The Soul of the Sax

Now that we have your mind limbered up to the many varieties of saxophone (much like ice cream in that there are many flavors that are all good, but then there's that one favorite that tops them all), we'll reach into the deepest depths of the instrument (no, not the dark, moist interior of the horn that gets quite uninviting after an hour's worth of playing time) which happens to be the soul of the saxophone. Now you might be thinking to yourself, "self, what exactly is the soul of the saxophone?" And I would have to intrude into your thoughts to tell you that the soul of the saxophone is as intangible as a human's and also just as alive and free-willed. To explain further, let me illustrate the many personae of the different types of saxophones with an excerpt from The Devil's Horn.

Mike Segell is on a mission to attain inside knowledge on the history of this serpentine instrument and visits a collector who seems he was taken out of the 1920's just yesterday. In addition to coming for notes and a stimulating conversation, he also arrives with the hope of playing a rare bass saxophone.


"Vince Giordano has insisted on washing the mouthpiece of his bass saxophone before I play it. 'It probably hasn't been cleaned since before the horn was manufactured,' he says. Vince bought the behemoth from Artie Drelinger, who played in the Paul Whiteman and Bunny Berigan bands in the 1920s, the beginning of the golden age of dance-band music....

Vince's model is the saxophonist Adrian Rollini, who played the bass in the California Ramblers, the quintessential college dance band of the flapper era. 'Schnoz was the first guy to play melodically on the bass,' he says as he affixes a now-sanitized mouthpiece to Artie Drelinger's old warhorse. He motions for me to sit astride the instrument and try it out. After my fingers find the right positions on the keys, I blow. Ridiculously low blasts of sound escape from the horn. Despite its size, the bass speaks more readily than my tenor. What's truly remarkable, though, is the transforming power of the instrument - of all saxophones, really. The tenor imparts to the player a lean but muscular power and confidence, the baritone a kind of blustering machismo, and the bass...as your breath is organized into sound waves, you're suddenly capable of noises that are superhuman."

As a saxophone player myself, and an avid listener of saxophone music, I found this description of a saxophone's "transforming power" to be incredibly accurate. Each horn takes on its on character or flavor which speaks to the player in a different way. To really get a more firm grasp on this subject, there is no substitute than playing a saxophone yourself, blog buddy. And if that's not happening soon, just take my word for it - saxophones are maaaaaaagical.

The Bass Saxophone

P.S. Aren't you glad we had that discussion on different types of saxophones in the previous post? There's a method to my madness!