I apologize to my regular readers for slacking off recently. I've been having problems with my tenor and I'm about to take drastic measures to resolve them. First of all the Rigotti reeds I use were out of stock for a long time. Roberto's finally got some in and I ordered three boxes, thinking that would hold me for a little while. I immediately went though all 30 reeds without finding a single good reed. This is something that has never happened to me with this brand. I was so looking forward to feeling good about playing tenor and this was a major blow to my little feeling. Sometimes it does seem like in order to be truly happy I need to have at least one good reed. I know that this is not a healthy way to react to this relatively small problem (in the grand scheme of things). It would be like if an opera singer would sometimes wake up one day and, lo and behold, she sounded like Rac
hel Ray and Mose Allison's lovechild.
For some reason a good tenor reed is much harder for me to find than a good alto reed is. Does Riggoti use all their best cane on the smaller reeds? It sure seems that way. Even worse than my reed problems are the problems that I'm having with my neck (sax neck that is). It took me a little while after first getting my horn to notice, but at some point my neck was pulled down. You see slightly feel a small crease on the side and some of the lacquer on the sides has also come off. I feel that this causes my horn to have less centered intonation that it should have. The overtones don't match, meaning that the overtones are out of tune with the corresponding regularly fingered notes. The horn has a warn, fat and beefy sound but it's too hard to play it in tune. At first I thought it was just me (which of course is partially is) because I hadn't been playing tenor as long as I had played alto. After having other people try it with other necks I accepted the fact that some of my problems are due to the neck.
A couple of weeks ago I brought my horn in to a local sax tech and had him try to pull the neck back to where it originally was. It moved up a half an inch and the result was even more unstable intonation than before. While looking at a tuner I could play ev
ery note right in tune, but it didn't feel as centered as I would have liked. New Mark VI neck go for as high as $1700, no kidding. It's insane. I might be able to get lucky and find a beater for $600, but I wouldn't be able to try it first to see if it's any better than mine. Besides, I don't really have an extra $600 to drop on a neck.
I've experienced neck problems with other horns in the past and found that a different neck can change everything about the way a horn sounds and feels. Changing necks can make your horn brighter or darker, stuffier or more free-blowing. They can change the response, intonation and timbre. Now days there are a lot of after market necks being. I've tried several different brands and most seemed to be worse than the original necks. Oleg's necks for instance are pretty awful. Ther
e are even some wood necks being made now by a few different companies. I have yet to try one of these.
There are guys who say that you can made a neck better by super-freezing it. This changes the molecular structure of the neck. There are other more woo-woo techs who think that they can make a neck better by making tiny scraping on the inside on the neck. One of the first thing to try if you're having pr
oblem that you think are related to your neck is to have someone who knows what they're doing refit your neck so that it makes a tight and even seal in your horn. A loose neck can cause some major problems over the entire range of the horn, so can one that isn't even fitting.
I'm now looking to trade my whole horn in for a different Mark VI. I may have found one. What a pain in the neck.
Posts
Bill Mithoefer (Monk'sDream) hipped me to a cool streaming Jazz video site called JazzVision.com, which is part of the Jazz Corner network. It's the first dedicated video s
haring and video networking site dedicated to Jazz. It's nice not to have to filter through all the swearing baby, nervous hamster and gnad cruncher videos like on YouTube. Thanks Bill.
him. I'm still reading about the early 20th century and the meteoric rise of the sax in America. It seemed that back then there were as many sax quartets and all-sax orchestras as there are garage rock bands now. Most big companies had a sax quartet to boost morale. If you were a good saxophonist then you even had a much better chance of getting a good job. These aattb sax quartets were the precursors to the swing band sax section. It's hard for me to imagine how a sax quartet like the Brown Brothers could be what a rock stars are today. These guys were making $1000 a week almost a century ago!
h the master. In this book Lee talks about his days with Lennie Tristano's group, opening for Bird, working with Miles Davis, his early development as an improviser, his composing, the music business, and much more. This is a great read even if you aren't a huge Konitz fan, and you'd be developmentally disabled if you weren't (see how PC I am since I was chastised by an angry reader for calling someone a retard, I really meant Lame-o). Lee is still playing his ass off in his eightieth decade and his experience as a Jazz musician is invaluable to any young player. Lee's thoughts on improvising really made my think about my entire approach to playing. He talks about how he doesn't consider himself a virtuoso, like Chris Potter, who can captivate an entire audience in rapt attention. He never tries to force any emotion into his music, he just tries to develop good melodies. Lee seems to be very concerned with musical purity and doesn't ever compromise his approach just to please an audience.
hel Ray and Mose Allison's lovechild.
ery note right in tune, but it didn't feel as centered as I would have liked. New Mark VI neck go for as high as $1700, no kidding. It's insane. I might be able to get lucky and find a beater for $600, but I wouldn't be able to try it first to see if it's any better than mine. Besides, I don't really have an extra $600 to drop on a neck.
e are even some wood necks being made now by a few different companies. I have yet to try one of these.
oblem that you think are related to your neck is to have someone who knows what they're doing refit your neck so that it makes a tight and even seal in your horn. A loose neck can cause some major problems over the entire range of the horn, so can one that isn't even fitting.
