TubeNet

An alto ophicleide?

Tampaworth wrote:An alto ophicleide?

With a full Boehm. Tuning at the neck insertion tennon.

I'm just guessing the tuba & bass sax video was Marcelo, a Brazilian tuba player featured in a number of online videos playing in a rather casual band with accordion, couple other brass and reeds, etc. He also plays saxophone. Valve trombone may be heard among others, off camera. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=358418510989226

The pitch doesn't sound like it's actually coming from the bari-sax itself. The pitch sounds more like a T-sax. I think he's deriving the pitches with his chops, not the keys. There can't be any valid partials created in 10" of pipe in that register and huge bore.

All notes in he first octave are fundamentals.

On the same tip, but sort of opposite is the Tubax... a subcontrbass saxophone built by Benedikt Eppelsheim of Munich. While it sort of sounds like a sax and uses a sax mouthpiece, it's actually built on the dimensions and wrap more like a tuba. He basically borrowed tuba physics and applied it to the saxophone... and it plays far better than a normal sax-shaped contrabass sax. It's actually a remarkably lyrical instrument that plays *incredibly* well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niWfx7KMVIo" target="_blank

It would be interesting to hear more about the parallels between the tuba and the Tubax. I don't see it, just looking at pictures. It's slender compared to a conventional saxophone, that's the single obvious difference. (Other than way it's folded up, which I wouldn't expect to make any more difference than it does in tubas.)

This J'Elle Stainer contrabass is a fatter bore - I think it's Eb, but haven't really checked that. Personally I think he gets a better tone out of it, in the sense that it clearly sounds like the notes he's playing. The Tubax suffers from a common acoustic weakness in very low reeds, to my ears, the lowest notes sound like they want to be harmonics - I think because the 1st and 2nd partials aren't very well formed, and the 3rd kind of takes over. Sounds not all that different from Eb contrabass sarrusophone - it's an improvement, for sure, but it seems like kind of a compromise between sarrusophone and saxophone, in a place where even the saxophone is kind of underwhelming as a bass instrument.

I would love to see someone build a modern ophicleide (As opposed to a modern reproduction of an antique instrument like the Wessex) using saxophone technology. If something that half-assed can sound that nice, I can only imagine how an instrument actually designed for that purpose would sound.

BTW, the spell-check on my PC wanted to replace 'ophicleide' with the word 'pedophile'.

The saxophone was patented 25 years after the ophicleide, and really hasn't changed drastically over time. Here's an 1877 bass sax.


My take is that saxophone technology was available at a time when the ophicleide was still in use. Sax's father made ophicleides, and Sax may have prototyped the concept by putting a reed mouthpiece on one - the reverse of the present experiment. As soon as the saxophone came out the door, I'm sure ophicleide players were trying it out. My guess is that saxophone technology is most helpful with the saxophone.

OldsRecording wrote:BTW, the spell-check on my PC wanted to replace 'ophicleide' with the word 'pedophile'.

"AutoCorrupt FLAIL" ...

I guess what I meant by 'Saxophone Technology', is something of the order of taking a simplified version of bari sax keywork and designing an ophicleide from the ground up, something that would at home in a modern musical setting.

Then there is the other side of the coin... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4jpkXDfzo8" target="_blank