{"id":560,"date":"2020-02-26T14:07:04","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T14:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coldnose.us\/?p=560"},"modified":"2020-02-27T18:34:06","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T18:34:06","slug":"volume-11-the-trumpet-chronicles-is-now-the-saxophone-chronicles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/2020\/02\/volume-11-the-trumpet-chronicles-is-now-the-saxophone-chronicles\/","title":{"rendered":"Volume 11: The Trumpet Chronicles is Now the Saxophone Chronicles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since this website used to reside at a different address, until the idiots who run my web hosting somehow didn’t notify me of a domain name renewal, I doubt many of you (well, the one or two who’ve visited so far) are familiar with the Trumpet Chronicles.<\/a>\u00a0 This was a series of articles I wrote as I wandered my way through the intricacies of trumpet selection and mouthpiece searching.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

About a year or so ago, I came to the realization that I was probably about as far as I could get with my current level of involvement in playing the trumpet, and that I really wasn’t having much fun.\u00a0 I play in a community band in the Northern Kentucky area, and I was one of about 10 trumpet players, and very likely the weakest of the bunch.<\/p>\n

I noticed that the band did not have a baritone saxophone player, and hadn’t for quite a while.\u00a0 Lightbulb!\u00a0 Maybe “I” could play the baritone saxophone?\u00a0 The only problem was that I hadn’t played one since 1979.\u00a0 This might present a problem.<\/p>\n

I asked the director about this, and he said that I could give it a try.\u00a0 There was a borrowed high school bari that I could use.\u00a0 It’s of Chinese descent and is in reasonably good condition.<\/p>\n

Next… what mouthpiece to use?\u00a0 I had been through this same type of searching when I was pursuing the perfect trumpet mouthpiece (hint:\u00a0 it doesn’t exist).<\/p>\n

After some inquiries to friends and forums, I settled on a Yamaha 5C plastic mouthpiece as a good place to start.\u00a0 It’s been a good choice for the level of playing that I am at (and will probably stay at).<\/p>\n

With woodwinds, there’s additional mouthpiece-type decisions to make… what ligature, and what make and strength of reed?<\/p>\n

Ligature… I did some research and asking around, and settled on a Rovner Dark Ligature.\u00a0 It seems to work just fine.<\/p>\n

Reeds.\u00a0 This search for a woodwind player is just as traumatic as the perpetual mouthpiece search for a brass player.<\/p>\n

The reeds I remember from 1979 were Rico reeds, so I started there.\u00a0 My memories from college were that you were supposed to play on the stiffest reed you could stand, although I do not remember the logic behind this statement.\u00a0 I tried some 2s and 2.5s, and ended up on 3.5s.\u00a0 But it was difficult for me to get a consistent sound across the entire range of the instrument.\u00a0 And I was destroying 2-3 reeds per band practice.\u00a0 The ends would just split.<\/p>\n

I’ll spare you the long drawn-out story, but I discovered through the help of fellow sax players in the band that I was positioning my reed on the mouthpiece too far past the edge of the mouthpiece.\u00a0 This was what I thought I remembered from 1979.\u00a0 Wrong.\u00a0 According to my peers, it’s supposed to be slightly shy of the edge of the mouthpiece, with just a sliver of mouthpiece showing.\u00a0 I fixed that.<\/p>\n

But I was still breaking reeds left and right.\u00a0 At $3 – $4 a pop, it was getting expensive.\u00a0 Obviously there was something wrong with my technique.<\/p>\n

A kind bass clarinetist figured out that I was tonguing the reed with the tip of my tongue, and that was causing the broken reeds.\u00a0 I needed to adjust how I placed the mouthpiece in my mouth, and where I tongued on the mouthpiece.\u00a0 BINGO!<\/p>\n

With my same mouthpiece and a Rico 2 reed, I played an entire 2 hour practice session on the same reed, and it is still good to use again.\u00a0 Amazing.\u00a0 And my playing was a lot more consistent across the range of the instrument.<\/p>\n

At last, a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Going on in the background was an occasional search for my own baritone saxophone.\u00a0 I wasn’t too picky, but wanted one from one of the classic American brands if at all possible.\u00a0 Then, a possibility emerged from Facebook Marketplace.\u00a0 A young man in Cincinnati had a 1957 Martin bari that was supposed to be playable.\u00a0 My problem was that I was rich in trumpets, but poor in cash.\u00a0 Would he consider trading for some trumpets?\u00a0 He would.\u00a0 So I ended up trading 2 trumpets and a cornet for the Martin.\u00a0 An additional benefit of sorts was that the Martin is of the same vintage as the new owner.\u00a0 I had some repairs made to it, and it still needs some additional work, so I have been playing the Chinese horn in the meantime.<\/p>\n

A kind bari player from Facebook, who happens to be a Vandoren artist, sent me a Vandoren 5C mouthpiece to try out, along with some Vandoren reeds.\u00a0 Sadly, I broke all of the reeds prior to fixing my embouchure.\u00a0 I think for now that I will likely stick with the Yamaha 5C, but\u00a0I did recently purchase a J & D Hite Artist Baritone Saxophone Mouthpiece to try out.\u00a0 \u00a0We’ll see how that does.<\/p>\n

My intent is to provide updates to the now-named Saxophone Chronicles regularly.\u00a0 Life usually intervenes, so we’ll also see how that goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since this website used to reside at a different address, until the idiots who run my web hosting somehow didn’t notify me of a domain name renewal, I doubt many of you (well, the one or two who’ve visited so far) are familiar with the Trumpet Chronicles.\u00a0 This was a series of articles I wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[39,16,42,13,14,9,49,45,21,37,47,33,34,35,22,28,48,786,785,26,19,38,29,31,36,30,43,41,25,24,23,27,10,12,46,11,18,20,32,17,44,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldnose.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}