Matt Traum: 0:02

Welcome to the Aerophone Academy podcast with me, Matt Traum.

Alistair Parnell: 0:06

And I'm Alistair Parnell. Join us each month as we discuss the wonderful world of wind controllers and you get the very best information and answers to your questions.

Matt Traum: 0:18

The Aerophone Academy podcast is the source for accurate information on wind controllers, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast.

Alistair Parnell: 0:26

And while you're at it, why not check out www. isax. academy?

Matt Traum: 0:32

and patchmanmusic. com.

Alistair Parnell: 0:35

Welcome back everyone to episode 15 of the Aerophone Academy podcast. Let's introduce our co-host, Matt Traum, over in the States. Hi, Matt, how are you doing this evening?

Matt Traum: 0:47

Doing well, Alistair, how are you?

Alistair Parnell: 0:49

Yeah, good. You know we've had a little bit of some hot weather over here just recently and you know us Brits are not used to it, so we start flagging a bit. I just did two concerts. They were the hottest concerts I've ever done and sweating terribly, so I'm quite pleased. Just today it's kind of backed off a little bit, so we're okay. What about you? Have you been warm over there?

Matt Traum: 1:11

Yeah, it's been a warm summer for us too. We've been up in the 90s quite a bit looking for a little relief.

Alistair Parnell: 1:17

Yeah, doing gigs and carrying in equipment and, oh dear yeah, it gets pretty warm.

Matt Traum: 1:22

So you had some hot music, but it wasn't that kind of hot music.

Alistair Parnell: 1:26

It was hot, hot, yeah, exactly. So no, but it's all been good. And stay tuned, because later in this episode we've going to address the subject of practice. We're going to talk about some general things about practice first, which I guess you could almost apply to any instrument or any level of player, and then we'll get on to some more specific things later on which are more kind of electronic wind based. So I know that, Matt, obviously you've come through a kind of music college for your like. Do you call it high school or whatever? You came through all of that right.

Matt Traum: 2:26

Well, yeah, high school would be 9th through 12th grade generally here, and then you go to college. You know university after 12th, right?

Alistair Parnell: 2:34

Yeah, I had a formal, but you majored in music, right, you still did.

Matt Traum: 2:39

I did in college. Yes, I majored in jazz performance and composition at Ohio State University here and played trumpet all the way through. Played some bass guitar in college to kind of help pay the bills. That was a good decision to teach myself how to play bass. And in high school, I think I mentioned in a previous episode that I played some trombone and euphonium. Yes, so yeah, and euphonium, yes.

Alistair Parnell: 3:02

So yeah. So, Matt, my first question to you is then were you, or do you recall ever being, if you like taught how to practice? I know when we have lessons, we're sort of told what we need to work on and hopefully, if you've got a good teacher, they'll also say you know well, this is how you can practice. But do you recall having very much specific input about how you can improve your own personal practice? Because I don't think I had a lot of that input really.

Matt Traum: 3:34

You know, I can't think of any either. It's been quite a few years since I've had any formal one-on-one teaching or teaching from a teacher. But yeah, I don't recall that as being a priority. It was always about here do this, learn how to do this and come back next week.

Alistair Parnell: 3:49

Yes, yes, and you're on your own, yeah. So I think I mean, obviously a lot of people can work it out, but I think there are some strategies that we can talk about a little bit to help people in that situation. Because, yeah, like I say, I say I think back to you know, I was at the Royal College of Music in London doing a saxophone as a first study, piano as a second study and, yeah, same thing. I was told to practice and you know work on this, but I don't actually recall being given an awful lot of advice on specific ways of how to practice. And I think perhaps maybe in the last 10, 15, 20 years, I think this is something that's been developed a little bit further now, and so we've got a little bit more advice and literature and things like applications we can use. So I think things are getting much better.

Alistair Parnell: 4:40

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Alistair Parnell: 5:08

There are 20 videos to help you learn every note on the instrument plus the alternatives, with detailed explanations and playing tips on how to get the best from each sound. There are sessions on improvisation and help with reading music. Downloadable PDFs and backing tracks for each lesson. Start playing great tunes from day one and see great results in just 90 days. Regular live webinars with me, alistair Parnell, to get your questions answered and join a whole community of players. Visit isaxacademy for more information. But for me, the starting place, matt, is you've got to want to practice.

Alistair Parnell: 5:55

Now I spend a lot of my time teaching and I have a lot of pupils who they enjoy playing their instrument and they enjoy playing the tunes and they might kind of play for their friends or play with some little band or whatever, and then I think they may well get to the stage where they're thinking, ok, well, you know, they start to say, oh, I wish I was a little bit better, they'd like to improve, but kind of what they really want to do is just play tunes. So I find the first obstacle is getting people to realise you know the benefits of practising and and move on if you're that sort of person I guess it's different between people, different between different ages, but do you have any experience of you know that kind of person who they've kind of got a little bit stuck. Maybe a certain level. They'd like to go further, but are they willing to put the time in to improve a bit more?

Matt Traum: 7:08

Yeah, I was just going to say that some people will say, oh, just playing, no matter what you're doing, is good. But then you get into a spot where you're kind of like yeah, like you're saying it's like how can I go to the next level? How do I take it to the next level? You know this is taking forever. I'm not progressing very quickly. You have to sit down and say, well, what is it that I need to improve on? You know, is it my, my speed? Is it my being able to play in all keys, or endurance, or whatever? So I guess you have to identify before you can even move on from there. You have to identify what are your weakest points and maybe hone in on that.

Alistair Parnell: 7:42

Yeah, and then I think you know one of the first starting places is thinking very much about you know, when are you going to practice? You need to think about a time in your day where you can set that aside, hopefully, or say, right by the end of the day, I'm definitely going to do a little bit of practice. I don't think it matters so much how long you practice, for I'd like to think for most people that when you get involved in practicing, sometimes it might be 10 minutes, sometimes it might be an hour and a half, two hours if you're enjoying it. So important to think about setting aside a time. And also, Matt, in terms of wind synthesizer, you know it's also important, isn't it, to get a space that you're happy to practice in and get your equipment set up nicely so you're ready to go. What do you think on that?

