The Saxophone

your instruments? No? No, not really the same here. Yeah, I played trumpet when I was in school, and I was like, I think I was probably a source of great amusement for like my band, teachers and stuff. They'd probably play my tapes at home for their friends at parties. I was probably much in the same territory. I will say that towards towards the very end I was, I ended up being in like a like the school jazz band. I guess it was. I don't know. We played different

like some types of music. We played Chicago and stuff, and that was pretty fun. Like for just a brief period of time, I saw the potential of playing music, playing an instrument and enjoying it at the same time. It wasn't later until I picked up the guitar that I realized the thing about music is you don't have to be really good at your instrument to have fun playing, but you have to be good enough to play to have fun playing. And I think when I played trumpet,

I never got there. I never even got to where I could really do it. But anyway, when I was in school bands, I remember being there with the kids in the room who played saxophones, and they'd have to, you know, like learn all the fingerings and mess with the reads and everything. And I remember thinking looking at these instruments with you know, my my trump I had three valve buttons on it and keys whatever you call. And the saxophone had so many. It had all these

like lumps and wires and keys and stuff. And I thought, how could you ever learn all that? And how why why would you put this like brass alien paris I

it up against your body. It's so lumpy. Ye. At the same time, though, I always thought the saxophone, the clarinet, various other woodwinds, they looked more organic, especially the saxophone really, because it as this it's like it's coiling like some sort of a beast and and it makes sense that you would utilize all of your fingers in playing an instrument, as opposed to our use of the trumpet, where you're just using the three or in the case of the

french horn, you have one hand just sort of shoved up there for good measure. That is right, you please? Yeah, So when you played french horn, what is that for? What happens if you take your hand out of the hole, Well, it helps you support the horn, but also you can sort of shape the sound a little bit with it. Oh, I see. But of course, my view of the saxophone changed greatly when I grew up, and I think that largely had to do with me learning to appreciate jazz

like that. I'd never really listened to jazz when I was a little kid, and you know, once I heard actual jazz music or you know, the stuff from the middle of the twin a century, then the saxophone kind of made sense to me. I agree on Once you hear somebody that is a true master the saxophone, as with any musical instrument, you you you see what the deal is, you see why you hear, why it exists, You know why it exists, why it was invented, you know what, what sort of a whole. It's filling in

the human experience, as you will. At the same time, there's nothing like hearing a terrible saxophone or there's also the saxophone, I feel can be a difficult instrument if it's um playing in a genre that you have a little exposure to. For instance, the more the spacier, more

chaotic versions of jazz. I know, recently, you and I were in a work trip and we had an early morning lift ride to the airport and the lift ride driver was playing some very free form jazz and it's it's not something that like I I am acclimatized to so as it orna Coleman or something. Maybe, Oh, I don't know, it's just very free form. Okay, it was. It was kind of a psychedelic freak out uh saxophone performance. But still at the same time, I can appreciate that

there is there's great skill going into the performance. Yeah, and at least to me, while saxophone sounds very like muscular and natural and real, and the genius of it is realized in jazz of the don't I don't mean to sound pretentious, start talking about the genius of music. Um, there's also a way in which it's always been kind of funny to me, especially like it's they're like the saxophone solo and like a rock ballad is always the

funniest part. But people are into that. Like do you remember in the recent stuff to Pull Your Mind episode where we talked about the Russian born artists and comedians Coomar and Melamed and they they did this thing where they used market research to determine all of the elements that people like the most and the least in music, and then they made a most hated song and a

most wanted song. And the most wanted song had things like it sounded kind of like a combination of like like an eighties or nineties R and B song, but also kind of spring steeny. It had like a you know, like working class people with humble ambition and dreams and like saxophone and the saxophone was what people wanted. That's that's that's wonderful. I mean, it does make me think now that you mentioned the nineteen eighties, like two kind

of extremes of of of saxophone player. On one hand, Um, I think of Bruce Springstein in the in the EA Street Band, and the original sax player Clarence Clemens, who lived passed away in two thousand and eleven. He was like really tall, and oh yeah it was a I mean I think it was like six five. But I seem to recall Bruce Springstein himself is maybe a shorter gentleman, so you know, he seemed even more gigantic up there on the stage playing the sacks. But then I also

think to the nineteen eighties seven film The Lost Boys. Okay, I knew you were going here. Yeah, you know which thing I'm talking about. Yeah, there's a scene where they characters just go out to what it's a big party by the beach or something, and there's a band playing and there is just the most intense, oiled up muscle

wrestle guy ever playing a saxophone solo. Yeah, And it's one of these things that for the longest I just without researching, and I just assumed this is just some bodybuilder and they said, hey, gyrate with the saxophone and we'll put we'll play something over it. But as it turns out, that gentleman in The Lost Boys is Tim Cappello, who was and still is an actual saxophonist in addition to a bodybuilder. And I don't mean that he could just play it well enough to sort of, you know,

do the scene. No, he played on Peter Gabriel's second album and toured with him, particularly the tracks Perspective and Home Sweet Home. He played with various other people, played with uh Tina Turner. I believe so this was this guy was a legit saxophone player who just happened to be a bodybuilder as well. His agent must have like choked on his coffee when he saw the casting call go out for that, like need need oiled up bodybuilder who is expert at saxophone. He's your man. He's apparently

