Being that I've played in guitar bands ever since I was in junior high school, I actually prefer E/F# (Concert/Tenor Sax) and A/B to the piano keys of Bb/C and Eb/F.

My fingers are more comfortable in the sharp keys, simply because I have thousands more hours in sharp keys.

I suppose if I cut my musical teeth in piano based or swing band based groups, I'd like Bb and Eb better.

Playing sax, flute, keys, brass and many other instruments, transposing even a half step requires entirely different fingerings. It's like learning the song all over again from scratch. So when I started playing guitar and we modulated up a half step, all I had to do was move my and up one fret and use the exact same fingering. WOW! Wanna modulate again? And again?

Matt mentioned intonation on brass and woodwind instruments. No sax is in tune with itself. Each note has to be adjusted with lip pressure on the reed and the players ears.

When I get a new sax, the first thing I do is sit with a tuner and play every note on the sax (long tones) and see which ones play sharp and which ones play flat. Doing this a while will automatically put my lip in the right direction and my ears will tell me how much.

Modern saxes seem to be better at intonation than older ones. I guess computer design, human refinement, or better manufacturing techniques have contributed to that.

The worst sax I've had for intonation is a silver plated 1925 King Alto. But it has the voice of an angel, so I keep it around. The second worst one I've ever owned was the legendary Selmer Mark VI (which I bought new in 1959 or 1960). The VI to sax players is worshiped like a very early Les Paul or Fender Broadcaster - worth a lot of money. Mostly because the VII wasn't as good (the intonation was better but the tone was worse).

My 9 year old, custom built MacSax and a used Yamaha YTS-52 I just picked up have the best relative intonation of all the saxes I've owned (saxes are expensive so I haven't owned nearly enough <wink/grin>). My VII, Couf Superba and Grassi Prestige are newer designs than the VI and have better intonation too.

I have a relative who has absolute pitch, and he says some keys sound brighter, others darker, and it has nothing to do with whether it's a sharp key or a flat key.

We transpose songs to fit our vocal range. If possible we try to do it in 'record key' but it's better to change the key if you can't do a good job in the record key. Changing keys and just listening to the backing tracks I create myself we've noticed that sometimes a half step difference makes a difference in how bright or dark the song sounds. I've never taken the time to log which keys sound brighter or darker, and also don't know if it's song-specific or not.

So doing the backing tracks in MIDI where I can change the key to whatever I want without artifacts and with a few clicks of the mouse helps a lot when learning new songs. I can get the song in the optimum key for the singer and move it a half step or so for the listener.

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