I remember the day in the sixth grade when the band teacher from the junior high school came to our elementary school and assigned instruments: I was rocked to find out I got to learn to play the alto saxophone. I don’t know how I landed it. It was the coveted beast of the band, and I had rolled a Natural 20.
That was, hot damn! Forty years ago!
I still have my original saxophone. It’s not a high quality instrument by any means, a simple student model Yamaha, but its my first and only. I’ve replaced the corks over the years and bought a new mouthpiece (apparently they go sour, who knew?) and it has (sadly) sat in a corner in the house idle for a very long time: decades.
I tell people in my orchestra (where I play the violin) that the saxophone was a stepping stone for my amateur musical career: I could read treble clef so I only needed to learn the instrument when I took up violin at forty, not learn to read music, too.
It’s mostly the truth.
As it was my experiences during that era—in band and junior high school and keeping up with the practice required and a long list of other tween drama—soured me long before my mouthpiece went bad. It was a kind of low grade creative trauma and avoidance, and the thought of performing as a saxophonist has left me thinking I must harbour some residual subconscious vibes of aversion and recoil.
Even so, something compelled me the other day to pull the saxophone out of its case and ensure it was still playable.
It needed a new neck strap, but otherwise (and to my surprise) together we could still make a few reasonable tunes emerge from this brass-hued beast.
I don’t think I’m getting the band back together, but maybe I’ll keep a reed at the ready in case I decide to jazz up some musical therapy in my basement.
Terms FROm this POSt
- amateur
- How does one know when one is no longer an amateur? Strictly speaking, once one is paid for work, sure, they can use the label professional to differentiate themselves along that axis of skill. But on another axis, the beginner through expert and elite levels, there is a big swath of territory where someone can have many and probably enough skills to be adequately proficient at a thing while still having a multitude of learnings to overcome.
- career
- I willingly stepped away from a comfortable job in 2023 to pursue something with more meaning and purpose. We live in a society that values productivity above many other things, so questioning career (that pursuit of productivity perfection and identity) is a challenging thing. I write a lot about careers and career change because it is a defining part of what I am.
- violin
- I write here quite a lot about the violin. It is exactly what you think: that four stringed wooden instrument with the distinctive curved body shape. Played well it is tuned to the range of the human voice, so it often haunts our hearts and reminds us of singing. I have been playing since 2016 when I took it up as an adult student, but one who could already read music. I can play, but the quality to which I aspire is something I will work on for the rest of my life.