still your man. He's still active today. And on the other another example is sort of like the ridiculousness of the Sacks. I would say, I can't help but think of Bill Clinton's Sacks solo on the Arsenio Hall Show. Oh yeah, that was I don't remember that from the time, but I know that's the thing people talk about now, like Bill Clinton and the Sacks. Yeah it, you know it. Um, I didn't show he was cool that that was the

intended message. He was a presidential candidate at the time, and yeah, he goes in there and he's he's, you know, ripping it out on the sacks. The crazy thing about it, though, is it's kind of embedded in my mind from just being on TV when I was a kid. But it also seems to have become just a just a part of the American saxophone image abroad. Even um. A couple

of years ago, I was with and into this. This this interesting scenario where when you look at representations of Santa Claus in China, Santa Claus will often have a saxophone. And uh, this was I believe the first person to really get into this was journalist Max Fisher, who at the time he was writing for the Washington Post. This was and Um, and he was saying, hey, what he looked into this situation, Why are there all these Santa

Clauses with saxophones? What does it mean? And he would ask people about it and they would say, I don't know, Santa just has a saxophone. Um. And so I looked into a little bit. I I ended up chatting with Beijing based journalist Helen gal And and and this was in and the short version the short explanation that most people tend to gravitate toward here is that American Santa Um kind of took up this American instrument in a

fusion of American symbols during the nineteen eighties. This was the time when Santa Claus was introduced as a Western concept uh into Chinese popular culture, and he ended up just bringing the saxophone as well. Okay, so it's kind of like putting a McDonald's takeout bag in his hand. It's just like, this is part of American culture. Let's give him an American instrument. And so it might lead some people to think like I kind of, without looking

into it, I kind of just thought of the saxophone. Yes, it is a very American instrument. It's a part totally. It's a part of jazz, it's a part of part of the you know, the blues, is a part of Bruce Springsteen. What could be more American than these examples of our musical heritage. And yet it is not an American invention, not at all. No, Rather, it is an eighteen forties or maybe as early as eighteen thirties creation by the Belgian born French inventor and musician Adolf Sacks. Right,

and and it's not even necessarily one instrument. We keep talking about the saxophone, and we'll keep talking about the saxophone. But on June eighty six, Uh, Adolph Sacks applied for patents on fourteen different types of saxophone. And that's just the day of the patent, as we'll discuss. He you know, he developed and invented it earlier than that. Yeah. Now, despite how many he applied for patents for this, at this time, there are really only a few varieties of

saxophone that are in common use today. If you just think of a saxophone, what you're probably thinking of is like an alto saxophone or maybe a tenor saxophone. But then they are also soprano saxophones, is baritone saxophone, and then there are a lot of later riff riffs on the saxophone concept. There are other experimental saxophones, and we'll get into some of these as we continue the episode. All right, well, maybe first of all we should look

at what came before the saxophone. Yeah, so obviously there was there were, there were there was a lot of history before the saxophone. And before the saxophone, we we had woodwind instruments and we had brass instruments. The saxophone is in singing that it's kind of a hybrid that

bridges these two families. Now, not to get too bogged down in ancient history here, though, I'd love to come back and discuss more musical instruments in the future, but horns, you know, we've had a shell and bone instruments of this type for a very long time. Some of our earliest models of musical instrument technology involved blowing a horn of some kind, usually adapted from something you know that

occurs naturally. And uh and in them we see, you know, the basic technologies that would evolve into woodwind and brass as well. So it's it's all an evolution of materials, of design and engineering. As for brass itself as a as a as the material for this instrument. I've read that the trumpet is the oldest brass instrument, dating back to roughly c oh. I think that's where the trumpet

that I used in in my school days came from. Yes, yeah, yes, it was quite elderly and it uh you know, I I often wondered, Okay, so I'm like breathing through this thing. There's an inevitable amount of when you're blowing through and taking a breath, you're gonna suck sort of some air through the trumpet as well. And they just had to be amazing undiscovered cultures of mold and some stuff in there. Sometimes you'd open the spit valves and oh, I don't

want to gross everybody out too bad. But even if you're touching on it, I can kind of, you know, the way that you interact with with with scent memories, I can sort of recall that that funky brass odor. Yes, this this combination of like the smell of the metal. I don't know if that's really the metal or if it's just imagined, but also of the oil you would use to oil the keys on the valves, so some kind of gross oil and when you got it in

your mouth that was not pleasant. And also just the smell of life that dwells in moist shadow, the taint of the unwashed corn. So to be clear here, the saxophone is a woodwind and f mint that is just made of brass. It takes the easy to play, single read mouthpiece that you would find in a clarinet, for example, and it melds it with the easy fingering of large woodwinds and an event of course, it is made of brass.

That's material. It depends on oscillating read for its sound, not buzzing lips, which you would find in a in a brass mouthpiece such as with the trumpet or than chorn. With those you kind of have to go, yeah, it's a buzzing I hope you enjoyed that, folks. So, yes, this is a this is a pure woodwind. In this regard, however, it's worth noting that the very first saxophone was was all Would but he was only later than he made the switch to brass um. And we'll come back to

kind some of the curious trivia about this as we proceed. Well,

let's take a look at all Adolf Sacks himself. So I've been reading a book called The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone, edited by Richard Ingham from Cambridge University Press n and it has some excellent chapters, especially about the the inventor of the saxophone himself, chapter by an author named Thomas Lily, but also the book starts with a quote from a poem from the Scottish poet Douglas Dunn called an Address to Adolph Sas in Heaven and it's too good not to read this here here he goes

so from saxophone quartets by Strauss on days off from the opera House, or works by mil Hoode and Ravel or Villa Lobos in Brazil to Lester leaping and possessed by his brass belled iconoclast. The sound we hear is yours, Adolph Posterity. It's howling wolf times, salivating on a read and fingering at breakneck speed. I like that. It almost has kind of a beat quality to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So who is this guy who's being addressed in heaven here?

