[EE NYC]

Given some of the (by now) predictable "back and forth" regarding issues of mouthpiece and saxophone material (or myriad other related issues discussed at SOTW) I wonder if there's a way to cut through some of the static and better understand why we believe some of the things we believe in. I'm not looking to rehash the pros and cons of materials, I'm looking to discuss the reasons (sometimes understandable, sometimes not) why people believe the things they do. It's not just students and neophytes who believe these things and until we address that I'm not sure how the discussion moves forward.

The way I see it, there aren't all that many people who are in a position to back up any claims one way or another, at least in terms that most players can understand. Most saxophonists cannot decipher Benade studies nor do they understand basic saxophone acoustics. Any many are not even sure exactly how these studies apply to the saxophone. So how are us laypeople supposed to decide what's what? If we don't understand the texts and physics then we are left to rely on experts. But that also leaves us at a loss since there is nothing of a consensus among mouthpiece and instrument makers. The acousticians seem to have their tussles as well (at least from what I've seen here). Which proves nothing either way. Hence the problem.

The usual marketing BS aside, there are some well respected craftsmen (and musicians) who assert that materials do make a difference. And they are going to influence the discussion, rightly or wrongly. It's one thing to say that someone like Frank Morgan (who wrote on this subject) was not infallible but he must have believed strongly in that position. And I'd love to know why. And so would many other players (I assume). Again, not looking to argue the pros or cons about Mr. Morgan or his position, just saying, how do we respond to posters who will use that article in asserting their own position? Do we quote books and studies that they will not understand? That doesn't seem to work. It may only serve to reinforce their belief. So I think it's understandable why people might be inclined to feel one way or another when they have little true understanding to base a position on. Playing the horn, as we all know, is very personal and as such this can get touchy. Players feel the horn vibrate and assume this must have an effect on the sound. Simply telling them it doesn't may not be enough.

Personally, I've experienced nothing to lead me to think materials matter much if at all. But that's purely anecdotal. I might be right or I might be wrong. I'm pretty sure I'm right. What I've read about the air column and bore taper seems convincing. The point is, I really don't know for sure. And I suspect that of those who say they do, many are simply adopting a line that they really don't fully understand either. I've seen posters get written off immediately for bringing these questions up. Sure, some of these posters are making assertions that they can't possibly know. But again, this mythology runs deep and wide in our community of players and instrument makers. So it's understandable that this will continue to come up again and again.

I'm not sure what I really have to offer on this. I'm not trying to be pollyanna or leave this fuzzy. I'm actually looking for clarity. But I don't think we'll get there unless we are willing to understand why people come to this forum with some of the ideas they have. And I think we all have to be willing to question our beliefs. Not because they should necessarily change (although they might) but because maybe we'll each come to an even better understanding of what we are doing.

 

[AhCheung]

You are opening a can of worms...

Personally, I have done just enough experimentation to understand that, to me, materials matter. For instance a solid copper neck over a sterling silver neck over a brass neck (of the same manufacturer) on the same sax. I can hear the difference, feel it, and some listeners can hear the difference.
I also understand that two different players sound different on the same sax with the exact same set up because of the different ways they blow and different embouchures.
I also understood long time ago that some people are more influenced than others by rumors, hypes etc. That's what you would call myths I suppose.
For instance: that a low Bb bari has more power than a low A one (may be true, depending on the pair of instruments you are comparing, may be completely false if you take a smaller bore low Bb and a large bore low A with the same pads/resos) ; that the soprano should be avoided as your first sax 'because of intonation problems' (with the proper set up a kid can perfectly start on a decent curvy) ; that student saxes are obviously inferior in workmanship, tonal qualities etc to "pro" models (many student models were in fact stencils of flagship horns, eg true of many European manufacturers in the 50s-70s period) etc...
As they say YMMV, it all depends whether you are satisfied with taking things at face value and glad to spread rumors about stuff you haven't experienced first hand....
oh yes, like "I have seen many of these" which can mean "I have read about, seen pics" to many, or to some mean "I have played several of these, worked on them (if I am a tech)"...

