Klarinet Archive - Posting 000088.txt from 2000/02

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] How DID you learn saxophone
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 21:24:24 -0500

The saxophone was unfinished business for me, because of that band teacher
I've grumbled about before, who got the class to laugh at me when I asked to
switch to baritone sax, in days of yore when the cave paintings were fresh.
So there I was at age forty-something (I don't remember any more exactly
which year this happened), playing piano and clarinet as an amateur, doing my
regular prowl of the flea markets and so forth with my husband. In a
junktiques shop up in Pennsylvania, a dealer offered some old plastic
clarinets and two alto saxes for sale.

One sax was a Selmer Bundy. The other was an old-looking, beat-up Selmer for
$120. The Bundy, in clean condition, in a clean case, was priced twice as
high as the Selmer. I took a closer look at that old sax, which was
beautifully engraved with a floral design, but full of cobwebs and dead bugs,
and so filthy that my hands turned black everywhere I touched it. I found
some dents. Nothing looked missing or seriously damaged. The case was
keratol-covered, with typical 1920s luggage contruction. The purple velvet
lining, black with mildew, smelled like guano bats nested in there. The sax
looked like brass, dirty rather than tarnished -- clearly plated, not
lacquered, yet the raw brass showing through the scuffed places had tarnished
black. Now, why would anybody plate brass over brass? And why would the
plating not tarnish when the body underneath did tarnish? The treasure
goblins started to gibber in my head.

I knew zip about saxes at that point, but I did know that Selmer clarinets
are good ones. I thought that plating looked like matte-finished gold,
obscured by the layer of dirt, and I figured that nobody would gold-plate
junk. Kevin was still busy in the shop. I bought the sax and left it in his
car while paid a visit to the women's restroom at the gas station down the
block, where I washed out the mouthpiece and the old reed that looked the
least disgusting from the gruesome collection in the case. Then I sat down
with the sax on the tailgate of the station wagon. I'm still astonished at
myself for putting that reed in my mouth, but.... Oh, well, I didn't die.
The reed, the pads and the neck cork were so shot and I was so ignorant of
saxes that I could only get about four notes. What a tone -- big, booming,
resonant. A closer look with a magnifying glass in sunlight confirmed that
the sax was gold plated, all right.

The next day, the repairman looked a little giddy when I opened that case on
his counter. (Maybe it was the fumes.) He tried to talk me into swapping
the sax for a slightly used Buffet R-13 clarinet. I guess the sensible thing
would have been to take him up on the offer, since I didn't have serious
money in the sax (yet -- it would need a full overhaul to make it playable).
I needed a better clarinet then and didn't even know how to play the sax, but
I just couldn't do that deal. I started educating myself about saxophones
instead. I've still got that sax. I bought used instruction books and other
music from the used book pushers and taught myself.

The fingerings came easily because I already played clarinet and recorder. I
was already used to a jump of an octave instead of a 12th and knew the basic
fingerings for the throat tones, which are similar on sax and recorder. For
me, the most difficult part of the range was convincing myself to loosen up
my embouchure enough to get the lowest four notes. The weight and diameter
of the body took some getting used to, as well.

I liked the tone of that old sax so much that every other sax I bought
subsequently also dates from the 1920s. The very next sax I found was my
1926 C. G. Conn bass. Talk about beginner's luck! Well, when you find
things like that, the cosmos is trying to tell you something and you have to
get serious about practicing. Otherwise, the goblins won't show you the good
stuff any more.

Lelia

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