Hi guys - thanks for the replies. Love low Bb's, tender....working on a version of one note samba on low Bb at the moment because I dislike my neighbours constant best of X factor replays.
anyway, the lady in question has no thumbs or little fingers, just the three central digits on each hand. I understand palm keys would be no problem but how would you get around stabilising the instrument with no thumbs?
Jbt - do you know which model of Conn has the fingering layout you mentioned?
cheers
Missing thumbs? There's goes the register key. That could also cause problems with "holding" the instrument. How far is she willing to go in terms of a "specialty sax"?
The reason I ask is because I was just thinking that her best bet might be to have the sax "mounted" on a very solid stand where she can just sit at it and play it without having to actually "hold it". That would free her fingers to just playing keys without having to worry about balancing or manipulating the horn in any way with the thumbs.
If she is willing to go for a "stationary sax" that is solidly mounted that also opens up other possibilities such as "foot-operated levers", for say the register key, and potentially other keys that would normally be used for the pinky.
That would certainly be a "specialty sax" for sure. I'm not sure what all that would entail, but potentially the sax could be mounted on a system that has some freedom of movement so it's not totally rigid. Maybe mounted with some kind of springs so she'll have some freedom of moment whilst still providing some stability and "foot controlled keys". She might also be able to incorporate her palms to activate keys as well once the horn has been "anchored".
In my mind I see this thing being attached directly to the stool or chair that she is sitting on so it retains a solid orientation to her. Although the sax could also be mounted directly on her with some sort of rigid harness system that actually holds the sax fairly rigid in front of her. Then she would have more freedom to move around. That could depend on the size of sax she's interested in playing. Having it mounted directly to her via a rigid harness system would indeed be better than having it mounted to a stool. But either way can work.
I think I've seen "sax stands" where the sax can supposedly be played while it's in the stand. So maybe get one of those and standard sax. See what she can do with that, and then work from there. Once the sax is in a stand that opens up the possibility of foot-operated levers.
In fact, she could potentially use foot operated levers even with a "free-floating" sax worn on a rigid harness. The control cables could be flexible (kind of like the cables used for camera shutters). She could potentially use her foot at least for the octave key. And possible more.
Anyway, that's just my brainstorming thoughts for whatever they're worth.