Obviously you can tell from the poem that he's dead, and you can probably guess that since he invented the saxophone, he pretty much have to be dead, unless I don't know, he's a multi centenarian, right, he know he lives on in the instrument. But yes, he died in eight He was born in eighteen fourteen. He was the first of eleven children born in to musical instrument maker in denn

in what is now Belgium. His parents were not only instrument makers, but they were also innovators of in their own right, altering designs and uh and of course just playing music. So he was born into a family that was not only musically literate, but but very versed in the technology of musical instruments. Yeah, Adolf's father, Charles Sacks, was at one point made the official instrument maker to

the Court of the Netherlands. And so Charles created an alternative design of the horn, the core Omni Tonique, which I have an image of here I went and fetched from an image of the met Museum, ain't she Abut this is good? Now, Robert, you played the French horn, but this is not what you played. No, this is this his French horn esque in its overall design. But there there, there's there are different additional whorls in there. It looks like the entrails of a brass angel. Yeah.

I think it's got a valve that you can sort of pump in and out, maybe sort of like a trombone handle. I think, yeah, this was no rough horn. You can look at this and tell like this, this is something that was created by a true craftsman. Beautiful, beautiful metal guts and uh and so Sacks. Uh. Adolf Sacks grew up amid these these these brass guts. According to a text I was reading Leon Kaczynski's Adolf Sacks and his Saxophone. Uh. Sacks could drill a clarinets holes

and bend a horn by the age of six. So he simply just grew up in the world of instrument crafting and music. And he learned to play a clarinet and flute and was quite skilled at this as well, like like no mere amateur as a musician at all. Yeah. It was said that he could have been a renowned clarinetist if he wanted, like if he pursued that path instead. But when he when he would play his instruments, he would keep noticing chances for improvements to the design of

the instrument itself and then returned to the workshop. And so he began to become known for his skill at instrument making. With his father Charles, according to the chapter by Thomas Lillay, Uh, with his father Charles primarily churning out the known instruments for the family to sell, and Adolf focusing more and more on experimenting with new forms

and designs. Yeah, he entered his own handcrafted flutes and clarinets and contests by the age of fifteen, and he created his own take on the bat at the base of clarinet at age twenty. Yeah. Lila's chapter tells the story of Sax's entry at the Brussels Exhibition of eighteen forty one. Uh. And so this was this instrument show and contest that Sachs entered with a handful of clarinets. And according to Sax's friend George Kassner, an early model

of the saxophone was there. So, according to Kassner's version of the story, this would have been the public a view of the saxophone, except for the unfortunate twist of fate that the new instrument quote was sent flying with a kick by an unknown person at a time when the inventor, Atolf Sacks, was away, so already making enemies

even one. Somebody just punts your saxophone. Uh. And according to Lila, the judges at this contest recommended Sacks for the gold medal, but the central jury rejected their recommendation because they said Sacks was too young to win the top prize. And Sacks reportedly commented on this quote if I am too young for the gold medal, I am too old for the silver. Oh man, this is already

just a great snapshot of of Sacks. Yeah. You know, in reading his from his biographies, he becomes pretty clear like that he's one of these these individuals who creates something that's going to live on after he's gone, but he himself is is not really going to have a real bite of that success. Yeah, he clearly was a very talented, very smart person, but also just he had a lot of troubles. Yeah, and some of these were outside of his control, but then a number of them

also seemed to be kind of self inflicted. And and this is he's very much a study and like what kind of like what kind of determination is sometimes involved in an inventor's mindset? You know? Uh? And and how might that determination uh run at odds with polite society. But what were all the stories about how he like almost perished repeatedly as a child. Oh yeah, according to Adolf sax and his saxophone, Um, his mother referred to him as quote little Sacks of the ghost based on

the number of times he almost died. So he managed to survive a three story fall Uh, an incident where he swallowed virtualized water and a pin at age three, gunpowder explosion, burns, a fall into a cast iron frying pan. How do you fall into one? He's very small at the time. Maybe small at the time, yeah, or you know, it's unclear, like maybe just part of him. Uh. Also poisonings and phyxiations due to varnished items left lying in

his bedroom at night. What I'm unclear of that is, you know, due to ongoing projects that his parents were working on or stuff that he was working on, because clearly from a very early age he was engaging in these sort of in this sort of activity. Well, I think before his parents worked on musical instruments, they worked on furniture, like cabinets. They were cabinet makers, and so it could be varnishing of cabinet parts. There you go. And once he was hit in the hit on the

head by a cobblestone and fell into a river. Dang. Yeah. So it's kind of a minor miracle that he even lived to adulthood based on these stories, and then his life in Paris as an adult seems just consumed by rivalries with various enemies. At least one of which culminated in a musical duel. Uh. And then there were all these various betrayals as well. So Kochynsky wrote that he quote had exceptional gifts for the gentle art of making enemies.

