This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.

Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic.homestead.com/MouthpiecePitch.html>

John

Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?

--- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com, "John" <jtalcott47@...> wrote:
>
> This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
> 
> Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic.homestead.com/MouthpiecePitch.html>
> 
> John
>

I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated
the setup Santy describes.

Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more
air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount
of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate)at
least  a couple of orders of magnitude.

That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read
here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic
coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.

Barry

> From: "John" <jtalcott47@...>
> Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
> To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
> 
> 
>  
> Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?
> 
> --- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
> <mailto:MouthpieceWork%40yahoogroups.com> , "John" <jtalcott47@...> wrote:
>> >
>> > This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
>> > 
>> > Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic.homestead.com/MouthpiecePitch.html>
>> > 
>> > John
>> >
> 
> 
> 
> 

Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the result?!?!?  No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I have worked for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind products that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
Check out Warburton Music!!

--- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@...> wrote:


From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@...>
Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM


  



I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated the setup Santy describes. 

Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate) at least  a couple of orders of magnitude.

That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.

Barry


From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch




Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?

--- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@. ..> wrote:
>
> This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
> 
> Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
> 
> John
>

I think your neck system is a great idea, but what says that it will blow theory out of the water? What do you have that defies the laws of physics?

It's worth mentioning that Benade completely redesigned the clarinet (check out the NX) and Coltman redesigned the scale of the Boehm flute. It's not as though theory and practice are at odds. Why would anyone think that they are?

In a different field, aerodynamics, no aircraft designers AFAIK do anything without taking into account the laws of aerodynamics, since they want their products to fly. Architects design buildings based on science, no matter how fanciful their designs. I don't understand why those who design
 musical instruments and accessories are so allergic to acoustic science, which is every bit as mature as aerodynamics or structural engineering.

No one is saying that you can design a perfect horn or mpc by numbers alone, but the numbers can be a big help if you understand them.

Toby

James Warburton <jameswarburton@...> wrote:                                           Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the result?!?!?  No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I
 have worked for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind
 products that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
 I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
 Check out Warburton Music!!

--- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@...> wrote:

 
From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@...>
Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM

     I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated the setup Santy describes. 

Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate) at least  a couple of orders of magnitude.

That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.

Barry
 
From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch


 
Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?

--- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@. ..> wrote:
>
> This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
> 
> Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
> 
> John
>




 




      
                 
                 
 

I think James that you missed the point entirely of the material I linked to.  That was to demonstrate that a saxophone cannot be played using a diaphragm of a speaker set to a fixed frequency.  This is not theorizing about anything, it is pointing out a fundamental fact of woodwind acoustics. That is to play different notes as the saxophone is fingered requires the cooperation of the vibrating source (reed) with the column of air inside the instrument. A speaker can only play the pitch it is given electronically, whether it is generated by a tone generator or a theramin.

I am very curious about the "initiator" piece of your ultimate sax neck invention.  If I understand correctly it is a substitute for the portion of the saxophone neck that would otherwise be covered by the cork.  That would mean that in order to install this piece onto an existing neck, you would need to cut off the section of the neck just above the cork, and then thread the end to accept the new extension.

My main question is how the 4 different "initiator" bore shapes---cylindrical, straight taper, reverse taper, and compound taper affect the intonation of the octaves and registers of each make of saxophone since the taper of the cone at the end of the neck is so different.

Even though most of this section of the neck is actually inside the mouthpiece, it is still a part of the cone that makes up the saxophone.  Small changes in the inside of the neck can have a pronounced effect upon how the instrument plays.

--- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com, James Warburton <jameswarburton@...> wrote:
>
> Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the result?!?!?  No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I have worked for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind products that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
> I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
> Check out Warburton Music!!
> 
> --- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@...> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@...>
> Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
> To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
> Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated the setup Santy describes. 
> 
> Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate) at least  a couple of orders of magnitude.
> 
> That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.
> 
> Barry
> 
> 
> From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
> Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
> To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
> Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?
> 
> --- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@ ..> wrote:
> >
> > This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
> > 
> > Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
> > 
> > John
> >
>

John,
   
  I really don't know what Santy was on about. I tried to reproduce his results and of course failed miserably, for the reasons you give. If anyone wants to try the easiest way is to simply sing the note with your mouth closed over the neckpipe. 
   
  One could take the ultimate neck idea a step farther and put the collar further down the neck, giving more length in which to alter the bore. I'm guessing (and James would have to confirm this) that changes in that area would only affect the very highest notes. Benade mentions that "necking in"
 is usually done to improve the mode relationships in the top notes. Probably doesn't make too much difference in the first two octaves. It is an interesting way to affect the Frs, and could be used (if used correctly) to correct intonation problems in conjunction with the mpc volume.
   
  Toby

John <jtalcott47@...> wrote:
            

I think James that you missed the point entirely of the material I linked to. That was to demonstrate that a saxophone cannot be played using a diaphragm of a speaker set to a fixed frequency. This is not theorizing about anything, it is pointing out a fundamental fact of woodwind acoustics. That
 is to play different notes as the saxophone is fingered requires the cooperation of the vibrating source (reed) with the column of air inside the instrument. A speaker can only play the pitch it is given electronically, whether it is generated by a tone generator or a theramin.

I am very curious about the "initiator" piece of your ultimate sax neck invention. If I understand correctly it is a substitute for the portion of the saxophone neck that would otherwise be covered by the cork. That would mean that in order to install this piece onto an existing neck, you would
 need to cut off the section of the neck just above the cork, and then thread the end to accept the new extension.

My main question is how the 4 different "initiator" bore shapes---cylindrical, straight taper, reverse taper, and compound taper affect the intonation of the octaves and registers of each make of saxophone since the taper of the cone at the end of the neck is so different.

Even though most of this section of the neck is actually inside the mouthpiece, it is still a part of the cone that makes up the saxophone. Small changes in the inside of the neck can have a pronounced effect upon how the instrument plays.

--- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com, James Warburton <jameswarburton@...> wrote:
>
> Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the result?!?!?$BA~(B No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I have worked for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of
 theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind products that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
> I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
> Check out Warburton Music!!
> 
> --- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@...> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@...>
> Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
> To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
> Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM
> 
> 
> $BA~(B 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated the setup Santy describes. 
> 
> Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate) at least $BA~(Ba couple of orders of magnitude.
> 
> That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.
> 
> Barry
> 
> 
> From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
> Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
> To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
> Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?
> 
> --- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@ ..> wrote:
> >
> > This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
> > 
> > Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
> > 
> > John
> >
>



  
            
 

Hi Toby,
No disrespect intended to physics. My comment was simply a response to a conversation I had with someone who who spends more time talking than playing and, in retrospect I see that it came across a little harsh. 
Regarding the question of intonation and response, the proof is in the pudding. Naturally, we rejected many (MANY!) versions of the iniator, any and all that seemed to compromise either  of these qualities. Prototypes were played by a number of fine saxophone players using a variety of mouthpieces. The bottom line is that the selection on initiators now available has been overwhelmingly praised by EVERYONE who has tried them. 
best regards,
James

--- On Wed, 2/24/10, kymarto123@... <kymarto123@....jp> wrote:


From: kymarto123@... <kymarto123@...>
Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 7:23 AM


  



I think your neck system is a great idea, but what says that it will blow theory out of the water? What do you have that defies the laws of physics?

It's worth mentioning that Benade completely redesigned the clarinet (check out the NX) and Coltman redesigned the scale of the Boehm flute. It's not as though theory and practice are at odds. Why would anyone think that they are?

In a different field, aerodynamics, no aircraft designers AFAIK do anything without taking into account the laws of aerodynamics, since they want their products to fly. Architects design buildings based on science, no matter how fanciful their designs. I don't understand why those who design musical instruments and accessories are so allergic to acoustic science, which is every bit as mature as aerodynamics or structural engineering.

No one is saying that you can design a perfect horn or mpc by numbers alone, but the numbers can be a big help if you understand them.

Toby

James Warburton <jameswarburton@ yahoo.com> wrote:
  






Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the result?!?!?  No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I have worked for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind products that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
Check out Warburton Music!!

--- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@ norwoodlight. com> wrote:


From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@ norwoodlight. com>
Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM


  

I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated the setup Santy describes. 

Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate) at least  a couple of orders of magnitude.

That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.

Barry


From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch




Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?

--- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@. ..> wrote:
>
> This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
> 
> Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
> 
> John
>







 

Hi James,

As I said, I think that a modular neck system is a great idea. On sax there has never been a chance before to change the "constriction"--the opening from the mpc into the sax cone. There are a lot of potentially useful mods that can be done at that point, especially as regards getting the highest notes into line. Now I get into a bit of theory: there are two important parameters for getting a sax to play in tune. One is to match the volume of the missing cone with that of the mpc; but there is another requirement, that the resonance frequency of the mpc match that of the missing cone. This requires some manipulation of the opening just on the other side of the mpc, where the neck starts. 

On oboe we can futz around with the staple, but aside from buying a new neck there was no way to do this on the sax before. Your system suddenly makes that a possibility, so that in addition to changing the playing "feel", you would be able to fine tune the modes with different openings on your initiator, or even take a "blank" and custom mold an interior shape and diameter with putty.

You should be careful that there are no sharp edges in the interior where the initiator and tenon screw in. But it looks really good.

Toby
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: James Warburton 
  To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:34 PM
  Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch


    
        Hi Toby,
        No disrespect intended to physics. My comment was simply a response to a conversation I had with someone who who spends more time talking than playing and, in retrospect I see that it came across a little harsh. 
        Regarding the question of intonation and response, the proof is in the pudding. Naturally, we rejected many (MANY!) versions of the iniator, any and all that seemed to compromise either  of these qualities. Prototypes were played by a number of fine saxophone players using a variety of mouthpieces. The bottom line is that the selection on initiators now available has been overwhelmingly praised by EVERYONE who has tried them. 
        best regards,
        James

        --- On Wed, 2/24/10, kymarto123@... <kymarto123@...> wrote:


          From: kymarto123@... <kymarto123@...>
          Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
          To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
          Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 7:23 AM


            
          I think your neck system is a great idea, but what says that it will blow theory out of the water? What do you have that defies the laws of physics?

          It's worth mentioning that Benade completely redesigned the clarinet (check out the NX) and Coltman redesigned the scale of the Boehm flute. It's not as though theory and practice are at odds. Why would anyone think that they are?

          In a different field, aerodynamics, no aircraft designers AFAIK do anything without taking into account the laws of aerodynamics, since they want their products to fly. Architects design buildings based on science, no matter how fanciful their designs. I don't understand why those who design musical instruments and accessories are so allergic to acoustic science, which is every bit as mature as aerodynamics or structural engineering.

          No one is saying that you can design a perfect horn or mpc by numbers alone, but the numbers can be a big help if you understand them.

          Toby

          James Warburton <jameswarburton@ yahoo.com> wrote: 
              
                  Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the result?!?!?  No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I have worked for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind products that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
                  I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
                  Check out Warburton Music!!

                  --- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@ norwoodlight. com> wrote:


                    From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@ norwoodlight. com>
                    Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
                    To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
                    Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM


                      
                    I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated the setup Santy describes. 

                    Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate) at least  a couple of orders of magnitude.

                    That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.

                    Barry


                      From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
                      Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
                      Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
                      To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
                      Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch





                      Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?

                      --- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@. ..> wrote:
                      >
                      > This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
                      > 
                      > Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
                      > 
                      > John
                      >





                 


       


  

Toby, do you sing opera, in addition to your other talents?

How strong an 880 hz note can you sing?   Even a strong 440 is hard when the
mouth is closed around a sax neck (there is a reason why singers keep their
mouths wide open).

 I just picked up my curved soprano and did some singing into it.

When I sang an Eb (below the A440) into the horn and fingered low Db, not
much change, but when I fingered low C the note dropped a bit flat, and then
I fingered low B it dropped further.

On tenor sax, singing a D or Db below A440 and fingering a middle B seems to
make the note pop out a bit; fingering a middle A forces it down (with an
accompanying strange sensation in my throat, that actually triggers a
cough.)