 

[Saxaholic]

Why even bring this back up?

The science is there. People can believe whatever they want. It doesn't matter if Adolphe Sax himself crawled out of his grave and said mouthpiece material matters, because he would be wrong.

People think that way because it's been fed to them by marketing for the past 60+ years, and because they WANT to believe it makes a difference.

Most people are too lazy to read and/or try to understand the literature. If that's the case, then just accept the fact it's been scientifically proven and leave it at that. These skeptics have not done the scientific research, nor published their findings, and as such, their "opinion" on the matter is pretty much invalid.

- Saxaholic

 

[EE NYC]

Hmmm…hope I didn't make a mistake with this. I tried to be as clear as I could. Not trying to open a can of worms or argue the positions on these issues.

As I mentioned, these ideas are not simply the domain of students or amateur players. They go much deeper than that and marketing doesn't explain the whole thing. I see it at every level. As such I thought it would be an interesting discussion. Maybe not...

 

[Saxaholic]

I understand what you're saying, and you do have the best of intentions, but it is a simple answer.

Even the most prominent people are swayed by rumors, hype, and hearsay. People used to think the world was flat, EVERYONE, including the most intelligent of scholars. Then it was proved by science that the world is round.

If you're asking "how do we dumb down the facts so everyone can understand" the answer is "go read the book about 3-4 times if you really want to know that bad" otherwise just accept that it is fact, proven by science.

- Saxaholic

 

[thadnoland]

It doesn't matter if Adolphe Sax himself crawled out of his grave and said mouthpiece material matters, because he would be wrong.

Adolphe Sax knew material didn't matter. His Father Charles knew the same.

He had to deal with these same issues when the saxophone first appeared to the public and the years following.

 

[EE NYC]

I understand what you're saying, and you do have the best of intentions, but it is a simple answer.
Even the most prominent people are swayed by rumors, hype, and hearsay. People used to think the world was flat, EVERYONE, including the most intelligent of scholars. Then it was proved by science that the world is round.
If you're asking "how do we dumb down the facts so everyone can understand" the answer is "go read the book about 3-4 times if you really want to know that bad" otherwise just accept that it is fact, proven by science.
- Saxaholic

Well, some of the players I come into contact with and some of the mouthpiece makers and horn technicians I know have different opinions on this than I do. I'm talking about very well respected people in the field. I think that they hold to their opinions not on rumors, hype or hearsay but based on what they truly feel is their own experience on the issue. This then gets passed around and becomes the mythology. And I don't use the word mythology to say that I think they are wrong or right. I use it because it gets accepted through repeated usage, right or wrong. So I'm not asking how we can "dumb down the facts". Just trying (perhaps futilely) to open up the discussion a bit. But I have the feeling this thread may fall into a back and forth on materials. I really hope not...

 

[MartinMusicMan]

I wonder if there's a way to cut through some of the static and better understand why we believe some of the things we believe in. ... I'm looking to discuss the reasons (sometimes understandable, sometimes not) why people believe the things they do.

I tried to be as clear as I could.

You're being too general and vague. What's your point? Why do some people believe that material matters and others don't? Why do some people believe in God and some don't? People believe what they believe. Some will use science to explain their belief, some will use logic, some will use their experience, some will use the opinions of others. And some people will say something just to be provocative or because they're not very bright. If you're asking how we know something, you're getting into very deep philosophical waters. Google "epistemology."

 

[Saxaholic]

So, what precisely is your question?

WHY does this mythology exist? That was already answered.

Does material REALLY matter? That was already answered, too.

- Saxaholic

 

[EE NYC]

Fair enough. I thought it ran a little deeper than that given who I've spoken to about it.

As for SOTW, I see a lot of people dismissed out of hand for bringing it up and I was thinking maybe there's a better way to handle it.

I invite the mods to close the thread since I don't see it going anywhere.

