SOTM SOTM May 2021 - The Swan

sax panther said:
hopefully nobody gets in too much of a flap if I post a non sax recording - I don't want to ruffle any feathers.
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It's fine, as long as you don't play it on the swanee whistle.

Actually there is a recording on Youtube of someone playing it on the swanee saxophone. Heaven knows why!
The tuning is, as one would expect, approximate.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f52zEL5uydg
 
It's been awfully quiet here, so I bit the bullet and did a take on my 1924 N.H. White King Saxello. My intonation kind of sucks right now, playing with Invisalign braces that move my teeth every day is definitely a challenge and Tuesdays are the days with the least discomfort (new braces every Wednesday). But hey, my dog likes the take so it can't be that bad.

Dropbox

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LostCircuits said:
It's been awfully quiet here, so I bit the bullet and did a take on my 1924 H.N. White King Saxello. My intonation kind of sucks right now, playing with Invisalign braces that move my teeth every day is definitely a challenge and Tuesdays are the days with the least discomfort (new braces every Wednesday). But hey, my dog likes the take so it can't be that bad.
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Well done! That was good. Many thanks. :clapping:
I imagine that intonation is a problem with a saxello whether or not you are not wearing braces.

I don't think I have ever heard a proper saxello before. It's pretty!
To my ears it sounds quite different from a conventional soprano. Did King only make saxellos, or did they make ordinary sopranos as well?
 
nigeld said:
Well done! That was good. Many thanks. :clapping:
I imagine that intonation is a problem with a saxello whether or not you are not wearing braces.

I don't think I have ever heard a proper saxello before. It's pretty!
To my ears it sounds quite different from a conventional soprano. Did King only make saxellos, or did they make ordinary sopranos as well?
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Well thank you so much! And yes, there were a lot of "alternate" fingerings but I am getting more and more used to those. I know for sure that using the same fingerings on my Conn straight or P Mauriat will get me very different notes 😎

But the braces really threw in a Monkey wrench, it is almost like playing guitar with groves on and taking them off is not an option so I have to just cope. And sound different, not necessarily worse after getting used to it but different.

NH King made a variety of sopranos, straight and curved, they are a bit undervalued, even though they are nice instruments but @JayeNM could probably chip in more here because I only have very limited exposure to those.
 
LostCircuits said:
NH King made a variety of sopranos, straight and curved, they are a bit undervalued, even though they are nice instruments but @JayeNM could probably chip in more here because I only have very limited exposure to those.
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Nice soundclip !

Yes, back 10 years ago or so, King Sopranos (straight or otherwise) had a very bad rep online for poor intonation, their Saxellos aside. I had refurbished around a half dozen straights by that time and didn't find that to be the case, however.

I mean, comparatively speaking to a Conn or Buescher or Martin of similar era...the Kings always seemed to possess a similar intonational attribute to their contemporaries.

Nevertheless, up until around 2016 or so, the Kings fetched less on the market in either project or refurbished condition. However, I have noticed in the past 2-3 years that their market values have increased, and people have been bidding numbers on a project straight which parallel the amounts folks will pay for a project Conn, Boosh, Martin.

So it seems the more attention these have been getting, their values have been increasing...which suggests (although doesn't 'prove', necessarily) that others are not running into the reputed 'bad intonation' issues, perhaps.
 
JayeNM said:
Nice sound clip !

Yes, back 10 years ago or so, King Sopranos (straight or otherwise) had a very bad rep online for poor intonation, their Saxellos aside. I had refurbished around a half dozen straights by that time and didn't find that to be the case, however.

I mean, comparatively speaking to a Conn or Buescher or Martin of similar era...the Kings always seemed to possess a similar intonational attribute to their contemporaries.

Nevertheless, up until around 2016 or so, the Kings fetched less on the market in either project or refurbished condition. However, I have noticed in the past 2-3 years that their market values have increased, and people have been bidding numbers on a project straight which parallel the amounts folks will pay for a project Conn, Boosh, Martin.

So it seems the more attention these have been getting, their values have been increasing...which suggests (although doesn't 'prove', necessarily) that others are not running into the reputed 'bad intonation' issues, perhaps.
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Thank you!

I found that most of the soprano intonation problems are related to the mouthpiece. What I mean is that they are more prone to occur on some horns than others but a bad mouthpiece can really exacerbate the problems. I just made a sop piece for a friend (a very good sax player) who could not keep his Selmer Serie II in tune and with the new piece the issues went away. And when I said "bad mouthpiece" above it was really meant to say "bad match" because my friend tried 4 pieces and the one that works best on the saxello (and my other vintage sops) was the one he liked least, whereas another one that I had problems with (and replicated by M. Michel on SOTW) was the one that sounded like somebody just opened the curtains.