It felt like my vocal cords were being forced into the lower frequencies.

This effect was reproducible at  other notes.  Certain key fingerings would
favor a note, others would tend to pull it down.

 What's interesting to me is the way the notes felt forced downward with a
sensation I felt in my throat, which I interpret as acoustic coupling
between my vocal cords and the horn.

This suggests that there's a bit more to Santy's story than anyone here is
giving credit. 
I don't think either John or Toby has actually reproduced Santy's experiment
accurately.

Barry




> From: <kymarto123@...>
> Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:26:31 +0900 (JST)
> To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
> 
> 
>  
> John,
>   
>  
>   
> I really don't know what Santy was on about. I tried to reproduce his results
> and of course failed miserably, for the reasons you give. If anyone wants to
> try the easiest way is to simply sing the note with your mouth closed over the
> neckpipe. 
>  
>  
>   
> One could take the ultimate neck idea a step farther and put the collar
> further down the neck, giving more length in which to alter the bore. I'm
> guessing (and James would have to confirm this) that changes in that area
> would only affect the very highest notes. Benade mentions that "necking in" is
> usually done to improve the mode relationships in the top notes. Probably
> doesn't make too much difference in the first two octaves. It is an
> interesting way to affect the Frs, and could be used (if used correctly) to
> correct intonation problems in conjunction with the mpc volume.
>   
>  
>   
> Toby
> 
> John <jtalcott47@...> wrote:
>   
>     
>   
> 
>> 
>> I think James that you missed the point entirely of the material I linked to.
>> That was to demonstrate that a saxophone cannot be played using a diaphragm
>> of a speaker set to a fixed frequency. This is not theorizing about anything,
>> it is pointing out a fundamental fact of woodwind acoustics. That is to play
>> different notes as the saxophone is fingered requires the cooperation of the
>> vibrating source (reed) with the column of air inside the instrument. A
>> speaker can only play the pitch it is given electronically, whether it is
>> generated by a tone generator or a theramin.
>> 
>> I am very curious about the "initiator" piece of your ultimate sax neck
>> invention. If I understand correctly it is a substitute for the portion of
>> the saxophone neck that would otherwise be covered by the cork. That would
>> mean that in order to install this piece onto an existing neck, you would
>> need to cut off the section of the neck just above the cork, and then thread
>> the end to accept the new extension.
>> 
>> My main question is how the 4 different "initiator" bore
>> shapes---cylindrical, straight taper, reverse taper, and compound taper
>> affect the intonation of the octaves and registers of each make of saxophone
>> since the taper of the cone at the end of the neck is so different.
>> 
>> Even though most of this section of the neck is actually inside the
>> mouthpiece, it is still a part of the cone that makes up the saxophone. Small
>> changes in the inside of the neck can have a pronounced effect upon how the
>> instrument plays.
>> 
>> --- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
>> <mailto:MouthpieceWork%40yahoogroups.com> , James Warburton
>> <jameswarburton@...> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the
>>> result?!?!?? No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of
>>> what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I have worked
>>> for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of
>>> theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces
>>> over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many
>>> years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind products
>>> that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
>>> > I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the
>>> end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
>>> > Check out Warburton Music!!
>>> > 
>>> > --- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@...> wrote:
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@...>
>>> > Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
>>> > To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
>>> <mailto:MouthpieceWork%40yahoogroups.com>
>>> > Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > ? 
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated
>>> the setup Santy describes.
>>> > 
>>> > Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot
>>> more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The
>>> amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate)
>>> at least ?a couple of orders of magnitude.
>>> > 
>>> > That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read
>>> here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic
>>> coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.
>>> > 
>>> > Barry
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
>>> > Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
>>> > Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
>>> > To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
>>> > Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > 
>>> > Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?
>>> > 
>>> > --- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo
>>> rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@ ..> wrote:
>>>> > >
>>>> > > This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
>>>> > > 
>>>> > > Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. <http://jbtsaxmusic./>
>>>> homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
>>>> > > 
>>>> > > John
>>>> > >
>>> >
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> 
> 
> 

With all due respect, the article quoted about Santy Runyon, and none of the others who have tried this, have duplicated the setup Santy described.  And it was not something Santy set up, but rather an electronics professor at the university he attended.

The same professor was also a musician, and had in fact invented a quarter tone organ, yes, more keys between the white and black keys, and had written music for that instrument and could perform on it.

Santy described the professor gluing the small speaker to the sawed off shank of an old mouthpiece.  Then between the mouthpiece/speaker and the Theremin, which I think was used just as an amplifer in this case, there was also a "box with knobs" that the professor carefully adjusted until self-resonance was achieved.

This had to be some sort of positive feedback to the amplifier.

Being a speaker builder I have an inkling what was going on.  When testing a woofer and cabinet for resonant frequency a resistor is placed in series with the woofer.  The woofer is driven with a sine wave through the resistor.  Voltage is measured across the woofer's terminals.  At resonance, the woofer's impedance will rise sharply as indicated by an increase in the voltage read across the terminals.

With a ported (aka "bass reflex") cabinet, two resonant points can be found.  One is the resonant frequency of the woofer and cabinet.  The other is the resonant frequency of the port and cabinet.

So, if in that experiment long ago, the speaker/mouthpiece were fed an audio signal, a sinewave, generated by the Theremin, through a resistance that he adjusted in that "box with knobs" between the mouthpiece/speaker and Theremin, follow me here... and if he adjusted the VFO (Variable Frequency Oscillator) of the Theremin, he could find a frequency where it was resonant.  And if he fed that increased voltage from the speaker terminal side of the box back to the Theremin's amplifier, into the non-inverting input, and adjusted the amps negative feedback to just barely keep it stable, it would be possible to then put the speaker into self resonance, once those settings were found, with no input from the Theremin, by just adjusting the feedback until it oscillated.

In other words, a feedback type hum.  

And if, like the woofer in a ported cabinet, that mouthpiece/speaker were placed on a saxophone, it would then be like placing a woofer in a cabinet.  And there would be a resonance that would change as the sax keys were fingered.  That would then feedback into amp of the Theremin, and the pitch would follow the notes fingered.

