Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to invention. My name is Robert Lamb, and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. Robert, were you in a band when
Speaker 1: you were in school? Not not like not like a
Speaker 1: rock band, I mean like a school band. School band
Speaker 1: is the only thing I was in. Uh. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: played trumpet for a while, then I played French war
Speaker 1: and then I played just a little more trumpet, and
Speaker 1: uh that was it. Did you ever get good at
Speaker 1: your instruments? No? No, not really the same here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I played trumpet when I was in school, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I think I was probably a source of
Speaker 1: great amusement for like my band, teachers and stuff. They'd
Speaker 1: probably play my tapes at home for their friends at parties.
Speaker 1: I was probably much in the same territory. I will
Speaker 1: say that towards towards the very end I was, I
Speaker 1: ended up being in like a like the school jazz band.
Speaker 1: I guess it was. I don't know. We played different
Speaker 1: like some types of music. We played Chicago and stuff,
Speaker 1: and that was pretty fun. Like for just a brief
Speaker 1: period of time, I saw the potential of playing music,
Speaker 1: playing an instrument and enjoying it at the same time.
Speaker 1: It wasn't later until I picked up the guitar that
Speaker 1: I realized the thing about music is you don't have
Speaker 1: to be really good at your instrument to have fun playing,
Speaker 1: but you have to be good enough to play to
Speaker 1: have fun playing. And I think when I played trumpet,
Speaker 1: I never got there. I never even got to where
Speaker 1: I could really do it. But anyway, when I was
Speaker 1: in school bands, I remember being there with the kids
Speaker 1: in the room who played saxophones, and they'd have to,
Speaker 1: you know, like learn all the fingerings and mess with
Speaker 1: the reads and everything. And I remember thinking looking at
Speaker 1: these instruments with you know, my my trump I had
Speaker 1: three valve buttons on it and keys whatever you call.
Speaker 1: And the saxophone had so many. It had all these
Speaker 1: like lumps and wires and keys and stuff. And I thought,
Speaker 1: how could you ever learn all that? And how why
Speaker 1: why would you put this like brass alien paris I
Speaker 1: it up against your body. It's so lumpy. Ye. At
Speaker 1: the same time, though, I always thought the saxophone, the clarinet,
Speaker 1: various other woodwinds, they looked more organic, especially the saxophone really,
Speaker 1: because it as this it's like it's coiling like some
Speaker 1: sort of a beast and and it makes sense that
Speaker 1: you would utilize all of your fingers in playing an instrument,
Speaker 1: as opposed to our use of the trumpet, where you're
Speaker 1: just using the three or in the case of the
Speaker 1: french horn, you have one hand just sort of shoved
Speaker 1: up there for good measure. That is right, you please? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when you played french horn, what is that for?
Speaker 1: What happens if you take your hand out of the hole, Well,
Speaker 1: it helps you support the horn, but also you can
Speaker 1: sort of shape the sound a little bit with it. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see. But of course, my view of the saxophone
Speaker 1: changed greatly when I grew up, and I think that
Speaker 1: largely had to do with me learning to appreciate jazz
Speaker 1: like that. I'd never really listened to jazz when I
Speaker 1: was a little kid, and you know, once I heard
Speaker 1: actual jazz music or you know, the stuff from the
Speaker 1: middle of the twin a century, then the saxophone kind
Speaker 1: of made sense to me. I agree on Once you
Speaker 1: hear somebody that is a true master the saxophone, as
Speaker 1: with any musical instrument, you you you see what the
Speaker 1: deal is, you see why you hear, why it exists,
Speaker 1: You know why it exists, why it was invented, you
Speaker 1: know what, what sort of a whole. It's filling in
Speaker 1: the human experience, as you will. At the same time,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like hearing a terrible saxophone or there's also
Speaker 1: the saxophone, I feel can be a difficult instrument if
Speaker 1: it's um playing in a genre that you have a
Speaker 1: little exposure to. For instance, the more the spacier, more
Speaker 1: chaotic versions of jazz. I know, recently, you and I
Speaker 1: were in a work trip and we had an early
Speaker 1: morning lift ride to the airport and the lift ride
Speaker 1: driver was playing some very free form jazz and it's
Speaker 1: it's not something that like I I am acclimatized to
Speaker 1: so as it orna Coleman or something. Maybe, Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just very free form. Okay, it was.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a psychedelic freak out uh saxophone performance.
Speaker 1: But still at the same time, I can appreciate that
Speaker 1: there is there's great skill going into the performance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at least to me, while saxophone sounds very like
Speaker 1: muscular and natural and real, and the genius of it
Speaker 1: is realized in jazz of the don't I don't mean
Speaker 1: to sound pretentious, start talking about the genius of music. Um,
Speaker 1: there's also a way in which it's always been kind
Speaker 1: of funny to me, especially like it's they're like the
Speaker 1: saxophone solo and like a rock ballad is always the
Speaker 1: funniest part. But people are into that. Like do you
Speaker 1: remember in the recent stuff to Pull Your Mind episode
Speaker 1: where we talked about the Russian born artists and comedians
Speaker 1: Coomar and Melamed and they they did this thing where
Speaker 1: they used market research to determine all of the elements
Speaker 1: that people like the most and the least in music,
Speaker 1: and then they made a most hated song and a
Speaker 1: most wanted song. And the most wanted song had things
Speaker 1: like it sounded kind of like a combination of like
Speaker 1: like an eighties or nineties R and B song, but
Speaker 1: also kind of spring steeny. It had like a you know,
Speaker 1: like working class people with humble ambition and dreams and
Speaker 1: like saxophone and the saxophone was what people wanted. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's wonderful. I mean, it does make me think
Speaker 1: now that you mentioned the nineteen eighties, like two kind
Speaker 1: of extremes of of of saxophone player. On one hand, Um,
Speaker 1: I think of Bruce Springstein in the in the EA
Speaker 1: Street Band, and the original sax player Clarence Clemens, who
Speaker 1: lived passed away in two thousand and eleven. He was
Speaker 1: like really tall, and oh yeah it was a I
Speaker 1: mean I think it was like six five. But I
Speaker 1: seem to recall Bruce Springstein himself is maybe a shorter gentleman,
Speaker 1: so you know, he seemed even more gigantic up there
Speaker 1: on the stage playing the sacks. But then I also
Speaker 1: think to the nineteen eighties seven film The Lost Boys. Okay,
Speaker 1: I knew you were going here. Yeah, you know which
Speaker 1: thing I'm talking about. Yeah, there's a scene where they
Speaker 1: characters just go out to what it's a big party
Speaker 1: by the beach or something, and there's a band playing
Speaker 1: and there is just the most intense, oiled up muscle
Speaker 1: wrestle guy ever playing a saxophone solo. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: one of these things that for the longest I just
Speaker 1: without researching, and I just assumed this is just some
Speaker 1: bodybuilder and they said, hey, gyrate with the saxophone and
Speaker 1: we'll put we'll play something over it. But as it
Speaker 1: turns out, that gentleman in The Lost Boys is Tim Cappello,
Speaker 1: who was and still is an actual saxophonist in addition
Speaker 1: to a bodybuilder. And I don't mean that he could
Speaker 1: just play it well enough to sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: do the scene. No, he played on Peter Gabriel's second
Speaker 1: album and toured with him, particularly the tracks Perspective and
Speaker 1: Home Sweet Home. He played with various other people, played
Speaker 1: with uh Tina Turner. I believe so this was this
Speaker 1: guy was a legit saxophone player who just happened to
Speaker 1: be a bodybuilder as well. His agent must have like
Speaker 1: choked on his coffee when he saw the casting call
Speaker 1: go out for that, like need need oiled up bodybuilder
Speaker 1: who is expert at saxophone. He's your man. He's apparently
Speaker 1: still your man. He's still active today. And on the
Speaker 1: other another example is sort of like the ridiculousness of
Speaker 1: the Sacks. I would say, I can't help but think
Speaker 1: of Bill Clinton's Sacks solo on the Arsenio Hall Show.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was I don't remember that from the time,
Speaker 1: but I know that's the thing people talk about now,
Speaker 1: like Bill Clinton and the Sacks. Yeah it, you know it. Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't show he was cool that that was the
Speaker 1: intended message. He was a presidential candidate at the time,
Speaker 1: and yeah, he goes in there and he's he's, you know,
Speaker 1: ripping it out on the sacks. The crazy thing about it, though,
Speaker 1: is it's kind of embedded in my mind from just
Speaker 1: being on TV when I was a kid. But it
Speaker 1: also seems to have become just a just a part
Speaker 1: of the American saxophone image abroad. Even um. A couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, I was with and into this. This
Speaker 1: this interesting scenario where when you look at representations of
Speaker 1: Santa Claus in China, Santa Claus will often have a saxophone.
