One of the most frequent discussions that ensues when new people come to this café, is whether it's better for them to play tenor or alto or which is preferred or which is easier to play. I say "ensues", because it often just comes up when someone pops in, or when they're "asking for a friend".
I'm here to settle the tenor vs alto discussion right now!
That was an incendiary joke, I actually just want to bring up something I don't think has been mentioned before in these numerous friendly talks.
Nature.
Some like to go to physics for answers. I want to bring nature into this controversy. But first, physics: yes, the tenor is heavier and longer. I am not the only person who bought a soprano because they're light and easier to carry. But these are obvious physical facts. Nature probably takes some of its cues from physics, anyway.
Which runs faster, an elephant or a cheetah? The cheetah runs up to 100 km/h, although I wouldn't recommend following one for an hour. The African Bush Elephant can get up to 40km/h. The physics of weight and musculature of the two animals is physics, right?
I believe one place where physics and nature meet is in music. We know this from studying overtones. We also can observe this in the progression of consonance and dissonance. Once the tritone was called the devil's interval. Then it became a major force in the blues (and jazz and rock). It has been observed that what we consider consonant has gone from the low end to the high end of the overtone series.
So what does this have to do with cheetahs and elephants?
Think of the Road Runner cartoons, or any children's animal populated cartoons. The music is usually very good orchestral music, composed to accompany the action. The wah wah wah trombones, the xylophone glissando of a fall down the stairs, and the tuba or contrabass illustrating the slow and cumbersome giant. These go with our natural feeling for these things.
Getting to the point, while you can play fast notes on any saxophone, they sound more at home on a soprano than on a bass. By extension, they sound more natural on an alto than on a baritone. Of course there are contexts where this isn't true, but by and large, if you think about Bird's playing, how it was almost always lightning fast, it sounded like... a bird in flight. Personally, I don't think this would have flown on a tenor. (Ducking the tomatoes)
So in short, it isn't only the timbre and frequency of the sound of tenor or alto, but also the density of attacks in a given piece that gives its character. If you stretch the idea to soprano, you very often hear really fast passages on it that are angular, dissonant, "outside". Steve Neff has a video about this and listening to it, I feel like you can play almost anything fast on a soprano and make it sound natural. I know at least one modern tenor virtuosos who plays like this and it doesn't sound natural to me. While this is completely subjective, I'm also someone who loves Coltrane's wildest sheets of sound, but he didn't play them in everything.
Getting back to the summation, there is a different feel between the alto and the tenor. It's not just the sound, which in certain ranges is actually hard to identify, or just the range. They are fingered the same, and others have pointed out that modern instruments are very similar in feel, other than weight and length. I feel there are almost different natural roles for the instruments. That doesn't mean anyone should or should not play either a certain way. It doesn't mean that someone like Leo P can't play crazy good, fast stuff on a bass sax, either. But Leo P is the exception that proves the rule, it's what he's most known for at the moment.
I look forward to this theory of nature being gently torn apart by the saxophone experts of whom I am not one. I do believe the common wisdom is correct in saying to choose the one whose voice suits your own inner voice.
I'm here to settle the tenor vs alto discussion right now!
That was an incendiary joke, I actually just want to bring up something I don't think has been mentioned before in these numerous friendly talks.
Nature.
Some like to go to physics for answers. I want to bring nature into this controversy. But first, physics: yes, the tenor is heavier and longer. I am not the only person who bought a soprano because they're light and easier to carry. But these are obvious physical facts. Nature probably takes some of its cues from physics, anyway.
Which runs faster, an elephant or a cheetah? The cheetah runs up to 100 km/h, although I wouldn't recommend following one for an hour. The African Bush Elephant can get up to 40km/h. The physics of weight and musculature of the two animals is physics, right?
I believe one place where physics and nature meet is in music. We know this from studying overtones. We also can observe this in the progression of consonance and dissonance. Once the tritone was called the devil's interval. Then it became a major force in the blues (and jazz and rock). It has been observed that what we consider consonant has gone from the low end to the high end of the overtone series.
So what does this have to do with cheetahs and elephants?
Think of the Road Runner cartoons, or any children's animal populated cartoons. The music is usually very good orchestral music, composed to accompany the action. The wah wah wah trombones, the xylophone glissando of a fall down the stairs, and the tuba or contrabass illustrating the slow and cumbersome giant. These go with our natural feeling for these things.
Getting to the point, while you can play fast notes on any saxophone, they sound more at home on a soprano than on a bass. By extension, they sound more natural on an alto than on a baritone. Of course there are contexts where this isn't true, but by and large, if you think about Bird's playing, how it was almost always lightning fast, it sounded like... a bird in flight. Personally, I don't think this would have flown on a tenor. (Ducking the tomatoes)
So in short, it isn't only the timbre and frequency of the sound of tenor or alto, but also the density of attacks in a given piece that gives its character. If you stretch the idea to soprano, you very often hear really fast passages on it that are angular, dissonant, "outside". Steve Neff has a video about this and listening to it, I feel like you can play almost anything fast on a soprano and make it sound natural. I know at least one modern tenor virtuosos who plays like this and it doesn't sound natural to me. While this is completely subjective, I'm also someone who loves Coltrane's wildest sheets of sound, but he didn't play them in everything.
Getting back to the summation, there is a different feel between the alto and the tenor. It's not just the sound, which in certain ranges is actually hard to identify, or just the range. They are fingered the same, and others have pointed out that modern instruments are very similar in feel, other than weight and length. I feel there are almost different natural roles for the instruments. That doesn't mean anyone should or should not play either a certain way. It doesn't mean that someone like Leo P can't play crazy good, fast stuff on a bass sax, either. But Leo P is the exception that proves the rule, it's what he's most known for at the moment.
I look forward to this theory of nature being gently torn apart by the saxophone experts of whom I am not one. I do believe the common wisdom is correct in saying to choose the one whose voice suits your own inner voice.
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