So you're left with this, this vision of a difficult of very difficult but determined and talented man um And he did find some key patrons and supporters, you know, sometimes in very high places. Yeah, like he there was almost like when he did make friends, he could make really influential friends. But even in his successes, such as with the saxophone, he still had to fight ceaseless battles against those who would imitate and and or outright steal

his craft. Yeah, so we should get to more on that, because after this Brussels exhibition in eighteen forty one, Sachs moved to Paris and he continued his work there. This was around eighteen forty two, and at the time a writer named Hector Barelos wrote an article about Sax's arrival, which included the following. This is sited in Lila's chapter quote. He is a man of penetrating mind, lucid, tenacious, with

a perseverance against all trials and great skill. He is at the same time a calculator, accoustician and as necessary also a smelter, turner and engraver. He can think and act, He invents and accomplishes. So obviously Sax made he found it. Uh, he found a way of making very positive impressions on some people. And once in Paris, Sacks made friends with big players in the music world and gave public performances

with his instruments. But he also made enemies very quickly, especially among the other instrument makers of Paris, people who saw in Sacks a threat to their business. Yeah, who would have thought that this was such a vicious world? You know that the world of of of of instrument makers in Paris. Oh, it's about to get vicious in ways that you will be shocked by. So Lili quotes a letter written by Hector bare leo Is in October

of eighteen forty three. Quote, it is scarcely to be believed that this gifted young artist should be finding it difficult to maintain his edition and make a career in Paris. The persecutions he suffers are worthy of the Middle Ages, and recall the antics of the enemies of Ben Venuto the Florentine sculptor. They lure away his workmen, steal his designs, accuse him of insanity, and bring legal proceedings against him. Such is the hatred inventors, inspire and rivals who are

incapable of inventing anything themselves. Man, So, what are some examples of how they work to get against him? There?

There are several in this book. Uh So, some of Sax's enemies tried to undercut him by using their influence in the music world to make sure Sax's instruments, for example, his bass clarinet were not accepted in orchestras right, so they would they would have influence over somebody in in some big influential orchestra, they say, like the lead clarinetists and some Paris orchestra, who would then say, you know, if you let instruments invented by Adolph Sax into this orchestra,

I will walk out. I will not play with you anymore. Yeah, I was your thing about some of these, and then the other text where people were like, yeah, I'm not playing at Off Sacks instrument. It's hard, it's really it's very it's difficult. But I think for us to really imagine this kind of world, because I know, for all of my life I kind of thought of you know, instruments are kind of fixed, you know, they're they're all old, well established instruments, Like the newest instrument is going to

be like the you know what, electric guitar whatnot. But but no new invent new instruments are being invented all the time. I mean. Now, one thing that does come into become an issue here is that when a new instrument is invented, it doesn't yet have like compositions written

specifically with it in mind. So if you're playing older compositions for an orchestra, they're probably they're not going to have a saxophone part written in them, right, And of course, not every instrument has a lot of versatility, Like obviously the saxophone has quite a bit of versatility. But on the other hand, something like the theoremin has limited usage

in music even when it is it's it's played exceptionally well. Yeah, but even if these orchestras were considering incorporating say a base clarinet of sax's design, or a saxophone or a sax horn, uh, you know, any of the stuff he put together, there would be ways that these rival instrument instrument makers could try to shut that down and prevent

it from happening. Also, when the French government was considering adopting some of Sax's instruments for the reform of its military ensembles, because apparently at the time, the French government considered the old, sort of decrepit state of their their military marching bands to be an embarrassment. They needed new military music to show off, which is kind of a funny thing to consider that they'd be super concerned about, but that this would be an expression of your military

prowess since I guess as a different time. Yeah, but then again, it is technology, and that's one thing that is that we shouldn't overlook, like like we're talking about musical technology. Yeah. Uh So this was going on. There was a just so the French government considering adopting some of Sax's instruments for their for their military use, and then opposition to Sax really intensified the rival instrument makers.

They formed this association that was basically just organized to attack Sacks and shut him down, and they tried to sue him to prevent him from getting a patent on the saxophone. One of the tactics they tried is downright diabolical. So in I'm gonna quote here from Lilla's chapter quote, in another tactic, several saxophones were purchased and sent to other countries. Sax's identification was removed and the instruments were

then re engraved to indicate foreign manufacture. Right, So the ideas to say, oh, no, saxophone, saxophone, I'm calling him saxophone. Sacks did not invent the saxophone. They're already ones being made by other people over here beforehand, man, So they're just straight up falsifying evidence to support this idea that he stole the saxophone design from other countries. Right. But of course, fortunately that Lila says that these forgeries were

poorly executed and quickly revealed as a ruse. But it just did not stop here. From the late eighteen forties on through the rest of his life, it seems sax was just plagued with money troubles and constant lawsuits. His biography at this point really just reads mostly as one miserable sounding court case or bankruptcy threat after another, and he eventually died in eighteen ninety four in poverty. I believe, Yeah,

I think so. But I think we should turn back to the eighteen forties to look at the invention of the saxophone in particular. But maybe first we'll take a break.

