Jazz Is All
Well-Known Member
- Messages
- 853
- Location
- Barcelona, Spain
I've been trying to master BC since I got my Vito Resotone a year ago. Not an easy task for anyone usually, let alone a 70+ year old saxophone-only player. I don't know why changing registers on this tubular instrument is so damned squirrely and difficult to control compared to any conical saxophone, but that seems to be the nature of the beast. It's hard enough learning to play from charts with the notes constantly changing by a 12th but Noooo, it has to have the most skittish overtone tendency in the instrument world. So I hadn't been playing it lately put off by the thought of not mastering it and having to give up and sell it. Yesterday I practiced and yet again found the same difficulty I had been having in jumping from the Chalumeu to the Clarion register.
I practice this by doing something I saw on a YouTube tutorial. I play each note in the lower register beginning with low Eb and playing up the instrument chromatically. While playing each note I press the register key to changes to the clarion note a 12th above. I play the two notes back and forth for each note in the chromatic scale and I had been able to get my clarion notes sounding quite nicely because I have learned at least how direct my breath and shape my throat to control them. However, when I get to D/A, which it always jumps up to the register above that, regardless of what I try. Today I was having more trouble with that than ever and was really considering selling this torture device and getting the Martin alto I have lusted after lately. But I hate to quit....I didn't learn to play 3 sizes of sax by giving up when I hit roadblocks along the way and I'll be damned if I quit so quickly with the BC.
As a result I considered what things I could change about my approach. First came the reed. I had been using a medium hard reed as most people suggest with the Vandoren Mpc I have. I have been playing 3.5s of a number of brands, and so I tried going up to a 4 and even a 5 to see if that would help. It just made it harder to play easily, so I went down to a 2.5 and a 3 and things got much easier, but still I couldn't stop the jump to the 3rd & even 4th register when I got to that Chalumeau D and above. So I tried altering the position of the mpc in my mouth by lowering and raising the height of my adjustable chair with the hydraulic handle to see how the position in my mouth with my back and head straight might change the tonal quality of my output. That in conjunction with angling the entrance of mpc into my mouth from more horizontal to more vertical caused me to actually be blowing down into the reed and not just against it. None of that seemed to do much so I went back to a more natural entry of the mpc into my mouth and I adjusted the position of the reed tip on the table from exactly even with the mpc tip to leaving a hair and then more of tip showing. All the advice I had seen and read was that the reed should be right up to the tip edge, so no tip shows, but I tried this adjustment to see if it would affect my ability to play the Clarion all the way up the horn to B. Again however, it didn't change much.
At the point of frustration it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't yet ever tried altering the amount of mpc I was taking into my mouth. In fact, I was taking in quite a bit as I am mostly a tenor player and have been doing that ever since Uncle Phil chastised us all on SOTW years ago about not eating enough mpc tip. Lo and behold, and Voilà, that was the decisive issue and problem. With just a small amount of tip in my mouth I was suddenly able to play from low Eb all the way up the BC to B2 not just in the Chalumeu and throat tone registers but also in the Clarion register. What a great feeling to finally be able to do that without the damn flock of Canada geese giving me hell and possibly frightening the neighbors. I broke for a well deserved lunch and a nap. From here it is onward and upward with this B&D instrument. I'll be damn if I let it get the best of me this quickly as I know that it has so many other non-sax like tricks up its devious sleeves to torture me. I realize that I must have a masochistic nature that needs to feel the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune rather than take the path of least resistance.
I practice this by doing something I saw on a YouTube tutorial. I play each note in the lower register beginning with low Eb and playing up the instrument chromatically. While playing each note I press the register key to changes to the clarion note a 12th above. I play the two notes back and forth for each note in the chromatic scale and I had been able to get my clarion notes sounding quite nicely because I have learned at least how direct my breath and shape my throat to control them. However, when I get to D/A, which it always jumps up to the register above that, regardless of what I try. Today I was having more trouble with that than ever and was really considering selling this torture device and getting the Martin alto I have lusted after lately. But I hate to quit....I didn't learn to play 3 sizes of sax by giving up when I hit roadblocks along the way and I'll be damned if I quit so quickly with the BC.
As a result I considered what things I could change about my approach. First came the reed. I had been using a medium hard reed as most people suggest with the Vandoren Mpc I have. I have been playing 3.5s of a number of brands, and so I tried going up to a 4 and even a 5 to see if that would help. It just made it harder to play easily, so I went down to a 2.5 and a 3 and things got much easier, but still I couldn't stop the jump to the 3rd & even 4th register when I got to that Chalumeau D and above. So I tried altering the position of the mpc in my mouth by lowering and raising the height of my adjustable chair with the hydraulic handle to see how the position in my mouth with my back and head straight might change the tonal quality of my output. That in conjunction with angling the entrance of mpc into my mouth from more horizontal to more vertical caused me to actually be blowing down into the reed and not just against it. None of that seemed to do much so I went back to a more natural entry of the mpc into my mouth and I adjusted the position of the reed tip on the table from exactly even with the mpc tip to leaving a hair and then more of tip showing. All the advice I had seen and read was that the reed should be right up to the tip edge, so no tip shows, but I tried this adjustment to see if it would affect my ability to play the Clarion all the way up the horn to B. Again however, it didn't change much.
At the point of frustration it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't yet ever tried altering the amount of mpc I was taking into my mouth. In fact, I was taking in quite a bit as I am mostly a tenor player and have been doing that ever since Uncle Phil chastised us all on SOTW years ago about not eating enough mpc tip. Lo and behold, and Voilà, that was the decisive issue and problem. With just a small amount of tip in my mouth I was suddenly able to play from low Eb all the way up the BC to B2 not just in the Chalumeu and throat tone registers but also in the Clarion register. What a great feeling to finally be able to do that without the damn flock of Canada geese giving me hell and possibly frightening the neighbors. I broke for a well deserved lunch and a nap. From here it is onward and upward with this B&D instrument. I'll be damn if I let it get the best of me this quickly as I know that it has so many other non-sax like tricks up its devious sleeves to torture me. I realize that I must have a masochistic nature that needs to feel the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune rather than take the path of least resistance.
