I’ve never been able to practice music when people are listening in or watching me. I once had a friend want to watch me practice, and as much as I wanted to let them, it made it into a performance and I just played them some songs instead of working on things where I needed to improve. Practicing has always been a very personal space for me where I work on the things with which I’m weakest, and it’s hard to show that weakness to other people.
A few weeks ago, I traveled from Boston to Seattle to visit some friends and some people throw some fish around. Seattle’s a great spot, but it is a pretty long plane ride away. So, I did the only reasonable thing a saxophonist could do and bring my Vindor ES1 with me in my carry-on bag in case I had some down time on my trip. I was so sure the TSA was going to ask me about this device, but surprisingly it went through the screening without an issue.
About an hour into the trip, I got tired of reading and wanted to do something more active, so instead of playing a game on my phone, I decided to take out the ES1 and practice with it through my earbuds. I had a couple of songs I had to learn for some videos we were shooting, so why not practice when I had a couple of hours where I couldn’t do anything else? It was awesome. I was in my own world practicing these songs and both of the people next to me had no idea. My wife was busy reading a book, and the kid who was on my other side was having fun playing video games. The Vindor ES1 even fit comfortably with the seat table down, so I could put my phone down to look at music transcriptions. I got a good hour or so of practicing in before the plane had to start landing.
I never thought that I’d play saxophone on an airplane, but here we are.
