Playing the saxophone Why do you play saxophone? Some thoughts.

[mizmar]

Cafe would look a little different.

It's not too late.

 

[Colin the Bear]

X that. 😤

 

[cappers]

It's a thing; a tool at best.
Don't take it so seriously.

Maybe for you.

I took it up after retiring because I was bored and wanted a challenge. Having always loved the sound of the sax, trying to play one seemed worth a go.

It fullfills a creative need I didn't know I had.
It is the focus of much of my time, practising, playing and learning music theory.
Like @Hoosierken says, it exercises my brain, fingers, and lungs and I find playing both relaxing and uplifting.
It has introduced me to new friends and experiences.
I have never been happier!

 

[Grumps]

Maybe for you.

No. It's an inanimate thing for everybody. The creativity has always been inside of you and there are infinite other ways to express it. We play saxophone because we can. Hopefully...

 

[MikeMorrell]

In my early 40's, I got a bit fed up with practicing and playing 'classical guitar music' (alone) at home. On a (mid-life crisis?) whim, I rented a sax based on an an ad in a local newspaper. That was 30+ years ago. Since then, the sax has been my 'vehicle' to playing in various bands with others.

The shared musical and social enjoyment of 'learning and playing with others' has changed my life for the better. I've found that being a member of 'musical communities' is vastly more enjoyable of just playing (any instrument) alone at home.

So my main motivation to playing sax has always been to play in bands.

 

[JayeNM]

If I cast my mind back to a late teen about to leave school with little chance of a University place I went to careers advice officer, saying I wanted to be a poet (seriously).

He said I couldn’t do that maybe be a librarian (which surely is as good as). But then I heard the saxophone on the radio and decided on that. My dad told me I couldn’t so that confirmed it for me, and I took up the saxophone.

So you don't listen to dad, bur a career services bloke, on the other hand....? 😉

 

[mizmar]

To get off with girls..obviously...😉

Beat me to it....was gonna say "to get chicks"

But by that yardstick, my musical career has then been an abject failure....

As always, YouTube has the answer:

The Duke of Silver

View: https://youtu.be/UJdPeMZrcMw?t=55

 

[wakyct]

I don't see a problem with playing the saxophone seriously. It's when we take ourselves seriously that issues tend to crop up.

 

[cappers]

No. It's an inanimate thing for everybody. The creativity has always been inside of you and there are infinite other ways to express it. We play saxophone because we can. Hopefully...

That’s a sweeping generalisation! Of course it’s an inanimate tool but it has given me an opportunity to explore my creative side at a late stage in life. Others including you obviously feel differently.
I chose sax over any other instrument or ways of expressing my creativity because it’s a sound I love and want to create.

 

[Pete Thomas]

Of course it’s an inanimate tool but it has given me an opportunity to explore my creative side at a late stage in life. Others including you obviously feel differently.

A saxophone is indeed more than an inanimate tool. It is a symbol of a certain artistic creativitly in a way that is different than the symbolism of various other inanimate tools. Not just as a musical instrument either.

 

[skeller047]

While I agree in general that musical instruments are tools, I also feel that when they are played over many years by the same person they begin to take on aspects of that person's spirit. If you ever look at "inanimate" metal with an electron microscope or do some measurements using sensitive instruments, you will find there is a lot of stuff going on in a seemingly inert piece of material. When we play an instrument, our breath and our touch influences that activity, warming this, vibrating that, and over time the thing changes. And so do we.

Our brains and senses are able to apprehend much more than what has been studied in the scientific literature. Some people study on more delicate levels, and they always find something interesting. (Recent studies on pigeon navigation are a good example.) Me, I just try to be aware of what's happening and accept my feelings toward my instruments for what they are. And try to understand their feelings toward me.

I don't think there is such a thing as an "inanimate object". Electrons, quarks, photons, all the other particles that exist, have inherent motion. Everything is alive, in some sense. Seriously. We are each a moderately complex assembly of these particles, and most people would agree that we are alive. But we are taught to think that the very small bits that make us up are not alive. I think that is both naive and arrogant.

 

[AlonW]

No. It's an inanimate thing for everybody. The creativity has always been inside of you and there are infinite other ways to express it. We play saxophone because we can. Hopefully...

