can ascend from the root to the flatted thirteenth (aka flatted sixth) and resolve down a half-step to the fifth; or you can leap from the second to the flatted seventh.

And of course, the order of these upward leaps can be reversed. For instance, you can leap downward from the flat seventh to the second of the V9 chord, or from the root downward to the third.

The point is, while you’re practicing your intervals, exercise your mind along with your fingers by thinking of ways you’re actually going to apply all that fabulous technique you’re building. Engage your brain and ears as you’re doing the grunt work.

And with all that being said, sit down and git ‘er done. Practice, practice, practice. Make your mother proud.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of fronting my own jazz quartet for two consecutive days as a part of the Thornapple Jazz Festival. Now in its sixth year, the festival has begun to expand its reach beyond Hastings to other, outlying communities in Barry County. This year included Delton and Middleville.

Thus, on Friday the lads and I took the stage at the MidVilla Inn on M-37 just north of Middleville. The turnout was modest, but not at all bad for a small town that isn’t known as a hotbed of jazz. As for a rhythm section, I couldn’t have asked for better players. Ric Troll is one of the tastiest drummers and all-around musicians I know, with tremendous musical sensitivity. Dave DeVos is a seasoned and solid bassist who, like me, has a relentless thirst to grow in the mastery of his instrument. And keyboard man Paul Lesinski is nothing short of fabulous, a player of great inventiveness and the technical excellence to pull off anything his fertile mind conceives.

Together, these guys are my musical dream team. They made it easy for me to pull off my allotted two sets with the kind of energy and spontaneity that are the soul of jazz. If all it takes is one bad player to make a good band sound lame, it’s also true that a great band can boot a decent soloist up to the next level. It takes a certain baseline of aptitude and experience for that to happen, but once you achieve that level, then players the caliber of Ric, Dave, and Paul can lift you out of the ordinary and inspire you to stretch, to push beyond your normal, self-imposed limits and explore new musical territory. That, at least, has been my experience as a jazz saxophonist.

I was very pleased with our performance at the Mid Villa, and again Saturday night at the Waldorf in downtown Hastings. The Waldorf is one of my favorite restaurants, with out-of-this world cooking and absolutely stellar, award-winning microbrews, and I’ve wanted to bring a straight-ahead jazz combo there for a long time. Mike, the owner, finally booked my quartet for the dinner crowd from 6:30-8:30, and we got our chance.

Our song list ran the spectrum from bebop to ballads to Latin to jazz/rock, and included such tunes as “Anthropology,” “Footprints,” “Triste,” “Stolen Moments,” “Have You Met Miss Jones?” and “Song for My Father.” We even played one of my own originals, a Latin-flavored ballad that I wrote several years ago called “Tracy” in honor of a love lost but fondly remembered.

It was a joy to participate in the Sixth Annual Thornapple Jazz Festival, and an honor to be invited by the event’s driving force and musical manager, my friend Joe LaJoye. Joe, if you happen to read this post, thank you! The guys and I had a blast. Maybe next time around you’ll be able to take a breather from all the responsibilities of “makin’ it happen” long enough to sit in with your trumpet for a tune or two, eh?