PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Birthday of Adolphe Sax

Today nobody died so far. Let's celebrate the 201st birthday of

Adolphe Sax.

If you've never heard about him: He invented the Saxophone and improved many brass instruments.

Have a super Friday.

Great comment GHinCH. Yes, he certainly changed the music world, in ways he could never have probably dreamed how, 2 centuries ago.

November 6 is saxophone day and it is also my wife Leilani's birthday.

It holds a special significance to me because the two things most dear to me share the same day.

We are celebrating today (actually we drag out birthdays to the entire month - why limit the celebration to one day?)

When in South Dakota, I visited the National Music Museum and they have a collection of Adolph Sax saxophones from soprano to bass as well as a number of other instruments he invented that didn't take off like the saxophone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Music_Museum

http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/

http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/Saxophone/AdolpheSax/SaxSaxophoneChecklist.html

If you ever get near Vermilion SD, the museum is worth at least a half day.

Insights and incites by Notes

http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/

Beautiful examples of the original design of the saxophone. I found one on Craigslist several years back that was similar to the bari sax. It was made by Boosey and I have researched it to 1889. Like the Selmer it has limited range, dual octave keys no rollers etc. The Boosey neck is also attached but the "curl" is on the left side of the body. Also high pitch. Wonderful "parlor" sound.

Happy saxophone day and now I'm off to a Sax gig.....

On the subject of saxes, perhaps someone could answer this for me. With the upper banks of my Ketron I have a variety of sax options, such as jazz tenor, rock sax etc. Where do the different tones come from on a "real" sax? Is it in the manufacture, the reed or the musician?

And can one go from playing a slow sexy tenor song to a R&R style with the same instrument?

Probably a dumb question, but remember I'm only a piano player.

All of the above:

1) sax - size and taper of the bore, density of the brass, amount of copper in the brass, height of the keys, resonators in the pads, plating/lacquer (if any) and some saxes use necks and bells made of sterling silver -- etc.

2) Mouthpiece, tip opening, bore size, baffle, etc. Also, is it made of hard rubber, brass, stainless steel? The mouthpiece on the sax is like the pickups and tone circuitry of the guitar, it's where the tone is generated and there are almost endless variations of design. I've seen some very extended conversations about mouthpieces on the Sax On The Web Forum, and I've known a few sax players who had dozens of mouthpieces.

3) Reed brands (like guitar strings) have different tones and they come in different strengths (hardness), which is also dependent on tip opening of the mouthpiece - also related, the ligature (the device that holds the reed to the mouthpiece). Plus since cane reeds are 'organic', no two are alike in tone or response. Then there are the synthetic reeds, which are more consistent but have a different tone (I prefer cane)

4) Player. The player's mouth is a resonating chamber that creates standing waves that color the tone by reinforcing some harmonics and depressing others. Also, the mouth shape can be changed during the playing to get different sounds, almost like vowel ooh-aah changes.

5) Player #2 - breath support. How tight are the muscles in your lower abdomen and diaphragm. This affects the clarity of the tone. Breath support varies the air pressure (not the speed of the air).

6) Player #3 - embouchure - simply put, how much of the mouthpiece/reed is in your mouth and how firmly are you embracing it

How do you get that blues sound?

All of the above, plus there are other effects you can produce. Probably most relevant here is a growl produced by the vocal chords while playing. It can vary to various degrees between a hum and something similar to clearing one's throat. It produces what I've heard called "dirty sax" a lot.

Then you can flutter tongue.

These are the basics. What makes the sax so versatile is that there are so many different ways to change the tone by either equipment, the player, or both.

Because most of the above interact with each other, it can take a long time to find the combination you like best. Plus you don't hear the sax like others do, so for years, when I was working on tone, I would play in front of a wall to hear the reflections coming back at me.

Insights and incites by Notes

Hi Bob,
Thank you for all the trouble you went to in your explanation. I must admit, I never realised the intricacies involved, and although I worked with a very good sax player for many years, it never occurred to me to ask him.
Without needing a further explanation, I guess the same goes for brass instruments such as trumpets & troms also.