There's nothing special about the saxophone. You don't even have to be human to play it. But you do have to be alive for transcendence to happen. I agree that the source of creativity and inspiration has nothing to do with any type of expression or instrument, it just comes from the universe and when we are in a good flow of doing music we open ourselves up to being conduits for that creative energy.

How not to play:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3gvz5GomQs

 

[mizmar]

But we are taught to think that the very small bits that make us up are not alive. I think that is both naive and arrogant

Well there's the concept of emergence; both philosophically and in science. Thinking that "life" and such has to be explained in terms of elementary particles isn't really necessary, any more than some form of dualism or monism (in your case). But it's metaphysics, so a personal choice.

Same for the saxophone, or any instrument.
An instrument is part of a history. the development from it's predecessors. The musicians who've used it, innovated styles and techniques or teaching material etc. Composers, seminal recordings or performances, stories and cultural symbols. And an individual example has a location amongst other models, and it's own history etc.
Pick up any instrument and you are, unavoidably, hooking yourself into a cultural river. You can swim with it or against; but certainly in it.

All that has explanatory value beyond the brass and leather of the material or the atoms or quarks; or, indeed, individual musicians.

 

[skeller047]

Well there's the concept of emergence; both philosophically and in science. Thinking that "life" and such has to be explained in terms of elementary particles isn't really necessary, any more than some form of dualism or monism (in your case). But it's metaphysics, so a personal choice.

I am familiar with the concept of emergence. I am not referencing that. I just think that calling an electron or a quark “elementary” is merely us (humans) showing our ignorance and our limitations.

I admit this borders on metaphysics, or perhaps spiritualism. But as I consider the question of why our universe exists at all, and observe the almost daily expansion of our knowledge of both the cosmos and the tiny world of subatomic particles, then it’s hard not to think of all these things having some purpose. Neil deGrasse Tyson has a saying: “As the area of our knowledge expands, so too does the border of our ignorance.”

I do have the sense that my horns know me, as I know them. Maybe it’s the crazed thoughts of a doddering old man, but it gives me comfort to think this way.

 

[mark_addy]

There's nothing special about the saxophone. You don't even have to be human to play it. But you do have to be alive for transcendence to happen. I agree that the source of creativity and inspiration has nothing to do with any type of expression or instrument, it just comes from the universe and when we are in a good flow of doing music we open ourselves up to being conduits for that creative energy.

How not to play:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3gvz5GomQs

Wow - that's quite an achievement. (Having gone to all that trouble, I reckon they might have thought about feedback control for whatever was actuating the mouthpiece, to control the pitch a bit better - perhaps that was phase 2!). So all I need to do is to grow a few more fingers.

The sax I have had here for only a couple of weeks, seems to have assumed my character more thoroughly than the one I have owned for 35 years. That is, it is currently held together with 3 bits of insulating tape, a rubber band, some paper from an envelope, and one of my daughter's hair elastics. (The last providing such a snappy low C# action that I think it'll be hard to improve on it using normal methods 🙂 ).

 

[Vlad]

There's nothing special about the saxophone. You don't even have to be human to play it. But you do have to be alive for transcendence to happen. I agree that the source of creativity and inspiration has nothing to do with any type of expression or instrument, it just comes from the universe and when we are in a good flow of doing music we open ourselves up to being conduits for that creative energy.

How not to play:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3gvz5GomQs

It can play it better than i could 😉
there's loads of these robot played, guitar, bass, drums etc things out there..

View: https://youtu.be/odRPjenVaGQ?si=y6V5VVDfzFLQMyRk

 

[Woodpad]

It's a thing; a tool at best.
Don't take it so seriously.

Just make it sing, that's all.

 

[PiccoloPirate]

With respect to Transcendence, with inanimate objects, that have moving parts, I'm more successful transcending, into a provider of food for the family, with a rowboat, verses a saxophone.

just some mid 60s, transcendental meditation humor. 🎶🏴‍☠️🎶

 

[Grumps]

Neil deGrasse Tyson has a saying: “As the area of our knowledge expands, so too does the border of our ignorance.”

There is no border to Neil deGrasse Tyson's ignorance.

Now back to romanticizing things...

 

[AlonW]

With respect to Transcendence, with inanimate objects, that have moving parts, I'm more successful transcending, into a provider of food for the family, with a rowboat, verses a saxophone.

View attachment 35626
just some mid 60s, transcendental meditation humor. 🎶🏴‍☠️🎶

Well you can eat a fish but you can’t eat a song.