What that would be is a self resonant system that is doing electronically what a mouthpiece and reed do physically.

So, that experiment would have removed the human factor from the equation.

So, what does this mean?  It means just what he found... if the characteristics that caused the mouthpiece/speaker to self-resonate much lower than 880 hz (for the alto sax) then the lower register would work, but not the upper register.

If the mouthpiece/speaker were adjusted to self-resonate at a frequency much higher than 880 hz, then the upper register would work, but not the low register.

This is seen with players that relax, drop the jaw to play low notes, and tighten up, or "bite" for high notes.

However if self-resonance were achieved at around 880 hz, then those characteristics would allow both registers to be played without changing the embouchure pressure.

What these other experimenters have not done, those who have tried to duplicate what Santy witnessed, is that they have not gotten the mouthpiece/speaker or the entire system into self-resonance.

It would probably be possible to use an LM386, or other suitable chip, as an op amp, along with a few pots, and a 9 volt battery, to duplicate this effect.

Paul C.

In Santy Runyon's own words:

http://www.runyonproducts.com/sugg.preview.html

An Excerpt from Santy Runyon's Suggestions For Woodwind Players 
 

"...I would like to explain to everybody how I found out about a very novel and practical way to teach woodwind instruments. This happened at Missouri University when I was very young and I was playing for my meals at Sampson's Café every evening for two meals a day. A young college professor came there every night for several weeks. He finally approached me and said, he thought I was getting the wrong kind of a sound out of the saxophone. I, of course, responded that I was plenty aware of that. I said to this gentleman, "what do you think I practice eight hours a day for? If I thought I was great, I wouldn't have practiced that much." 

He invited me over to his laboratory where he had one of the first electronic instruments called a Theramin. The Theramin consists of a box with radio tubes producing oscillations at two sound-wave frequencies above the range of hearing. Together, they produce a lower audible frequency equal to the difference in their rates of vibration. Pitch is controlled by moving the hand or a baton toward or away from an antenna at the right rear of the box. This movement alters one of the inaudible frequencies. Harmonics, or component tones, of the sound can be filtered out, allowing production of several tone colors over a range of six octaves. 

This man was also was knowledgeable enough to make a quarter tone organ - not half steps, like the piano. He manufactured this quarter tone organ himself, devised a keyboard for it, and wrote music for it - quite a talented young man. 

He asked me if I had a mouthpiece I didn't care about. I had several that weren't very good. What he did was cut off the tip of one of the mouthpieces and just took the shank that went on the cork. The object of using this shank that goes on the cork was to build a little container for a speaker and attach it to this Theramin. He had an arrangement that looked like a three-dial radio. He set the speaker in motion by turning on the theramin, and changed the pitch from sharper to flatter, or higher or lower, you might say. 

 

We attached this speaker to the saxophone with this cutoff shank of the mouthpiece. This set the column of air in motion that was already in the saxophone, and you could play in the low register of the instrument. When you got the speaker to sound 880 vibrations a second (CPS) you could play all over the instrument, upper register as well as lower register. If you got is below 880 CPS, you could play the lower register fine, but the upper register wouldn't respond. When you got is above 880 CPS, the upper register would play fine. If you released the octave key, it would stay in the upper register. Only when you got it on 880 vibrations per second would the sax play in both registers. 

Now you understand that this is without any air at all, because, as a matter of fact, the saxophone is not a vacuum. It is full of air already. The object of this little device was to set the column of air in motion that was already in the instrument. There is no need to blow it full of air because it is already full of air. 

I thought this was a very unique experience. You could play all over the instrument with a nice sound. When you duplicate this by playing on the mouthpiece, with the reed on the mouthpiece, (playing the saxophone in the regular way), you can put the mouthpiece on the instrument in the proper place so it plays in tune. If you play tighter than that, then you throw the pitch of the instrument sharp, so you have to pull the mouthpiece out. Saxophones are not designed for the mouthpieces to be pulled out too far. With the mouthpiece pulled out too far, it throws the high notes flat with the low notes. So what you have to do then is to "pinch" to get those notes in tune. 

...Bear in mind that when this little speaker was turned on - when it was activated - the only human element involved in playing the instrument was myself fingering the instrument. The sound was very good and the volume depended upon the amount of energy that was fed into the speaker. When the volume was turned down, the saxophone still played, but softly. When the volume was turned up, and the intensity of the speaker was increased, more volume was produced by that process. No human element was involved, no wind being blown, and nobody's mouth was on the mouthpiece. This thing was playing just through the vibrations of the little speaker that he built. 

As it turned out, the optimum results were obtained on Alto Saxophone by producing 880 cycles per second on the mouthpiece. It turned out that the embouchure pressure was right in the middle. It was neither too tight nor too loose, and it produced all the notes on the saxophone with excellent results. The same process was used in determining the note that should be used on the Tenor, which is a "G" concert, one tone below the "A" 880, and on the clarinet, one tone above the "A" 880, which is a "B" concert. So it is "B" for the Clarinet, "A" for the Alto, and "G" for the Tenor, and a major third lower, an "Eb," is for the Baritone Sax. (These are concert notes.)..." 

----

(from Paul Coats)

No, I don't believe Santy made this up, fabricated a "story".  For what reason?  Just because you and I may not know all of the details does not make it untrue.  And Santy was not an electrical engineer.  He was a saxophonist.  That he did not know all of the details of how the professor achieved this effect is understandable.

Paul Coats

Speaking as a former student, friend, and Endorsing Artist of Santy’s, I
want to share the most important of MANY great lessons I learned:

 

You have to continually experiment and actually build and try out different
ideas. You will never learn what works, and most importantly what doesn’t
work, until you build one and play it.

 

Santy probably forgot more about what happens inside a saxophone that I will
ever know. He was quite well versed in all of the theory. He did believe
that there was a big difference between drawing pictures and talking about
things and in actually building mouthpieces, playing them, and then building
another that was slightly different and seeing if it played better or worse.

