Posts Tagged saxophone

Numerical Notation for Saxophones Revisited

Been thinking about getting back into the sax. I could never be a great player, especially after taking so many years off, but it’s fun to play the horn, any horn, even if you are just making noise. I’d was thinking about getting a C Melody because I’ve just been working with guitar, bass and piano for several years and now I’ve got an ear for the real note values (not the Bb or Eb values) that I don’t want to mess up. I turns out the C melody sounds an octave lower than concert pitch. What I really want then is a C soprano, the only sax that plays the exact concert notes.

Except I don’t want to do that. Look, it doesn’t matter what I want. I’m kinda tired right now. But I haven’t posted in month and I need to keep going here. It was a nice break. But no one else really cares about this project at the moment, so it’s all me. And this has been bugging me. So I made some index cards like before, but less half-assed. (Have I mentioned repeatedly a major strength of numerical notation is the ease with which you can write it on ordinary index cards? It’s just something I noticed is handy.)

So I just went through the main saxes (including the C ones nobody really uses) and located middle C & A440. It’s as much for myself as anyone who is interested. (Which is maybe nobody. But maybe you. It’s only you… Did you know A440 is the highest regular note on a bari sax, if it has the extra key? I didn’t.) Here you go, and I hope it is helpful:

sax_C-sop

sax_Bb-sop
sax_alto
sax_bari
sax_tenor
sax_bari

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