Mark Maxwell, Saxophonist

Check out this very interesting interview with the great Frank Zappa:

The industry has changed forever, my friends. Frank Zappa saw it coming, knew it all along…

Question: How many sax players does it take to clean a saxophone?
Answer: Apparently at least one.

I bought a box of Q-tips today to clean my sax with (a various tedious job).

I have, officially, the grimiest saxophone in the world. I looked it up on Google. You do a search on “world’s grimiest sax,” you get markmaxwell.org. I looked it up in the Wikipedia. There’s an article about how dirty my sax is. Argh! I spend so much time outdoors in the dirt, wind, rain - this silver-plated sax collects specimens from all over America and saves them for future generations.

So I get layers of muck on top of the layers of tarnish crust. Mix that with all the spit that flies out of the horn while I blow my brains out. The sax is no longer silver, it’s taken on this weird shiny grayish brown patina.

Strangely, the sax ends up looking very soulful, very antique, and lots of people tell me how beautiful it is! Lots of people! But man, don’t look too close. I think I have a colony of ants living in the bell.

(Roberta has promised to help me take it apart and clean it when I get home. Next time you see me my Yamaha Custom YTS-875S Tenor Saxophone will be shining!)

If you’re a sax player, here’s my advice. Don’t play your sax. Don’t even take it out of the case. Take a picture of it, look at the picture often, but don’t actually put it together and blow into it. Get an Wind Synthesizer and find a good oboe patch.

Here’s where I’m goin’, Baby! On my way to Portland, actually, after driving through some heavy weather! Driving, driving, driving, But I’m very self-amusing: books on CD, XM radio, iTunes, listening to the latest versions of my newest tunes. I have fun. And I miss my wife.

I’m proud to present the first installment in the Song-A-Week campaign, my ambitious program to seed the planet with new music one song-a-week at a time.

This week’s song is called Frequency of Knowing. The title refers that vibration you tap into where you just know something. Its not an educated guess, not a sophisticated surmise. Its information downloaded to you from the Universe. You just know.

Note the use of the Morley Wah-Wah on the sax solo near the end.

Click the little blue arrow above to hear it, and to read more about Frequency Of Knowing, go here. Enjoy!

A great article today from David Hooper’s excellent blog MusicMarketing.com about time management. A subject close to my heart. A quote:

This is where goal setting helps us the most. We have to decide what is truly important in our lives. We have to choose what our most important goals are in the business, family, relationship, spiritual, and leisure areas of our lives. Once we have decided what our most important goals are in each area, we can then get on with the process of daily goal setting.

Our goal setting should include daily planning with an emphasis on only those things that we must get done that day. We should be careful to stick to our daily plan and not take on too much in one area. Taking on too much will only erode time from other important areas of our lives.

Seems I’m constantly challenged by time constraint: how to best use time for family, business, health, spirit…and still have massive amounts of time for composing and recording, not to mention practicing and performing.

Here’s another quote I like:

Another time waster is the TV. Turn it off for certain periods in the evening. Spend that time with those who are important to you or doing things you never seem to have time for.

I totally advocate turning off the TV. Even though I get sucked into it often enough, I rarely miss it I don’t get it.

For instance, right now. Here I am in my hotel room in Grant’s Pass, Oregon, on my way to Portland to do a 4 day show. It’s 11:30PM, and it’s the first time I’ve had all day to really get creative (I’ve got some new software - Reason - that I want to learn). I’m not complaining, mind you. Just pointing out: Life is a great balancing act, and the better your goals are defined and the more you review and update them, the more organized in managing your time.

Thanks for the reminder, David Hooper.