Veggie Dave
Sax Worker
- Messages
- 3,560
- Location
- Citizen of Nowhere
Last night I was playing a club that had fans everywhere to try and keep the temperature down. On stage the temp drifted between 27C and 29C. Not the hottest stage I've played on, but still quite toasty.
First song, I grab the tenor and try to play the first note (high E IIRC) and nothing, then a squeak. 60 seconds or so of trying to get the reed as wet as possible and it starts to come back to life. The next few songs it's great but then there's a break of sax songs for about 20 minutes. This is all it took for the reed to dry out again. Not as badly this time, but still hard to play until I manage to get it wet again.
A 20 min or so break between sets and it's back to square one. Weirdly, the alto reed (only used on two songs during the two hour show) and the clarinet (used only once) had no issues.
This is definitely a new one for me. Am I missing something? Could it simply be the tenor was in line with one of the big fans which caused the reed issue (the clarinet and alto were much more protected) or something else? It definitely wasn't simply the stage temperature because I've played on much hotter with no issues.
First song, I grab the tenor and try to play the first note (high E IIRC) and nothing, then a squeak. 60 seconds or so of trying to get the reed as wet as possible and it starts to come back to life. The next few songs it's great but then there's a break of sax songs for about 20 minutes. This is all it took for the reed to dry out again. Not as badly this time, but still hard to play until I manage to get it wet again.
A 20 min or so break between sets and it's back to square one. Weirdly, the alto reed (only used on two songs during the two hour show) and the clarinet (used only once) had no issues.
This is definitely a new one for me. Am I missing something? Could it simply be the tenor was in line with one of the big fans which caused the reed issue (the clarinet and alto were much more protected) or something else? It definitely wasn't simply the stage temperature because I've played on much hotter with no issues.