 

[hakukani]

How to deal with sax mythology?

Just make it jibe with your own belief system.

For myself, I'm saving a lot of resources by calling BS on material, cryogenics, and all the other snake oil. I've found that most of the believers in this area have an ulterior motive. The marketer preys on this. I realize how powerful expectation effects are, and perceived truth is a function of cognition and perception.

The only way to a better anything musically speaking is study and practice. Billie Holliday didn't try to buy a better voice, she already knew the songs.

"Thinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of thought."
-Martin Heidegger

 

[bandmommy]

I don't know how others deal with saxophone mythology, but I know how I do.
Remember that game called 'Telephone'? You know, the one where you line up a bunch of kids, whisper something in the first kids ear, they whisper it to the next, and that kid whispers it to the next kid, until you get to the last kid.
Usually what was whispered to the first kid and what the last kid says are VERY different.
That's how I deal with mythology. At one time something may have been factual, but as it was passed on over time things got a little 'mixed up'.
Other stuff, well, take it with a grain of salt.
People are going to believe what they want, and no amount of 'mythbusting' will change that.
So, I guess we just have to respect that and not let it bother us too much.

 

[bari_sax_diva]

To expand on what Hak so eloquently said... mythology is in the eye of the beholder. Some professional athletes (baseball players come to mind) are known to be extremely superstitious. But to get where they are, they've already put in the work, so they can be forgiven for believing that witchcraft is what gives them that ever-so-tiny edge.

Most musicians, on the other hand, should probably set aside the snake oil and use that energy in the practice room. Eventually we all develop preferences, but as long as you have something that works, you can generally go a LONG way without worrying about horn materials, lacquer/plating, or serial numbers. Find something that seems to work FOR YOU (we're all different), then get your butt in gear and practice.

 

[hakukani]

Damn graduate school classes. They make you think and read, the bastards....

 

[piwikiwi]

I understand what you're saying, and you do have the best of intentions, but it is a simple answer.

Even the most prominent people are swayed by rumors, hype, and hearsay. People used to think the world was flat, EVERYONE, including the most intelligent of scholars. Then it was proved by science that the world is round.

If you're asking "how do we dumb down the facts so everyone can understand" the answer is "go read the book about 3-4 times if you really want to know that bad" otherwise just accept that it is fact, proven by science.

- Saxaholic

That's bs btw that people thought the world was flat. Well maybe a long time ago but they already knew the world was a sphere when Columbus set out to explore America. My sister who I has a college degree in history says it one of the first things they teach new students. A lot of stuff in high school books about the middle ages is just wrong.

But I agree with you just making the thread a bit more interesting

 

[saxpiece]

The way I understand it is that anything that can have an effect on how the air motion behaves can alter the timbre or tone.

This includes the mouthpiece dimensions, the reed, the player, the sax dimensions and the edges of things that the air motion hits.

The sax or mouthpiece material used for saxophones results in very small vibrations and these small vibrations have a very minimal effect on how the air motion behaves and the timbre or tone is only altered in a very small way by small material vibrations and our ears can't really pick up these very small timbre or tone alterations.

There is also mojo and feeling and associating looks with sound and monetary value and vested interest and ownership pride and snobbery and etc etc and everyones different and has their own set of tastes in everything and not just saxophones, so it's a wonder that some of us can agree on anything really.

 

[edwin]

The whole issue of how beliefs are shaped is very interesting, and important. The way people engage with scientific information fascinates me. There are some areas where people are prepared to accept what the experts say, pretty much without exception (of course there's always a lunatic fringe on any topic). Then there are areas where there are small but vocal minorities who oppose the science - not on scientific grounds, although they may be dressed up as such - and a small proportion of people get sucked in. And then there are areas where there is huge doubt in the public mind, despite very strong scientific evidence for whatever the proposition is. You get people who have no particular qualifications in a field being presented by the media as having valid and worthwhile opinions for the sake of 'balance'.