 

Everyone I know who is actually in the business of designing saxophones and
saxophone accessories is pretty familiar with all the theory, and applies
it. That being said, I am unaware of any company that goes straight from a
theory based design into production. Everyone, without exception, builds
prototypes, because there is still much that is not understood, and much of
the published material appears to be very much in error.

 

 

 

From: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of tenorman1952
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:22 AM
To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch

 

  

In Santy Runyon's own words:

http://www.runyonproducts.com/sugg.preview.html

An Excerpt from Santy Runyon's Suggestions For Woodwind Players 


"...I would like to explain to everybody how I found out about a very novel
and practical way to teach woodwind instruments. This happened at Missouri
University when I was very young and I was playing for my meals at Sampson's
Café every evening for two meals a day. A young college professor came there
every night for several weeks. He finally approached me and said, he thought
I was getting the wrong kind of a sound out of the saxophone. I, of course,
responded that I was plenty aware of that. I said to this gentleman, "what
do you think I practice eight hours a day for? If I thought I was great, I
wouldn't have practiced that much." 

He invited me over to his laboratory where he had one of the first
electronic instruments called a Theramin. The Theramin consists of a box
with radio tubes producing oscillations at two sound-wave frequencies above
the range of hearing. Together, they produce a lower audible frequency equal
to the difference in their rates of vibration. Pitch is controlled by moving
the hand or a baton toward or away from an antenna at the right rear of the
box. This movement alters one of the inaudible frequencies. Harmonics, or
component tones, of the sound can be filtered out, allowing production of
several tone colors over a range of six octaves. 

This man was also was knowledgeable enough to make a quarter tone organ -
not half steps, like the piano. He manufactured this quarter tone organ
himself, devised a keyboard for it, and wrote music for it - quite a
talented young man. 

He asked me if I had a mouthpiece I didn't care about. I had several that
weren't very good. What he did was cut off the tip of one of the mouthpieces
and just took the shank that went on the cork. The object of using this
shank that goes on the cork was to build a little container for a speaker
and attach it to this Theramin. He had an arrangement that looked like a
three-dial radio. He set the speaker in motion by turning on the theramin,
and changed the pitch from sharper to flatter, or higher or lower, you might
say. 

We attached this speaker to the saxophone with this cutoff shank of the
mouthpiece. This set the column of air in motion that was already in the
saxophone, and you could play in the low register of the instrument. When
you got the speaker to sound 880 vibrations a second (CPS) you could play
all over the instrument, upper register as well as lower register. If you
got is below 880 CPS, you could play the lower register fine, but the upper
register wouldn't respond. When you got is above 880 CPS, the upper register
would play fine. If you released the octave key, it would stay in the upper
register. Only when you got it on 880 vibrations per second would the sax
play in both registers. 

Now you understand that this is without any air at all, because, as a matter
of fact, the saxophone is not a vacuum. It is full of air already. The
object of this little device was to set the column of air in motion that was
already in the instrument. There is no need to blow it full of air because
it is already full of air. 

I thought this was a very unique experience. You could play all over the
instrument with a nice sound. When you duplicate this by playing on the
mouthpiece, with the reed on the mouthpiece, (playing the saxophone in the
regular way), you can put the mouthpiece on the instrument in the proper
place so it plays in tune. If you play tighter than that, then you throw the
pitch of the instrument sharp, so you have to pull the mouthpiece out.
Saxophones are not designed for the mouthpieces to be pulled out too far.
With the mouthpiece pulled out too far, it throws the high notes flat with
the low notes. So what you have to do then is to "pinch" to get those notes
in tune. 

...Bear in mind that when this little speaker was turned on - when it was
activated - the only human element involved in playing the instrument was
myself fingering the instrument. The sound was very good and the volume
depended upon the amount of energy that was fed into the speaker. When the
volume was turned down, the saxophone still played, but softly. When the
volume was turned up, and the intensity of the speaker was increased, more
volume was produced by that process. No human element was involved, no wind
being blown, and nobody's mouth was on the mouthpiece. This thing was
playing just through the vibrations of the little speaker that he built. 

As it turned out, the optimum results were obtained on Alto Saxophone by
producing 880 cycles per second on the mouthpiece. It turned out that the
embouchure pressure was right in the middle. It was neither too tight nor
too loose, and it produced all the notes on the saxophone with excellent
results. The same process was used in determining the note that should be
used on the Tenor, which is a "G" concert, one tone below the "A" 880, and
on the clarinet, one tone above the "A" 880, which is a "B" concert. So it
is "B" for the Clarinet, "A" for the Alto, and "G" for the Tenor, and a
major third lower, an "Eb," is for the Baritone Sax. (These are concert
notes.)..." 

----

(from Paul Coats)

No, I don't believe Santy made this up, fabricated a "story". For what
reason? Just because you and I may not know all of the details does not make
it untrue. And Santy was not an electrical engineer. He was a saxophonist.
That he did not know all of the details of how the professor achieved this
effect is understandable.

Paul Coats

The account of Santy's "experiment was that a mouthpiece shank was cut off a mouthpiece and attached to a small box with a speaker in it.  The mouthpiece shank/speaker box was put on the neck of the saxophone and the theramin was "tuned" to make an A=880 play through the speaker.  

At the time this event was supposed to have taken place, there were no tone generators as we have today and so Santy's account described the use of a theramin set at the frequency of A=880.  The only difference between Santy's account and my test was that instead of a small box containing a small speaker, the small speaker was attached to two mouthpiece shanks put together and the electronic source used to drive was a computer program tone generator instead of a theramin.

The bottom line is that the pitch cannot possibly change when the saxophone is fingered because there is no cooperation between the vibrating diaphragm inside the speaker and the soundwave inside the instrument.  This would be true regardless of the type of speaker, how it was attached to the neck of the saxophone, or the electronic source driving the speaker.

--- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com, Barry Levine <barrylevine@...> wrote:

>  I just picked up my curved soprano and did some singing into it.
> 
> When I sang an Eb (below the A440) into the horn and fingered low Db, not
> much change, but when I fingered low C the note dropped a bit flat, and then
> I fingered low B it dropped further.
> 
> On tenor sax, singing a D or Db below A440 and fingering a middle B seems to
> make the note pop out a bit; fingering a middle A forces it down (with an
> accompanying strange sensation in my throat, that actually triggers a
> cough.)
> 
> It felt like my vocal cords were being forced into the lower frequencies.
> 
> This effect was reproducible at  other notes.  Certain key fingerings would
> favor a note, others would tend to pull it down.
> 
>  What's interesting to me is the way the notes felt forced downward with a
> sensation I felt in my throat, which I interpret as acoustic coupling
> between my vocal cords and the horn.
> 
> This suggests that there's a bit more to Santy's story than anyone here is
> giving credit. 
> I don't think either John or Toby has actually reproduced Santy's experiment
> accurately.
> 
> Barry

I think the point is that while the impedances of the tube will pull a given note one way or the other, as you found out, there does not seem to be any physical way for a given pitch to "play all the notes" of the sax. This is precisely why white noise is used in testing the acoustic impedance of the sax--it contains all frequencies so that the right ones can excite the correct resonances in the tube. Likewise, a reed is a non-linear generator, which is capable of vibrating at any pitch set as the main frequency of the air column by the impedances of the tube. 

If a given tube length has maxima that correspond to a fixed pitch played into the tube, or near it, coupling can occur, but there is no way that a fixed pitch can excite tube resonances if they are off more than a certain amount, and that amount is rather small, although I don't have figures at hand to be precise.

At least as far as I know... 

Toby
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Barry Levine 
  To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 9:59 PM
  Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch


    
  Toby, do you sing opera, in addition to your other talents?

  How strong an 880 hz note can you sing?   Even a strong 440 is hard when the mouth is closed around a sax neck (there is a reason why singers keep their mouths wide open).

   I just picked up my curved soprano and did some singing into it.

  When I sang an Eb (below the A440) into the horn and fingered low Db, not much change, but when I fingered low C the note dropped a bit flat, and then I fingered low B it dropped further. 

  On tenor sax, singing a D or Db below A440 and fingering a middle B seems to make the note pop out a bit; fingering a middle A forces it down (with an accompanying strange sensation in my throat, that actually triggers a cough.)

  It felt like my vocal cords were being forced into the lower frequencies. 

  This effect was reproducible at  other notes.  Certain key fingerings would favor a note, others would tend to pull it down.  

   What's interesting to me is the way the notes felt forced downward with a sensation I felt in my throat, which I interpret as acoustic coupling between my vocal cords and the horn.

  This suggests that there's a bit more to Santy's story than anyone here is giving credit. 
  I don't think either John or Toby has actually reproduced Santy's experiment accurately.

  Barry






    From: <kymarto123@...>
    Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
    Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:26:31 +0900 (JST)
    To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
    Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch





    John,
      
     
      
    I really don't know what Santy was on about. I tried to reproduce his results and of course failed miserably, for the reasons you give. If anyone wants to try the easiest way is to simply sing the note with your mouth closed over the neckpipe. 
     
     
      
    One could take the ultimate neck idea a step farther and put the collar further down the neck, giving more length in which to alter the bore. I'm guessing (and James would have to confirm this) that changes in that area would only affect the very highest notes. Benade mentions that "necking in" is usually done to improve the mode relationships in the top notes. Probably doesn't make too much difference in the first two octaves. It is an interesting way to affect the Frs, and could be used (if used correctly) to correct intonation problems in conjunction with the mpc volume.
      
     
      
    Toby

    John <jtalcott47@...> wrote:
      
        
      



      I think James that you missed the point entirely of the material I linked to. That was to demonstrate that a saxophone cannot be played using a diaphragm of a speaker set to a fixed frequency. This is not theorizing about anything, it is pointing out a fundamental fact of woodwind acoustics. That is to play different notes as the saxophone is fingered requires the cooperation of the vibrating source (reed) with the column of air inside the instrument. A speaker can only play the pitch it is given electronically, whether it is generated by a tone generator or a theramin.

      I am very curious about the "initiator" piece of your ultimate sax neck invention. If I understand correctly it is a substitute for the portion of the saxophone neck that would otherwise be covered by the cork. That would mean that in order to install this piece onto an existing neck, you would need to cut off the section of the neck just above the cork, and then thread the end to accept the new extension.

      My main question is how the 4 different "initiator" bore shapes---cylindrical, straight taper, reverse taper, and compound taper affect the intonation of the octaves and registers of each make of saxophone since the taper of the cone at the end of the neck is so different.

      Even though most of this section of the neck is actually inside the mouthpiece, it is still a part of the cone that makes up the saxophone. Small changes in the inside of the neck can have a pronounced effect upon how the instrument plays.

      --- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com <mailto:MouthpieceWork%40yahoogroups.com> , James Warburton <jameswarburton@...> wrote:
      >
      > Does anyone EVER stop to think that the only thing that matters is the result?!?!?? No amount of theorizing is ever going to change the fact of what happens when you actually play the horn. My brother and I have worked for years on the pragmatic aspects of these things and no amount of theorizing will ever substitute for results. His work with brass mouthpieces over the lat 40 years is without dispute. Our work, over almost as many years has resulted in some actual, not "pie in the sky" woodwind products that are going to blow the theorists out of the water!
      > I say this only to assure you that there is in fact a pot of gold at the end of the endless search for great sound and sure intonation!
      > Check out Warburton Music!!
      > 
      > --- On Wed, 2/24/10, Barry Levine <barrylevine@...> wrote:
      > 
      > 
      > From: Barry Levine <barrylevine@...>
      > Subject: Re: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
      > To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com <mailto:MouthpieceWork%40yahoogroups.com> 
      > Received: Wednesday, February 24, 2010, 6:23 AM
      > 
      > 
      > ? 
      > 
      > 
      > 
      > I'm not sure your experiment (though a noble effort) adequately duplicated the setup Santy describes. 
      > 
      > Mainly because if he set it up with an actual paper cone speaker, a lot more air was being pushed than by the tiny earphone speaker you used. The amount of acoustic energy involved would have been different by (guestimate) at least ?a couple of orders of magnitude.
      > 
      > That said, I can't see how Santy's setup would work, given all I've read here on this forum and elsewhere, unless there was some kind of acoustic coupling going on with the speaker-box assembly.
      > 
      > Barry
      > 
      > 
      > From: "John" <jtalcott47@msn. com>
      > Reply-To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
      > Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:08:01 -0000
      > To: MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com
      > Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
      > 
      > 
      > 
      > 
      > Are there any theories as to why Santy Runyon would make up such a story?
      > 
      > --- In MouthpieceWork@ yahoogroups. com <mailto:MouthpieceWo rk%40yahoogroups .com> , "John" <jtalcott47@ ..> wrote:
      > >
      > > This is an update of a piece I wrote for SOTW a few years back.
      > > 
      > > Mouthpiece Pitch <http://jbtsaxmusic. <http://jbtsaxmusic./>  homestead. com/MouthpiecePi tch.html>
      > > 
      > > John
      > >
      >