Speaker 1: And uh, this was I believe the first person to
Speaker 1: really get into this was journalist Max Fisher, who at
Speaker 1: the time he was writing for the Washington Post. This
Speaker 1: was and Um, and he was saying, hey, what he
Speaker 1: looked into this situation, Why are there all these Santa
Speaker 1: Clauses with saxophones? What does it mean? And he would
Speaker 1: ask people about it and they would say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: Santa just has a saxophone. Um. And so I looked
Speaker 1: into a little bit. I I ended up chatting with
Speaker 1: Beijing based journalist Helen gal And and and this was
Speaker 1: in and the short version the short explanation that most
Speaker 1: people tend to gravitate toward here is that American Santa
Speaker 1: Um kind of took up this American instrument in a
Speaker 1: fusion of American symbols during the nineteen eighties. This was
Speaker 1: the time when Santa Claus was introduced as a Western
Speaker 1: concept uh into Chinese popular culture, and he ended up
Speaker 1: just bringing the saxophone as well. Okay, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of like putting a McDonald's takeout bag in his hand.
Speaker 1: It's just like, this is part of American culture. Let's
Speaker 1: give him an American instrument. And so it might lead
Speaker 1: some people to think like I kind of, without looking
Speaker 1: into it, I kind of just thought of the saxophone. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is a very American instrument. It's a part totally.
Speaker 1: It's a part of jazz, it's a part of part
Speaker 1: of the you know, the blues, is a part of
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen. What could be more American than these examples
Speaker 1: of our musical heritage. And yet it is not an
Speaker 1: American invention, not at all. No, Rather, it is an
Speaker 1: eighteen forties or maybe as early as eighteen thirties creation
Speaker 1: by the Belgian born French inventor and musician Adolf Sacks. Right,
Speaker 1: and and it's not even necessarily one instrument. We keep
Speaker 1: talking about the saxophone, and we'll keep talking about the saxophone.
Speaker 1: But on June eighty six, Uh, Adolph Sacks applied for
Speaker 1: patents on fourteen different types of saxophone. And that's just
Speaker 1: the day of the patent, as we'll discuss. He you know,
Speaker 1: he developed and invented it earlier than that. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: despite how many he applied for patents for this, at
Speaker 1: this time, there are really only a few varieties of
Speaker 1: saxophone that are in common use today. If you just
Speaker 1: think of a saxophone, what you're probably thinking of is
Speaker 1: like an alto saxophone or maybe a tenor saxophone. But
Speaker 1: then they are also soprano saxophones, is baritone saxophone, and
Speaker 1: then there are a lot of later riff riffs on
Speaker 1: the saxophone concept. There are other experimental saxophones, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into some of these as we continue the episode.
Speaker 1: All right, well, maybe first of all we should look
Speaker 1: at what came before the saxophone. Yeah, so obviously there
Speaker 1: was there were, there were there was a lot of
Speaker 1: history before the saxophone. And before the saxophone, we we
Speaker 1: had woodwind instruments and we had brass instruments. The saxophone
Speaker 1: is in singing that it's kind of a hybrid that
Speaker 1: bridges these two families. Now, not to get too bogged
Speaker 1: down in ancient history here, though, I'd love to come
Speaker 1: back and discuss more musical instruments in the future, but horns,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had a shell and bone instruments of
Speaker 1: this type for a very long time. Some of our
Speaker 1: earliest models of musical instrument technology involved blowing a horn
Speaker 1: of some kind, usually adapted from something you know that
Speaker 1: occurs naturally. And uh and in them we see, you know,
Speaker 1: the basic technologies that would evolve into woodwind and brass
Speaker 1: as well. So it's it's all an evolution of materials,
Speaker 1: of design and engineering. As for brass itself as a
Speaker 1: as a as the material for this instrument. I've read
Speaker 1: that the trumpet is the oldest brass instrument, dating back
Speaker 1: to roughly c oh. I think that's where the trumpet
Speaker 1: that I used in in my school days came from. Yes, yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: it was quite elderly and it uh you know, I
Speaker 1: I often wondered, Okay, so I'm like breathing through this thing.
Speaker 1: There's an inevitable amount of when you're blowing through and
Speaker 1: taking a breath, you're gonna suck sort of some air
Speaker 1: through the trumpet as well. And they just had to
Speaker 1: be amazing undiscovered cultures of mold and some stuff in there.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you'd open the spit valves and oh, I don't
Speaker 1: want to gross everybody out too bad. But even if
Speaker 1: you're touching on it, I can kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: the way that you interact with with with scent memories,
Speaker 1: I can sort of recall that that funky brass odor. Yes,
Speaker 1: this this combination of like the smell of the metal.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's really the metal or if
Speaker 1: it's just imagined, but also of the oil you would
Speaker 1: use to oil the keys on the valves, so some
Speaker 1: kind of gross oil and when you got it in
Speaker 1: your mouth that was not pleasant. And also just the
Speaker 1: smell of life that dwells in moist shadow, the taint
Speaker 1: of the unwashed corn. So to be clear here, the
Speaker 1: saxophone is a woodwind and f mint that is just
Speaker 1: made of brass. It takes the easy to play, single
Speaker 1: read mouthpiece that you would find in a clarinet, for example,
Speaker 1: and it melds it with the easy fingering of large
Speaker 1: woodwinds and an event of course, it is made of brass.
Speaker 1: That's material. It depends on oscillating read for its sound,
Speaker 1: not buzzing lips, which you would find in a in
Speaker 1: a brass mouthpiece such as with the trumpet or than chorn.