Thank you again Bob - every day I live & learn,

That is what I like about this forum: Universal knowledge openly and expertly distributed.

A layman only can imagine what influences the different elements of an instrument including the player have -- depending on the mental openness of that person and his/her "déformation professionnelle", of course.

I think that the same goes for any instrument, acoustic or electronic.

To follow up on Bob's response "...since cane reeds are 'organic', no two are alike in tone or response". To paraphrase Pete Fountain in an interview many years ago, "I have a $5,000 custom made clarinet and I have to rely on a .25 cent reed to make me sound good"

Every instrument has it's intricacies. The physical and electrical nature of the instrument gives it it's own 'personality'.

It's not just tone, it's "What nuances can be created by the instrument itself?"

A good musician learns what the instrument he/she is playing can do, and then exploits those nuances to coax expression out of that instrument. Charlie Parker is credited with this quote, "You don't play the sax, you let the sax play you."

I think that goes for every musical instrument.

And it helps the synth player coax those expressions out of his/her synth if he/she tries to recreate them.

Play a sax patch like a piano or guitar, and it isn't going to sound right. This is a major problem with synth players saying 'the sax just doesn't sound right'. Often it is you aren't getting the nuances of the sax out of your synth.

For an analogy: Take one of those comedians that do impressions of the president and other famous people. Is their voice like the person they are 'doing'? Some aren't even close. But they capture the speech patterns, the pauses, the dynamics, the pitch changes, the articulation, etc., and if they do that well enough, they create a convincing impression.

I found the best synth for recreating sax sounds is the Yamaha VL70m. Admittedly, the tone isn't the best (samplers do it better), but the ability to recreate 'sax nature' is more than enough to make up for the difference.

I'm a sax player first, and I also play flute, wind synth, guitar, keyboard synth, bass, drums, and voice. My sax is set up with a mouthpiece that allows me to play a rock/blues 'dirty sax' sound. If I want something mellow, I'd have to take the brass mouthpiece with the large lay off, put the hard rubber mouthpiece on with a medium lay, wet a new harder reed to match that mouthpiece, and re-tune the sax. Impractical between songs. -- Same goes for a more edgy contemporary jazz sound, mouthpiece/reed/tuning/etc. So instead, I bring out the WX5 Wind MIDI controller and play a nice mellow or edgy contemporary jazz sax patch on the VL70m.

My advice to all synth players who want to emulate other instruments is to listen to them intently, figure out how they get their expression and try to recreate those nuances on your synth.

A few tips to get you started. Saxes like to scoop up to pitch a lot from below pitch. We also like to vary our vibrato speed and intensity according to the demands of the music and all the other things I mentioned above.

Guitarists like to bend notes up (although the good ones might hit a note a half step below and bend up to pitch). Guitar finger vibrato is from on pitch to above pitch and back. Guitarists can control sustain from mute with the palm of their hands to lengthy by using feedback and fx.

Trombonists like to tongue notes a lot unless using the slide for a portamento effect. All brass instruments tend to tongue notes a lot more than reeds.

Saxes and clarinets play faster than guitars, but only one note at a time. We can do glissandos which sound different from the guitar equivalent of slides.

There are countless nuances and ornaments that different instruments are capable of, and the more you listen, and the more you can figure out how to recreate them with your synth, the better job you can do with your emulation.

Here are a couple of sax emulations on a VL70m synth by me. The pitch changes, articulation, and dynamics give the synth sound 'sax nature'. And the fact that this patch gets brighter with higher continuous controller 2 levels (breath) makes the tonal differences more sax like.

These were recorded on a pre-iPod Archos Juke Box on the gig, so the tone is thin, upper midrange and highs are pronounced. The backing tracks are almost pure BiaB styles (I forget which ones or whether they were PGs or Mine).

http://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_sunshinesax.mp3

http://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/_capecodsax.mp3

If I played these patches like a piano, they wouldn't sound like a saxophone at all.

Conversely, if I played a piano patch like a sax, it wouldn't sound like a piano at all.

Insights and incites by Notes

I'm sure Adolphe certainly never expected it to go this far. Just look what he started!

He invented a number of instruments, and I'm sure he hoped at least one of them would be a bit hit!