Musical Notes

A few days ago, I came across a couple of saxophones that I had never seen or heard of before and they looked really, really interesting. I had heard of the Romero System before, but only on clarinets. Here's a little information on these instruments.

Some interesting videos on YouTube and some hot blogs this year. We thought we would take the time to point to some of our favorites.

During the war period from 1942 to 1945, Conn ceased all production of musical instruments for civilian use to manufacture brass components for compasses, altimeters, and other military instrumentation. That's why this particular ship compass, made by Conn and discovered in one of our travels through antique hordes is rather interesting.

Like all clarinets that differ from the bog-standard 17/6 Klose-Boehm clarinet, it landed in the clarinet world with a resounding “plop”. Manufactured by Selmer in their professional, intermediate (Signet) and student (Bundy) lines, Mazzeo instruments enjoyed a very brief surge of interest in the 1960s, only to largely disappear from sight.

The bass saxophone is one of the largest members of the saxophone family—larger than the more commonly encountered baritone saxophone.

In this post we hope to give musicians some ideas/exercises to improve on internal pulse. Keeping a steady pulse is a fundamental skill for any musician. Even in different charts that encourage a flexible rhythm, such as a passage marked rubato, being able to maintain a steady pulse is essential for the music to work.

While some jazz musicians have called the concept of “swing” a subjective and elusive notion, they acknowledge that the concept is well-understood by experienced jazz musicians at a practical, intuitive level.

I have always purchased soprano saxes that give a hobbyist half a chance to play in tune. My favs to date are pictured below: Eppelsheim soprillo, Yanagisawa Elimona sopranino, and the Yanagisawa S992 soprano.

Many reasons are touted for having open holed key works but for perhaps 95% of players they serve no purpose and have significant detractors. The inclination towards open holes is much stronger in some countries than others; America seems to have rather unquestioningly adopted the idea from the French. There are many superb players in the world who do indeed play on closed-hole flutes.