COURTNEY PINE has already graduated through more music than most people play in a life time. At school he was reaching grade 5 on the horn during the day, and sitting in with bands like Clint Eastwood and Hi-Tension in the evening. Passing through funk and reggae, he immersed himself in jazz, and in 1986, at the age of 22, shot to more recognition and acclaim than some die-hards would consider decent in this jazz line of work.

His work is typified by electrifying solos — pure emotion down a piece of plumbing. Absolutely dedicated to practice and improvement — he carries on playing in the dressing room during his current tour's half hour interval — he's already pushing the saxophone beyond its popularly perceived limits.

Part way through the tour, PAUL COLBERT pulled him aside after a gig at London's Piccadilly Theatre, and threw a few suggestive words in the right direction. CHRIS TAYLOR whipped his camera out of the way as the answers winged back.

SOUND

Over the last few concerts, Courtney had been trying a series of belt worn radio transmitters and mikes lightly clamped to the bell of his horn. The sound was steadily getting there — past radio systems had lost 'body' across airwaves, he explained — but changing mikes from soprano to tenor was a trial.

"I really need two, one for each. The other problem is that the sound from the bell of the horn is fine, but the top end of the soprano gets lost — really I need another mike up there as well."

Some engineers seem to overlook the fact that a lot of the essential volume and tone of a sax escapes from its sides. "Listen for soprano solos in particular." suggests a mildly exasperated Mr Pine. "When someone plays high up, those notes are lower in volume because the top end of the saxophone hasn't been miked. In the studio I like to use either some Sennheisers or AKGs — the big fat ones ha, ha. On the tenor there'll be one on the bell and one on the side of the instrument between the F and the G keys which picks up the middle and top ranges." Key click shouldn't be a problem, if you've kept your horn well.

Contact mikes on the reed are OK for some players, but can mess about with the embouchure: "If you like to add a bit of vibrato or get tones out of different parts of that reed, then having a Barcus Berry up there can spoil that."

SCALES

"I've been trying to expand the western scale," states Courtney, wryly taking on the minor challenge. Working to the 20th century's equal temperaments (see last month's Making Music) the obvious way "is by going up in arpeggios starting on C major and doing a C major arpeggio. Then when you reach the top note, instead of going to C, you would get to F, then to B flat, then from B flat to F, so extending your scale through the western notes.

"The principle I'm trying to work on is that by the time you've reached the octave C, the next note is between E and F — that's where it should be," according to the laws of untampered temperament.

"I'm just really trying to work it out by arpeggios. It's very difficult to incorporate it in the music because the piano gets in the way... if I do something, then the piano playing in the tempered scale will bring me right back.

"I've got to conceptualise it first. You've got to hear the notes before you can play them. I'm lucky being a saxophonist because using false fingerings I can probably get three or four different notes between semitones.

"The problem is, you have to decide where to stop."

IMPROVE

If you're a player just learning the ropes, how do you go about stretching your harmonic knowledge?

"Basically, you've got to play a lot of arpeggios — C sharp major and C sharp minor. A lot of players don't go for those scales. But in popular music bands, the most popular scales are C sharp and F sharp, and they're always the hardest keys to play. Once you've learnt that, everything becomes easy.

"On the tenor, D flat major is the fullest scale on the horn because it goes from a low B flat all the way up to F, and all those notes can be included in the scale, so that's a very nice one to learn.

"What they teach at school is, like, intervals but you've got to learn about notes. You've got to find a note on the saxophone and get to know it so well, identify with it.

"On the soprano I sit down and play maybe just a middle D, but what I'm listening to are the upper partials of that note. Eventually I can hear the octave D above, and then the G, and then the D flat — I get my ear to listen to all the harmonics that are making up that one note... not changing the actual sound, just listening. After a while what you can actually do is alter the upper partials so you can change its character, but that comes after playing a lot of long notes."

TRICKY

Apart from the tenor and soprano saxes, you're also known for dabbling with the bass clarinet - traditionally a tricky instrument to get on with.

"Yeah, yeah it is. I started off playing straight B flat clarinet at 14, then stopped. After four or five years I 'discovered' jazz and went back to it, but the B flat clarinet didn't seem to cater for what I was interested in, and anyway its typical logo is trad jazz and I was thinking of something more modern.

"I didn't quite get on with the pitch of the E flat clarinet — I don't get on with E flat — and the next one was the bass clarinet. I practised it for a while and realised I could really incorporate it, and I found a jazz saxophonist called Eric Dolphy who played bass clarinet.

'The tuning's a bit funny. In three different octaves you've got three different fingerings — it's difficult for a while. A C in the lower octave is a G in the middle octave and an E in the upper octave. You can get some interesting intervals going, though.