Matt Traum: 8:33

Yeah, that's a great thing to consider, because just the fact of having to set things up if you have a gig rig and you're taking it out and you have to bring it home and then set it up again with your home amplifier and in a situation in your practice room, that can be kind of a negative, that kind of puts you off. It's like, ah, just leave it, I don't want to, you know, take it out and hook it up and then Friday you have to pack it up again and put it in the car. So maybe you have a second rig or a like a smaller rig that you can practice on. Maybe that that will still accomplish what you're trying to accomplish, but maybe it's not your full blown. You know your whole system.

Alistair Parnell: 9:09

Yeah.

Matt Traum: 9:09

Just have something set up all the time that you can just leave there and then, when you have some time you can, you can go in and do some work.

Alistair Parnell: 9:15

Exactly. Yes, and that's probably really what I do in terms of cables and plugging in and this sort of thing. I try as much as possible to have two sets of everything, because one of the worst things you can do is if you're going to set up everything back at home and then you've got to remember to put everything away for the gig. I find it's much easier just to, you know, have a second copy of that cable so that you haven't got to remember all these things. You keep one set of stuff for the gigs and one set of stuff for being at home. I just find that a little bit more reliable.

Matt Traum: 9:49

Well, and that's the other thing is you have that risk of forgetting something at home. So you get that. Yes, I have that fear. It's like, oh my God, I left the power supply at home and now I can't play the gig, you know. So it's like, oh, I don't want to touch that, leave that rig in the corner there and that's what I pack into the car. And here's my setup in my little room here where I can just sit down and play, and I know that those are two separate things I don't have to worry about forgetting. That's like a nightmare for every musician that's playing live. I think.

Alistair Parnell: 10:17

Absolutely

Matt Traum: 10:18

Having a failure at the gig or forgetting something and I've done it before how about you? Do you have a horror story or two?

Alistair Parnell: 10:26

Yeah, but like you say, I mean you know I get so obsessive about driving two minutes up the road and then having to go into the boot of the car and check that. I did I put that cable back in, did I? You know it's just, yeah, it's not good. So definitely having your equipment set up and ready to go. Because one thing I really want to emphasise in this podcast is, you know, this thing about time Everybody gets short of time. Everybody's busy doing this. They've got families or whatever. So anything you can do where your time is going to be used, you know, to the best possible advantage, even if that's just five minutes. You know, if you're just waiting for dinner to cooke or something and you've just got five or ten minutes, you know, just go and play a couple of scales or something. Anything is better than nothing.

Alistair Parnell: 11:18

And you know, just recently I've been trying to get back into my running. You know, for a bit of fitness, trying to lose a little bit of weight again, and it's. You know, for a bit of fitness, trying to lose a little bit of weight again, and it's. You know, it's one of those things. It's a bit of a pain at first. It takes a little bit of sort of you know, really do. I want to do this again. Once you've got into the routine, you start to enjoy it. You realise what the benefits will bring, and it's so much fun. Realize what the benefits will bring, and it's so much fun. It only takes actually a few days, or even a week or two. Once you've set yourself up for practicing at a regular time, everything's ready to go. You really start to notice the difference, even if it's a short time in each session.

Matt Traum: 12:00

Yeah, you know, I have to say as we get started here that people think that even if you're at the level of a Michael Brecker or somebody like that, that they never practice. But this opposite is true. I heard that Michael Brecker, he would play for hours a day, absolutely.

Alistair Parnell: 12:18

Yes, yes.

Matt Traum: 12:19

Imagine that him thinking that he's not, you know, ready for a gig. Yes, oh man, yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 12:25

Yeah, because didn't they? I should know this information. Didn't somebody recently publish some of his practice notes?

Matt Traum: 12:33

Yeah, I know he had a whole notebook of little phrases that he would work on yes, I don't know come up with in his head, and then he would of course work them out in all the different keys.

Alistair Parnell: 12:50

Yeah, but yeah, I've seen that it's fascinating. I don't know if it's ever been published officially. Yeah, I think it might have by now. But yeah, you're absolutely right. You tend to think these great players, you know they've done it all. No, they haven't. They'll all tell you that they are practicing long hours because that's what it takes if you want to be at that kind of level. Ok, so yes, let's say we've sorted out. You know a good place to practice, you've got your equipment ready. If you need some sheet music, then you've got that ready, or an iPad or whatever you might use.

Alistair Parnell: 13:28

In terms of what I say to my students is you're not complete for practice unless you also have your metronome. Hopefully you have some kind of writing implement, either for your iPad or your sheet music. And also another quite handy thing is is having perhaps some kind of notebook. It actually works quite well to try and keep track of where you are, what you've practised and also what you might work on in the next practice. That's always a good thing to be proactive rather than reactive.

Alistair Parnell: 14:05

You know, often we start playing something and we just go through and think, oh, I had a glitch there. This didn't go so well. Okay, maybe, maybe I'll kind of work on that a little bit. It's much better, if you can, to keep a little note of where you are and next time you set up for practice you look at your note and you say, okay, well, last time I was working on this little section and let me do that same section again first. So being ready, prepared properly, notebook, definitely, metronome and some kind of writing implement I think that's an absolute must before you even start to play start to play yeah and um, to identify what you need to practice.

Matt Traum: 14:49

If it's, uh, maybe an octave break, if you're playing a wind controller, you're having that problem with going from you know b to c sharp or c to c sharp on a brass fingering uh, those are always difficult. The octave keys are probably the one thing that we can say on all wind controllers is the hardest thing to get over. So...

Alistair Parnell: 15:01

Absolutely

Matt Traum: 15:01

Probably the number one thing that people work on yes, but identifying what the problems are. If you're playing along and you're hearing this blip every time you play this phrase, it's like okay, I've got to figure out. Why is this blip happening? Why am I getting this note that I don't want? Yes, is it? Is it my? Is it my octave? Is my thumb moving too slowly or is it moving too quickly? Cause it's not coordinated with my right hand and you can slow down these things and just play it over and over again until you can figure out oh, it's my thumb, my thumb's too fast or my thumb's too slow, and you can figure out. Sometimes you have to slow it down or maybe record it.

Matt Traum: 15:41

Recently I was working on setting the de-glitch time on a wind controller and I was trying to figure out where should I put it, and I'm tweaking this and over and over again I would play this trill and see what setting would create the least amount of glitches. So it's a combination of practicing, but also your settings, and if you're changing your settings on your wind controller, that can completely change everything. Then, if you're changing the key deglitch time on a wind controller a lot of wind controllers have that now where you can set how long the delay is before it reads. Another fingering change yes, and if you change that, your entire technique could change. So that's a critical parameter. You really need to figure out exactly where you want to be with that and kind of set it and then forget it and then learn how to play with that setting.