All right, we're back and we're discussing the saxophone. So Sachs was first granted a patent for the saxophone on June twenty second, eighteen forty six, and getting this patent, as we mentioned earlier, turned out to be difficult due to the intentional sabotage of an association of rival musical instrument makers, which we discussed a bit earlier, a musical

legion of doom. Yeah. So, according to this chapter by Thomas Lillay, another one of the challenges that Sax's rivals put in his way was quote the contention that because the saxophone had been performed before a large public audience during the contest on the Champ du Mars, it was invalid for patent. So Sax's response to this challenge was

pretty awesome. He came back with a challenge. In return, he withdrew his patent request and dared his the plaintiffs to build a saxophone of their own without the use of his design specs, and they were unable to do it. So a little less than a year later sax refiled and got his patent application granted. So now he's got the thing patented. But as we've talked about, obviously Sacks didn't invent it in eighteen forty six. He'd been working

on this for a while. Uh. We remember the story from eighteen forty one with the exhibition in Brussels were at least according to Kassner, Uh, he had a saxophone then before somebody came along and punted it. But maybe a way of coming at this issue is to think about what makes the saxophone special, Like, what is it about this instrument that needed to be invented. So the word saxophone means literally either sound of Sacks or voice of Sacks. I don't know which one is better. I

guess voice of Sacks is better. That the Greek phone could mean sound or voice off often voice, and I like that. It's kind of creepy to think about the voice of the inventor coming and speaking through the brass tube. More than the century after he dies. It would have been a great album title for him, you know, the Voice of Sacks, Sound of Sacks, Sacks from the Heart of Space. Now, the saxophone has nineteen keys, and it slightly resembles the off acclyde, which is a brass instrument.

It was invented earlier that century in France. Yes, and literally lists a number of instruments that have been offered does design ancestors to the saxophone. So a few of these include a quote Argentine instrument quote made of a cow's horn whose tip is shaped to resemble a single read mouthpiece with a thin read of bone bound by a silk thread. Another one might be the alto fagato, which is a sort of high register bassoon. I think

that name just means high bassoon. And then the Hungarian taro gatta, which is a canonical bore would wind you know. I'm gonna mention this later in the episode as well. But anyone who's intrigued by the history of musical instruments, I highly recommend the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. It's amazing museum, well worth the price of admission. They

have musical instruments from all over the world. Uh, just stroll from continent to continent and just wow yourself with how many different designs there are that have a lot in common. Like you know, they're they're string instruments from all over the world, and in in a very simple way, they are all doing the same thing. But yet the materials involved, the design involved, the artistry involved, this the sort of music that has then created with the instrument

very so much. Um and certainly you see plenty of different instruments of that museum that are made from parts of an animal was going there? What means you want to do this episode on the saxophone? I think it did. It did? It did remind me of of the saxophone as being an example of like, here's a musical instrument that first of all has a very clear cut inventor, but also with his name on it, with his name on it. Uh. And yet at the same time it

does tie into this this larger history of musical instrument technology. Right. Well, given that it was part of this larger history, I guess we need to ask the question again what makes the saxophone special? Like what was it alf Sacks trying to do when he made it? Uh? Some sources claim that he sort of discovered the design by accident. Sax's

son Adolf Edward, disputes this. A likely reason for its creation was that Sachs wanted to create a version of the clarinet that would overblow in octaves rather than in twelve. So now I didn't know what this meant when I first read it, so I had to go read about this and figure out what this is. As best as I understand. Overblowing is when you change the note being played on a wind instrument without changing the fingering, but

simply by altering the air flow. So maybe like blowing harder or changing the position of the mouth or whatever, So you can hold a fingering, change what you're doing with your mouth and your lungs, and cause the sound produced by the instrument to jump up to a higher pitch. And on the saxophone, what makes the saxophone special is that this interval where the note jumps up to is a perfect octave, essentially the same note one octave up,

which is a useful thing. This isn't the case on other instruments, like on a clarinet, it when you overblow, it tends to jump up by like a twelve or something not a perfect octave, and the fact that the saxophone can overblow into a perfect octave is musically useful. It's useful to the player. It can be pleasing. So there's a lot of speculation that this was the purpose of why why sax created this in the first place.

It was to have an instrument that could do this, But we don't know for sure exactly why the saxophone was created. Yeah, ad off Sex never claimed to have been visited by a muscular angel playing this instrument, right right. Uh you know. Also, I just had the perfect idea, and now what I know has to be the case is that that guy in the Lost Boys. You know, muscle guys are often oiled up, this guy was oiled

up with with like the trumpet valve key oil. Now I've also read that the saxophone bridges the gap between the brass section and the woodwinds. Uh you know, and I guess that that explanation kind of know. It also plays with this idea that it is a fusion of the two design elements. But the idea is that it also it creates a tonal balance between the two. It's

a versatile instrument with a quote middle voice. Yeah, and the saxophone is also said to have the sound closest to the human voice, making it an obvious choice for you know, you're pleasing musical solos. Yeah. Thomas Lily's chapter in in the Cambridge Companion, he writes about how the

saxophone is sometimes thought of as a singing instrument. It's got the like the range and versatility of a human voice quote, capable of producing guttural sounds and fine spun spun eloquence, of rabble rousing and of inspiring and he so he says, like the singing quality of the saxophone made it really well suited, especially to become part of not like orchestral music, but of jazz and popular music, which tended to evolve from originally acapella forms that, like,

you know, jazz and popular music grew out of stuff like blues and work songs and folk songs that were sung before they were anything else. So in a way, it's almost like a an instrument of translation from purely vocal music into uh, instrumental music. Yeah, I think that's a good way of thinking about it. Yeah, this again, this player, this, this definitely aligns up with this feeling that the saxophone is very organic and and and also probably plays up to the sensual aspects of the saxophone.

