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Thread: Why Do We Make Fun of Saxophone Players

  1. #11
    I tend to agree with Adrian.

    I don't mind the bari sax too much. Atleast the bari can add weight and can blend not too badly with the euphonium and tuba section. The problematic member of the saxophone family in concert bands is the tenor saxophone especially in the hands of weaker players. The way composers have the tenor doubles the euphonium part can be a nightmare for intonation. They just don't seem to blend as well with the euphonium as compared to the tenor doubling a trombone part.

    One thing my Community Band conductor did half way through the season last year is move the the tenor saxes in front of the trumpets as opposed to having them in front of myself in the euphonium section. In front of the euphoniums is the now the horn section. The trombones, horns and euphonium sections sounded better.

    Having said that, I had played in concert bands with some great saxophone sections.

  2. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by adrian_quince View Post
    Short answer? Frustration.

    Now, let me preface the long answer by saying that a good saxophonist in a concert band is worth their weight in gold. With that said, there are a few factors that often lead low brass feeling frustrated by saxophones in the brass in the concert band:
    .
    .
    .
    What does all of this mean? Being a saxophonist in the concert band is hard. While low brass players might like to vent about those darn saxes, it would be more productive to understand the issue and approach our woodwind counterparts with some sympathy for being dealt one of the toughest roles in the concert band. And, if you have good musical partners in the saxophone section, appreciate how lucky you are.
    Well said. Saxophones provide unique and beautiful voices but players who can really produce the characteristic sound of the instrument are rare. I think this is true for many instruments, including the euphonium!

  3. #13
    Wow, I really wasn't expecting this great of a response to this thread! There's a reason that this forum is my favorite place to hang out on the internet. (Who needs Facebook when you have a bunch of brass players to talk to?)

    There is one point I'd like to address, though:

    Quote Originally Posted by ghmerrill View Post
    Student level saxophones typically really suck in terms of pitch and intonation. Saxophone players in the schools (who are mostly taking lessons from a school "music teacher" who is almost never a saxophonist) are never taught how to play in tune uniformly, and their instruments are not helping them. Later in life, these people end up in community bands. They do not know how to play in tune, and they usually don't know what "in tune" means because they've never trained their ears to do it.

    When I showed up for my first lesson (at about age 13 in the early 60s -- before some of the really good saxophones were manufactured) with my Eastman guy, I saw that he had masking tape all over his instrument. Why? "It's the only way to get it to play basically in tune."

    The saxophone is a very easy instrument to learn to play. It is a VERY VERY difficult instrument to learn to play in tune and with good tone production. In the family, the baritone is generally the best of lot in terms of tone quality, pitch, intonation, and tone quality. I don't know why this is.

    In the past year I've gone from one community band where the saxophone section was dreadful to another where the section is actually good. What's the difference? Better (more expensive) instruments and better training and musicianship. But that's quite unusual for a saxophone section in community band. Quite unusual. In general, amateur saxophone players who show up in community bands have significantly poorer equipment and are just not as good musicians as most of the rest of the players. It's their culture.
    There's also a school of saxophonists who forsake modern equipment (with tuning improvements) for certain classic models, like the Selmer Mark VI. The Mark VI has a distinctive sound that has yet to be replicated, but it has serious tuning issues that players have to work hard to address. Some Mark VI devotees do, some don't. The closest analogy I can think of for the latter group is a euphoniumist buying a Besson New Standard for the tone quality and not trying to bring the notoriously sharp 6th partial into tune.
    Adrian L. Quince
    Composer, Conductor, Euphoniumist
    www.adrianquince.com

    Kanstul 976 - SM4U

  4. #14
    Join Date
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    Not much to add to this interesting discussion, but our MD has said on more than one occasion, "why can't you saxes sound more like the euphoniums?" Everyone chuckles - except the saxes.
    Rick Floyd
    Miraphone 5050 - Warburton BJ / RF mpc
    YEP-641S (recently sold)
    Doug Elliott - 102 rim; I-cup; I-9 shank


    "Always play with a good tone, never louder than lovely, never softer than supported." - author unknown.
    Symphonic Band of the Palm Beaches
    El Cumbanchero (Raphael Hernandez, arr. Naohiro Iwai)
    Chorale and Shaker Dance
    (John Zdechlik)

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by adrian_quince View Post

    There's also a school of saxophonists who forsake modern equipment (with tuning improvements) for certain classic models, like the Selmer Mark VI.
    Ah, the Selmer Mark VI. I switched from alto to tenor when I was 15 -- definitely one of the worst mistakes in my musical life, but the tenor was the sexy jazz horn and seemed more versatile and in demand at the time. At that point my parents had scraped together enough money to buy a new horn for me to replace the old used alto I'd started with as a rental and then bought.

    The Mark VI was the top of the line. How I wanted a Mark VI!! But the Mark VI was $625 at the time (yeah, I still remember the price). Too rich for us. The Conn (Artist model, also referred to as the 10M) was $475. The Selmer was, by every measure, clearly superior. I've seen it said of the 10M that "This seems like the horn everyone who wasn't playing a VI at the time were most often playing on." Paul Desmond played a Selmer VI (as did John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins). Of course, Sigurd Rascher (my teacher's professor at Eastman) played on a (gold plated) Buescher New Aristocrat, which was regarded as a better horn for "classical" work.

    Among the players in a saxophone section, the bari players are often the best musicians. Partly I think it's something about that horn and the parts written for it (and the fact that you can by an easy trick play bass clef parts such as bassoon, euphonium, tuba, etc.). And partly it's because the bari players are often converted bassoon players. In middle or high school, if you needed a bari player for pep band, big band, etc., you could turn a bassoon player into a reasonable bari sax player in a few days. And the bassoon player tended to know a lot about tone and pitch control.


    Gary Merrill
    Wessex EEb Bass tuba (DW 3XL or 2XL)
    Mack Brass Compensating Euph (DE N106, Euph J, J9 euph)
    Amati Oval Euph (DE 104, Euph J, J6 euph)
    1924 Buescher 3-valve Eb tuba (with std US receiver), Kelly 25
    Schiller American Heritage 7B clone bass trombone (DE LB K/K10/112/14 Lexan, Brass Ark MV50R)
    1947 Olds "Standard" trombone (Olds #3)

  6. The model prior to the Selmer Mark VI was the Selmer "Super Balanced Action" alto sax. My father was a music teacher and made money on the side through college, WWII and into the late 1950's playing big band "dance jobs". My father purchased his Selmer SBA in 1950 (or so) to replace his prewar Buescher Aristocrat. My dad would tell stories of how he disposed of his awful, out of tune, Buescher alto sax when he got his Selmer. He threw the Buescher against the wall and smashed it after playing its last dance job!

    My younger brother still has the Selmer and plays it regularly. These often sell for $6-7K or more even today!
    Adams E3 0.60 Sterling bell - Prototype top sprung valves
    Concord Band
    Winchendon Winds
    Townsend Military Band

  7. Every wind band I've played in, no matter the quality, has had tuning issues between euphoniums (my instrument) and the tenor and baritone sax. I don't have nearly the same issue matching with the clarinets, bassoon, or bass clarinet.

  8. #18
    I just recently called saxophones weird-looking trumpets, after a friend of mine posted a sax ensemble video to the community band Facebook page. Good times.

  9. #19
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    Why? It's the organic nature of their little noisemakers...reeds.

    Always buying the dern variable things.

    Constantly fiddling with them.

    A good euph MP can last a lifetime...when we find the right one.

    Ha!

    DG

  10. Yes, the fiddling with reeds is a main reason that in school I opted for brass instead of reeds.

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