Bass sax/contrabass sax/Adolphe Sax baritone recordings

[saxtek]

One of the bandleaders I work with asked to use some of my recordings on a site devoted to his band. What actually resulted was a whole page devoted to some of my oddball recordings on big saxes. It's a little over the top, but a good place to check out recordings of bass sax, Tubax, and an original 1861 Adolphe Sax original baritone saxophone Check it out:

http://www.tedknight.com/randy_emerick.htm

[KenK]

The recordings sound great, the playing is terrific! And, the tone on that Adolphe Sax baritone is amazing.

[saxtek]

The Baritone sax solo featuring the original 1861 Adolphe Sax baritone was recorded on a Sony Professional Walkman (actually a pretty good cassette recorder) in the living room of a friend during a sax quartet rehearsal. The sound quality is not as good as on the other recordings, but you don't often hear recordings of a real Adolphe Sax saxophone, much less a baritone, so I saved it.

[SOTSDO]

How much of a burden did you find the double (i.e., not automatic) octave key? From what I've seen of the old saxes, the keywork wasn't very well thought out to allow easy operation of the two different touchpieces.

I've just purchased an old bass clarinet with a two touchpiece system, and I'm finding that it isn't as simple as it was when I was a youngster (and learned to play on a similar instrument) to make the switch at the right time any longer. That (and the horrid angle that the neck is at with the body of the horn) have lead me to rethink plans of having it rebuilt.

Childhood memories are always nice, but there seems to be some truth in the statement that "You can't go back". Sigh...

[saxtek]

I've found that after a week or so of continuous playing, the double octave key is no problem. The double octave key system is very forgiving - that is, in fast passages going from G to A and back, you can stay on the lower octave key.

Sometimes I will put away my 19th century double octave key saxophones for nearly a year, but when I pull them out again, the technique comes back quickly. However, after restoring my 1861 baritone and 1876 alto years ago, I played them a lot for months, and the double octave system no longer seemed strange to me.

I corresponded a few times with Arno Bornkamp about playing the original Adolphe Sax saxophones in an authentic 1800s style. He pointed out that at first, saxophone players used no vibrato. I have found it difficult to completely eliminate vibrato from my saxophone playing, even though I don't use vibrato on clarinet (except for Glenn miller style lead clarinet playing).