Welcome back to another WXAV podcast, another one in the series for this little WXAV, St. Xavier Music Department, little crossover special, we got going. So right now I am joined by my good pal Adam. Adam, how are you?
Hey, it's nice to meet you guys. I just introduced him. Adam, let's get this show started. Oh, yeah, definitely.
Thank you. Thank you for being here, my dude. Right off the bat for people that don't know. What do you play in Jasmine?
I play Alto, saxophone. Jasmine. How long have you been playing saxophone? I started playing saxophone in eighth grade.
I actually started on clarinet earlier in like fifth grade and I absolutely just hated it. I was like, this is horrible, you know? Yeah, then once I switched in eighth grade I started really enjoying a lot more. So it works out and I'll be able to play college and everything too.
Yeah, yeah. Very cool. How long have you been playing Jasmine? In high school, my freshman year, my dad was like, you should do, you know, Jasmine.
He was the one who actually did saxophone and ended up enjoying it. He was like, you should do Jasmine. I just really feel like you don't like this. And I was like, no, like the less I do band the better because it's like a lot of work.
Yeah. And so I didn't do it my freshman year. My sophomore year. So that was the first year I did it and I loved it a lot.
I really liked just sewing, like improvised especially because I feel like that's when you can really just like, just like see what like makes up a player and they just like can do like whatever they want. They're just like on restraint about their written music. Before this assignment, have you ever written any type of music? This is the most legitimate music I've ever written.
Me and my siblings actually all play instruments. My brother plays drums and my sister plays anything she can get her hands on, but mostly violin. Okay. And so I don't know if you've ever seen the show Gravity Falls.
Yes. So my siblings were like, I was like, would you guys want to play like the theme song for that? And they were like, yeah. So I wrote out the parts for it.
And so we all played that. So that was like a little like thing that worked out. But yeah, this piece is the first legitimate thing that I've ever written. Okay.
Rookle. And we are going to play a little bit of your piece and it is called Chambers. Adam, how about you tell me how you kind of came up with that main melody? The time that I wrote this, I was just, I was mad obsessed with John Colestrian.
Okay. And the piece that I wrote out Chambers is actually a contract of Mr. P.C. And what a contract is is it just means the chords in the background, the same and you just make a new melody for it.
That's actually where the name comes from to Chambers is Mr. P.C. Some people think that stands for politically correct, but it actually was dedicated to Paul Chambers. That's the name P.C.
Which is why I named it at Chambers because the original song was dedicated to him. Yeah. So I was just obsessed with Colestrian at the time. Like, I would just like wake up and get like excited to like drive school.
Just like listen to like blue train, giant steps. Those are probably two favorite albums from him. And the melody itself, it's actually played by Colestrian in his solo. I'm on Mr.
P.C. Like you can hear it. And so when I heard that, I was really just like, I feel like that idea is like so strong, like it could be its own song, you know. I just, I really wanted to experiment with like seeing you know, is that is that a possibility and stuff.
And so that's why I ended up arranging Chambers was so that we could do just that, test that idea as a melody and would that work. It would pull through great in my opinion. In fact, I actually almost like that more than the main melody of Mr. P.C.
So I'm in no way like saying like, oh, this is my song. And I mean, it's really, I just arranged it realistically, but it's all culture and ideas. Yeah. And yeah, you can like hear his ideas in my solo.
It's actually kind of funny. Okay. How do you think the feeling the studio was for you? Oh my gosh.
The studio was actually really amazing. I'm actually not even in the jazz combo this semester because I'm just scheduling and everything. I tried to focus on my classes, but I have to say that is the one thing that I'm really upset about. I'm really upset about this because I really like the difficulty studio is really cool.
So you, I mean, I'll just give you a little walkthrough, but it was like for me, I stepped in and there's like, just, it had such a chill vibe. I was just like couches everywhere, you know, people lay down. It was like video games. There was like a, one of those, what's the machine called where you shoot the ball off in the thing.
Five minutes of struggling to remember what the game was. Adam and I googled it and finally came up with our answer. All right. I think we need to accept the laws on this one.
Pinball pinball? Yeah. We said eight ball. We said ping pong pinball.
Yeah, pinball. Those are the. You know what that does sound right. That does sound right.
That does sound right. The ball is the ball. All right. All right.
Well, all right. There was a pinball machine there, you know, and since those are both combos there, actually, you know, I got to play a lot of pinball. I also fell asleep on one of the couches, you know, it was a good time. But then when you go into the actual recording room, I actually have pictures of it.
It's so cool. It's a huge board with all the different sound effects and stuff. And then the other room, they have all the players and they have like their mics adjusted and everything. That sounds really comfortable.
You can adjust the other players, you know, too. If I were to be like, you know, screw Louise, I don't want to hear him. I could have like shut it off. So I wouldn't hear him, but I hear everyone else.
So that was pretty cool too. So it sounds like the studio experience was real cool for you. It was great. I know I keep saying it was great, but like I can't, I can't understand how awesome it was.
Yeah. Or overstate. Yeah. Whatever the word.
How do you feel like you picked solos for your piece?