Alistair Parnell: 16:30

Yeah, and likewise with the breath sensitivity. You know, that's all. That's always important to get set up first as well. But yes, Matt, I think what what you're saying is absolutely I agree with that. You know deciding what you want to play. The extra little step though perhaps might be if you write that down, it's almost like it's going to hold you to account a little bit more if you say, ok, this section here I'm not very clean on my octave changes. You know, if you kind of write that down, it's like you've got to pay for it. Then you've got to say, ok, next time I come back to practice, yes, I've written it down, so that's going to be important. I think that's something that I find is helpful.

Matt Traum: 17:20

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Matt Traum: 17:30

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Alistair Parnell: 18:36

So certainly you know this falls into my kind of category. I have this thing with all of my pupils. You know, I have the basic three, three words, which is you know when are you going to practice, what are you going to practice? And then, how are you going to practice? And we've already we've been through the, the, the, the, when you know you need to sort out a time.

Matt Traum: 19:03

And the where, too, you know you have a room set up.

Alistair Parnell: 19:06

And the where that's right. And then you know what are you going to practice and, like I just said, you know, writing something down, I think, holds you to account. I do think also, when we are practicing, it's very easy to start from the position of you know we're going to try and play a tune. A lot of people are, you know they're playing tunes maybe jazz standards or a pop tune or whatever and there's a tendency, I think, to want to practice very kind of, in a very linear way. They're going to start at the first bar and they're going to kind of can I get all the way through? This is one of the downsides I find of backing tracks.

Alistair Parnell: 19:49

Sometimes it's easy to put a backing track on and think, yeah, I'm going to play this all the way through, and of course it's beneficial getting used to practicing performing a piece all the way through, nevermind if you make a few glitches here and there. That's absolutely essential. But I think it's easy to then just keep doing that, just keep playing from the beginning to the end. And I know you brought this up in our notes, matt that you know it's very easy just to keep repeating things that we can do. We're a little bit more reluctant to practice things that we can't do.

Matt Traum: 20:29

Absolutely. I found you know you can identify where the problem is and I found like if you have a way to do some looping, that you can loop a section of maybe two bars you know where the problem is, and just loop that or four bars or whatever, instead of going through the whole song and hitting that spot every once, every minute. You can hit it every 10 seconds, yes, and just loop it and just get the mechanics of it down. I can say that can be really helpful. There's ways to do that. There's software, looping software that you can use. Also foot pedals and things, hardware type devices that can be really super useful for practicing that method.

Alistair Parnell: 21:09

Yes, there's a little app that I use quite often called AnyTune Pro. I think there are various ones that do the same thing. You can set a sort of A and a B point. You can slow the tune down if you want to. You know if you're transcribing it or something, and you just go over and over a section, which can be very useful.

Alistair Parnell: 21:28

But certainly, again, going back to this idea of separating out, you know some of those small sections and, like you say, matt, it could just be a bar, it might even be just four notes. You know, whatever it takes for just concentrating on those small areas, as everyone will tell us. You know, for practicing, it's all about speed. Speed is very often our enemy If we're trying to do things at the speed of, say, a backing track or we're just trying to. You know, we know, in the sound of, in our heads, this tune should go like this. Yes, eventually it's when we start off, it's being able to, in our heads, create a slower version of some of those elements of the tune and just work on them very carefully and very slowly.

Alistair Parnell: 22:19

Again, you'll see a lot of people. There's this Bob Reynolds. There's a fascinating bit. He's a saxophone player in States. Tenor player, excellent guy. There's a fascinating video of him on YouTube. He has his own YouTube channel and it's basically about 20 minutes long and he's just left his camera running and he films himself doing 20 minutes of practice and I think he's working on a section which is essentially five notes. There's a chain of five notes. It doesn't look particularly tricky, but he just goes over and over this in various ways and what he's done. Afterwards he's gone back over the video and kind of tried to notate onto the video what might have been going through his mind as he's been making these repetitions. It's quite a fascinating video to watch to see how one of the very best players goes through a little practice session like that and just how much time and detail goes into. It's just a five note little section and he so many approaches to it, different rhythms. He's thinking about his tone, he's thinking about pulse, he's playing it in different registers, all this sort of thing. Just on a very short phrase. It really is fascinating.

Matt Traum: 23:45

I'll have to check that out. That sounds great, yeah. So that comes up with another thing I've thought about a lot. It's practicing. I know you're saying to try things slow and then maybe work your way up. Of course that's great, you know figuring out proper fingerings and things. But then there's also the other side of it where if it's maybe a faster tempo piece and you have to really zip along on it and it's difficult to play it right at the high speed, to practice it at a higher speed than you're ever going to play it in a concert, miss the notes or flub the notes or skip notes. But if you can play it, you know, 10 faster than you'll ever need to play it, then that's also a valid practice technique as well. That I found. You know you just get it at a super fast speed and then the slower speed will seem easy.

Alistair Parnell: 24:34

Sure, sure.

Matt Traum: 24:35

So there's there's uh positives to both directions of changing the tempos

Alistair Parnell: 24:40

And then obviously there are, there are many, many ways of the sort of know, how are we going to improve those things? Things into a kind of the most basics, which for me there are basics. Like you know, we sometimes have to play loud and soft, high and low, smooth and detached. So they're all elements of the way we express our music. And also, you know, if we are looking at a piece of music, we do need to consider, of course you know, the style, the character, what we're trying to express with it.

Alistair Parnell: 25:33

And the other thing that strikes me quite often about the way we play a musical instrument, any hard passage, essentially, when you boil it down, everything boils down to exchanging from one note to another note. If we're talking about one octave, we have got 12 notes in an octave and that can go to any one of the other 12 notes. So they are kind of very basic combinations of things that we need to be able to familiarise ourselves with. And any hard passage, you know those are the elements that we need to be considering. So I think it's a case again of thinking about OK, I have a tune, I've got a tune, but let's just break things down into some of their more basic little steps so that we can really learn how to practice those.

Alistair Parnell: 26:28

Like you were saying about the problem with a wind synth, about you know octaves are going from C sharp to D or whatever. Are you really getting that cleanly? It's easy to play it several times right, and it's coming out with a jump in it and we kind of almost get used to hearing it like that. So we let it go and you're like, well, that's okay, because I always do it like that. Maybe it's not okay.