Speaker 1: With those you kind of have to go, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a buzzing I hope you enjoyed that, folks. So, yes,
Speaker 1: this is a this is a pure woodwind. In this regard, however,
Speaker 1: it's worth noting that the very first saxophone was was
Speaker 1: all Would but he was only later than he made
Speaker 1: the switch to brass um. And we'll come back to
Speaker 1: kind some of the curious trivia about this as we proceed. Well,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at all Adolf Sacks himself. So
Speaker 1: I've been reading a book called The Cambridge Companion to
Speaker 1: the Saxophone, edited by Richard Ingham from Cambridge University Press
Speaker 1: n and it has some excellent chapters, especially about the
Speaker 1: the inventor of the saxophone himself, chapter by an author
Speaker 1: named Thomas Lily, but also the book starts with a
Speaker 1: quote from a poem from the Scottish poet Douglas Dunn
Speaker 1: called an Address to Adolph Sas in Heaven and it's
Speaker 1: too good not to read this here here he goes
Speaker 1: so from saxophone quartets by Strauss on days off from
Speaker 1: the opera House, or works by mil Hoode and Ravel
Speaker 1: or Villa Lobos in Brazil to Lester leaping and possessed
Speaker 1: by his brass belled iconoclast. The sound we hear is yours,
Speaker 1: Adolph Posterity. It's howling wolf times, salivating on a read
Speaker 1: and fingering at breakneck speed. I like that. It almost
Speaker 1: has kind of a beat quality to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So who is this guy who's being addressed in heaven here?
Speaker 1: Obviously you can tell from the poem that he's dead,
Speaker 1: and you can probably guess that since he invented the saxophone,
Speaker 1: he pretty much have to be dead, unless I don't know,
Speaker 1: he's a multi centenarian, right, he know he lives on
Speaker 1: in the instrument. But yes, he died in eight He
Speaker 1: was born in eighteen fourteen. He was the first of
Speaker 1: eleven children born in to musical instrument maker in denn
Speaker 1: in what is now Belgium. His parents were not only
Speaker 1: instrument makers, but they were also innovators of in their
Speaker 1: own right, altering designs and uh and of course just
Speaker 1: playing music. So he was born into a family that
Speaker 1: was not only musically literate, but but very versed in
Speaker 1: the technology of musical instruments. Yeah, Adolf's father, Charles Sacks,
Speaker 1: was at one point made the official instrument maker to
Speaker 1: the Court of the Netherlands. And so Charles created an
Speaker 1: alternative design of the horn, the core Omni Tonique, which
Speaker 1: I have an image of here I went and fetched
Speaker 1: from an image of the met Museum, ain't she Abut
Speaker 1: this is good? Now, Robert, you played the French horn,
Speaker 1: but this is not what you played. No, this is
Speaker 1: this his French horn esque in its overall design. But
Speaker 1: there there, there's there are different additional whorls in there.
Speaker 1: It looks like the entrails of a brass angel. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's got a valve that you can sort
Speaker 1: of pump in and out, maybe sort of like a
Speaker 1: trombone handle. I think, yeah, this was no rough horn.
Speaker 1: You can look at this and tell like this, this
Speaker 1: is something that was created by a true craftsman. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful metal guts and uh and so Sacks. Uh. Adolf
Speaker 1: Sacks grew up amid these these these brass guts. According
Speaker 1: to a text I was reading Leon Kaczynski's Adolf Sacks
Speaker 1: and his Saxophone. Uh. Sacks could drill a clarinets holes
Speaker 1: and bend a horn by the age of six. So
Speaker 1: he simply just grew up in the world of instrument
Speaker 1: crafting and music. And he learned to play a clarinet
Speaker 1: and flute and was quite skilled at this as well,
Speaker 1: like like no mere amateur as a musician at all. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was said that he could have been a renowned
Speaker 1: clarinetist if he wanted, like if he pursued that path instead.
Speaker 1: But when he when he would play his instruments, he
Speaker 1: would keep noticing chances for improvements to the design of
Speaker 1: the instrument itself and then returned to the workshop. And
Speaker 1: so he began to become known for his skill at
Speaker 1: instrument making. With his father Charles, according to the chapter
Speaker 1: by Thomas Lillay, Uh, with his father Charles primarily churning
Speaker 1: out the known instruments for the family to sell, and
Speaker 1: Adolf focusing more and more on experimenting with new forms
Speaker 1: and designs. Yeah, he entered his own handcrafted flutes and
Speaker 1: clarinets and contests by the age of fifteen, and he
Speaker 1: created his own take on the bat at the base
Speaker 1: of clarinet at age twenty. Yeah. Lila's chapter tells the
Speaker 1: story of Sax's entry at the Brussels Exhibition of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one. Uh. And so this was this instrument show
Speaker 1: and contest that Sachs entered with a handful of clarinets.
Speaker 1: And according to Sax's friend George Kassner, an early model
Speaker 1: of the saxophone was there. So, according to Kassner's version
Speaker 1: of the story, this would have been the public a
Speaker 1: view of the saxophone, except for the unfortunate twist of
Speaker 1: fate that the new instrument quote was sent flying with
Speaker 1: a kick by an unknown person at a time when
Speaker 1: the inventor, Atolf Sacks, was away, so already making enemies
Speaker 1: even one. Somebody just punts your saxophone. Uh. And according
Speaker 1: to Lila, the judges at this contest recommended Sacks for
Speaker 1: the gold medal, but the central jury rejected their recommendation
Speaker 1: because they said Sacks was too young to win the
Speaker 1: top prize. And Sacks reportedly commented on this quote if
Speaker 1: I am too young for the gold medal, I am
Speaker 1: too old for the silver. Oh man, this is already
Speaker 1: just a great snapshot of of Sacks. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: in reading his from his biographies, he becomes pretty clear
Speaker 1: like that he's one of these these individuals who creates
Speaker 1: something that's going to live on after he's gone, but
Speaker 1: he himself is is not really going to have a
Speaker 1: real bite of that success. Yeah, he clearly was a
Speaker 1: very talented, very smart person, but also just he had
Speaker 1: a lot of troubles. Yeah, and some of these were
Speaker 1: outside of his control, but then a number of them
Speaker 1: also seemed to be kind of self inflicted. And and
Speaker 1: this is he's very much a study and like what
Speaker 1: kind of like what kind of determination is sometimes involved
Speaker 1: in an inventor's mindset? You know? Uh? And and how
Speaker 1: might that determination uh run at odds with polite society.
Speaker 1: But what were all the stories about how he like
Speaker 1: almost perished repeatedly as a child. Oh yeah, according to
Speaker 1: Adolf sax and his saxophone, Um, his mother referred to
Speaker 1: him as quote little Sacks of the ghost based on
Speaker 1: the number of times he almost died. So he managed
Speaker 1: to survive a three story fall Uh, an incident where
Speaker 1: he swallowed virtualized water and a pin at age three,
Speaker 1: gunpowder explosion, burns, a fall into a cast iron frying pan.
Speaker 1: How do you fall into one? He's very small at
Speaker 1: the time. Maybe small at the time, yeah, or you know,
Speaker 1: it's unclear, like maybe just part of him. Uh. Also
Speaker 1: poisonings and phyxiations due to varnished items left lying in
Speaker 1: his bedroom at night. What I'm unclear of that is,
Speaker 1: you know, due to ongoing projects that his parents were
Speaker 1: working on or stuff that he was working on, because
Speaker 1: clearly from a very early age he was engaging in
Speaker 1: these sort of in this sort of activity. Well, I
Speaker 1: think before his parents worked on musical instruments, they worked
Speaker 1: on furniture, like cabinets. They were cabinet makers, and so
Speaker 1: it could be varnishing of cabinet parts. There you go.
Speaker 1: And once he was hit in the hit on the
Speaker 1: head by a cobblestone and fell into a river. Dang. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a minor miracle that he even
Speaker 1: lived to adulthood based on these stories, and then his
Speaker 1: life in Paris as an adult seems just consumed by
Speaker 1: rivalries with various enemies. At least one of which culminated
Speaker 1: in a musical duel. Uh. And then there were all
Speaker 1: these various betrayals as well. So Kochynsky wrote that he
Speaker 1: quote had exceptional gifts for the gentle art of making enemies.