There are again personified in this this vision of the muscular saxophone player engaging in his solo. I should also, as long as we're talking about materials and all, I should point out that the flute is the only other you know, um of famous metal woodwind instrument. However, the flute was originally crafted from wood and is still sometimes crafted from wood today. I think they're they're even bone flutes, right, yeah, yeah, flute technology. Yeah, it goes back a long way now.

According to the author Don Ashton, one of the things that makes the saxophone unique and appealing is that it's sort of a friendly instrument to pick up, like that it has acoustical properties that make it easy to learn and and uh, it is an amiable object to sound. Ashton writes, quote relative to other woodwind instruments, the saxophone has a large bore, and this is of great significance to many aspects of its sound capabilities and player response.

The use of a conical tube renders the sound wave richly harmonic, yet the fingering system rivals that of the flute. In simplicity. In common with other large bore instruments, the fundamentals are easily formed. Yet the reduction and bore towards the mouthpiece facilitates both an evenness of timber throughout the instrument and the extension of the two and a half

octave normal range. Now, of course, experienced players now often take the instrument beyond that normal range, but that was sort of like the range at which it was originally said that the instrument was meant to be played. So it kind of hits this perfect balance point, you know. It's it's an instrument that's easy to pick up, but yet it rewards the h the musician who invests a

great deal of time and energy into it. Exactly. Yeah, And because it's characterized as as seeming to to like grow so organically from what the musician is able to do, you can take it in a lot of directions, the way you can take your voice in a lot of directions. All right, Well, on that note, we're gonna take one more break and we come back. We're going to discuss the legacy of the saxophone. Alright, we're back now. The saxophones impact on music and culture was, of course enormous.

Lily notes that it's spread really quickly to other countries soon after its debut in Paris in the eighteen forties. Within the next few decades, it was appearing all around the world. There were several early saxophonists names like Louis Adolph Mayor, on Riwui and Suaya, who made the instrument popular abroad with their performing tours, and early on a

lot of listeners. This is kind of funny now, given I don't know all the like the Saxy Santa and the Muscle Guy and all, but early listeners reported being awed by the beauty of the sound produced by the saxophone. Like after an early demonstration by Sacks in eighteen forty two in Paris, an author named Scootier wrote in La France Musicale that the instrument had this amazing sound quote remarkable intensity and quality of sound. You cannot imagine the

beauty of sound and the quality of the notes. It makes me wonder if to a large extent, we're just desensitized to the saxophone today and I'm just so used to hearing it in commercials and recordings in many cities you walk on the street and you hear the saxophone. If you attend to parade, you see people marching here, people marching with the saxophone. Yeah, I mean, just think about the quality of uh, you know, a sort of like mid level middle range tone produced by the saxophone.

It is remarkably like it feels very like thick and deep and rich, full full of little harmonics and uh yeah, yeah, I think I can hear what they're saying. I've just heard it so many times. Now, what what if I could hear a saxophone for the first time? Another one, So that last quote was cited in Lila. Here's another one sided in lay again, this one from that guy George Kastner, who wrote in eighteen forty four about the

saxophone quote the nobility and beauty if it's timber. I cannot say enough times the saxophone is called to the highest destiny by the beauty of its timber. Yeah, these guys are losing their minds about a saxophone. Like it's clearly scratching an itch that that other instruments were not really capable of dealing with. You know, it's it's delivering a new experience. Yeah, and of course not everyone would

always feel this way. On top of so, you had the rivals of Sacks who opposed the saxophone for pure business reasons, you know, they just wanted to take him down. But there have been people who hated it for other reasons. Of course, one really sad fact in its history is that probably because would reach its most powerful and brilliant use later on in like African American jazz music, racists have often targeted the saxophone. Like no surprise here, but

the Nazis hated the saxophone. Um. There's an article in in the Atlantic by J. J. Gould about this, citing the writings of the Czech dissident literary figure Josef Skvoreki, and the Nazis often opposed jazz music. He talks about how they considered the saxophone to be linked to uh

TO like African music, and they banned it. They highly regulated it in Germany and some occupied territories uh And in one of his books, Skvoreki relays a set of regulations issued by a Nazi officer name go Lighter in occupied Czechoslovakia, and some of these rules are just bizarrely specific, like quote, pieces in fox trot rhythm so called swing are not to exceed twenty percent of the repertoires of

light orchestras and dance bands. Like so tightly regulating the specific musical qualities of what kind of music can be played and when literal music nazis yes, yes, and like banning vocal improvisation, you know, like scat singing. But then also one of the things that that is in this list of prohibitions is quote, all light orchestras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of saxophones of all keys, and to substitute for them the violincello, the viola,

or possibly a suitable folk instrument. Uh. And so a lot of these rules explicitly cite racial resentment as their motivation, saying that music should not sound Jewish or African. Uh, it's insanity. And and Scoreki wrote that jazz was opposed by the authorities of the Soviet Union as well. Uh. He wrote, jazz was a sharp thorn in the sides of the power hungry men from Hitler de Bresnev who

successfully ruled in my native land. I have to say I think I'm am even more inclined to like jazz now that I know that it was, you know, getting an the skin of of of prominent Nazis and giving them the willies right well, I mean you can you can tell apart from their racial hatred, there's also there's a spirit of creativity and freedom in it that is anathema to the totalitarian, authoritarian spirit you know, that hates

that kind of creativity. And of course I think many people would truly agree that like jazz is one of the truest and most powerful realizations of what the saxophone was capable of with you know, artists like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. Yeah, artists that really like took that organic nature that we've been talking about and just laying like, like, let that balloon out let that be the defining aspect

of the performance. Now, despite the fact that I think most people today would really associate the saxophone with jazz more than anything else, uh, it actually wasn't a commonly used instrument in the very earliest days of jazz and only became a regular addition to jazz ensembles and compositions roughly,

