Author: Chris P
Date: 2018-09-16 01:24
shmuelyosef wrote:
"I have done the experiment, and saxophones with the body vent disabled (closed) are much more difficult than a standard Boehm clarinet."
- Saxes being conical bore instruments need the two 8ve vents (which are both a compromise) in order to get the upper register easily - the lower vent to allow D-G# to overblow and 8ve and the upper vent to allow A-C# to overblow and 8ve as well as allowing high D to high F# or high G to sound.
Oboes also have the same thing as do taragatos, sarrusophones and contrabassoons as they're all conical bore instruments and work on the same principles.
With just the upper vent open, conical bore instruments will overblow a 12th from upper register D-F (sounding A-C as that's the 3rd harmonics of low D-F) and then a dodgy F#-G# as they're not vented correctly with just the upper vent and finally A upwards will be business as usual with the upper vent, so you'll lose the entire lower part of the upper register with just the top 8ve vent working on them.
And being able to open just the upper vent on instruments fitted with fully automatic 8ves for the entire upper register won't be possible - the automatic 8ve mechanism will only allow the notes from A upwards to speak in the upper register as anything below that will remain in the lower register until you release LH3 to make the 8ve mechanism vents switch over.
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"Modern soprano saxophones (like the newer Yanagisawas and Selmers) have a 3-way vent, which dramatically improves the evenness of tone and intonation of these beasts."
- I'm not sure what you mean by a "3-way vent" - all soprano saxes have two 8ve vents, even the early ones with two separate 8ve keys. No Selmer nor Yanagisawa, nor any other soprano sax to my knowledge has three 8ve vents.
One thing a lot of sopranos have is a split C# vent where the open C# has full venting in the lower 8ve, but has reduced venting in the upper register to keep the open C# in tune where the 8ve key lowers a perforated pad cup or the upper of two small pad cups that make up the C# vent key.
Not all sopranos, but most - Yamaha have done away with that on their 475, 675 and 875/875EX sopranos, but the 61, 62 and 82Z has the compensating mechanism. On older sopranos, the C# vent was either lowered or completely closed by the 8ve key to tame the upper register C# - the rest was up to the player to control if intonation up top was wild.
The only saxes built with three 8ve vents as standard are Yamaha bari saxes (32, 52 and 62 series), Buffet and Jupiter and also Chinese copies of the Yamaha 32/52 bari where the lower vent has two vents that open/close together which helps clean up the upper register G and G# and a single upper 8ve vent just below the socket.
Yamaha even provided info about how to add an extra lower 8ve vent to their older 61 series baris as they did suffer with a dodgy upper register G/G# as they only had two 8ve vents in total.
Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.
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The Clarinet BBoard
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