the beast

[sxpoet]

Student Sax’s are designed for kids under the age of 11 years old to be able to play, as their lungs aren’t as large as a full grown adult, so they are a lot lot easier to blow.

The problem with wind instruments if you want to play very high notes, you need to get the air moving very fast through the instrument, this involves blowing faster and also running out of air a lot quicker.

The opposite is true for very low notes you need to get the air moving a lot slower through the instrument, this also involves running out of air a lot quicker and needs more stomach control and playing more relaxed.

That’s why the mid range on wind instruments is easier to play in terms of blowing power and not running out of air very quickly, which are usually the first notes you learn to master.

it’s down to physics, the larger the diameter of a pipe, means you you have to put a larger volume of air or water through the pipe, combine that with higher frequency notes need a faster flow of air whereas lower frequency notes need a slower flow of air. So the size of your lungs and mouth cavity determines how much air you can provide and how longer before you run out of air and also how much air pressure you can keep up.

Circular breathing is very bad for your lungs, as you are not emptying your lungs properly and refilling it with fresh air, you end up starving your blood supply of fresh oxygen which it takes from the lungs. With circular breathing a larger volume of stale air is sitting in your lungs for longer periods.

the student sax is harder to play altissimo notes and harder to get a good strong sound not because of the materials its made out of but because of the way the Sax is designed to work with less air.

Similarly a Pro sax is designed to use a lot more air, and the change in design makes it easier to play altissimo and get really fuller sounds, but this makes it harder for young kids to start blowing.

Because you cant change the diameter of the sax when blowing to alter the air speeds and volume of air going through the sax, this is where difference in mouthpiece designs come into play. A low numbered mouthpiece is easier to blow through compared to a higher numbered mouthpiece, again the difference in mouthpiece will make a difference in air speed and volume of air going through the sax, this will make it easier or harder to play altissimo notes and get a fuller sound.

Another example, is if you take in more mouthpiece, this opens your mouth more and provides a larger cavity of air in your mouth to force through the sax, this will give a lot stronger sound compared to a thinner sound.

My mistake was i bought an intermediate sax to learn on, which is identical to a pro sax in terms of blowing power, because of the sax design, so i couldn’t blow a note for a count of 4 beats when i started out, However 6 months later i could start hitting altissimo G because of the sax design and my lungs had got used to blowing, now i can blow four bars/measures in one breath.

Mouthpieces are crazy, the main thing is when your lungs, embouchure and stomach control changes and improves with practice then you definitely need to move up a mouthpiece size. This is the disadvantage of not practicing every day.

The problem with changing the mouthpiece design instead of going up a mouthpiece size opens a different can of worms as you don’t know what air speed and air volume they work with so you could end up going either up or down a mouthpiece size, can be costly.

The most import thing from the start is decide whether you want to play classical music or rock music as this determines the mouthpiece design. A professional classical sax player wont be able to play a non classical mouthpiece as well as a professional rock player straight away.

then the problem gets even more complicated – Reeds vary from soft to hard, they control the vibrations in the air movement, the harder the reed the easier it gets to play altissimo. The harder the reed, makes it harder to blow and turns your lips into jelly a lot faster. the harder the reed gives you a stronger sound. You can only go so far up in reed sizes, but as you improve, you definitely need to move up a reed size.

Ligatures, in my opinion make a slight difference to the timbre sound, i might be wrong but i think they can dampen a tone or make a difference in how clear or how mellow or how punchy the sound is. ligatures alter how loose the reed hugs the mouth piece, a metallic ligature will sound tonally different to leather reed as they affect how the reed vibrates.

This is the reason where a poor setup (you cant blame the sax) will make you sound awful. This is the reason why when i listened to various sax students some sounded awful and some sounded great (nothing to do with long tones practice) – and believe it or not, each student was playing in tune with a tuner (the bad sound was not due to playing out of tune ).

Some people argue, because the sax doesn’t play any note in tune which is true, that you need a good tonal ear otherwise you’ll never play properly in tune? There is some truth in that, because if you play a recorder, all the notes are in tune as its not a conical pipe shape.

dont we just love controlling the sax beast?

[Leo Salu]

Howdy, i would think everyone that is on the forum has to love the beast, that was a pretty good explanation about a lot of different things, i was surprised about the student sax being easier to get a note versus the pro model, i think i mentioned that i found my YTS62 easier to get a note to play (less air) than the YTS23 in fact everything seemed easier than the student model. I have a etude tenor that i got brand new playing that against the yamaha is like night and day the etude was just clunky, i try playing it once and a while and can’t wait to get back to the Yamaha’s. My thought was how much better a new player would fare using a good Yamahara right out of the start vs working thru a student model, of course i was not thinking of the under 12 players you mentioned. I started playing in 1954 at 8 yrs old, lasted to 1964 then stopped for 55 yrs now in my fifth year and loving every minute of it. Leo S.

