"...I would like to explain to everybody how I found out about a very novel and practical way to teach woodwind instruments. This happened at Missouri University when I was very young and I was playing for my meals at Sampson's Café every evening for two meals a day. A young college professor came there every night for several weeks. He finally approached me and said, he thought I was getting the wrong kind of a sound out of the saxophone. I, of course, responded that I was plenty aware of that. I said to this gentleman, "what do you think I practice eight hours a day for? If I thought I was great, I wouldn't have practiced that much."

He invited me over to his laboratory where he had one of the first electronic instruments called a Theramin. The Theramin consists of a box with radio tubes producing oscillations at two sound-wave frequencies above the range of hearing. Together, they produce a lower audible frequency equal to the difference in their rates of vibration. Pitch is controlled by moving the hand or a baton toward or away from an antenna at the right rear of the box. This movement alters one of the inaudible frequencies. Harmonics, or component tones, of the sound can be filtered out, allowing production of several tone colors over a range of six octaves.

This man was also was knowledgeable enough to make a quarter tone organ - not half steps, like the piano. He manufactured this quarter tone organ himself, devised a keyboard for it, and wrote music for it - quite a talented young man.

He asked me if I had a mouthpiece I didn't care about. I had several that weren't very good. What he did was cut off the tip of one of the mouthpieces and just took the shank that went on the cork. The object of using this shank that goes on the cork was to build a little container for a speaker and attach it to this Theramin. He had an arrangement that looked like a three-dial radio. He set the speaker in motion by turning on the theramin, and changed the pitch from sharper to flatter, or higher or lower, you might say.

We attached this speaker to the saxophone with this cutoff shank of the mouthpiece. This set the column of air in motion that was already in the saxophone, and you could play in the low register of the instrument. When you got the speaker to sound 880 vibrations a second (CPS) you could play all over the instrument, upper register as well as lower register. If you got is below 880 CPS, you could play the lower register fine, but the upper register wouldn't respond. When you got is above 880 CPS, the upper register would play fine. If you released the octave key, it would stay in the upper register. Only when you got it on 880 vibrations per second would the sax play in both registers.

Now you understand that this is without any air at all, because, as a matter of fact, the saxophone is not a vacuum. It is full of air already. The object of this little device was to set the column of air in motion that was already in the instrument. There is no need to blow it full of air because it is already full of air.

I thought this was a very unique experience. You could play all over the instrument with a nice sound. When you duplicate this by playing on the mouthpiece, with the reed on the mouthpiece, (playing the saxophone in the regular way), you can put the mouthpiece on the instrument in the proper place so it plays in tune. If you play tighter than that, then you throw the pitch of the instrument sharp, so you have to pull the mouthpiece out. Saxophones are not designed for the mouthpieces to be pulled out too far. With the mouthpiece pulled out too far, it throws the high notes flat with the low notes. So what you have to do then is to "pinch" to get those notes in tune.

...Bear in mind that when this little speaker was turned on - when it was activated - the only human element involved in playing the instrument was myself fingering the instrument. The sound was very good and the volume depended upon the amount of energy that was fed into the speaker. When the volume was turned down, the saxophone still played, but softly. When the volume was turned up, and the intensity of the speaker was increased, more volume was produced by that process. No human element was involved, no wind being blown, and nobody's mouth was on the mouthpiece. This thing was playing just through the vibrations of the little speaker that he built.

As it turned out, the optimum results were obtained on Alto Saxophone by producing 880 cycles per second on the mouthpiece. It turned out that the embouchure pressure was right in the middle. It was neither too tight nor too loose, and it produced all the notes on the saxophone with excellent results. The same process was used in determining the note that should be used on the Tenor, which is a "G" concert, one tone below the "A" 880, and on the clarinet, one tone above the "A" 880, which is a "B" concert. So it is "B" for the Clarinet, "A" for the Alto, and "G" for the Tenor, and a major third lower, an "Eb," is for the Baritone Sax. (These are concert notes.)..."

For more information be sure to read Santy Runyon's Suggestions for Woodwind Players

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