Last week's episode1 on the saxophone included the statement But all that glitters is not gold: at my saxophone lesson, the teacher discovered that the octave key doesn't work. At the same time, I started exploring some of the other keys on the saxophone and discovered how to play G# and low C# (the note produced when no keys are pressed is a high C#). The only missing chromatic note is D# and as yet I haven't had cause to play it. I'm not losing any sleep over this.
I set off for the music shop on Sunday morning; it's situated not far from where my (old) company's offices are in Tel Aviv, so I could have travelled by train to Bnei Brak and either walk or taxi from there, but as my daughter works in the area, I travelled with her: probably slightly faster and my wife didn't need to take me to the local train station. The weather was cool and there was what my late mother would call 'spitting' rain, so I decided to walk. Not a very good decision, as a couple of minutes after starting, the rain got heavier and heavier. When it was too heavy to continue, I found a convenient bus shelter and waited there until the rain eased off a little. I walked another half kilometre before the rain returned so I had another rest in another bus shelter. Eventually I carried on and found the shop which was in a small alley, in an otherwise residential area: a peculiar place for a music shop.
The salesman then proceeded to insert a mouthpiece of his own into the saxophone and rip off a few minutes of excellent sax playing. There's nothing wrong with the sax; it just has to be handled with care.
While waiting for a taxi to come and pick me up, I had a look around the shop: some very nice Gibson and Fender guitars for sale although I wasn't tempted.
Today was practice day: again the octave key wouldn't always work, so I pulled the key ring lightly and it now works. The picture comes from this site and explains a question that arose this morning: I noticed that when I played A, B or C with the octave key, the top of the octave "whistle" (that's the little yellow bump on the very top of the saxophone, not labelled; what would be called a "chubchik" in colloquial Hebrew ) would indeed open, but not with the G. The site says the body octave key, which opens for the notes D to G; and the crook (or neck) key, which opens for the notes A and above. The very first saxes had little more than this - in fact they had completely separate octave keys, so when you wanted to move from octave G to A, you had to release the first octave key and switch to the second. This was a royal pain in the...thumb - and it wasn't long before 'automatic' octave mechs were developed, that did the switching for you. I did notice that playing G with the octave key did in fact play a high G even though the "chubchik" appeared to be closed.
I am still not happy with my embouchure; it doesn't seem to be constant and I have to consciously change it in order to play low C (the lowest possible note) properly; that doesn't seem right.
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