Speaker 1: So you're left with this, this vision of a difficult
Speaker 1: of very difficult but determined and talented man um And
Speaker 1: he did find some key patrons and supporters, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes in very high places. Yeah, like he there was
Speaker 1: almost like when he did make friends, he could make
Speaker 1: really influential friends. But even in his successes, such as
Speaker 1: with the saxophone, he still had to fight ceaseless battles
Speaker 1: against those who would imitate and and or outright steal
Speaker 1: his craft. Yeah, so we should get to more on that,
Speaker 1: because after this Brussels exhibition in eighteen forty one, Sachs
Speaker 1: moved to Paris and he continued his work there. This
Speaker 1: was around eighteen forty two, and at the time a
Speaker 1: writer named Hector Barelos wrote an article about Sax's arrival,
Speaker 1: which included the following. This is sited in Lila's chapter quote.
Speaker 1: He is a man of penetrating mind, lucid, tenacious, with
Speaker 1: a perseverance against all trials and great skill. He is
Speaker 1: at the same time a calculator, accoustician and as necessary
Speaker 1: also a smelter, turner and engraver. He can think and act,
Speaker 1: He invents and accomplishes. So obviously Sax made he found it. Uh,
Speaker 1: he found a way of making very positive impressions on
Speaker 1: some people. And once in Paris, Sacks made friends with
Speaker 1: big players in the music world and gave public performances
Speaker 1: with his instruments. But he also made enemies very quickly,
Speaker 1: especially among the other instrument makers of Paris, people who
Speaker 1: saw in Sacks a threat to their business. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: would have thought that this was such a vicious world?
Speaker 1: You know that the world of of of of instrument
Speaker 1: makers in Paris. Oh, it's about to get vicious in
Speaker 1: ways that you will be shocked by. So Lili quotes
Speaker 1: a letter written by Hector bare leo Is in October
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty three. Quote, it is scarcely to be
Speaker 1: believed that this gifted young artist should be finding it
Speaker 1: difficult to maintain his edition and make a career in Paris.
Speaker 1: The persecutions he suffers are worthy of the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: and recall the antics of the enemies of Ben Venuto
Speaker 1: the Florentine sculptor. They lure away his workmen, steal his designs,
Speaker 1: accuse him of insanity, and bring legal proceedings against him.
Speaker 1: Such is the hatred inventors, inspire and rivals who are
Speaker 1: incapable of inventing anything themselves. Man, So, what are some
Speaker 1: examples of how they work to get against him? There?
Speaker 1: There are several in this book. Uh So, some of
Speaker 1: Sax's enemies tried to undercut him by using their influence
Speaker 1: in the music world to make sure Sax's instruments, for example,
Speaker 1: his bass clarinet were not accepted in orchestras right, so
Speaker 1: they would they would have influence over somebody in in
Speaker 1: some big influential orchestra, they say, like the lead clarinetists
Speaker 1: and some Paris orchestra, who would then say, you know,
Speaker 1: if you let instruments invented by Adolph Sax into this orchestra,
Speaker 1: I will walk out. I will not play with you anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was your thing about some of these, and then
Speaker 1: the other text where people were like, yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: playing at Off Sacks instrument. It's hard, it's really it's
Speaker 1: very it's difficult. But I think for us to really
Speaker 1: imagine this kind of world, because I know, for all
Speaker 1: of my life I kind of thought of you know,
Speaker 1: instruments are kind of fixed, you know, they're they're all old,
Speaker 1: well established instruments, Like the newest instrument is going to
Speaker 1: be like the you know what, electric guitar whatnot. But
Speaker 1: but no new invent new instruments are being invented all
Speaker 1: the time. I mean. Now, one thing that does come
Speaker 1: into become an issue here is that when a new
Speaker 1: instrument is invented, it doesn't yet have like compositions written
Speaker 1: specifically with it in mind. So if you're playing older
Speaker 1: compositions for an orchestra, they're probably they're not going to
Speaker 1: have a saxophone part written in them, right, And of course,
Speaker 1: not every instrument has a lot of versatility, Like obviously
Speaker 1: the saxophone has quite a bit of versatility. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, something like the theoremin has limited usage
Speaker 1: in music even when it is it's it's played exceptionally well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but even if these orchestras were considering incorporating say a
Speaker 1: base clarinet of sax's design, or a saxophone or a
Speaker 1: sax horn, uh, you know, any of the stuff he
Speaker 1: put together, there would be ways that these rival instrument
Speaker 1: instrument makers could try to shut that down and prevent
Speaker 1: it from happening. Also, when the French government was considering
Speaker 1: adopting some of Sax's instruments for the reform of its
Speaker 1: military ensembles, because apparently at the time, the French government
Speaker 1: considered the old, sort of decrepit state of their their
Speaker 1: military marching bands to be an embarrassment. They needed new
Speaker 1: military music to show off, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: funny thing to consider that they'd be super concerned about,
Speaker 1: but that this would be an expression of your military
Speaker 1: prowess since I guess as a different time. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: then again, it is technology, and that's one thing that
Speaker 1: is that we shouldn't overlook, like like we're talking about
Speaker 1: musical technology. Yeah. Uh So this was going on. There
Speaker 1: was a just so the French government considering adopting some
Speaker 1: of Sax's instruments for their for their military use, and
Speaker 1: then opposition to Sax really intensified the rival instrument makers.
Speaker 1: They formed this association that was basically just organized to
Speaker 1: attack Sacks and shut him down, and they tried to
Speaker 1: sue him to prevent him from getting a patent on
Speaker 1: the saxophone. One of the tactics they tried is downright diabolical.
Speaker 1: So in I'm gonna quote here from Lilla's chapter quote,
Speaker 1: in another tactic, several saxophones were purchased and sent to
Speaker 1: other countries. Sax's identification was removed and the instruments were
Speaker 1: then re engraved to indicate foreign manufacture. Right, So the
Speaker 1: ideas to say, oh, no, saxophone, saxophone, I'm calling him saxophone.
Speaker 1: Sacks did not invent the saxophone. They're already ones being
Speaker 1: made by other people over here beforehand, man, So they're
Speaker 1: just straight up falsifying evidence to support this idea that
Speaker 1: he stole the saxophone design from other countries. Right. But
Speaker 1: of course, fortunately that Lila says that these forgeries were
Speaker 1: poorly executed and quickly revealed as a ruse. But it
Speaker 1: just did not stop here. From the late eighteen forties
Speaker 1: on through the rest of his life, it seems sax
Speaker 1: was just plagued with money troubles and constant lawsuits. His
Speaker 1: biography at this point really just reads mostly as one
Speaker 1: miserable sounding court case or bankruptcy threat after another, and
Speaker 1: he eventually died in eighteen ninety four in poverty. I believe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so. But I think we should turn back
Speaker 1: to the eighteen forties to look at the invention of
Speaker 1: the saxophone in particular. But maybe first we'll take a break.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're discussing the saxophone. So
Speaker 1: Sachs was first granted a patent for the saxophone on
Speaker 1: June twenty second, eighteen forty six, and getting this patent,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned earlier, turned out to be difficult due
Speaker 1: to the intentional sabotage of an association of rival musical
Speaker 1: instrument makers, which we discussed a bit earlier, a musical
Speaker 1: legion of doom. Yeah. So, according to this chapter by
Speaker 1: Thomas Lillay, another one of the challenges that Sax's rivals
Speaker 1: put in his way was quote the contention that because
Speaker 1: the saxophone had been performed before a large public audience
Speaker 1: during the contest on the Champ du Mars, it was
Speaker 1: invalid for patent. So Sax's response to this challenge was
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. He came back with a challenge. In return,
Speaker 1: he withdrew his patent request and dared his the plaintiffs
Speaker 1: to build a saxophone of their own without the use
Speaker 1: of his design specs, and they were unable to do it.