I think in the time after World War One. Like its earliest widespread use in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was in bands you don't think like John Phillips sousa type of music like marches and that kind of thing. And in the nineteen twenties, the popularity of its skyrocket it it surged in America with the saxophone craze. Now I take like to take a few minutes here to talk about self playing saxophones, Like how you begin this like a like now word from our sponsor? Well, because

I have to. I feel like I have to sort of set it apart from what we've been talking about because the idea we've talked about how organic it is and it's you know, it's this expression of the human spirit. So it seems kind of also make it a soulless mechanical thing. Yeah, it's see it seems like an exercise

in tira need to do that, doesn't it? But m but there there were a self playing saxophones, and and i'd like, I'd like to come back and discuss self playing musical instrument technology in the future because because there is quite a lot to cover. Again, the Fabulous Musical Instrument Museum and NEX Arizona. They have an entire room dedicated to everything from player pianos to musical boxes, uh, to automated umpah bands and and of course the self

playing sacks. So the Musical Instrument Museum they identify the late nineteenth and early twentie centuries as the golden age of mechanical music. There were a lot of efforts at this point to just to take the automation technology and apply it to just about anything. And we and this is where we see the automatic saxophone. Now, I don't think this qualifies as a true Sacks, but you had this, uh essentially a toy, a toy instrument known as the

play a Sacks role operated musical instrument. And it was a nineteen thirties invention patented by Henry oh Dratten NG. And it was it was mainly intended for amusement. It was something of a of a toy. It looks like a saxophone wearing a jet pack. Yeah, like a simplified saxophone. It looks like a toy sack xophone. Uh and uh. And this is some information. This is from the patent which is via basic Sacks dot info and Google patents quote. The sacks measures twelve inches with a two and three

fourth inch diameter horn. The music rolls and these, of course, so we're talking about rolls of paper that contain the information. Uh. These music roles are perforated and measure about four inches wide. The rolls wrap around the front of the sacks to play sixteen notes through the sixteen slotted openings. Put the music roll on, turn the crank, and breathe. The sacks play sixteen note perforated music rolls with accompanying chords. Now, wait,

were you able to find what this sounds like? I did not run across the recording of it, but I think we can all kind of imagine a mechanical toy saxophone sound, probably more in keeping with the sort of toy saxophones that a child might possess today. You know, if only this like so, imagine the old wests Lune where you walk in and the player piano is going

or wait, is that actually a thing? Usually actually there's a human at the piano in the saloon, isn't there, Well, unless there's a player piano and okay, well I'm just saying maybe that should have been replaced by a player like an automatic saxophone. We'll have to come back to the player piano. I think there's a whole uh, I mean, we can do a whole episode on the pianos as well. Imagine automatic saxophone playing in the background in the confrontation

scene at the end of Unforgiven. Now, of course, today we also have digital saxophones, such as one model I was looking at the Rowland a ten digital saxophone which actually utilizes both accurate fingering and a breath sensor. Um this in a so that the idea here's you. You get this this instrument and you can play the saxophone with headphones on that are you know, that are hooked up to the instrument itself. Oh, I see. So it looks it looks like a rather interesting piece of technology.

And this is not a toy. This is a high priced item I'm talking about. You can find plenty of videos of people demonstrating them online. And of course this is in addition to synthetic sacks sounds that one might produce via synthesizer. Now we're talking about like high tech upgrades to the saxophone. But it goes in the other direction to doesn't it? Oh yeah, now remember yeah, remember

the fact that Sax's original saxophone wasn't brass. But would well you find the bamboo variations of the saxophone have popped up in parts of the world where the sax's influence was felt, but materials or funds prevented everyone from from grabbing a horn. And it's not just saxophone. You also find uh, um, you know, wooden tubas, wooden trumpets, etcetera. And there are several examples of this at the Musical

Instrument Museum in Phoenix. Now it's easy to think of these is just mere um, you know, um crude replicas of of the saxophone itself or whatever horn they're they're they're modeled on. But there's actually one called the Maui Zephoon that has actually picked up quite a following all its own. And uh and I actually looked up some videos of individuals playing this and it can sound quite good in proper hands. It's essentially just a small wooden saxophon.

Doesn't quite look like a saxophone. It kind of looks more like a clarinet, but it has kind of a saxophone sound. To it, at least when the individuals uh testing it out, we're playing it. You know. One of the things we've talked about sometime a few times on stuff to plow your mind is um the idea of sort of like expanding our sell our self image of the schema of the body to include tools that we use a lot and really start to incorporate into the self.

So like, if you you use a tool enough, you find ways to start to think of it almost as a part of your own body. You think about it the same way you think of your hands or your feet, And um, yeah, I wonder if the same thing happens with people who use musical instruments enough, I would imagine. So yeah, you know, I remember hearing UM like an

interview with who is at Doc Severerson. Uh, there's a Tonight show back in the day, and he was talking about like just how you know a professional trumpet here, like how often they practice, And it's like there's an intimacy with it that they only they are privy to, like talking about like if they skip, you know, if they skip a practice, they skip a day of playing it.

