your 14 years is me at 54 :D setting goals seems like a right way to do, but knowing what goals to set is another topic... playing a high D in tune is my goal for the next couple of weeks!
I think that's why putting them down on paper is so important. It forces you to take a few minutes to reflect on what you are doing and what you hope to do. The priorities become clearer. It always helps to have an instructor to help guide you as well. For the high D i'd suggest to work on playing it without the octave key... that's difficult to do with the palm keys, but it can help you with the voicing and flexibility part of holding it in tune.
Another great video; thank you for sharing! I majored in (and graduated with a degree in) music, but then life happened and I ended up taking a sixteen-year break. Aside from my junior and senior recitals from 23 and 22 years ago and a university jazz ensemble studio album, I have very few recorded examples of my playing. I picked up the alto and the tenor in May and June of 2020 (respectively) and have practiced almost every day since that time. I did not start to regularly record myself until joining an online community of (mostly adult amateur) musicians in 2021. It was eye-opening (mostly in bad ways, but in some positive ways, as well) but I felt that I benefitted tremendously from it. Though I've since left that community, I still record myself once a week or so, and I keep a practice journal, which is also a fantastic strategy. Putting attainable goals in writing and keeping a video diary are awesome ideas that I will implement. Thanks again!
I am fortunate to have a decent stack of old recording, but most of them are on cassette tape and I don't have a way to listen to them. Gonna have to figure out how to digitize them some day. My college had a top notch music engineering program, so the engineers always needed to practice recording. We'd do sessions from midnight to 6am all the time. I wish I could still go days without sleep.
My playing is basically the same as it was back then, but I look a fair bit different, lol. But setting goals has been helpful. My longer term goals keep getting pushed, but it's more to do with my evolving perspective - I'm learning more about what it takes to get where I want to go. Plus, I am doing a good job working through the short term goals I'm setting, and I can feel the different things I've learned starting to come together to contribute to those longer term goals.
You are doing all the right things, that's for sure. I still think you are one of the very few people who might be doing too many of the right things and need to let loose a little, but from our chats I gather that you are working on that aspect as well. On a side note, when I put the audio together with those old pictures it felt like I was 14 again for a quick second. Where has all the time gone?
Thinking about progress and measuring it. Those are some good points. When I was in college I borrowed an alto sax & taught myself to play (by ear). After a year I bought a nice Selmer sax and a local funk-jazz-fusion band hired me. We played in local clubs (north of Detroit) and then decided to move to LA to "make it!" Our music was ok, but I think it was more of an attraction to have white sax player in an otherwise all black band in the late 1960's. After arriving in LA I quit the band because of differing world-views (I became a "Jesus freak.") My sax got stolen & I quit playing for about 25 years. Since restarting to play sax it is much easier for me to see progress, but I have a hard time sticking to the short-term goals in order to attain the long term goals. One of the short-term goals that I did achieve was to record a CD, which was very satisfying (and it even sold a few thousand copies.)
Selling a few thousand copies is not too shabby! Most pro jazz musicians would be happy to sell a couple hundred :) I think I've got one big recording project left in me before I permanently pack my horns away in the closet. I have no idea where I'll find the time and money to realize it, but it's on the bucket list.