Matt Traum: 26:48

Yeah, yeah, just play that jump or a little four-note phrase over and over again and you'll hear that blip come in, probably 80% of the time. And it's like, why is that coming in? You just have to sit down and figure out there is a reason. And sit down and figure out there is a reason and once in a while it won't happen. So you know you can do it without the blip. But uh, figure out, you know, oh, it's my right hand index finger, that one is a little bit too slow. Or you know and make an adjustment and remember that that's that's like oh, wow, that's a big improvement. Then you know if you can, yes, narrow down a problem like that and know yeah I'm hearing blips again.

Matt Traum: 27:21

Oh, it must be that finger. You and I'm getting lazy with that finger.

Alistair Parnell: 27:24

And try and have the expectation that you know you want to get it exactly right, rather than kind of saying, well, I always do it like that, so that's OK. You know, Matt, one of one of my you know, I've got several kind of very, very vivid memories of certain things that happened kind of in my musical career. I remember this was 1984. I went to my first day at the Royal College of Music. At that point the director there was Sir David Wilcox. Now I guess you guys in the States would have these books, anything that.

Alistair Parnell: 28:07

There's a series of books called Carols for Choirs and these have been absolutely the mainstay of any British choir. I imagine they probably are with a lot of choirs in the US. Most of those were done by Sir David Wilcox. He was quite a short guy, quite a scary guy, kind of a little bit old fashioned in his approach, but an absolutely inspirational character. So there I am, I've got my saxophone on my shoulder and I've walked into the Royal College of Music in the big main concert hall there and we're all there as kind of first years and you know we don't know what to expect and he's introducing everything and telling us, you know, we're going to have a wonderful time and there's wonderful staff and these hallowed halls with all these famous composers that have played in these practice rooms and all these sort of things. It's magical.

Alistair Parnell: 28:58

But one thing I remember him saying and it's the first time I'd heard it, but I've heard it many times since. He said you know, when we're practising, we should try to don't practice until you get something right. We should practice until we can't get it wrong. And that stuck with me. Well, forever right, because you know it's very easy to practice something half a dozen times. I got it right on the sixth time. Okay, I'm good now Let me carry on. That's not a great average, right, right?

Matt Traum: 29:34

Yep, so that's another brings up another thing kind of in the same idea. Once it's under your, it's in your brain and it's under your fingers and it's comfortable and you're probably never going to mess it up again, that's great, and I've always struggled with playing in various keys on my whole career playing an instrument.

Matt Traum: 29:54

And it's like I can play in C all day long and I know exactly where every note is and I know what it sounds like in my head. But then let's play a half step above that yeah, the same song. And I'm like, ooh, I'm playing all the wrong notes, or mostly wrong notes. Yes, and why is that? You know, I have C, it's in my brain, I don't have to think about it anymore. You learn it. Then you forget it. Yeah, I can sit there and play in C sharp. Eventually, after 10 minutes of playing in the key, then, okay, it kind of comes together. But you know, even at my old age I'm still not comfortable playing in the key of C sharp. Sure, and I've always wondered about guys like Michael Brecker and Charlie Parker and Bob Mintzer. Can they play in any key equally fluent? Yeah, and I'll bet you they can.

Alistair Parnell: 30:38

Yeah, I think they probably can.

Matt Traum: 30:41

I was talking to a friend of mine, George Shernit, here in Cleveland, who plays with the Cleveland Orchestra when they need a saxophone player, and he's a fine player. He plays with everybody that comes to town and plays jazz and classical and everything. A fine player, and we were talking about the idea of forgetting about note names and just knowing, knowing where a sound is on your instrument. I think that's what we kind of the gist of what we were saying.

Matt Traum: 31:02

It's like forget about, you know, e sharp in the key of c sharp, you know, with that e sharp note, sure, oh, it's, that's a hard note because you never see it, you know. But yes, it's just forget about that. It's just, it's this finger is down and that's the sound you know. And just, if you're playing and you know your instruments so well that you know if you lift this finger, it's going to go up a whole step or or whatever, and to the point where you don't have to think about notes anymore. Yes, because as soon as you start thinking about notes, you've added another step of computation in your brain and it's going to slow you down and you have to think about it.

Matt Traum: 31:36

But uh, as I said, when I'm playing in the key of c, I don't even think about it, it's just there. Yeah, because that's that's long-winded way of putting it. But I think, as you get to be super professional, which I am not, um, you get to the point where you don't have to think about what key you're playing in. So it doesn't matter to Bob Mintzer if he's playing in the key of C sharp. He doesn't care, he's playing. I'm guessing we'll have to ask him sometime if we have him on the show.

Alistair Parnell: 32:00

The other. The other thing I like to say to some of my students, Matt, is kind of along the same lines as the kind of you know practice tool. You don't get it wrong. I like to say to them okay, imagine you've got you know, it's a little black bag and you've got a series of green and red balls. Okay, and imagine that you practice a phrase and then you say to yourself okay, did you get that exactly right? And if you did, you put a green ball into the black bag. And if you made any kind of mistake or you weren't quite happy, well, that's a red ball into the bag. And you continue there's a red and a green and two or three more reds, and then, oh, there's a green and there's another red, and OK, so you carry on in this vein.

Alistair Parnell: 32:52

Now, when you come to do your performance or your exam, or you're playing in front of your friend, or you're going for your lesson or whatever your performance basically, is you then dipping your hand into that black bag and, like a lucky dip, picking out one of those balls? Is that going to be a red one or is that going to be a green one? So, basically, the story is obviously the more green balls you put into your bag, the more likely you are to come out with a good performance when it really counts. I quite like that idea of visualising good practice. This is what we need to be working on. Do it correctly. Nearly always. That means do it slowly, but get more green balls in the bag than red balls.

Matt Traum: 33:37

Yeah, you're increasing your chances of playing it right, your odds.

Alistair Parnell: 33:40

Exactly.

