jbtsax
R.I.P. in memoriam 1947 - 2023
I suspect most sax players by now have heard of checking the mouthpiece pitch. Most sources say this idea originated with Santy Runyon several years ago. Santy's pitches were B for the clarinet, A for the alto, G for the tenor, and Eb for the baritone. Eugene Rousseau, also a proponent of mouthpiece pitch in his book "Saxophone High Tones" gives the pitches as C for the soprano, A for the alto, G for the tenor, and D for the baritone.
Out of curiosity I recreated the "experiment" described by Santy Runyon in this(DEAD LINK) from his book, "Suggestions for Woodwind Players". Instead of a "theramin" which was simply a frequency generator which one could control by moving the hand between the metal poles, I used a pitch generator on my computer to play the A=880 input pitch into a small speaker.

The sound produced can be heard here Runyon Test
1. The small speaker alone sounding A=880
2. The small speaker connected to the "mouthpiece"
3. The "mouthpiece" on the neck of the saxophone
4. The saxophone being fingered
As you can hear, Santy's story is completely bogus. He apparently didn't understand that the resonance from each change in the length of the body tube couples with the reed and causes the reed to vibrate at that frequency. The little speaker has to vibrate at 880vps no matter what the length of the tube.
More to follow.
Out of curiosity I recreated the "experiment" described by Santy Runyon in this(DEAD LINK) from his book, "Suggestions for Woodwind Players". Instead of a "theramin" which was simply a frequency generator which one could control by moving the hand between the metal poles, I used a pitch generator on my computer to play the A=880 input pitch into a small speaker.

The sound produced can be heard here Runyon Test
1. The small speaker alone sounding A=880
2. The small speaker connected to the "mouthpiece"
3. The "mouthpiece" on the neck of the saxophone
4. The saxophone being fingered
As you can hear, Santy's story is completely bogus. He apparently didn't understand that the resonance from each change in the length of the body tube couples with the reed and causes the reed to vibrate at that frequency. The little speaker has to vibrate at 880vps no matter what the length of the tube.
More to follow.
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