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Re: Key Holes

Author: Chris P
Date: 2018-06-28 10:53

Cacisnd wrote:

"I am a beginner too - and I think the top diamond hole left uncovered when playing a D acts sort of like an octave vent so the note is higher. If I am wrong then sorry I am new to this."

That is exactly what the diamond aperture is doing - it's the 8ve vent for the middle C#, D and Eb when it's uncovered as the lower 8ve vent is positioned too high to work effectively for these notes. If you play upper register D using the back 8ve key, you'll notice it doesn't want to speak cleanly. Then you switch to the lower 8ve vent from upper E to G# and then the upper vent from A to C.

And because saxes are working on the same principal (they're a conical bore reed instrument just like an oboe), they can sometimes have a dodgy middle D because the lower 8ve vent is positioned too high for that note. The better location for the D 8ve vent is the high D key tonehole, so some bass saxes require the high D key to be nudged to give a clearer middle D.

8ve vents are a compromise - you're only using three on an oboe to cover an entire 8ve when in fact you really need a separate 8ve vent for each semitone, but that will make an overly complicated and most likely a very unreliable mechanism. So the placement of the 8ve vents is strategically done to cover a different section of the upper register with as few vents as is possible and each vent has its lower and upper limit.

Former oboe finisher
Howarth of London
1998 - 2010
The opinions I express are my own.

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