Matt Traum: 33:47

So we should talk about maybe a little bit about timing too. I want to mention that since the mid-90s I've been a closet drummer and I had an electronic drum kit back in the mid-90s, the Roland kit, and recently, last few years, I got one of their higher-end drum kits and they're just phenomenal. They're not inexpensive but boy, they're just so much fun and I just love playing it. I'll play that daily, more than my horn sometimes, but I have noticed just playing drums. The point I'm trying to make is my timing has improved tremendously on my horn from playin g drums, work on timing with a metronome and just a woodblock or something that you can click with the metronome and get that exactly on the click of the metronome and working on timing. I just have noticed being more sensitive to that now and where I used to be, I've improved quite a bit my timing when I'm playing lines on my horn and I hear a lot of players who just don't have very good time, and that's another thing that's a problem. It's not necessarily notes. You're playing all the notes right, but it's just all over the place. That can make a big difference when you listen to real professionals- Brecker and Charlie Parker and those guys- and you listen to their time, it's impeccable. Of course, there's a difference there. If you want to drag or push the beat a little bit, that's a whole other issue. I'm talking about being able to play properly and evenly.

Matt Traum: 35:15

There's various percussion apps. I'm sure that you can play along with or tap your finger on something and it'll actually give you a report. It's like you were behind most of the time on this beat. I can't name any specifically at the moment, but I'm sure they exist. There's a little feature on this drum kit Roland kit that you can go into this practice mode and it'll play with a metronome and you just play along with it and it'll say you're 2% ahead on your kick drum and your snare is a little bit behind and I can see it. I'm looking and I'm playing and it's like okay, there it is. There's the exact timing. It's very eye opening to experience that for the first time. So I think rhythm is a very important part of horn playing as well. It's often neglected.

Alistair Parnell: 35:57

Absolutely, Matt, you know, here in my studio teaching every week, I would say I'm probably spending easily 75% of my time helping people with timing, with rhythm inaccuracies, and I also know I did some research several years ago. You know even people that are auditioning young musicians for music college. You know, probably the top of their list is, yeah, they might make a great sound, they might have wonderful musicianship and shape phrases. Can they actually play accurately in time? And it's such a top thing, it's such a top of a list for everyone. Yeah, it's essential to work on the timing and we all can improve our timing.

Alistair Parnell: 36:48

You said about, you know, using the drum kit. My son he's. I've told you, Matt, he's playing out on the ships. You know, he's a drummer out on the ships. He actually put me onto an app a few weeks ago that him and some of his mates were talking about.

Alistair Parnell: 37:04

There's a little app called Rhythm Bot, so it's rhythm and B-O-T. It's an inexpensive app. I think it might be free. What it does is there's a little area at the bottom of the screen where you tap the rhythm that is printed out in front of you on the app. There's a metronome that gets clicking along and, just like you said, it kind of gives you a report how accurate you are.

Alistair Parnell: 37:29

What it does as a sort of competitive thing, though it keeps track of how many rhythms did you play in a row without messing up. And so my son he sent me, he said I say, dad, I got up to, like you know, 140 in a row or something. Wow, that's pretty good. So of course, that was it. I had to get going on this thing and he and I have been batting this backwards and forwards. I think we're on about 500 and something now in a row without making a mistake. It's really quite addictive, but so much fun and does you so much good getting your accuracy. So RhythmBot is a great little app to practice with if you want to improve your rhythm, which we all need to improve our rhythm.

Matt Traum: 38:16

Yeah, I'll check that out. I remember in high school 11th or 12th grade at my high school we had a I think it was called Tap Master. It was a little machine that had cassettes, audio cassettes. You put your cassette in there. There was also a booklet that came with with it and there was a little button that you rest your hand on and you tap it and it would play this rhythm and you had to tap along with the tape and then it would measure, uh, which ones you missed, or if you were... I don't know if it gave you the timing, if you were ahead or behind, but if you were within a acceptable range, you'd get credit for that particular note and so you'd go through these exercises. It was part of our curriculum there in high school. We had to complete a couple of courses on this thing. Again, I think it was called Tapmaster Really kind of a clever thing in old school, but it was to teach rhythm, and not just rhythms but timing within rhythm. Yeah, and it sounds similar to what you're saying with that app. So I'll definitely check that app out. That's pretty cool.

Alistair Parnell: 39:12

Yeah it's great. I recommend that one and the one I recommend for developing ear. There's another app called Sonofield S-O-N-O field Sonofield. That's very good for developing your sense of pitch and getting used to certain intervals that we might hear. If you're trying to play by ear a little bit more, that's an excellent app. It's a similar thing, but listening to different intervals rather than doing something rhythmic. So they would definitely be my top tips for helpful apps.

Matt Traum: 39:45

I wanted to mention one thing about practicing with the metronome. There's a cool tip I think it was from Carol Kaye, the famous bass player and guitar player back from the session days in the 60s and 70s. She's available. You can actually access her on Facebook and message her and she tends to respond. She's really something else. But she said, practicing with the metronome, she'll set it to like half notes and instead of it being one and three on the downbeat she'll put she'll think of the metronome as being on two and four and especially if you're playing the swing piece and you're practicing swing, you'll have that, you know. So you, you feel that backbeat. Uh, I thought that was a really interesting uh way to a metronome and it does work. I'm a big fan of that. So have you tried that, Alistair?

Alistair Parnell: 40:35

Absolutely. Yes, it's something I've done for quite a long time and I try to recommend the pupils to do that. Some pupils have a difficulty kind of getting into the feel of that being the two and the four. So the way I try to teach it is if the metronome's doing this for a pulse, then what I tell them to do is say four, say your fourth beat on one of those clicks, so the metronome's doing, and then you go four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, because then you've got it set up on the on on two and four. Absolutely a brilliant idea. Yeah, there's a brilliant video, M att, and I'm sure you've seen it. This is was it Harry Connick Jr?

Matt Traum: 41:21

Yes, yeah, he did the music for Sleepless in Seattle and you know he has a big band and stuff. He's a really cool guy, yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 41:28

And, and, and he was playing this thing and people were clapping along, weren't they? But they were clapping on one and three. And do you remember what he did? Do you recall it?

Matt Traum: 41:35

Yeah, so they were on one and three and they were heavy on one and three. So he's playing along and this is the coolest video. All of a sudden he puts a five four bar in there and it's during a piano solo. So he just adds one beat and all of a sudden they're hip and they're clapping on two and four!

Alistair Parnell: 41:48

Fantastic!

Matt Traum: 41:51

He looks around and the band looks around. The band followed him. They knew exactly what he was going to do. Yeah, that's one of the coolest videos I've ever seen.

Alistair Parnell: 42:05

Absolutely brilliant.

