Contrabass Digest

2000-07-12

Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 19:25:44 -0700
From: "Timothy J. Tikker"
Subject: [CB] Languages

Grant wrote:

>>There is an old joke, with entirely too much truth to it:
Q:  If someone who speaks two languages is called "bilingual", and
someone who speaks several languages is called "multi-lingual", what
do you call someone who speaks only one language?

A:  An American.<<

I told that joke to a Britisher some years ago, who without missing a beat added
"and if he speaks no language at all, he's called a Londoner!"  He eventually
demonstrated some of the dialect one would encounter in a Central London pub...
pretty scary stuff!

- Timothy Tikker

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From: "A Johnson"
Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2000 23:02:55 CDT
Subject: [CB]
 

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From: "Tom Izzo"
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 00:16:46 -0500
Subject: Re: [CB]

A-- And your message is???????

----- Original Message -----
From: A Johnson
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2000 11:02 PM
Subject: [CB]
 

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Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 10:13:14 -0800
From: Andrew Stiller
Subject: Re: [CB] bsax upper register

At 8:30 PM -0400 7/11/00, lawrence johns wrote:
>The high register of the bari sax is very weak, thin
>and less characteristic. I would suspect the bass sax is even more
>weak

The bit about the bari sax used to be true, and is repeated by many
orchestration books--but it isn't true any longer.  After Gerry
Mulligan brought the instrument out of the shadows, manufacturers did
the necessary work to strengthen the upper notes, and they are now
quite reliable on any decent instrument.  This leads me to wonder
whether the bass sax has not been subjected to the same improvements,
because there's less demand for it.  The Nuclear Whales had a new
bari sax of course, but their bass looked to be at least 40 or 50
years old.  So I guess my question was whether newer examples
incorporate the improvements seen in bari saxes--or not?

That the contra sax has strong top notes proves in any event that
weakness is not inherent to the top notes of low saxophones, but can
be corrected with proper design.

--
Andrew Stiller
Kallisti Music Press

http://www.netcom.com/~kallisti

Ut Sol inter planetas, Ita MUSICA inter Artes liberales in medio radiat.
--Heinrich Schuetz, 1640
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