good tone, but the legato!

Great lesson tonight, as always. I took close notes as Jack gave me corrections. Very specific corrections, very specific notes. Specific to phrases that I am working on in my lesson material - these 16th note passages - "make them playful" - and always the work on my legato and on making my tonguing clean.

We worked on my approach to my low notes. I need to tongue less and push the air out in whole. Very very hard to describe, and these are my words and not Jack's. But I think what I have been doing is having too tight an embouchure when I start the note and then relaxing it when the note comes out a little funky. I need the note to come out right directly from the beginning, and on these low notes the aperture is larger.

We also talked about my habit of doing a little mini-crescendo on each note at times. I need the beginning of the note to be the same as the end of the note, instead of starting small and ending big on each note.

But Jack told me that I have a good tone, need to work on my legato, need to work on clean tonguing, but without a good tone none of it would be good. I've heard this enough now that I think I actually might have a good tone.