Matt Traum: 42:06

So, Alistair, I like to play a little bit of music every so often in these podcasts. And have you been working on anything recently that maybe you could share with us?

Alistair Parnell: 42:17

Yeah, so in the recent concerts that we did, we were celebrating our Equinox saxophone group 20 years of the Equinox saxophone group and I actually wrote a piece for Equinox. A while back I was actually on holiday in Turkey, my son and I. We went for a walk up this kind of huge I guess it was a mountain. The mountain was called Babadag, b-a-b-a-d-a-g, and being a kind of musical nerd like I am, I realised that all of those letters were in our musical alphabet. So I actually made a tune out of those letters B-A-B-A-D-A-G and you'll hear that theme. Well, it goes all the way through the piece, but here's a little snippet of that.

Alistair Parnell: 45:06

As you know, Matt, I'm working on this new course at the moment for my iSax Academy. This is going to be called Beyond the Basics and it's really essentially doing what we're talking about now. It's helping people to go further. My basics course is all about learning the notes. So if you're a complete beginner, you know here's an A, here's a B, here's a G. Put these together. Now we play a tune and that's where a lot of people start off, but then where to go after that. So if you're in the situation where we're talking about, you know you'd like to improve, you'd like to move forward on your wind synthesizer and, by the way, this course is going to be open to anybody that has any kind of wind synthesizer, really woodwind type of synthesizer. So if it's an EWI, if it's a Yamaha WX7 or whichever one you have, if it's the EMEO, if it's an Aerophone, whichever one you have, I've developed this whole course of practice plans.

Alistair Parnell: 46:09

There's some clever things in there. You can kind of say you can go on the course and you can say you know, I have 15 minutes and it'll come up with a list of things on the course that you can just do for 15 minutes. Or if you have 30 minutes, okay, I have 30 minutes Okay, go and play this lesson. It kind of develops essential things like playing your scales in each key, and then there's a tune, two tunes or so for each key as well, but lots of exercises on working on the octave jumps. There's a whole section on how to play the different styles of articulation and appropriate embellishments for, say, a brass instrument or a woodwind or a saxophone or a clarinet, and then lots of tunes and exercises you can play to develop those specific skills as well.

Alistair Parnell: 47:00

I'm hoping to have that out by. You know it's looking like probably September time now at the earliest, but I'm really excited about it. It's taken many, many, many hours of work to put this together. But if you can and if that's you, you want to out for Beyond the Basics and that's going to be coming up in September.

Matt Traum: 47:38

I highly recommend all of your courses, Alistair. You're one of the best teachers out there. I would encourage everybody to check out the iSax Academy website and join the Academy for the advanced courses and whatnot. There's nothing better out there. So congratulations on everything. I look forward to hearing that one.

Alistair Parnell: 47:54

Thank you, thank you. So Matt we've covered quite a lot of stuff here. The other thing I really wanted to make a big point about, and something I try to enthuse my pupils to do this that practice time doesn't have to be playing the instrument. In fact, I often say if someone is practicing well, they won't be playing all of the time because you need some time to be thinking about what you're doing. But the other really important stream of practice Time is listening. You have to make time in your practice session, so this isn't just having it on in the background while you're doing the dishes or cutting the grass or whatever you're doing In your practice time. Take time to listen to the music.

Matt Traum: 48:47

And I assume you mean listening to yourself, but also listening to other players play music too.

Alistair Parnell: 48:51

Absolutely. You've already mentioned recording yourself, Matt, which, of course, is a brilliant idea and it's so easy to do now with our iPhones and iPads and things. But no, I'm talking about listening actively listening to players. They don't have to be EWI players. They can be any kind of player. If you're working on a trumpet sound on your EWI, you definitely need to be listening towi players. They can be any kind of player. If you're working on a trumpet sound on your EWI, you definitely need to be listening to trumpet players. It's essential. If you don't listen, you're not going to be able to pick up those little intricacies that, say, a brass player might do. And, of course, all that stuff we've already talked about for sound, for feel, for tempo, articulation all of that stuff you have to be listening.

Matt Traum: 49:35

I agree, and listen to players maybe that are kind of an example of how you want to be yourself, you know, and if you're just a beginning player, and I'm not going to say Chet Baker's a beginning player by any means, but Chet Baker's more accessible when you listen to his solos. He can bebop as well as anybody, but he's generally a clean player and doesn't play a lot of fast flourishes and things. If you want to listen to a trumpet player, he's a good model, I think, to listen to. I've listened to some of his—he did some things in the 60s that were pop-oriented, more pop-oriented, and it's not a whole lot of jazz, but he still knows how to play the right notes and you can listen to those and pick up a lot of things and it's pretty accessible music too. What would you say to that?

Alistair Parnell: 50:19

Yeah, absolutely. And and you know I've had several people I'm sure you have had a similar, Matt. People are intrigued. You know they're always saying oh, what? What sound are you using? What sound are you using? Almost as if they're saying OK, well, if I play that sound, I'll sound the same as you. That might not quite work, and the difference is it's to do with those details, it's to do with your dynamics, it's to do with your articulation, it's to do with your rhythmic feel, you know your understanding of embellishments of that instrument. All of those things are completely transformative to the way that you're going to sound. And again, it's very easy just to practice a tune and think, ok, if I get these notes and hopefully get the rhythm more or less right, well, yeah, then I'm going to sound great. You might not sound great until you've really looked a little bit deeper at those nuances which all the best players have. And those are the things that are really going to bring your music to life.

Matt Traum: 51:21

Yeah, I agree, and it might be a little much to start off listening to Charlie Parker. Yeah, you know, if you're just learning how to improvise, I mean that's that'll just be totally confusing to somebody. So start off with a Ben Webster or you know something like that. And Stan Getz, you know a real smooth player who's laid back and conservative with his notes and that's a good way to learn. I wouldn't recommend people going right into Charlie Parker as a start.

Alistair Parnell: 51:48

Absolutely. And you know the other thing more specifically about a wind synth, of course, Matt, and we've kind of covered this in our other podcasts really. So do go back over those individual podcasts if you have the time. But you know we've talked about this before where it's almost well, you know, if you're a trumpet player, you're going to listen to trumpet players and you know you might listen to some other instruments as well, because we get ideas from any instrument or vocalists or, you know, any music is an influence.