"I just love the sound — very earthy."

INFLUENCES

"My influences have been the American jazz tradition — Sidney Bechet to Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Branford Marsalis.

"I'm also studying some African traditional music. I've been trying to link up the saxophone with a more rhythmic feel. African drumming has been slightly misquoted as simple drum rhythms playing over and over again, but when you listen to African tribal stuff, what's happening is these guys are actually playing melodies.

"There's a simple exercise I do on the saxophone where I don't blow into it, but I play the stops, just to hear the rhythm of what I'm doing. I mean, rhythm and melody are the same thing. They are linked.

"There are musicians all over trying to develop something rhythmically different. Our influences in Britain are different from the jazz influences of America. They would listen to reggae as we would listen to funk. Reggae to us is something we had from the beginning. There's a basic rhythm which is different. All we've got to do now is catch up with the Americans in terms of harmony and swing, and we've got something of our own

NAUGHTY

What bad habits can beginners slip into?

"Playing patterns and riffs, and learning a tune in one key. That's very bad, you go to a jam session and they're not playing in C but in F sharp, what do you do then? You still have your horn in its case. If you have an exercise, learn it in every single key. A lot of players learn it in one, and think 'OK, I'm ready'. They're not:"

SOLOS

How do you go about improving your improvisation?

"You have to learn a number of jazz standards, that's a priority. Wynton (Marsalis) says nine albums; you've got to learn all the solos on nine albums until you can play the lot, then move on.

"And work on your tone. That's a thing a lot of players forget about. They have this thin reedy sound that doesn't travel at all. You have to expand your tone by playing a lot of low notes. Then your cheeks don't work so much, it's the muscles in your neck that are developing to give you a much warmer, broader sound.

"And open your ears. If I'm walking in the park and listen to a bird singing or a dog barking I try to envisage myself playing that on the saxophone. That's the kind of thing you're trying to get to when the guy on the bandstand suddenly goes to a different key and you know exactly what's happening and can play everything he does straight back to him."

THE BOSS

What are the real responsibilities of a band leader?

"At the beginning, for me, it was just phoning people up looking for gigs and that, but now I've got to the position where there are people doing that for me so all I do is concentrate on the music. As the leader I have a number of compositions and a concept for the concert.

"On stage there's a kind of automatic conduct. The players don't always know if something's happening good. They're so into the improvisation, it's like they're not thinking about one more chorus or one less chorus. Where a pianist might have a really good idea but he's gonna stop in the next chorus because he doesn't think it's happening, I can step back and hear that it is working with the three of them together, not just the one man on his own, so I'll turn to him and say keep on playing.

"Most of the time at rehearsal we don't even improvise. We'll play the melody and the outro and coda and that's it. When we go on stage, whatever happens, happens.

"When you're on stage something has to happen, the boat won't sink, there's always someone gonna pull you up because you're all looking out for each other."

VOCALS

In the past you've worked with vocalists who joined the line-up as instrumentalists. Was that good?

"For me it was fine, I was working as a quintet with a guy called Cleveland Wells and I was actually trying, at the time, to make my saxophone more voice-like, so hearing a voice in the band playing scales and stuff made it a bit easier for me, because I don't actually sing. I'd like to work with more vocalists, maybe do a vocal album and have the saxophone as another voice."

NON-JAZZ

What do you think of solo-ing outside of jazz?

"In popular music it seems to be more based on a motif or riff, and solos are worked around somebody playing a catchy line. The producer will turn round and say, that's nice, we'll keep that, but now let's work on the middle eight. So that saxophone player will listen, and think up another catchy line and that will be inserted in the track, and then they'll say, what about a nice ending, so he'll look for another bit... In the end what you get is a manufactured solo that's been pieced together and has nothing to do with the saxophone player."

PRACTICE

"I used to do eight hours a day, but now I may get four, if I wake up early enough and before the phone starts ringing. It's a shame because I have more instruments to practise, now. I have to be more concentrated about it, there's no time for messing about. I actually have to learn some new triads or something each time I pick up the horn. I just keep on raising extensions until I reach the point where I have to put some quarter tones in there.

"A lot of the time it doesn't click together, and right now I'm in a state where I'm actually learning something new, and I'm still not halfway through getting it covered so I can't go on the bandstand and play it confidently. It's frustrating, and I try to practise whenever I can, but it takes time."

MUSIC

How close are you to the music you want to play?

"Ultimately what I'm trying to play is... well... I have this vision, a picture of a band that can go to Delhi and Kingston and New York and Brixton and Alaska and Russia and play the same one set of music that can appeal to all those audiences and have influences everywhere so everyone can hear something that's from their own background. But that's gonna take time."