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Stephen Ashworth updated their profile

Jun 6, 2020

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About me:: I play a vintage silver C-melody tenor sax in a weekly jam session in an Oxford pub, and occasional gigs with other local musicians. My playing varies between mediochre and dreadful. Looking for inspiration to make progress ...

12 June 2009: new sax arrived. I now also play a brand new C-tenor made by Aquilasax. Trying to emulate Stan's smooth tone. Long way to go ...

15 Aug. 2010: playing improving after massive practising. I'll spend an hour playing a tune over and over again in one key after another until I've gone through all twelve, and am thoroughly confused. I think it's doing me good in the long run, but you have to concentrate like crazy!

Website:: http://www.astronist.co.uk/

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Comment Wall (3 comments)

At 9:01am on May 28, 2009, Bev Getz said…: Welcome to Stan's forum, Stephen! Looking forward to hearing some of your music, if you are inclined to post some!

Best,
Bev

At 12:13pm on May 28, 2009, Denis Ouellet said…: Hi Stephen, wonderful to meet you on the Stan Getz home forums.
Well I am not surprised to learn that Oxford has jazz friends.

Your query got me looking all over my fakebooks and unfortunately I could not find anything on the chord changes. Same thing for the composer.
On the Roost Quartets date from May 17 1950 the composer is listed as "Wood". From a radio broadcast from Birdland Nov 13 1952 "Getz" is listed as composer. Also from the Hi-Hat radio broadcast March 8 1953 "Getz-Loeb" is listed. So a I would say this is really confusing (-:
By the way right now listening to the version played at the Carnegie Hall concert in Nov 14 1952 and it is wonderful.

I will try to find more info. If I come up with something I will let you know.

Welcome
Denis

Sippin' At Bells

At 12:51pm on March 10, 2010, Stephen Ashworth said…: Thanks. Stressed and depressed. Very cold in Oxford (coldest UK winter for 20 years or so). Having watched James Cameron's movie "Avatar" (set on a planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri), am now spending too much time trying to design a better starship fuelled with antimatter. Suitable starship music: "To The Stars" (Chick Corea), and "The Crossing" (Brubeck). Stress carries over into jam session, where my playing is not great, but nobody seems to notice. Why is it that when one plays a great solo, nobody notices, and when one plays a complete load of rubbish, everyone says how good it was? They're just not listening, that's the problem. Well, at my level of playing, that's a huge benefit!

My thoughts about "Avatar" are at http://www.astronist.demon.co.uk/space-age/essays/Avatar-review.html, if that's of any interest! (No Getz connection here at all; sorry, Bev.)

I've just discovered the chord sequence which goes: 3, 6, 2, 5, 1 -- with the 3 and the 2 having flattened third, fifth and seventh, i.e. half diminished chords (I also call this the Tristan chord, as it comes right at the start of the Prelude to Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde"). This chord sequence comes in the song "Too Close For Comfort" (which I picked up from the Getz CD "The Steamer"). Have been practising this, but it's too easy to get muddled up between one scale and another. The trouble is, they're all interchangeable -- that half diminished chord, for example, is actually identical with the basic major chord with the root note missed off, e.g. in C it would be E, G, Bb, D. Or you can think of it as a G minor triad which goes down to the sixth and uses the sixth as a root. Ditto, mutatis mutandis, in the other eleven keys. And then to play a scale, you've got to work out whether you have a normal or a flattened second, fourth etc. My head hurts!

Mit einem freundlichen Gruß aus Oxford.

Stephen