This strikes me as bizarre. Someone who in one situation would be perfectly capable of recognising that expertise is required to evaluate the evidence, in another situation - which requires similar expertise in interpretation - will feel that they are in a position to argue against the experts.

I'm not suggesting that we should uncritically accept everything the experts in any field say - not least because scientific opinion does change over time. But we need to recognise our limitations and we need to be sensible about where we seek additional information and opinions.

At the risk of killing this thread by starting a bunfight, I'll give some examples.

Suppose I had cancer. If I went to an oncologist and he said "the evidence is that your best chance of long term survival will be from a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy" I wouldn't accuse him of holding extreme left wing views about cancer management. I might choose to seek a second opinion, but if I did so it would be from another oncologist - not from (say) a market gardener.

Consider vaccination. The evidence in favour of vaccinating your children against a suite of once common and still very nasty childhood diseases is overwhelming. Nobody who took a serious, unbiased look at the evidence could possibly come to a different conclusion. Yes, there are risks, but they are tiny, and vastly outweighed by the benefits. And yet there is a vocal and fairly substantial minority who argue against it on all sorts of spurious grounds. I've spoken to a mother who was highly intelligent, university educated (although not in a health-related area) who told me that her baby's immune system wasn't mature enough to cope with being exposed to the antigens which make up the vaccine. She knew absolutely nothing about immunology, but was convinced that she knew enough to act against medical advice in what she thought was the best interests of her child. This is not particularly rare.

Take climate change. If you don't have ready access to scientific journals, it's easy to go to a university library and look through the last year's worth of Nature and Science. Have a look at the evidence regarding climate change, just in those two journals. You don't have to be able to understand all of the science - just some of the graphs are enough to make it very clear that there are multiple lines of evidence that show that something very significant is happening. The overwhelming weight of evidence is that this is a real problem, that it is very serious indeed and that doing nothing about it is taking a crazy risk. Moreover, we're told by the economists (more experts) that doing something meaningful about it would cost a small fraction of the world's military budget, and that getting going straight away would be a lot cheaper than waiting. And yet many media outlets, in talking about this topic, give equal weight (or more) to people who have no standing in the relevant scientific community who claim that there is no evidence for climate change, or that it is a trivial problem. There's an Australian geologist, for example, who writes books saying climate change is a myth. His work has been thoroughly debunked by the people whose field it is, but he still gets substantial media coverage. If a climate scientist started claiming that the geologists are all wrong about rocks it would be laughable, but somehow the reverse is not.

Now, is the paragraph above a left wing political statement? Seems absurd, but many would view it that way. But they probably wouldn't feel the same about the two paragraphs above that.

Some of the answer is no doubt to do with people who have short term vested interests in the status quo spending money to push a particular view, but why do people without such a vested interest get so passionate about grabbing the wrong end of the stick and pulling?

What does this have to do with saxophone materials? I guess I'm saying that people have views independent of the evidence; that many place credence in views which don't necessarily deserve credence; and that this is hard to fathom and difficult to shift. Fortunately, shifting peoples' opinions about saxophone materials is much, much less important than (for example) shifting their opinions about climate change. In fact it really doesn't matter at all - personal preferences are complex and a preference based on a misconception about acoustics is no less valid than a preference based on favourite colours, or a completely arbitrary preference.

 

[piwikiwi]

The whole issue of how beliefs are shaped is very interesting, and important. The way people engage with scientific information fascinates me. There are some areas where people are prepared to accept what the experts say, pretty much without exception (of course there's always a lunatic fringe on any topic). Then there are areas where there are small but vocal minorities who oppose the science - not on scientific grounds, although they may be dressed up as such - and a small proportion of people get sucked in. And then there are areas where there is huge doubt in the public mind, despite very strong scientific evidence for whatever the proposition is. You get people who have no particular qualifications in a field being presented by the media as having valid and worthwhile opinions for the sake of 'balance'.