Speaker 1: So a little less than a year later sax refiled
Speaker 1: and got his patent application granted. So now he's got
Speaker 1: the thing patented. But as we've talked about, obviously Sacks
Speaker 1: didn't invent it in eighteen forty six. He'd been working
Speaker 1: on this for a while. Uh. We remember the story
Speaker 1: from eighteen forty one with the exhibition in Brussels were
Speaker 1: at least according to Kassner, Uh, he had a saxophone
Speaker 1: then before somebody came along and punted it. But maybe
Speaker 1: a way of coming at this issue is to think
Speaker 1: about what makes the saxophone special, Like, what is it
Speaker 1: about this instrument that needed to be invented. So the
Speaker 1: word saxophone means literally either sound of Sacks or voice
Speaker 1: of Sacks. I don't know which one is better. I
Speaker 1: guess voice of Sacks is better. That the Greek phone
Speaker 1: could mean sound or voice off often voice, and I
Speaker 1: like that. It's kind of creepy to think about the
Speaker 1: voice of the inventor coming and speaking through the brass tube.
Speaker 1: More than the century after he dies. It would have
Speaker 1: been a great album title for him, you know, the
Speaker 1: Voice of Sacks, Sound of Sacks, Sacks from the Heart
Speaker 1: of Space. Now, the saxophone has nineteen keys, and it
Speaker 1: slightly resembles the off acclyde, which is a brass instrument.
Speaker 1: It was invented earlier that century in France. Yes, and
Speaker 1: literally lists a number of instruments that have been offered
Speaker 1: does design ancestors to the saxophone. So a few of
Speaker 1: these include a quote Argentine instrument quote made of a
Speaker 1: cow's horn whose tip is shaped to resemble a single
Speaker 1: read mouthpiece with a thin read of bone bound by
Speaker 1: a silk thread. Another one might be the alto fagato,
Speaker 1: which is a sort of high register bassoon. I think
Speaker 1: that name just means high bassoon. And then the Hungarian
Speaker 1: taro gatta, which is a canonical bore would wind you know.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna mention this later in the episode as well.
Speaker 1: But anyone who's intrigued by the history of musical instruments,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 1: It's amazing museum, well worth the price of admission. They
Speaker 1: have musical instruments from all over the world. Uh, just
Speaker 1: stroll from continent to continent and just wow yourself with
Speaker 1: how many different designs there are that have a lot
Speaker 1: in common. Like you know, they're they're string instruments from
Speaker 1: all over the world, and in in a very simple way,
Speaker 1: they are all doing the same thing. But yet the
Speaker 1: materials involved, the design involved, the artistry involved, this the
Speaker 1: sort of music that has then created with the instrument
Speaker 1: very so much. Um and certainly you see plenty of
Speaker 1: different instruments of that museum that are made from parts
Speaker 1: of an animal was going there? What means you want
Speaker 1: to do this episode on the saxophone? I think it did.
Speaker 1: It did? It did remind me of of the saxophone
Speaker 1: as being an example of like, here's a musical instrument
Speaker 1: that first of all has a very clear cut inventor,
Speaker 1: but also with his name on it, with his name
Speaker 1: on it. Uh. And yet at the same time it
Speaker 1: does tie into this this larger history of musical instrument technology. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: given that it was part of this larger history, I
Speaker 1: guess we need to ask the question again what makes
Speaker 1: the saxophone special? Like what was it alf Sacks trying
Speaker 1: to do when he made it? Uh? Some sources claim
Speaker 1: that he sort of discovered the design by accident. Sax's
Speaker 1: son Adolf Edward, disputes this. A likely reason for its
Speaker 1: creation was that Sachs wanted to create a version of
Speaker 1: the clarinet that would overblow in octaves rather than in twelve.
Speaker 1: So now I didn't know what this meant when I
Speaker 1: first read it, so I had to go read about
Speaker 1: this and figure out what this is. As best as
Speaker 1: I understand. Overblowing is when you change the note being
Speaker 1: played on a wind instrument without changing the fingering, but
Speaker 1: simply by altering the air flow. So maybe like blowing
Speaker 1: harder or changing the position of the mouth or whatever,
Speaker 1: So you can hold a fingering, change what you're doing
Speaker 1: with your mouth and your lungs, and cause the sound
Speaker 1: produced by the instrument to jump up to a higher pitch.
Speaker 1: And on the saxophone, what makes the saxophone special is
Speaker 1: that this interval where the note jumps up to is
Speaker 1: a perfect octave, essentially the same note one octave up,
Speaker 1: which is a useful thing. This isn't the case on
Speaker 1: other instruments, like on a clarinet, it when you overblow,
Speaker 1: it tends to jump up by like a twelve or
Speaker 1: something not a perfect octave, and the fact that the
Speaker 1: saxophone can overblow into a perfect octave is musically useful.
Speaker 1: It's useful to the player. It can be pleasing. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of speculation that this was the purpose
Speaker 1: of why why sax created this in the first place.
Speaker 1: It was to have an instrument that could do this,
Speaker 1: But we don't know for sure exactly why the saxophone
Speaker 1: was created. Yeah, ad off Sex never claimed to have
Speaker 1: been visited by a muscular angel playing this instrument, right right.
Speaker 1: Uh you know. Also, I just had the perfect idea,
Speaker 1: and now what I know has to be the case
Speaker 1: is that that guy in the Lost Boys. You know,
Speaker 1: muscle guys are often oiled up, this guy was oiled
Speaker 1: up with with like the trumpet valve key oil. Now
Speaker 1: I've also read that the saxophone bridges the gap between
Speaker 1: the brass section and the woodwinds. Uh you know, and
Speaker 1: I guess that that explanation kind of know. It also
Speaker 1: plays with this idea that it is a fusion of
Speaker 1: the two design elements. But the idea is that it
Speaker 1: also it creates a tonal balance between the two. It's
Speaker 1: a versatile instrument with a quote middle voice. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the saxophone is also said to have the sound closest
Speaker 1: to the human voice, making it an obvious choice for
Speaker 1: you know, you're pleasing musical solos. Yeah. Thomas Lily's chapter
Speaker 1: in in the Cambridge Companion, he writes about how the
Speaker 1: saxophone is sometimes thought of as a singing instrument. It's
Speaker 1: got the like the range and versatility of a human
Speaker 1: voice quote, capable of producing guttural sounds and fine spun
Speaker 1: spun eloquence, of rabble rousing and of inspiring and he
Speaker 1: so he says, like the singing quality of the saxophone
Speaker 1: made it really well suited, especially to become part of
Speaker 1: not like orchestral music, but of jazz and popular music,
Speaker 1: which tended to evolve from originally acapella forms that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, jazz and popular music grew out of stuff
Speaker 1: like blues and work songs and folk songs that were
Speaker 1: sung before they were anything else. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it's almost like a an instrument of translation from purely
Speaker 1: vocal music into uh, instrumental music. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a good way of thinking about it. Yeah, this again,
Speaker 1: this player, this, this definitely aligns up with this feeling
Speaker 1: that the saxophone is very organic and and and also
Speaker 1: probably plays up to the sensual aspects of the saxophone.