I'd love to get my hands on another King, I am just selling my P. Mauriat and then I may be able to afford one (hopefully a pawnshop find).
 
LostCircuits said:
It's been awfully quiet here, so I bit the bullet and did a take on my 1924 N.H. White King Saxello. My intonation kind of sucks right now, playing with Invisalign braces that move my teeth every day is definitely a challenge and Tuesdays are the days with the least discomfort (new braces every Wednesday). But hey, my dog likes the take so it can't be that bad.

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com


View attachment 18175
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Classic horn, but it always seems with a horn like these early Kings that you have to work extra hard to get a good result.
 
I must say that I'm a bit confused by the scores! :confused2:

The simplified one in musescore has tenor and alto mixed up somehow... and there are a couple of Es that dropped an octave!

I had a look at the Saint-Saëns version but I'm intimidated by the double-sharp and all these sharps! My brain's been off from playing for too long... 😳
 
LostCircuits said:
It's not a tenor, it's not an alto and it's pitched to C, what could it be?
My nickel-plated Wurlitzer stencil Martin Handcraft.

The take is far from perfect but I was running out of time (and patience, to be honest)

Dropbox - Error - Simplify your life

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View attachment 18246
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What a pretty saxophone! And what a haunting tone it has.
You certainly win the prize for the most interesting choice of instruments.
And is that a bass clarinet I see lurking moodily in the background?

I had a C-melody for a while, but I found it difficult to play, so I stick to the 4 standard sizes, which I find are more than enough for me to cope with.
 
nigeld said:
What a pretty saxophone! And what a haunting tone it has.
You certainly win the prize for the most interesting choice of instruments.
And is that a bass clarinet I see lurking moodily in the background?

I had a C-melody for a while, but I found it difficult to play, so I stick to the 4 standard sizes, which I find are more than enough for me to cope with.
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It is a LeBlanc bass clarinet, sadly a bit neglected right now. I found the easy way to play the Martin is to sit on a chair and place the bow on your knee. When I stand, I put the chair in front of me and put my right foot on it, and then use the knee the same way. That way you don't get the typical arm spasms associated with the Martin c-Mel.
The tone mostly comes from the MPC, took me a few trials to make one that got me the tone I wanted (it was a customer who asked and I sent him a few pieces to try and luckily he picked another one and returned this one). The tone gets even more "haunted" when I play a bari reed but that also has some additional challenges.

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saxyjt said:
I must say that I'm a bit confused by the scores! :confused2:

The simplified one in musescore has tenor and alto mixed up somehow... and there are a couple of Es that dropped an octave!

I had a look at the Saint-Saëns version but I'm intimidated by the double-sharp and all these sharps! My brain's been off from playing for too long... 😳
Click to expand...
Sorry about that - MuseScore didn't like it when I changed from alto to tenor in order to print out the parts.
Hopefully it is fixed now.
 
LostCircuits said:
It's not a tenor, it's not an alto and it's pitched to C, what could it be?
My nickel-plated Wurlitzer stencil Martin Handcraft.

The take is far from perfect but I was running out of time (and patience, to be honest)

Dropbox - Error - Simplify your life

www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com



View attachment 18246
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Excellent ! 'Chapeau!' as we say in french...

It gives me the idea of airing my own Martin C-mel but I'm sure I wouldn't come anywhere near this result...

I think I came across a couple of C-mel mouthpieces yesterday as it happens. A sign?
 
saxyjt said:
Excellent ! 'Chapeau!' as we say in french...

It gives me the idea of airing my own Martin C-mel but I'm sure I wouldn't come anywhere near this result...

I think I came across a couple of C-mel mouthpieces yesterday as it happens. A sign?
Click to expand...

Thank you!

Switching from Bb to C gave me more than one brain and finger spasm, not to mention the idiosyncrasies of the Martin that was out of regulation (I fixed it yesterday morning) and requires a few "special" fingerings but that's the advantage if you can't read sheet music, you just have to play it by ear. Which makes it "easier" in a way because you just need one "reference note" and then play around it if you have memorized the score. And I am too dyslexic, sheet music looks like a Rohrschach test to me.

C-mel mouthpieces are a very mixed bag, I had one that I got with the Martin and which was awful. Then I bought a Morgan, which is "ok" but not what I wanted. And to counter the myth that C-mels cannot sound like a real saxophone, I scaled down an RPC-B type (not shorten but really scale every x-axis dimension) and it turns the C-mel into a beast. The guy who purchased the other piece told me he could not use it because he no longer plays in heavy metal bands and it was too boomy and bright for anything else 😎

But give it a try, and really, the knee support gives you the perfect position for the horn unless you want to pull a Leo P. stunt.
 
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