Misc instruments Yamaha Venova

jthole · May 20, 2017

saxyjt said:
Is it a plot to drive flutists to the saxophone by introducing them to the wonderful world of reeds?

Next thing will be a soprano recorder ban, and compulsory start of new learners on this single reed contraption.

Ivan · May 20, 2017

It sounds dreadful

Chilli · May 20, 2017

Apparently, my local retailer (tech as well) has one. I'll try to go and give it a blow on Monday or Tuesday 🙂

jbtsax · Nov 19, 2017

I don't know how I missed this interesting thread. Here is another video showing how the Venova is designed.

I believe this is the answer to the age old question about what to do with a youngster who wants to play the saxophone, but isn't large enough to handle an alto. The soprano with it's demanding embouchure and intonation challenges isn't a good answer from an educational point of view. The Venova can fill this need quite nicely. The student can learn the embouchure, tonguing and articulation, how to read music, the basic saxophone fingerings, etc. while having fun and making a reasonably musical sound. The transition to a "real" saxophone will be a piece of cake, and it hasn't cost the parents an arm and a leg to find out if the student has any musical ability or serious interest.

Rob Pealing · Nov 20, 2017

The Nuvo jSax is also designed to introduce people to wind instruments, has any one tried one. It occurred to me that I could take it in my kayak safely, though with my playing might have very few paddling companions or the coast guard might think it was a distress call.
Nuvo publish music and teaching packages for it.

jbtsax · Nov 20, 2017

Rob Pealing said:
The Nuvo jSax is also designed to introduce people to wind instruments, has any one tried one. It occurred to me that I could take it in my kayak safely, though with my playing might have very few paddling companions or the coast guard might think it was a distress call.
Nuvo publish music and teaching packages for it.

You may even encourage some water fowl to want to mate with you. 🙂

Rob Pealing · Nov 20, 2017

🙂🙂

jbtsax said:
You may even encourage some water fowl to want to mate with you. 🙂

😱
I was floating having a break one day when a mallard hopped onto my front deck and started preening itself.

Dracopol · Jan 6, 2018

Alphorn said:
Is there any hypothesis out what the second pipe on the top is good for?

Alphorn

The Yamaha corporation explains it. It is called the "branching tube". By putting it there, it gives it acoustic tone-properties of a conical shape rather than the cylindrical tube it is in reality, to sound more like a sax. Blowing into one-and-a-half tubes resembles blowing into a single conical tube. Because math.

The "intestines" below are called the "meandering tubes" and that's a device to shorten the effective length and make fingering much easier.

YVS-100 - Features - Venova™ - Casual Wind Instruments - Brass & Woodwinds - Musical Instruments - Products - Yamaha - United States

Dracopol · Jan 6, 2018

I've read up on the Venova. I'm no particular advocate. I want to learn a reed instrument. People think this "trick" device is the easy road but it still takes practice.

The demonstration videos have very good people and less good people.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNvIOmnVQiI
("My Way")

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYLoUi0Ldhk
("Careless Whispers")

Ivan · Jan 6, 2018

Very untempting

kevgermany · Jan 6, 2018

Doesn't appeal to me either.

spike · Jan 6, 2018

Beware of the Plastic Inquisition >:)

Targa · Jan 6, 2018

orbifold · Jun 27, 2018

Sorry to resurrect an old thread but my Venova just arrived today and I've been toying around with it. I figured I might attempt to review it.

First of all, why would I even get one? Well, I travel a lot, usually to conferences which last anywhere from a few days to a month. It's beyond impractical to drag a sax along on trains and buses. I have a cute tin whistle I bring but I need me some blue notes™️, so something like the Venova seemed like a good enough choice.

Let's start with the construction. This thing is really compact and lightweight, and comes along with a very cute little hard case. The Venova is made of hard plastic. Judging from its depth on the holes and other openings, I'd say ~4mm thick. I tried bending it a bit. Won't budge. Overall I'd say it's a lot sturdier than a sax. The keys are also plastic but the mechanism seems moderately delicate so I'd avoid dropping the instrument, just in case 🙂 It seems to be a spring action mechanism and it looks easily replaceable if damaged.

Now, I never played a soprano so I couldn't compare, but the center of mass is just a bit below the G so it feels really easy to hold. As I said, it's very light. Around 170 grams with the mpc on. Perhaps I should be comparing it to a recorder... but I haven't played that since elementary school 🙂

It looks weird. Personally, I like it. Don't know what else to say I about the aesthetics so...

... let's talk TONE. Does it sound good? Not at first. Honestly, I dislike plastic reeds. I had a Légère one and I didn't like it it. No matter your preference, the stock one here is stiff and doesn't respond at all. So I immediately replaced it with a Vandoren Zz 3 alto reed I had lying around, which is a bit too long for a soprano mpc but only slightly too wide so it works. The Venova sounds a bit too bright for my liking, but a slightly darker sounding reed fixes that. Since a reed made this much impact, I would bet that a good mpc would do wonders with it. (On a related note, the Venova itself is cheaper than a good mpc, which I find funny.) To describe the sound, I'd say it sounds like a soprano/recorder hybrid, which it basically is.

Finally, let's talk about how it plays! It's a C instrument. The manual said it was tuned to 442 Hz, but you can pull out the mpc by a few mms, which sounds small but makes a big difference on an instrument of this size. I have yet to check it with a tuner, but to my ear the intonation sounds good. It isn't effortless to play, but I might just need a softer reed.

The fingerings are weird. It has 4 lower keys (C to D) which work like the Bb to Eb keys on the sax. Quickly alternating between e. g. C and C# seems very hard since you press both with your pinky, so you need to sort of roll your pinky back (guitar players, think of sweep picking a barre chord). The same goes for D and D#. Otherwise, you can pick between two recorder fingerings, German and Baroque. It has a removable ring you can put on the E hole which makes it smaller and means you need the German fingering. I think the Baroque one feels better. In any case, the differences compared to sax fingerings are there, but it's just a few sharps and F, but that's just E# 🙂 It has a nominal range of 2 octaves, but I just discovered a few altissimo fingerings so I don't know about that!

Also, the odd little front pipe... if you close it, the sound gets much deeper and weirder. The intonation gets thrown off and it sounds like a microtonal pan flute. I understand why they didn't include a key to close it but I wish they did. Oh and one very cool thing you can do on this and similar instruments (but not the sax) is slowly close/open the holes, creating a continuous transition in pitch.

Verdict ? If you need a travel instrument, it's well worth the money. It's an ok instrument, nothing amazing. But if you want a soprano, get a soprano and don't bother. Also, I wouldn't say this is a beginner instrument... as far as I've read, the soprano isn't a beginner sax, and this is half soprano half recorder, so it makes little sense to introduce someone to saxophones with this. And it isn't as forgiving with regards to sloppy embouchure as let's say the alto.

Well, all I can say for now. Thanks for reading 🙂