Speaker 1: There are again personified in this this vision of the
Speaker 1: muscular saxophone player engaging in his solo. I should also,
Speaker 1: as long as we're talking about materials and all, I
Speaker 1: should point out that the flute is the only other
Speaker 1: you know, um of famous metal woodwind instrument. However, the
Speaker 1: flute was originally crafted from wood and is still sometimes
Speaker 1: crafted from wood today. I think they're they're even bone flutes, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: flute technology. Yeah, it goes back a long way now.
Speaker 1: According to the author Don Ashton, one of the things
Speaker 1: that makes the saxophone unique and appealing is that it's
Speaker 1: sort of a friendly instrument to pick up, like that
Speaker 1: it has acoustical properties that make it easy to learn
Speaker 1: and and uh, it is an amiable object to sound.
Speaker 1: Ashton writes, quote relative to other woodwind instruments, the saxophone
Speaker 1: has a large bore, and this is of great significance
Speaker 1: to many aspects of its sound capabilities and player response.
Speaker 1: The use of a conical tube renders the sound wave
Speaker 1: richly harmonic, yet the fingering system rivals that of the flute.
Speaker 1: In simplicity. In common with other large bore instruments, the
Speaker 1: fundamentals are easily formed. Yet the reduction and bore towards
Speaker 1: the mouthpiece facilitates both an evenness of timber throughout the
Speaker 1: instrument and the extension of the two and a half
Speaker 1: octave normal range. Now, of course, experienced players now often
Speaker 1: take the instrument beyond that normal range, but that was
Speaker 1: sort of like the range at which it was originally
Speaker 1: said that the instrument was meant to be played. So
Speaker 1: it kind of hits this perfect balance point, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's an instrument that's easy to pick up, but
Speaker 1: yet it rewards the h the musician who invests a
Speaker 1: great deal of time and energy into it. Exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And because it's characterized as as seeming to to like
Speaker 1: grow so organically from what the musician is able to do,
Speaker 1: you can take it in a lot of directions, the
Speaker 1: way you can take your voice in a lot of directions.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, we're gonna take one
Speaker 1: more break and we come back. We're going to discuss
Speaker 1: the legacy of the saxophone. Alright, we're back now. The
Speaker 1: saxophones impact on music and culture was, of course enormous.
Speaker 1: Lily notes that it's spread really quickly to other countries
Speaker 1: soon after its debut in Paris in the eighteen forties.
Speaker 1: Within the next few decades, it was appearing all around
Speaker 1: the world. There were several early saxophonists names like Louis
Speaker 1: Adolph Mayor, on Riwui and Suaya, who made the instrument
Speaker 1: popular abroad with their performing tours, and early on a
Speaker 1: lot of listeners. This is kind of funny now, given
Speaker 1: I don't know all the like the Saxy Santa and
Speaker 1: the Muscle Guy and all, but early listeners reported being
Speaker 1: awed by the beauty of the sound produced by the saxophone.
Speaker 1: Like after an early demonstration by Sacks in eighteen forty
Speaker 1: two in Paris, an author named Scootier wrote in La
Speaker 1: France Musicale that the instrument had this amazing sound quote
Speaker 1: remarkable intensity and quality of sound. You cannot imagine the
Speaker 1: beauty of sound and the quality of the notes. It
Speaker 1: makes me wonder if to a large extent, we're just
Speaker 1: desensitized to the saxophone today and I'm just so used
Speaker 1: to hearing it in commercials and recordings in many cities
Speaker 1: you walk on the street and you hear the saxophone.
Speaker 1: If you attend to parade, you see people marching here,
Speaker 1: people marching with the saxophone. Yeah, I mean, just think
Speaker 1: about the quality of uh, you know, a sort of
Speaker 1: like mid level middle range tone produced by the saxophone.
Speaker 1: It is remarkably like it feels very like thick and
Speaker 1: deep and rich, full full of little harmonics and uh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I can hear what they're saying. I've just
Speaker 1: heard it so many times. Now, what what if I
Speaker 1: could hear a saxophone for the first time? Another one,
Speaker 1: So that last quote was cited in Lila. Here's another
Speaker 1: one sided in lay again, this one from that guy
Speaker 1: George Kastner, who wrote in eighteen forty four about the
Speaker 1: saxophone quote the nobility and beauty if it's timber. I
Speaker 1: cannot say enough times the saxophone is called to the
Speaker 1: highest destiny by the beauty of its timber. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: guys are losing their minds about a saxophone. Like it's
Speaker 1: clearly scratching an itch that that other instruments were not
Speaker 1: really capable of dealing with. You know, it's it's delivering
Speaker 1: a new experience. Yeah, and of course not everyone would
Speaker 1: always feel this way. On top of so, you had
Speaker 1: the rivals of Sacks who opposed the saxophone for pure
Speaker 1: business reasons, you know, they just wanted to take him down.
Speaker 1: But there have been people who hated it for other reasons.
Speaker 1: Of course, one really sad fact in its history is
Speaker 1: that probably because would reach its most powerful and brilliant
Speaker 1: use later on in like African American jazz music, racists
Speaker 1: have often targeted the saxophone. Like no surprise here, but
Speaker 1: the Nazis hated the saxophone. Um. There's an article in
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic by J. J. Gould about this, citing
Speaker 1: the writings of the Czech dissident literary figure Josef Skvoreki,
Speaker 1: and the Nazis often opposed jazz music. He talks about
Speaker 1: how they considered the saxophone to be linked to uh
Speaker 1: TO like African music, and they banned it. They highly
Speaker 1: regulated it in Germany and some occupied territories uh And
Speaker 1: in one of his books, Skvoreki relays a set of
Speaker 1: regulations issued by a Nazi officer name go Lighter in
Speaker 1: occupied Czechoslovakia, and some of these rules are just bizarrely specific,
Speaker 1: like quote, pieces in fox trot rhythm so called swing
Speaker 1: are not to exceed twenty percent of the repertoires of
Speaker 1: light orchestras and dance bands. Like so tightly regulating the
Speaker 1: specific musical qualities of what kind of music can be
Speaker 1: played and when literal music nazis yes, yes, and like
Speaker 1: banning vocal improvisation, you know, like scat singing. But then
Speaker 1: also one of the things that that is in this
Speaker 1: list of prohibitions is quote, all light orchestras and dance
Speaker 1: bands are advised to restrict the use of saxophones of
Speaker 1: all keys, and to substitute for them the violincello, the viola,
Speaker 1: or possibly a suitable folk instrument. Uh. And so a
Speaker 1: lot of these rules explicitly cite racial resentment as their motivation,
Speaker 1: saying that music should not sound Jewish or African. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's insanity. And and Scoreki wrote that jazz was opposed
Speaker 1: by the authorities of the Soviet Union as well. Uh.