[sxpoet]

Wind instruments are a lot more complex than playing a piano, i would recommend anyone getting lessons from day one like i did. A piano you have none of the problems of playing in tune, embouchure, reeds, mouthpieces, ligatures – with a piano you can have bad posture, wrong chair height – the main problem is playing from sheet music, providing you have a working piano in tune, theres nothing to stop your progress, unlike having to up your sax setup or sax as you improve which is a minefield.

i don’t claim to know everything about the sax, so any corrections to my knowledge is very welcome.

One of things that puzzles me do shops that sell saxophones deliberately want you to buy a student sax if you are an adult learner? if they make you buy a pro sax they probably think they will only be able to sell you one sax, whereas they can sell you two sax’s if they can get you buy a student sax first because years later on you’ll be back to buy the pro sax?

My Grandfather had a saying its more expensive in the long run to employ a cheap inexperienced labourer to do a job, than it is to pay more to employ a skilled worker to do the same job. His meaning being that if the job has to be redone again you end up paying more than if you employed the skilled worker in the first place.

you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. lol

[Leo Salu]

Back in 2018 i bought a alto sax made by etude (off amazon $250) played it for about a year then bought a selmer AS200 alto that is a pretty good sax still use that now, then decided i just had to get a tenor back to etude ($550) ok but that’s the clunky one, tired of that quickly so got a Selmer Bundy 2 nice student model sax played that for a while good sax, along the way picked up a soprano ok but not easy to play. A good friend gave me a Conn C melody (117 yrs old) that i am attempting to repad. That brought me to the Yamaha YTS23 real nice sax but kept hearing how much better the YTS62 was so just got one. Now i am the proud owner of 8 (eight) saxophones. the moral of this story fits kind of what you mentioned I should have just started off with the Yami 62 and saved some bucks, but they all look pretty cool on display. Also picked up all kinds of MP’s mostly selmer c *’s, ricos yamaha’s. now hoping i can now stop buying and be happy/content with what i got.

[sxpoet]

I can understand if you are a teenager then it makes sense to start out on a student sax, most parents don’t know if their children will loose interest a few years down the line.
But for an adult, buy a student sax if you’re not sure if you will loose interest, or buy a second hand pro sax that has been serviced.

The 1st sax i bought 10 years was a alto yamaha 480 identical to the 62 in terms of shape and neck, the only difference is the 62 finger keying action is a lot harder than the 480 and extra guards to protect it, so itʼs worth it in terms of wear and tear – soundwise there is no difference.

The guy who runs my local sax shop, is a professional Oboe player whose played a lot in orchestras in the past, and also plays clarinet and saxophones. He prefers the 480 easier on the fingers and advised me against buying the 62 Alto – he’s an honest chap, and wasn’t trying to unload another sax onto me to boost his profits.

I did buy a digital EMEO sax, which i practice on when the baby in our house is sleeping during different times of the day, its identical to a sax body, and has settings to play in Eb, Bb or concert mode, the only difference is the mouth piece is not reed sensitive, so you can play it with or without a mouthpiece, it’s not a performance instrument, just a silent practice instrument either through headphones or a speaker, but you need software on an ipad or computer via bluetooth to convert the midi signal into an audio signal.

The interesting thing is in the last 10 years, to buy my yamaha sax today, i would have to pay an extra £600 more. So it’s second hand value has gone up when i want to sell it.

The reason i went for Yamaha, is because i start playing on a student yamaha acoustic guitar in my teens. Cheap acoustic guitars are horrible. The strings are either too high above the neck, and this tears into to your fingers as you have to press the metal strings down harder and means you cant play for very long. The other problem with cheap guitars, if the strings are close to the neck, the lower strings rattle against the neck and ruin your recordings.

I’ve played some expensive acoustic guitars costing more than a saxophone, their strings are close to the neck, they don’t rattle against the neck, and the acoustic sounds from the type of wood panelling is to die for. makes you understand why a Stradivarius violin outclasses any modern day violin. unfortunately know one knows exactly how they were made.

The only i forgot to say, with the total money i spent in buying various mouthpieces, i could have bought a brand new sax. My teacher has a box load of mouthpieces, he must have spent a fortune.

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