[jojobas]

Fun fact: a cone open on one end (saxophone) supports all harmonics, as does a cylinder open on both ends (flute).

A cylinder open on one end (clarinet) only supports odd harmonics, which is why a clarinet sounds "rounded" and overblows into a twelfth, rather than an octave (as on former two).

[zoomablemind]

Interesting observation is that sax having a conical bore and using a reed to induce the sound resembles an oboe. Indeed, the fingering is nearly the same. Yet, the brass resonates in a much brighter and louder way. The reed and the mouthpiece are of clarinet design, except of conical kind. A true hybrid, ingenious synthesis.

Oboe's sound is pliable, thanks to the double reed, player's embouchure, and the richer spectrum of the conical bore. On the other hand, clarinet's sound is more robust, but somewhat limited by the straight cylindrical bore. Marrying these two resulted in a robust yet richer sound. Let alone using brass for the body no need to worry so much about cracks and temperature swings. Perfect for outdoor performances!

Wish I've known these similarities back in the day ..., would've saved us lots of effort trying to blend in oboe sound into a 'cool' band - sax was all it needed! Oh, well, experimentation was fun still ...

[jacquesm]

Oboe is quite a neat instrument though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WJhax7Jmxs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE2O_yfgtBU

[jojobas]

Soprano sax is not that easy to tell from an oboe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b-zbqcRick

There are differences of course, but I'd bet the majority of people couldn't tell most of the time.

[jacquesm]

Beautiful! I can easily tell the difference but that's cheating (after playing the sax of 17 years or so), the sax sounds a bit sharper and the oboe 'rounder' if that makes any sense, which makes it easy to pick out what is played by which instrument. Originally this piece is for two oboes, but this is a really nice variation and lovely to see a saxophone used for more traditional music, I wished more people would do that (but saxes are typically frowned upon for performing classical works in a 'serious' setting).

[singingfish]

I keep describing the soprano sax as a "loud bluesey oboe". It's my second favourite sax to play.

[samplenoise]

Which is also why saxophones can be made to sound like an organ (one open end)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmFlxwvKLz4&gl=BE

[jacquesm]

That's very beautiful, wow, thank you for posting this.

For a lark I once played organ pipes of an organ that was being decommissioned. It is absolutely incredible how much air that requires, a 8' pipe I could just about get to resonate, and once they resonate it becomes a lot easier because you have some backpressure but that initial rush to get the reed to move at all is quite literally breathtaking.

[jacquesm]

To answer the 'dead' comment below: yes, I actually did. Nicely cleaned it and I'm aware what organ metal is made of (it is not the safest substance in the world). Would recommend.

[jojobas]

Or rather an organ has pipes of all possible kinds and can sound like pretty much anything.

[jacquesm]

Think of it as a proto-synthesizer.

[dmoy]

Also makes it stupid difficult to do clean sounding smooth octave jumps on a clarinet.

[bjoli]

On one hand, it seems harder to learn, on the other: clarinet is the king of large jumps. The shit the clarinet soloists that come to my orchestra squeak out would be impossible to do that cleanly on my instrument (bassoon), even though large jumps on bassoon is considered easy.

And it isn't just a Martin Fröst thing. I played recently with Christoffer Sundqvist, Emil jonasson and Harri Mäki (as well as with Fröst on several occasions) and they all did crazy big-jump-gymnastics that put every other instrument to shame.

My theory is that the sparse overtones makes it _easier_ once you have the kind of control these people have.

[jacquesm]

Yes, I think you are 100% right. On the sax large jumps are super hard because there are so many modes of resonance to choose from and they all 'work' to some extent. If the instrument already has a strong preference for one such mode you can hit it flawlessly no matter where you come from. > 1 octave jumps on the sax were always hard for me no matter how much I practiced especially when going up I kept getting the weirdest (and sometimes pleasant but hard to reproduce) sound effects!

[bjoli]

Talking about sound effects and saxophone: https://youtu.be/KrFT5BcATFo

[jacquesm]

Wild! I could never do that on purpose. But by accident, any time ;)

[dmoy]

Oh yea, once you learn how to do it, it sounds real fuckin' good

It just takes literal years to learn how to do something on a clarinet that is just pushing a button on most other instruments