Speaker 1: He wrote, jazz was a sharp thorn in the sides
Speaker 1: of the power hungry men from Hitler de Bresnev who
Speaker 1: successfully ruled in my native land. I have to say
Speaker 1: I think I'm am even more inclined to like jazz
Speaker 1: now that I know that it was, you know, getting
Speaker 1: an the skin of of of prominent Nazis and giving
Speaker 1: them the willies right well, I mean you can you
Speaker 1: can tell apart from their racial hatred, there's also there's
Speaker 1: a spirit of creativity and freedom in it that is
Speaker 1: anathema to the totalitarian, authoritarian spirit you know, that hates
Speaker 1: that kind of creativity. And of course I think many
Speaker 1: people would truly agree that like jazz is one of
Speaker 1: the truest and most powerful realizations of what the saxophone
Speaker 1: was capable of with you know, artists like Charlie Parker
Speaker 1: and John Coltrane. Yeah, artists that really like took that
Speaker 1: organic nature that we've been talking about and just laying like, like,
Speaker 1: let that balloon out let that be the defining aspect
Speaker 1: of the performance. Now, despite the fact that I think
Speaker 1: most people today would really associate the saxophone with jazz
Speaker 1: more than anything else, uh, it actually wasn't a commonly
Speaker 1: used instrument in the very earliest days of jazz and
Speaker 1: only became a regular addition to jazz ensembles and compositions roughly,
Speaker 1: I think in the time after World War One. Like
Speaker 1: its earliest widespread use in the nineteenth and early twentieth
Speaker 1: centuries was in bands you don't think like John Phillips
Speaker 1: sousa type of music like marches and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And in the nineteen twenties, the popularity of its skyrocket
Speaker 1: it it surged in America with the saxophone craze. Now
Speaker 1: I take like to take a few minutes here to
Speaker 1: talk about self playing saxophones, Like how you begin this
Speaker 1: like a like now word from our sponsor? Well, because
Speaker 1: I have to. I feel like I have to sort
Speaker 1: of set it apart from what we've been talking about
Speaker 1: because the idea we've talked about how organic it is
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's this expression of the human spirit.
Speaker 1: So it seems kind of also make it a soulless
Speaker 1: mechanical thing. Yeah, it's see it seems like an exercise
Speaker 1: in tira need to do that, doesn't it? But m
Speaker 1: but there there were a self playing saxophones, and and
Speaker 1: i'd like, I'd like to come back and discuss self
Speaker 1: playing musical instrument technology in the future because because there
Speaker 1: is quite a lot to cover. Again, the Fabulous Musical
Speaker 1: Instrument Museum and NEX Arizona. They have an entire room
Speaker 1: dedicated to everything from player pianos to musical boxes, uh,
Speaker 1: to automated umpah bands and and of course the self
Speaker 1: playing sacks. So the Musical Instrument Museum they identify the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth and early twentie centuries as the golden age
Speaker 1: of mechanical music. There were a lot of efforts at
Speaker 1: this point to just to take the automation technology and
Speaker 1: apply it to just about anything. And we and this
Speaker 1: is where we see the automatic saxophone. Now, I don't
Speaker 1: think this qualifies as a true Sacks, but you had this,
Speaker 1: uh essentially a toy, a toy instrument known as the
Speaker 1: play a Sacks role operated musical instrument. And it was
Speaker 1: a nineteen thirties invention patented by Henry oh Dratten NG.
Speaker 1: And it was it was mainly intended for amusement. It
Speaker 1: was something of a of a toy. It looks like
Speaker 1: a saxophone wearing a jet pack. Yeah, like a simplified saxophone.
Speaker 1: It looks like a toy sack xophone. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: And this is some information. This is from the patent
Speaker 1: which is via basic Sacks dot info and Google patents quote.
Speaker 1: The sacks measures twelve inches with a two and three
Speaker 1: fourth inch diameter horn. The music rolls and these, of course,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about rolls of paper that contain the information. Uh.
Speaker 1: These music roles are perforated and measure about four inches wide.
Speaker 1: The rolls wrap around the front of the sacks to
Speaker 1: play sixteen notes through the sixteen slotted openings. Put the
Speaker 1: music roll on, turn the crank, and breathe. The sacks
Speaker 1: play sixteen note perforated music rolls with accompanying chords. Now, wait,
Speaker 1: were you able to find what this sounds like? I
Speaker 1: did not run across the recording of it, but I
Speaker 1: think we can all kind of imagine a mechanical toy
Speaker 1: saxophone sound, probably more in keeping with the sort of
Speaker 1: toy saxophones that a child might possess today. You know,
Speaker 1: if only this like so, imagine the old wests Lune
Speaker 1: where you walk in and the player piano is going
Speaker 1: or wait, is that actually a thing? Usually actually there's
Speaker 1: a human at the piano in the saloon, isn't there, Well,
Speaker 1: unless there's a player piano and okay, well I'm just
Speaker 1: saying maybe that should have been replaced by a player
Speaker 1: like an automatic saxophone. We'll have to come back to
Speaker 1: the player piano. I think there's a whole uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can do a whole episode on the pianos as well.
Speaker 1: Imagine automatic saxophone playing in the background in the confrontation
Speaker 1: scene at the end of Unforgiven. Now, of course, today
Speaker 1: we also have digital saxophones, such as one model I
Speaker 1: was looking at the Rowland a ten digital saxophone which
Speaker 1: actually utilizes both accurate fingering and a breath sensor. Um
Speaker 1: this in a so that the idea here's you. You
Speaker 1: get this this instrument and you can play the saxophone
Speaker 1: with headphones on that are you know, that are hooked
Speaker 1: up to the instrument itself. Oh, I see. So it
Speaker 1: looks it looks like a rather interesting piece of technology.
Speaker 1: And this is not a toy. This is a high
Speaker 1: priced item I'm talking about. You can find plenty of
Speaker 1: videos of people demonstrating them online. And of course this
Speaker 1: is in addition to synthetic sacks sounds that one might
Speaker 1: produce via synthesizer. Now we're talking about like high tech
Speaker 1: upgrades to the saxophone. But it goes in the other
Speaker 1: direction to doesn't it? Oh yeah, now remember yeah, remember
Speaker 1: the fact that Sax's original saxophone wasn't brass. But would
Speaker 1: well you find the bamboo variations of the saxophone have
Speaker 1: popped up in parts of the world where the sax's
Speaker 1: influence was felt, but materials or funds prevented everyone from
Speaker 1: from grabbing a horn. And it's not just saxophone. You
Speaker 1: also find uh, um, you know, wooden tubas, wooden trumpets, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And there are several examples of this at the Musical
Speaker 1: Instrument Museum in Phoenix. Now it's easy to think of
Speaker 1: these is just mere um, you know, um crude replicas
Speaker 1: of of the saxophone itself or whatever horn they're they're
Speaker 1: they're modeled on. But there's actually one called the Maui
Speaker 1: Zephoon that has actually picked up quite a following all
Speaker 1: its own. And uh and I actually looked up some
Speaker 1: videos of individuals playing this and it can sound quite
Speaker 1: good in proper hands. It's essentially just a small wooden saxophon.
Speaker 1: Doesn't quite look like a saxophone. It kind of looks
Speaker 1: more like a clarinet, but it has kind of a
Speaker 1: saxophone sound. To it, at least when the individuals uh
Speaker 1: testing it out, we're playing it. You know. One of
Speaker 1: the things we've talked about sometime a few times on
Speaker 1: stuff to plow your mind is um the idea of
Speaker 1: sort of like expanding our sell our self image of
Speaker 1: the schema of the body to include tools that we
Speaker 1: use a lot and really start to incorporate into the self.
Speaker 1: So like, if you you use a tool enough, you
Speaker 1: find ways to start to think of it almost as
Speaker 1: a part of your own body. You think about it
Speaker 1: the same way you think of your hands or your feet,
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I wonder if the same thing happens
Speaker 1: with people who use musical instruments enough, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, I remember hearing UM like an
Speaker 1: interview with who is at Doc Severerson. Uh, there's a
Speaker 1: Tonight show back in the day, and he was talking
Speaker 1: about like just how you know a professional trumpet here,
Speaker 1: like how often they practice, And it's like there's an
Speaker 1: intimacy with it that they only they are privy to,
Speaker 1: like talking about like if they skip, you know, if
Speaker 1: they skip a practice, they skip a day of playing it.
