Hi William-

     Welcome aboard. I'm glad you've found the saxophone.org web site. The site has been a work in progress for several years and will continue to be so as we're constantly making updates and tweaking and adding things. I hope you find the information here useful.

     I'm not sure of what your specific situation was on SOTW and I honestly have no interest in talking about it here, so I recommend letting that dog lie. I've been a member of SOTW since 2003 and I have nothing but good things to say about the effort that Harry has made in creating useful and well organized discussion forum. The forum here is a carry-over from what was started on Saxquest back in 2000. So, this is not a new forum, although its home here on saxophone.org is new.

     I like the last two lines of your post where you say "no favorites and keeping an open mind" and "have some fun and learn together". The only way to truly share differing opinions and keep an open mind is to respect the opinions of others when they differ from ours. This is true even when we feel the other person may have a different or competing agenda behind their opinion.

     We all have reasons for why we think the way we do and everyone's opinion and personal experiences are valid. Some people speak with many more years of experience and some people here are professional players whereas others are amateurs or beginners. But that's not to say the person who has been playing for only a year doesn't have a valid opinion or that the professional player's experience is worth any more than the life-long hobbyist. In fact, some times the fresh experience can be enlightening and a hobbyist can speak from a different perspective and set of life experiences than the seasoned professional.

     This is one of the reasons I included in this web site a video/audio section and a fairly extensive profile page. I encourage everyone to post up as much honest information about themselves as they feel comfortable. That being said, bashing another player's posted video or audio will not be tolerated on this web site. For many amateur players, sharing videos and audios can be somewhat of a nervous thing. Especially when your clip may be sitting right next to a clip of John Coltrane or some other site member with much more experience than you. But its not about who's better or any of that. Its about sharing and like you said "having fun and learning together". We all travel along a similar path when it comes to learning saxophone. Some of us are further along on that journey than others and for those who are its most admirable to reach out a hand to others when we can. I think Dick Oatts may have said it best when I had a chance to sit and talk with him. He said that learning to play the saxophone is a life-long pursuit. Even the most seasoned professional at one time or another struggled to play digital patterns over II-V-I progressions and/or worked meticulously on broken fourths or other such technical exercises. The great thing about learning to play an instrument is that its such a cumulative learning process. You never know where something you worked on 5-6 years ago will suddenly come back to you and be useful.

So, anyway, I digress. Thanks for posting,William and I look forward to many fun, respectful and interesting discussions in the future.

Cheers,

     Mark Overton
     www.saxquest.com
     www.saxophone.org

Welcome to the drama-free zone.  I don't think we ever responded to one another on SOTW, but I always found your posts offered in a helpful spirit, well thought out, and based on a credible body of experience.  Their loss is this site's gain.

You might, as an advanced player, be interested in David Valdez's blog, davidvaldez.blogspot.com.