This post must be about practicing. I could never really get the hang of practicing.

Sure, I did all my major and minor scales and thirds in college and memorized a few solo tunes for gigs, but I never got in the groove.

Enter a few weeks ago. I was trying to figure out what the fingerings were for contrabass clarinet altissimo register, of all things. I was “recruited” to play in a local clarinet choir, and somehow wound up on contra. The C key has no vent hole like a normal bass clarinet, so I’m not sure how to play above C.

While searching for answers, I stumbled on an advert for (the rather cumbersomely named) Lightning-Fast and Crystal-Clean Saxophone Playing. There was a pretty impressive video of Adam Larson, but what immediately struck me was how detailed the instructions were. This wasn’t the typical book of exercises with some fuzzy hand-waviness on how to break it down and approach the entire project. Instead, there’s a clear progression of exactly what to do and when, and no real decisions to get hung up on.

Specifically, the progress tracking chart immediately resonated with me — I could suddenly see myself working through these a little bit each day.

I figure this way: without any gigs, I won’t be reinforcing any bad technique, so this is an especially effective way to work on good technique. Not needing to pack up my horn, I can leave it out ready for practicing whenever I feel like. Seemed easy to get in 20 minutes whenever I have a break.

That brings me to this post, I figured it would be fun to write a review of this, but had nowhere to write it. On top of that, I could log my progress, and maybe some help some people that were kind of stuck in a rut, like me.

I forked out the $75 and started immediately. That was three weeks ago, January 5th.

So, stay tuned! Though a few weeks late, I’ve kept lots of notes on how things are going.