Speaker 1: You get into the zone where no one else can
Speaker 1: notice that you haven't practiced, but you notice it like
Speaker 1: there's an you know, it's just part of the intimacy
Speaker 1: with the tool um. And then when you get into
Speaker 1: the like the neurological zone too, it's it's interesting to
Speaker 1: sort of tease apart like where, you know, where, where
Speaker 1: does the instrumentation really take place in the brain. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a fascinating study that came out in
Speaker 1: concerning a music teacher by the name of Dan Fabio
Speaker 1: who had a brain tumor removed from part of the
Speaker 1: brain associated with music. And the physicians involved here they
Speaker 1: actually had him play his saxophone during part of the procedure.
Speaker 1: How can you do that? Well, it was apparently quite
Speaker 1: challenging for two main reasons. So first of all, he
Speaker 1: was on his side during the procedure and then also
Speaker 1: deep breathing, as is typical for many sacks numbers. They
Speaker 1: were concerned that it might cause his exposed brain to
Speaker 1: essentially protrude from his skull. What which is alone? What? Yeah?
Speaker 1: That that alone, I was a reason I just had
Speaker 1: to include this, the idea of someone potentially it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: but potentially like playing their saxophones, so passionately that their
Speaker 1: brain pops out of their skull. That is metal. That
Speaker 1: is so good. Yeah. The people in Cannibal Corps now
Speaker 1: were like, well, I want my brain to pop out
Speaker 1: of my skull. Well, you know, I was thinking along
Speaker 1: these lines, and I was like, why don't we hear
Speaker 1: saxophones in metal? The thing is, now, you do hear saxophone,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of metal acts out. There's
Speaker 1: aetially experimental metal acts that are utilizing the saxophone. There's
Speaker 1: a band for everything. Now, if you can think it up,
Speaker 1: there's a band that does it. Somebody's done it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: They did not want his brain to protrude from his
Speaker 1: skull anymore than it was during the procedure he was awake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he actually worked with his surgeon though prior to
Speaker 1: the UH to the to the procedure, and they selected
Speaker 1: a Korean folk song for him to play that would
Speaker 1: only require shallow breaths so he wouldn't have to like
Speaker 1: really you know, belt it in there uh. And he
Speaker 1: would also, in addition to um using the saxophone, he
Speaker 1: would also hum and repeat notes during the procedure, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the saxophone. Now, once the tumor was removed,
Speaker 1: the surgeons brought over the sacks. He performed flawlessly, and
Speaker 1: he completely recovered and returned to teaching music within a
Speaker 1: few months. And this procedure has apparently helped define the
Speaker 1: relation between the different parts of the brain that are
Speaker 1: responsible from music and language processing. So, yeah, I just
Speaker 1: had to include an anecdote about neuroscience and the saxophone. Now,
Speaker 1: as we close out here, it's probably time in the
Speaker 1: episode that we discussed kenneg does KENEGI? I'm trying to
Speaker 1: picture him. Does he look a little bit like weird al? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a little bit, I think maybe does he
Speaker 1: have like weird al type hair? Uh? He does? Or did? Yes?
Speaker 1: He's notable here, however, because at least for a while,
Speaker 1: he had the world record for the longest note um
Speaker 1: recorded using the saxophone. So let's do this. So how
Speaker 1: long did it go? Like three minutes? Well, in uh
Speaker 1: Kinegi apparently set the Guinness World record when he held
Speaker 1: his note in e flat for forty five minutes and
Speaker 1: forty seven seconds on his saxophone. Wait a second, how
Speaker 1: do you do that? Well, Vias, Something that's known as
Speaker 1: circular breathing. So this is a method employed by players
Speaker 1: of various wood instruments, saxophone included. Does this a continuous
Speaker 1: tone for a long long time. So they simply store
Speaker 1: air in their cheeks and then slowly release it while
Speaker 1: still breathing at the same time. And it's not it's
Speaker 1: not easy, and it apparently hurts the player's lungs and
Speaker 1: lips to do this, but it's the technique that is
Speaker 1: employed when you see these like crazy world records for
Speaker 1: sustained notes with woodwinds. So for a while this held
Speaker 1: the record, and then February two thousand Van Birchfield set
Speaker 1: a new Guinness World record holding one continuous note for
Speaker 1: forty seven minutes six seconds. And then Mark Atkins played
Speaker 1: the DIGREYD Concerto in for over fifty minutes continuously. And finally,
Speaker 1: in May seventeen, a Nigerian saxophonist, Fimi Kutie broke Mark
Speaker 1: Atkins record by playing a single note for fifty one
Speaker 1: minutes and thirty eight seconds. So that's uh so, who's
Speaker 1: going to be the first to break an hour? Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't know. This This is of seventeen based on
Speaker 1: some of the research that Scott, Benjamin and um carried
Speaker 1: out for us here. So I think this is the
Speaker 1: the current Uh, this is the current data. But by
Speaker 1: the time this this episode is published, who knows, there
Speaker 1: could be a new longest note. Oubt there a new
Speaker 1: record breaking saxophone is changing our understanding of just how
Speaker 1: long a note can be sustained. Thinking about this hurts me. Alright,
Speaker 1: So there you have it. We we kind of got
Speaker 1: into the weeds a little bit here at the end.
Speaker 1: But uh, but but the saxophone, it's again an instrument
Speaker 1: I felt like we had to cover because it has,
Speaker 1: you know, a definite inventor. Um, it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's a recent invention, and yet one that has
Speaker 1: just become such a part of the modern world, the
Speaker 1: modern musical world. You know, certainly in the West, that
Speaker 1: it's difficult to imagine it's absence. Yeah, and uh, and
Speaker 1: just because it has such a contentious history, you would
Speaker 1: not have expected such a thing for a musical instrument. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like this would be this would surely be
Speaker 1: the product of polite society. But it was obvious say anything.
Speaker 1: But now, like I said, we'd love to cover more
Speaker 1: musical inventions in the future, more bits of musical technology,
Speaker 1: and we'd love to hear from everyone out there. You know,
Speaker 1: what would you like it's to cover? Do you want
Speaker 1: you want us to go uh in the direction of
Speaker 1: more ancient musical instruments. Do you want us to go
Speaker 1: with with other more modern creations like the theorem and
Speaker 1: that we mentioned. We're really open for anything. I think
Speaker 1: that's the beauty of the show. Oh, that might be
Speaker 1: a fun one. One of the few inventions I can
Speaker 1: really justify a link to a discussion of ed Wood.
Speaker 1: That's true. Um, and hey, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Invention, head on over to invention
Speaker 1: pod dot com. That's the homepage for this show. But
Speaker 1: you can also find just find the show anywhere you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts if you go using them. What the
Speaker 1: I Heart radio app? You can do it that way.
Speaker 1: You can get it with Apple, podcast, um, Stitcher, Spotify,
Speaker 1: you name it. We're out there, look for Invention. That's
Speaker 1: where we are. Big thanks to Scott Benjamin for research
Speaker 1: assistance on this episode. It into our excellent audio producer,
Speaker 1: Tor Harrison. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us directly with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 1: say hello. You can email us at contact at invention
Speaker 1: pod dot com, m