Klarinet Archive - Posting 000377.txt from 2002/07

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Doubles
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 10:17:50 -0400

Bill Daniluk wrote,
>You actually have a bass sax? What's it like to play?
> How did you acquire it? What brand?

It's a silver-plated 1926 C. G. Conn. I hesitated to buy it (from the
previous owner's nephew), because it was badly damaged. The nephew told me
that when his uncle was in his 70s, he had lost his balance while trying to
lift the bass out of its case. To save himself from falling, he had dropped
the sax, on a hardwood floor.

The bass had landed on the heavy side: the main key rods. The weight falling
on the rods (therefore on the key posts) had punched a long dent through most
of the tone holes on the upper and lower stacks. There was a dent in the
bell and another in the long "drainpipe" that drops down to the neck, which
was twisted. Someone had attempted amateurish repairs on the popped solders
on the octave key posts. Huge globs of solder had left the upper octave key
immobilized in closed position. After about 15 or 20 more years of sitting
unplayed in a garage, the case and sax were full of dead bugs, dirt and mouse
debris.

In addition to cleanup and repairs, the bass needed a full overhaul with a
complete set of new corks and pads. Even so, I didn't see anything that
looked irreparable. Nothing was missing--and by great good fortune, the
original Buescher 2 hard rubber mouthpiece was undamaged.

With my limited experience, I'd never attempt such a restoration, but I knew
a fine repairman, Peter Ferrante, proprietor of Presto Brass and Woodwinds in
Arlington, VA. He'd already done an excellent job of restoring three smaller
old saxophones for me. Peter Ferrante farmed out some of the work on the
bass to Tony Valenti, who no longer deals directly with the public. Between
them, they kept my bass for more than a year, but they did a spectacular job.
They didn't replate, since I don't mind the battle scars and prefer to keep
old instruments as original as possible.

>I would think that you would get about 4 beats
>= 1/4=120 per breath on one of these!

I thought that, too, but it turns out that at maximum volume, a bass sax
doesn't require much more lung power than for maximum volume on a tenor sax.
It just needs enough wind to make the column of air vibrate inside the pipe,
and that's a lot less than it would take to blow *through* the pipe (hard
enough to blow out a candle at the other end, for instance). Still, there's
less volume control on a bass sax than there is on a tenor sax, let alone a
soprano clarinet, because the minimum threshhold of enough air to get a tone
going *at all* is much higher in the bass. The whisper-breath that will
bring a pianissimo out of a clarinet gets nothing but a non-vocalized hiss
out of a bass sax. To get the quietest possible tone out of the bass sax
requires about as much air as I'd need to talk loudly, while the loudest tone
is like shouting; but I don't ever need enough air for a horror movie scream.
Another difference is that a bass sax (this one, anyway) has slightly slow
speech for the lowest half-octave.

The biggest problem isn't the breath control; it's the weight, combined with
the massive, unbalanced shape. I could never control that thing with a
neckstrap or even the chest harness I use with alto and tenor saxes. Also, I
have small hands, and the bass has such a broad diameter that if I put my
thumb in the normal position under the thumb rest, I can't reach some of the
keys with my right fingers. Instead, a support stand takes all of the weight
and frees up my left thumb, so that I can play with my whole right hand moved
around to the front of the sax.

Even played quietly, the bass sets off harmonic vibrations in anything in the
room that's lightweight and loose enough to sing along. If I want to
practice at top volume, I wear hearing protection. In other words, it's the
ideal instrument for a clarinet player who got fed up with sitting in front
of the trumpets in high school. ;-) I have to memorize the music, though,
because the lowest tones vibrate my eyeballs so much that I can't read the
notes. Oddly enough, Shadow Cat *loves* the sound of the bass sax.

Lelia
LeliaLoban@-----.com