       






  

OK, those interested have stated their opinions on this and have dug in their heels.  Let's not have another long pissing contest that repeats the same opinions over and over.  Move on.

Thanks for weighing in on this topic Paul and sharing your advanced
knowledge of electronics. In this and your previous post attempting to
validate and explain Santy's reported experience with the theramin, you are overlooking one obvious and incredibly important fact. That is if there was some type of feedback resonance cooperation between the air column and the vibrations of the speaker cone---the speaker would not be vibrating at A=880, but would vibrate at the pitch of the note fingered. It could not be set above 880 and have the lower register not work, nor below 880 and have the upper register not work as was told in the story.

The other obvious piece of information overlooked is that the mouthpiece does not actually produce an A=880 when placed on the neck of the saxophone regardless of the embouchure pressure used since the end of the neck displaces a significant portion of the interior volume.

The simple fact is that mouthpiece pitch has nothing to do with the
frequency put into the saxophone. It has everything to do with the
player's embouchure pressure on the reed that allows the reed to vibrate in the most efficient manner so that the cooperation with the standing wave can take place. Setting the embouchure to play the pitches prescribed by Santy on the mouthpiece alone is an incredibly important part of woodwind pedagogy, but not for the reasons given in Santy's story.

That said, I look forward to hearing about the results of your efforts
to make a device that will accurately recreate the results reported by
Santy Runyon. If and when that occurs, I will of course admit that I am mistaken if your device can actually play a scale on a saxophone.

--- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com, "tenorman1952" <tenorman1952@...> wrote:
>
> In Santy Runyon's own words:
> 
> http://www.runyonproducts.com/sugg.preview.html
> 
> An Excerpt from Santy Runyon's Suggestions For Woodwind Players 
>  
> 
> "...I would like to explain to everybody how I found out about a very novel and practical way to teach woodwind instruments. This happened at Missouri University when I was very young and I was playing for my meals at Sampson's Café every evening for two meals a day. A young college professor came there every night for several weeks. He finally approached me and said, he thought I was getting the wrong kind of a sound out of the saxophone. I, of course, responded that I was plenty aware of that. I said to this gentleman, "what do you think I practice eight hours a day for? If I thought I was great, I wouldn't have practiced that much." 
> 
> He invited me over to his laboratory where he had one of the first electronic instruments called a Theramin. The Theramin consists of a box with radio tubes producing oscillations at two sound-wave frequencies above the range of hearing. Together, they produce a lower audible frequency equal to the difference in their rates of vibration. Pitch is controlled by moving the hand or a baton toward or away from an antenna at the right rear of the box. This movement alters one of the inaudible frequencies. Harmonics, or component tones, of the sound can be filtered out, allowing production of several tone colors over a range of six octaves. 
> 
> This man was also was knowledgeable enough to make a quarter tone organ - not half steps, like the piano. He manufactured this quarter tone organ himself, devised a keyboard for it, and wrote music for it - quite a talented young man. 
> 
> He asked me if I had a mouthpiece I didn't care about. I had several that weren't very good. What he did was cut off the tip of one of the mouthpieces and just took the shank that went on the cork. The object of using this shank that goes on the cork was to build a little container for a speaker and attach it to this Theramin. He had an arrangement that looked like a three-dial radio. He set the speaker in motion by turning on the theramin, and changed the pitch from sharper to flatter, or higher or lower, you might say. 
> 
>  
> 
> We attached this speaker to the saxophone with this cutoff shank of the mouthpiece. This set the column of air in motion that was already in the saxophone, and you could play in the low register of the instrument. When you got the speaker to sound 880 vibrations a second (CPS) you could play all over the instrument, upper register as well as lower register. If you got is below 880 CPS, you could play the lower register fine, but the upper register wouldn't respond. When you got is above 880 CPS, the upper register would play fine. If you released the octave key, it would stay in the upper register. Only when you got it on 880 vibrations per second would the sax play in both registers. 
> 
> Now you understand that this is without any air at all, because, as a matter of fact, the saxophone is not a vacuum. It is full of air already. The object of this little device was to set the column of air in motion that was already in the instrument. There is no need to blow it full of air because it is already full of air. 
> 
> I thought this was a very unique experience. You could play all over the instrument with a nice sound. When you duplicate this by playing on the mouthpiece, with the reed on the mouthpiece, (playing the saxophone in the regular way), you can put the mouthpiece on the instrument in the proper place so it plays in tune. If you play tighter than that, then you throw the pitch of the instrument sharp, so you have to pull the mouthpiece out. Saxophones are not designed for the mouthpieces to be pulled out too far. With the mouthpiece pulled out too far, it throws the high notes flat with the low notes. So what you have to do then is to "pinch" to get those notes in tune. 
> 
> ...Bear in mind that when this little speaker was turned on - when it was activated - the only human element involved in playing the instrument was myself fingering the instrument. The sound was very good and the volume depended upon the amount of energy that was fed into the speaker. When the volume was turned down, the saxophone still played, but softly. When the volume was turned up, and the intensity of the speaker was increased, more volume was produced by that process. No human element was involved, no wind being blown, and nobody's mouth was on the mouthpiece. This thing was playing just through the vibrations of the little speaker that he built. 
> 
> As it turned out, the optimum results were obtained on Alto Saxophone by producing 880 cycles per second on the mouthpiece. It turned out that the embouchure pressure was right in the middle. It was neither too tight nor too loose, and it produced all the notes on the saxophone with excellent results. The same process was used in determining the note that should be used on the Tenor, which is a "G" concert, one tone below the "A" 880, and on the clarinet, one tone above the "A" 880, which is a "B" concert. So it is "B" for the Clarinet, "A" for the Alto, and "G" for the Tenor, and a major third lower, an "Eb," is for the Baritone Sax. (These are concert notes.)..." 
> 
> ----
> 
> (from Paul Coats)
> 
> No, I don't believe Santy made this up, fabricated a "story".  For what reason?  Just because you and I may not know all of the details does not make it untrue.  And Santy was not an electrical engineer.  He was a saxophonist.  That he did not know all of the details of how the professor achieved this effect is understandable.
> 
> Paul Coats
>

