Saxophones Low pitch

Colin1

Mine's an espresso
Quick question
Can a tenor sax be low pitch without being C melody?

There's a vendor on fleabay who insists he's not selling a C mel but one of his pics reveals the words 'Low pitch' stamped on the heel of the bell
 
In the earlier part of the 20th century there were two main pitch standards for saxes. Makers who made both stamped them low pitch, LP, high pitch or HP. Sometimes only L or H. As LP became the standard, the markings were dropped.

If you really research it you'll find there were many pitch standards, and even today some orchestras tune to a pitch a little higher than the official standard.

LP means that concert A is 440Hz.
 
Low pitch and high pitch are usually mentioned when discussing an instrument from the period before pitch was standardised.

A modern tenor is pitched in Bb. An alto in Eb. A melody is in between and pitched in C. And because they're modern all low pitch.
 
Brilliant answers guys
So what is transposing and why doesn't a sax pitched in C have to do it?
Lost in the mists of time musicians realised that it was easier to learn one set of fingering for a tune and play on a bigger or smaller instrument to lower or raise the pitch.

To transpose is to take a piece of music and move it to a different key.

Saxes generally come in two keys, Bb and Eb. Bass/tenor/sop are Bb, baritone/alto in Eb. This means that when a C is written in the music, the sax plays either a Bb, or Eb respectively.

C saxes - C melody and C soprano, play the written note - except that the C melody plays an octave below what's written.

So you need to learn one set of fingering for reading music. The sax parts are already in the correct transposed key for the instrument
 
Not right, unless the part is written / arranged for your sax.

If you look at botm or SOTM, you'll see two sets of notes, one for Bb instruments, one for Eb. Neither will work if you use a C sax, unless you transpose.

Similarly music for piano, flute, voice will only work on a C sax unless transposed.
 
An instrument "in C" means that the note that is written is what you hear when you play that note. Flutes, oboes, bassoons, violins, cellos etc all do this.

Transposing instruments don't do that... so a "Bb" instrument means that if you finger "C" you hear a Bb.

The reason for this is as Kev said: a)you keep the fingering the same on all pitches of instrument so that a written 'F' for example has the same fingering on all instruments, BUT the note that sound sis different. This is handled by writing the music in a key that adjusts for this - this is what is meant by transposing. b)you associate the fingered note on the instrument with the note that is sounded. So on a tenor, we would have to move the labelling of all of the notes by a tone, so C = Bb etc.There's no reason to not do this - it would mean learning two sets of names for notes for given fingerings.

On balance, people decided that option 'a' was preferable.
 
A belated thanks for that
So transposition is only really a headache for the writer of the piece, the sax player (in this case) just needs to play what's been written for him (unless of course he's also the writer). What do the transposition values

Up a whole tone
Up a major six
Up a major nine
Up a major thirteen

mean? I didn't think that Bb to C was a whole tone
 
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