Alistair Parnell: 52:18

But of course, as a Winsynth player, we have this sometimes an overwhelming amount of different sounds that we have to our disposal. Now it's almost like each one of those sounds is a new instrument and we've got to learn how to get the best out of each one of those sounds. So rather than us just, you know, concentrating on the trumpet sound or synthesizer sound, flute sound, whatever it is, we now have a kind of responsibility almost to dig into each one of these sounds and work on them, almost as if we're playing several or many different instruments. How does a recorder player attack a note? How does a trumpet player attack a note? How do strings use vibrato? How does a synth player use a pitch bend wheel? There are so many elements and actually on a wind synthesizer, we've got a tremendous amount of listening to do there, to start to learn the details of the way those instruments are played, to get the very best out of them.

Matt Traum: 53:30

Yeah, it's all about choices with the wind controller. There's hundreds of sounds on an Aerophone AE-20 and AE-30, and any one of those sounds could be your whole career really, you know. So you need to find a sound and learn how to play it well, and it's not necessarily about the sound. Of course you want to have a nice sound and responsive, but it's how you play the sound, like you say, and one sound can sound great in a slow piece or a fast piece or Latin piece or swing piece, whatever. Yeah, all the same sound. So don't get hung up on having to pick a sound so much, as long as it's a good, responsive sound, and then concentrate on the playing aspect of it. Yeah, and that's another point, we can talk about practicing.

Matt Traum: 54:15

I guess picking sounds, I suppose, is a form of practicing too. If you're getting to getting ready for a gig, you have to know what sounds you want to use on a particular piece. Or, you know, have a library of five or six or nine or ten sounds that you're going to use for a, for a job, and narrow and narrow it down and then maybe tweak those and maybe take the reverb off and the effects so that you match the other instruments if you're playing with other horn players. So, um, I guess, um, I guess that's part of practicing as well and you could, you could say sure.

Alistair Parnell: 54:46

Yes, knowing what your sounds are, knowing, knowing which sounds you play the best and you feel most comfortable with. That's going to be different for every player.

Alistair Parnell: 55:02

So, in in a kind of wrapping up sense, n I think you know the main things we've hit here Matt, matt, are thinking about where you're going to practice and when you're going to practice. Get a nice, comfortable room where you hopefully haven't got too many distractions. You know we've talked about some of the applications that are useful. Having a metronome by the side of you is absolutely a must. Thinking about what you should practice and also actively thinking about how you can improve. There's so many exercises and books and, don't forget, it doesn't have to be, you know, a tutor book from a saxophone or a clarinet. It can be anything. You can pick up lots of different music to study. And then, you know, be mindful of practicing as best . you can.

Alistair Parnell: 55:57

assume that if you've got something right on the sixth time, that's OK. Try to work on it. So it's absolutely right more times than it is wrong. At the very Aerophone very least, maybe iSax a notebook on the things that you need to work on. Yes, you do need to Matt practice scales, I'm afraid, because that's the only way you're really going to get proficient in all the keys and learning the language of musical pieces and then, absolutely, Klaas we said at the end there, it's listening, listening, listening. That's the way we're going to improve those many little details about the way we should play our pieces of music and for anybody out there, that's listening. If you've got other ideas, you know, do let us know, because we have the ability for you to leave a message or email the Aerophone Academy podcast. There's a link in the description below that you can send to us and have your own ideas. We'll discuss them in another podcast, if that's the way we go in another podcast, if that's the way we go.

Alistair Parnell: 57:05

Now, before we leave this episode Matt, talking of leaving messages we have had a couple of questions. The first one actually this is from Klaas, who's somebody that's on my aerophone courses at the ISACS Academy and I think this links in with something that you were telling me about earlier, matt, when we were discussing things. So Klaas says that he really enjoys the podcast, he's a regular listener and he says they're always very interesting. So thank you, klaas. He says he's a regular whistle player for Irish bands. I love that sound whistles in Irish bands. I could listen to that all day long.

Alistair Parnell: 57:46

And he says that obviously whistles are diatonic. They're limited generally to play in a major or VL70 minor key. And he's saying how useful VL70 would be. You know the aerophone would be great to use because it's capable of playing in any key. So that would be great. And I know Klaas has the Roland AE-30. So he's a long way towards where he wants to get to. But what I think he's saying is that some of the sounds that he's got on his AE-30, he'd like to maybe investigate some of the possibilities from the built-in whistle sounds. I mean there are some recorder sounds on there as well. Sometimes you can experiment with maybe changing the octaves. But, matt, I think you've got a bit of a library of recorder sounds, haven't you?

Matt Traum: 58:36

Yeah, I've done various sounds over the years. There's a nice tin whistle on the Turbo VL70 setup that I did for the Yamaha VL70 sound module, the Turbo upgrade. There's a really nice tin whistle on there and some sounds where if you overblow it'll jump up to the octave, just like a real tin whistle does. It's a lot of fun to play. You might want to check that out. That's a nice little sound. I always talk about it. But it's just such a nice little sound module and there's 256 sounds on it and it packs a lot of power for the dollar or the pound.

Matt Traum: 59:12

There's other sound banks that I've done. If you go to patchmanmusiccom and click on the green software button down the left margin of the page, you'll it'll take you to our sound bank kind of an overview, and there's a link on there called wind controller, slash, breath controller sound banks. And if you click on that that'll give you a full list of all the wind controller specific sound banks that I've done for various synthesizers and soft synths and you'll see the VL70 Turbo upgrade on there where you can listen to the demos. Also, I did a. Interestingly, I did 15 instruments for the Native Instruments, Kontakt. So if you have Kontakt 4.0 or higher, the full version of that, I did a volume three has a tin whistle. That's really nice. A 12-inch British-made C tin whistle.

Alistair Parnell: 1:00:01

Yeah, and I have used that many times myself, Matt. In fact, I used it in a gig only about three weeks ago.

Matt Traum: 1:00:07

Oh great, that's nice to hear.

Alistair Parnell: 1:00:09

It's a great sound. Love that sound.

Matt Traum: 1:00:11

Thank you.

Alistair Parnell: 1:00:11

Yeah

Matt Traum: 1:00:12

So here's a couple audio demos. This is the tin whistle from WindPak 3, which is for Native Instruments Kontakt 4 or higher, the full version.

Matt Traum: 1:00:50

And here's the ocarina sound from that WindPak 3.

Matt Traum: 1:00:52

And here's a few of the recorder audio demos from WindPak 2 from Patchman Music for Native Instruments Kontakt.

