Alto MP comparison

[Anonymous]

Jeff – yes i got logic pro x free with my laptop deal. its very powerful and complex. at the moment i don’t wan’t to get into the tinkering with a recording and cheating by making my playing sounding better than it is like some people do – just want it as a record and playback to listen to my timing & pitch & tone – so no frills – what you c is what u get, what u hear is what u sound like etc…

[Kevin]

Jeff, If you’ve sanded on the face curve, then you may get something that will produce a sound, and may get lucky that all you handi-work resulted in something that responds to your expectations. But your odds are slim. Doing it by hand is hard enough, but moreso if you don’t have a glass scale and feeler gage set, to check for precision of the curve and symmetry of the two side rails.
The curvature’s that play and respond well are based on a precise geometric shape that is in my opinion some variation of an ellipse. I have machined a true radius face curve, a radial curve, and an ellipse, and did at least 5-6 variations of the latter two, and also with some variations of the face curve length and tip openings, and test played all those to learn what worked and didn’t.
I have only scratch the surface of this craft, but am intrigued to learn more. I did a few alterations by sanding, and one significant face change by hand, and the results were not that good, and trying to repeat results a crap shoot. I determined that I would prefer to do the work with precision CNC mill where I can program an exact geometric profile, that will have perfectly parallel rails.

[Kevin]

James, not sure what is your perception regarding recording that you deem as cheating. My thoughts are that most of the uploads done (to this site) are with sub-standard devices, mics, room acoustics, etc. which yield the result that one really sounds worse than they really do if you happened to be in the same room with them.
Is it cheating for Johnny’s recording to done with a good quality mic, good recording equipment software that uses a high sampling rate so we get a good audio spectrum of the frequency range and overtones, using a room that he’s setup to minimize the bad acoustical characteristics, or that he add’s a touch of reverb to add the essence of playing in a larger room like he would as a performer on stage, or positioned the mic where it best picks up the fullness of his sound?
Is it cheating to have made a mistake on a recording take and choose to delete it and do another take to play it more correctly?
I think most of the recordings I’ve heard uploaded are pretty straight forward basic novice recordings that simply have some reverb added, and more times than not a bit too much which to me doesn’t make them sound better than the really are, it just makes them sound like they are in a large empty auditorium and it kinda muddies and takes away from the clarity of their sound.
If you are referring to someone using pitch correction software, then yea I would side with you, but I think the majority of us are trying to learn about recording their sax by doing all the things Johnny has learned to do to make a truer recording of how our instruments sounds as if we could hear him in a good live room acoustical setting.

[Anonymous]

Hi Kevin, thanks for the information regarding your MP shaping experience. That explains why so many people are trying to make a perfect MP. At the price I paid for the 4C it’s just not worth putting in all those hours of filing and shaping by hand just for a mediocre sound. Clearly one must be extra careful when handling this critical part of our saxes, as to drop an expensive MP on it’s leading edge would be a total catastrophe. Cheers

[Anonymous]

@kevin – all i’m saying is for my purposes when i record and play back i want the playback sound to sound as close as possible to what i sound like – i dont wan’t to go into making it sound different/better or moving it about so it starts on every bar etc.. to me theres nothing more dissapointing than hearing a band on a record that sounds fantastic and when you go see them live they actually sound crap soundwise.

its just like reeds some people will pick one up and if it sounds crap they will chuck it away, whereas other may have the patience to tinker with it and make it playable. in my case i want to play the reed for what sounds like.

different strokes for different folks

[wayne wojnarowski]

Hi sx poet I’ve been out of the loop for a few whats everybody talking about? Hey Jeff thanks for the info on the computer but man I’m still having trouble with it I’m hoping it will come to me soon . In regards to reeds I like to manipulate them a bit, cause I’ve had success with sand papering them in the right spots1 However like anything you have to have some experience, meaning you ruin some in the process. Hey sx poet and Mike and Jeff I bought a interface for my low impedance mikes to use to record and I bought some inexpensive USB mikes, Mike Bishop I mentioned to you a month or so ago I bought a Shure , as well as a Samson USB GO MIKE super cheap but I think great sound unidirectional condenser with a 10 db pad
portable bla bla bla. Jeff you’ll appreciate this I wound up using the mike and the camera in my laptop cause I’m numb nuts!! I think I got a OK sound also choose your room for acoustics. Hey guys what if we all picked the same tune lick or what ever and posted it?? William you’ll like this one … than we will all be naked so to speak no one can to snarky !!

[wayne wojnarowski]

Why would anyone want to alter their tone pitch or whatever????????? If you sound like crap or think that you do don’t put anything out till you sound better!! Jeff and Kevin i admire your want to mess around with your MP”S kind of like me with sax reeds but a lot cheaper if you mess up a reed

[Author]

Posts