You get into the zone where no one else can notice that you haven't practiced, but you notice it like there's an you know, it's just part of the intimacy with the tool um. And then when you get into the like the neurological zone too, it's it's interesting to sort of tease apart like where, you know, where, where

does the instrumentation really take place in the brain. Uh, there's a there's a fascinating study that came out in concerning a music teacher by the name of Dan Fabio who had a brain tumor removed from part of the brain associated with music. And the physicians involved here they actually had him play his saxophone during part of the procedure. How can you do that? Well, it was apparently quite

challenging for two main reasons. So first of all, he was on his side during the procedure and then also deep breathing, as is typical for many sacks numbers. They were concerned that it might cause his exposed brain to essentially protrude from his skull. What which is alone? What? Yeah? That that alone, I was a reason I just had to include this, the idea of someone potentially it didn't happen, but potentially like playing their saxophones, so passionately that their

brain pops out of their skull. That is metal. That is so good. Yeah. The people in Cannibal Corps now were like, well, I want my brain to pop out of my skull. Well, you know, I was thinking along these lines, and I was like, why don't we hear saxophones in metal? The thing is, now, you do hear saxophone, and there are a lot of metal acts out. There's aetially experimental metal acts that are utilizing the saxophone. There's a band for everything. Now, if you can think it up,

there's a band that does it. Somebody's done it. Anyway, They did not want his brain to protrude from his skull anymore than it was during the procedure he was awake. Yeah, So he actually worked with his surgeon though prior to the UH to the to the procedure, and they selected a Korean folk song for him to play that would only require shallow breaths so he wouldn't have to like

really you know, belt it in there uh. And he would also, in addition to um using the saxophone, he would also hum and repeat notes during the procedure, so it wasn't just the saxophone. Now, once the tumor was removed, the surgeons brought over the sacks. He performed flawlessly, and he completely recovered and returned to teaching music within a few months. And this procedure has apparently helped define the relation between the different parts of the brain that are

responsible from music and language processing. So, yeah, I just had to include an anecdote about neuroscience and the saxophone. Now, as we close out here, it's probably time in the episode that we discussed kenneg does KENEGI? I'm trying to picture him. Does he look a little bit like weird al? Yeah, I mean a little bit, I think maybe does he have like weird al type hair? Uh? He does? Or did? Yes?

He's notable here, however, because at least for a while, he had the world record for the longest note um recorded using the saxophone. So let's do this. So how long did it go? Like three minutes? Well, in uh Kinegi apparently set the Guinness World record when he held his note in e flat for forty five minutes and forty seven seconds on his saxophone. Wait a second, how do you do that? Well, Vias, Something that's known as circular breathing. So this is a method employed by players

of various wood instruments, saxophone included. Does this a continuous tone for a long long time. So they simply store air in their cheeks and then slowly release it while still breathing at the same time. And it's not it's not easy, and it apparently hurts the player's lungs and lips to do this, but it's the technique that is employed when you see these like crazy world records for

sustained notes with woodwinds. So for a while this held the record, and then February two thousand Van Birchfield set a new Guinness World record holding one continuous note for forty seven minutes six seconds. And then Mark Atkins played the DIGREYD Concerto in for over fifty minutes continuously. And finally, in May seventeen, a Nigerian saxophonist, Fimi Kutie broke Mark Atkins record by playing a single note for fifty one minutes and thirty eight seconds. So that's uh so, who's

going to be the first to break an hour? Oh? I don't know. This This is of seventeen based on some of the research that Scott, Benjamin and um carried out for us here. So I think this is the the current Uh, this is the current data. But by the time this this episode is published, who knows, there could be a new longest note. Oubt there a new record breaking saxophone is changing our understanding of just how long a note can be sustained. Thinking about this hurts me. Alright,

So there you have it. We we kind of got into the weeds a little bit here at the end. But uh, but but the saxophone, it's again an instrument I felt like we had to cover because it has, you know, a definite inventor. Um, it's a it's it's a it's a recent invention, and yet one that has just become such a part of the modern world, the modern musical world. You know, certainly in the West, that

it's difficult to imagine it's absence. Yeah, and uh, and just because it has such a contentious history, you would not have expected such a thing for a musical instrument. Yeah, it seems like this would be this would surely be the product of polite society. But it was obvious say anything. But now, like I said, we'd love to cover more musical inventions in the future, more bits of musical technology, and we'd love to hear from everyone out there. You know,

what would you like it's to cover? Do you want you want us to go uh in the direction of more ancient musical instruments. Do you want us to go with with other more modern creations like the theorem and that we mentioned. We're really open for anything. I think that's the beauty of the show. Oh, that might be a fun one. One of the few inventions I can really justify a link to a discussion of ed Wood.

That's true. Um, and hey, if you want to check out other episodes of Invention, head on over to invention pod dot com. That's the homepage for this show. But you can also find just find the show anywhere you get your podcasts if you go using them. What the I Heart radio app? You can do it that way. You can get it with Apple, podcast, um, Stitcher, Spotify, you name it. We're out there, look for Invention. That's where we are. Big thanks to Scott Benjamin for research

assistance on this episode. It into our excellent audio producer, Tor Harrison. If you would like to get in touch with us directly with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello. You can email us at contact at invention pod dot com, m