Matt Traum: 1:01:14

There's WindPak 2, which has the full recorder family. There it's from sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor and bass. That's a nice bank. And then WindPak 1 has some other instruments and there's demos for all those instruments. You can check them out on the website. That might be a good place to expand. And of course quite a bit of editing can be done on the AE-20 and AE-30 using the app if you wanted to get in and experiment, and I certainly will have more sounds as well, for that in the future.

Speaker 5: 1:01:57

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Alistair Parnell: 1:02:55

And we have one more question before we finish this episode. This is from Nels Niels Magelson, who also says how much he enjoys the podcast. It's ever so nice to hear people enjoying the podcast and getting into it and listening and looking forward to the next episodes. He says Now he says he's very much a beginner. So he said he says his question is pretty basic. I always say this there's no such thing as basic questions. There's a lot to learn about Windsynths. So please do not hesitate to ask the most basic questions here for the Airphone Academy Podcast. We'll help you as much as we can with any question you have.

Alistair Parnell: 1:03:34

He says he's playing. This is the Akai EWI 5000. And he's got lots of these SWAM instruments. These are the ones by Audio Modeling. When I'm playing the trumpet sound, the bite sensor doesn't seem to respond and it's very hard to get much of any vibrato. He says he can use the pitch up and down to do it, but that's not very vibratolike. He's saying any suggestions will be appreciated. Thank you very much. Look forward to the next podcast, etc. Matt, do you want to try and tackle this one? I think I've got a couple of ideas.

Matt Traum: 1:04:32

I'm not exactly sure, but I'm thinking maybe vibrato on the SWAM brass instruments is not so much a pitch like you would hear a synthesizer going up and down and pitch very clearly it could be. Vibrato on those instruments is more like a timbre shift. Could that be what he's hearing?

Alistair Parnell: 1:04:51

Yes, quite likely. I've got well, two suggestions. When you go into the SWAM settings you'll see down the left hand side. There's a column there of different settings you can go to.

Alistair Parnell: 1:05:05

Don't forget, Nels, when you, when you start off, make sure you have set the default instrument that you're playing. I'm pretty sure there's an, an EWI setting on the setup. Is it possible? Maybe you did that for the Alto Sax one that you're using, maybe not on the trumpet. So on the right-hand side you click a little MIDI button at the top and then there's a list there of different kind of default setups for different instruments whether you're playing an aerophone or a kind of a keyboard instrument. Different instruments, whether you're playing an Aerophone or a kind of keyboard instrument or an EWI. Make sure you've clicked on the right one there and then, as Matt says, it might be just set up a little bit differently in the sound. Now you probably can still get in and edit it again in the MIDI settings or in the timbre settings.

Alistair Parnell: 1:06:01

In the MIDI settings or in the timbre settings I think there is a different pitch setting. There will be an amount of pitch shifting that you can do there, usually in semitones. It could just be that you need to increase that value in the settings to see if you can get more vibrato. You can basically set how wide you want the response to be on the vibrato. There it must be that. I think I know you can do it on your thumb. Maybe that's just moving it more than you're getting the bite sensor to do from the EWI. Of course the EWI has a different setup to the Aerophone. The EWI, Matt, am I right? You know it has this kind of automatic centering, doesn't it? For pitch?

Matt Traum: 1:06:44

Right, right, and we do have that on the Aerophone as well. They call it E-Wind type vibrato compared to. Is it called Sax? Is that the other name?

Alistair Parnell: 1:06:53

That's right. So on the Aerophone, you can set it if you want to, that if you loosen your lip and you want to hold a pitch for as long as you like at a flat pitch, you can do that, whereas on the E-Wind setting, it will automatically bring you back into tune. You know, fairly quickly, won't it?

Matt Traum: 1:07:12

Yeah, and there is a setting for how, how responsive that is too, even for E-wind. You can set the multiplier to make it super responsive or less responsive if you want just a subtle vibrato, yes, and uh also. Yeah, like I say, it could be more of a timbre shift, which is sometimes appropriate. If you were to hear a trumpet doing a synth like vibrato, it may not sound authentic to what a real trumpet does. Same same with flute. Flute vibrato is very different from a synth vibrato. So once you make those edits in SWAM, I assume you can hit the save button and save your settings so you don't ever have to do it again. Exactly, yeah.

Alistair Parnell: 1:07:52

Not only that, but you can also set your own sound as the default sound. So next time you open it up it's going to come straight back to that sound that you had before. And I always make those adjustments on my SWAM sounds and I actually have a different sound on my Aerophone. I've had some people see videos of mine where it actually says SWAM Trumpet on the Aerophone and people are like, hey, how did you get the SWAM Trumpet on your Aerophone? I didn't get the SWAM Trumpet on the Aerophone. That is just a sound setting that I use a preset sound on my Aerophone which is actually silenced. It doesn't make any internal sound. But I've set that Aerophone preset, if you like, in the way that I like it to control the SWAM sound. So don't be confused. I didn't get SWAM on my Aerophone wouldn't that be wonderful? But no, it's just a preset that I use to control the swam sound in the way I like it to be set up.

Matt Traum: 1:08:54

And I also would add that the vibrato from the, the lip sensor on the Aerophone, is not going to send that large of a range in general compared to the thumb sensor which is two half steps each way. So that would affect any patch more from the thumb as compared to the pressure sensor.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:12

Yeah, I mean you can set that bite sensor to be actually anything up to like an octave, but that gets very wild to come to control. I wouldn't suggest you do that. Usually I have mine to either 100 cents or 200 cents. That's where I feel is comfortable Everybody. I'd like to thank you again for joining us on this Aerophone Academy podcast.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:41

Please take notice of some of the things we've said and, like I said earlier, I'd like to thank you again for joining us on this Aerophone Academy podcast. Please take notice of some of the things we've said and, like I said earlier, if you've got your own suggestions for good practicing techniques and ideas, let us know, because we're always open to learn, and that's what it's all about. We're all about learning and improving On.

Alistair Parnell: 1:09:57

To our next episode, then, and I can tell you that we have the inside scoop the exclusive, if you like, on a brand new product that's going to come to market very soon. Now, you're not going to want to miss this next episode, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast and we will be revealing all the details, everything you're going to want to know about that new product, and we'll see you in the next one. Goodbye, Matt.

Matt Traum: 1:10:26

Bye-bye, take care. Alistair.