[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