This strikes me as bizarre. Someone who in one situation would be perfectly capable of recognising that expertise is required to evaluate the evidence, in another situation - which requires similar expertise in interpretation - will feel that they are in a position to argue against the experts.

I'm not suggesting that we should uncritically accept everything the experts in any field say - not least because scientific opinion does change over time. But we need to recognise our limitations and we need to be sensible about where we seek additional information and opinions.

At the risk of killing this thread by starting a bunfight, I'll give some examples.

Suppose I had cancer. If I went to an oncologist and he said "the evidence is that your best chance of long term survival will be from a combination of radiotherapy and chemotherapy" I wouldn't accuse him of holding extreme left wing views about cancer management. I might choose to seek a second opinion, but if I did so it would be from another oncologist - not from (say) a market gardener.

Consider vaccination. The evidence in favour of vaccinating your children against a suite of once common and still very nasty childhood diseases is overwhelming. Nobody who took a serious, unbiased look at the evidence could possibly come to a different conclusion. Yes, there are risks, but they are tiny, and vastly outweighed by the benefits. And yet there is a vocal and fairly substantial minority who argue against it on all sorts of spurious grounds. I've spoken to a mother who was highly intelligent, university educated (although not in a health-related area) who told me that her baby's immune system wasn't mature enough to cope with being exposed to the antigens which make up the vaccine. She knew absolutely nothing about immunology, but was convinced that she knew enough to act against medical advice in what she thought was the best interests of her child. This is not particularly rare.

Take climate change. If you don't have ready access to scientific journals, it's easy to go to a university library and look through the last year's worth of Nature and Science. Have a look at the evidence regarding climate change, just in those two journals. You don't have to be able to understand all of the science - just some of the graphs are enough to make it very clear that there are multiple lines of evidence that show that something very significant is happening. The overwhelming weight of evidence is that this is a real problem, that it is very serious indeed and that doing nothing about it is taking a crazy risk. Moreover, we're told by the economists (more experts) that doing something meaningful about it would cost a small fraction of the world's military budget, and that getting going straight away would be a lot cheaper than waiting. And yet many media outlets, in talking about this topic, give equal weight (or more) to people who have no standing in the relevant scientific community who claim that there is no evidence for climate change, or that it is a trivial problem. There's an Australian geologist, for example, who writes books saying climate change is a myth. His work has been thoroughly debunked by the people whose field it is, but he still gets substantial media coverage. If a climate scientist started claiming that the geologists are all wrong about rocks it would be laughable, but somehow the reverse is not.

Now, is the paragraph above a left wing political statement? Seems absurd, but many would view it that way. But they probably wouldn't feel the same about the two paragraphs above that.

Some of the answer is no doubt to do with people who have short term vested interests in the status quo spending money to push a particular view, but why do people without such a vested interest get so passionate about grabbing the wrong end of the stick and pulling?

What does this have to do with saxophone materials? I guess I'm saying that people have views independent of the evidence; that many place credence in views which don't necessarily deserve credence; and that this is hard to fathom and difficult to shift. Fortunately, shifting peoples' opinions about saxophone materials is much, much less important than (for example) shifting their opinions about climate change. In fact it really doesn't matter at all - personal preferences are complex and a preference based on a misconception about acoustics is no less valid than a preference based on favourite colours, or a completely arbitrary preference.

Amen! I wholeheartedly agree.

 

[Hr7star]

On a forum where religious topics are wisely banned; the materials debate is simply

a substitute for the "is there a doG" debate. IMO.

 

[piwikiwi]

On a forum where religious topics are wisely banned; the materials debate is simply

a substitute for the "is there a doG" debate. IMO.

I always thought that was a stupid question. You can't prove god nor can you disprove him. Believing in god doesn't have anything to do with proving nor has science anything to do with disproving god.

Scientist can look back and know how things were thousands of a second after the big bang but they will never ever know how it was created.

So I disagree because i think the materials debate is simply a matter of finding a scientist who is willing to test this.