Intonation Cold & Intonation

[Veggie Dave]

Since getting the Keilwerth MKX I've been able to increasingly relax my embouchure (which is definitely a good thing) but now that it's getting really cold my shed is increasingly difficult to heat. And this means the mouthpiece has to be pushed on further and further. It's got to the point now where it's a good few mm past the end of the cork, which seems to be affecting the intonation.

Can someone confirm that I'm not going mad and that having the 'piece that far onto the neck can affect intonation?

 

[jbtsax]

This article by Bret Pimentil gives a pretty clear explanation on this topic: Pushing In and Pulling Out

Theoretically a saxophone plays its best when the "effective volume" of the mouthpiece is a close match to that of the "missing cone". Pushing the mouthpiece in an extreme distance has the effect of reducing the "effective volume". The volume of the "missing cone" is a constant since it is determined by the taper of the saxophone especially the neck.

As Pimental's article states, changing the "sounding length" of the instrument affects the "short tube" notes more than the "long tube" notes. The "mismatch" of the "effective volume" of the mouthpiece to that of the "missing cone" affects the harmonics evidenced by the octaves being less in tune as well as the quality of the sound.

 

[ellinas]

It depends on the sax.
Different sax different tuning tendencies.

My beaugnier tenor is in tune when my mouthpiece is almost all the way in. Top notes are very sensitive and as we go lower the notes are less affected by how deep i pushed the mouthpiece. I feel that I need 15 minutes of playing to get it warmed and stable when it's cold. In all my saxes the first minutes are needed to stabilize the reed and my tuning 🙂

My Yanagisawa is like most saxophones. It tunes at about the middle to 2/3ds of the cork. And notes seem to get sharper and flatter in balance .... Same with Yamahas ....

The truth is that both have excellent intonation, and this comes from a keyboard player ... It's just my Beaugnier ( bigger bore? ) has a different behavior.

I remember the same behavior playing a vintage Keilwerth tenor of a friend ....

Tuning is a compromise.... more or less..

Also the chamber of a mouthpiece plays great role. My Beaugnier loves Link mouthpieces with large chambers. From a NY that's smokey dark to a Kanee florida clone that to my ears can get really bright.

The Yani ... accepts everything ... even though it's a 70s horn with a 60s body...

Summarizing .... the tuning point is different in the winter / summer. And it's perfectly fine to push the mouthpiece all the way in in some saxophones. 🙂

Enjoy your Keilwerth. It's a GREAT horn.

 

[Pete Effamy]

That looks very worrying. What is it in your shed, -10C?

 

[Wade Cornell]

You're not at all mad Veggie Dave. A cold instrument is a bastard to play in tune and pushing the mouthpiece in too far distorts intonation. My simple solution is a small electric fan heater blowing on the horn for ten minutes before I play. Your breath will keep it warm enough thereafter unless you're trying to play in very cold temperatures (keep the heater on you and the horn!).

 

[Ivan]

My simple solution is a small electric fan heater blowing on the horn for ten minutes

Exactly my technique in my musical outhouse

Also wall insulation @Veggie Dave?

I practiced for a while in a very cold bedroom and intonation was kaput. Altogether a miserable experience

 

[MMM]

would a plastic saxophone be affected by low temperature in the same way?

 

[guidocreo]

Cold is a big problem; when I was a teenager I played with the comunity city band; one very cold winter morning we went to the harbour to welcome the return of a sailor who had circumnavigated the world: the temperature was just above zero and there was a strong wind from the northeast, I was playing the clarinet and I was unable to do a sound for about ten minutes, after wich you can image the intonation. 🙂

 

[Veggie Dave]

Enjoy your Keilwerth. It's a GREAT horn.

It really, really is. 🙂

That looks very worrying. What is it in your shed, -10C?

I think part of the issue is that I use an infrared heater. Great for keeping you warm and very efficient. The only problem is that they don't really heat the air. So, while I'm not that cold the air remains close to that of outside. When I took the above image it was about 1C outside.

You're not at all mad Veggie Dave.

<phew>

I practiced for a while in a very cold bedroom and intonation was kaput. Altogether a miserable experience

It is soul destroying...

you can image the intonation. 🙂

Sadly, I do believe I can. 😉

 

[rhysonsax]

would a plastic saxophone be affected by low temperature in the same way?

Interesting question. It's the air temperature that matters for speed of sound (and so tuning) so initially I think a plastic saxophone would be just as bad, but maybe it would warm up to temperature more quickly than a metal sax.

I'm trying to remember the thermodynamics and materials science parts of my engineering and think that the relevant characteristics would be the "specific heat capacity" (how much energy to raise one kg of the material by one degree).

For instance Copper has a specific heat of approx. 0.39 kJ/(kg deg C)
And Polycarbonate has a specific heat of approx. 1.1 kJ/(kg deg C)

But the plastic saxophone would be considerably lighter, so perhaps we should look at the volumetric heat capacity (how much energy to raise one cubic centimetre of the material by one degree).

Copper has a volumetric heat capacity of approx. 3.45 J/(cc deg C)
Polycarbonate has a volumetric heat capacity of approx. 1.3 J/(cc deg C)

But a plastic sax would probably have higher wall thickness than a brass saxophone, so would perhaps only take somewhat less heat to bring it up to playing temperature.

Rhys

 

[fabriziodalisera]

Hello, as soon as you develop a more relaxed embouchure you need to push the mouthpiece further into the cork, and this is not a bad thing. Your sound will become bigger and fuller. Cold is an another story...but after 5 minutes of long tones you should not have problems.
Sometimes certain moutpieces don't work with some horns. I mean that you can play them of course, but not with good results. Especially big bore vintage horns require a big chamber to perform well both in terms of tone and intonation. If you try to play a ponzol on a Conn 10M tenor you will run into big problems. Some year ago I played a Keilwerth baritone, it didn't have any intonation problems, but I am not a Keilwerth expert. Maybe your mouthpiece could not be the best companion for that horn...

 

[Nick Wyver]

I can not recommend playing a baritone outside in winter. Most of it never warms at all.

 

[jbtsax]

I'm trying to remember the thermodynamics and materials science parts of my engineering and think that the relevant characteristics would be the "specific heat capacity" (how much energy to raise one kg of the material by one degree).

Arthur Benade in his Acoustical Evolution of Wind Instruments Course notes writes that more than 99% of the input energy from the player ends up simply heating the walls of the air column (below cutoff)." "All walls have viscous losses (rough or smooth) plus thermal and porous losses." He goes on to say "the thermal part of the dissipation varies only slightly with wall material."

As compared with a perfectly (heat) conducting material of infinite heat capacity and density, we have:
copper...................0.9997
brass......................0.9994
German silver.....0.9991
wood....................0.9720

This is way above my level of understanding of materials and thermodynamics. Perhaps others can relate it to the topic at hand.

 

[ellinas]

So .... an alloy with much copper in theory .... adjusts faster?

 

[rhysonsax]

So .... an alloy with much copper in theory .... adjusts faster?

Well I've read the words repeatedly and I don't know what Benade means !

Rhys