Thanks for weighing in on this topic Paul and sharing your advanced
knowledge of electronics. In this and your previous post attempting to
validate and explain Santy's reported experience with the theramin, you
are overlooking one obvious and incredibly important fact. That is if
there was some type of feedback resonance cooperation between the air
column and the vibrations of the speaker cone---the speaker would not be
vibrating at A=880, but would vibrate at the pitch of the note fingered.
It could not be set above 880 and have the lower register not work, nor
below 880 and have the upper register not work as was told in the story.

The other obvious piece of information overlooked is that the mouthpiece
does not actually produce an A=880 when placed on the neck of the
saxophone regardless of the embouchure pressure used since the end of
the neck displaces a significant portion of the interior volume.

The simple fact is that mouthpiece pitch has nothing to do with the
frequency put into the saxophone. It has everything to do with the
player's embouchure pressure on the reed that allows the reed to vibrate
in the most efficient manner so that the cooperation with the standing
wave can take place. Setting the embouchure to play the pitches
prescribed by Santy on the mouthpiece alone is an incredibly part of
woodwind pedagogy, but not for the reasons given in Santy's story.

That said, I look forward to hearing about the results of your efforts
to make a device that will accurately recreate the results reported by
Santy Runyon. If and when that occurs, I will of course admit that I am
mistaken if your device can actually play a scale on a saxophone.

I don't think that the theory I have read is wrong, but it only works to a first approximation because of the complexity and interactivity of the factors involved. I don't believe that anyone recommends trying to build an instrument by numbers, and all of the published work that I know is quite
 clear about the limitations of theory in the real world. 

That doesn't make the theory invalid or wrong. It is important to know, though, just what the theory can do and what it can't.

Toby

STEVE GOODSON <saxgourmet@...> wrote:                                                 
  Speaking as a former student, friend, and Endorsing Artist of Santy$B!G(Bs, I want to share the most important of MANY great lessons I learned:
   
  You have to continually experiment and actually build and try out different ideas. You will never learn what works, and most importantly what doesn$B!G(Bt work, until you build one and play it.
   
  Santy probably forgot more about what happens inside a saxophone that I will ever know. He was quite well versed in all of the theory. He did believe that there was a big difference between drawing pictures and talking about things and in actually building mouthpieces, playing them, and then
 building another that was slightly different and seeing if it played better or worse.
   
  Everyone I know who is actually in the business of designing saxophones and saxophone accessories is pretty familiar with all the theory, and applies it. That being said, I am unaware of any company that goes straight from a theory based design into production. Everyone, without exception,
 builds prototypes, because there is still much that is not understood, and much of the published material appears to be very much in error.
   
   
   
      From: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of tenorman1952
 Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:22 AM
 To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
 Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
  
  
   
    
        In Santy Runyon's own words:
 
 http://www.runyonproducts.com/sugg.preview.html
 
 An Excerpt from Santy Runyon's Suggestions For Woodwind Players 
 
 
 "...I would like to explain to everybody how I found out about a very novel and practical way to teach woodwind instruments. This happened at Missouri University when I was very young and I was playing for my meals at Sampson's Caf$B>-%"(B every evening for two meals a day. A young college professor
 came there every night for several weeks. He finally approached me and said, he thought I was getting the wrong kind of a sound out of the saxophone. I, of course, responded that I was plenty aware of that. I said to this gentleman, "what do you think I practice eight hours a day for? If I
 thought I was great, I wouldn't have practiced that much." 
 
 He invited me over to his laboratory where he had one of the first electronic instruments called a Theramin. The Theramin consists of a box with radio tubes producing oscillations at two sound-wave frequencies above the range of hearing. Together, they produce a lower audible frequency equal to
 the difference in their rates of vibration. Pitch is controlled by moving the hand or a baton toward or away from an antenna at the right rear of the box. This movement alters one of the inaudible frequencies. Harmonics, or component tones, of the sound can be filtered out, allowing production of
 several tone colors over a range of six octaves. 
 
 This man was also was knowledgeable enough to make a quarter tone organ - not half steps, like the piano. He manufactured this quarter tone organ himself, devised a keyboard for it, and wrote music for it - quite a talented young man. 
 
 He asked me if I had a mouthpiece I didn't care about. I had several that weren't very good. What he did was cut off the tip of one of the mouthpieces and just took the shank that went on the cork. The object of using this shank that goes on the cork was to build a little container for a speaker
 and attach it to this Theramin. He had an arrangement that looked like a three-dial radio. He set the speaker in motion by turning on the theramin, and changed the pitch from sharper to flatter, or higher or lower, you might say. 
 
 We attached this speaker to the saxophone with this cutoff shank of the mouthpiece. This set the column of air in motion that was already in the saxophone, and you could play in the low register of the instrument. When you got the speaker to sound 880 vibrations a second (CPS) you could play all
 over the instrument, upper register as well as lower register. If you got is below 880 CPS, you could play the lower register fine, but the upper register wouldn't respond. When you got is above 880 CPS, the upper register would play fine. If you released the octave key, it would stay in the
 upper register. Only when you got it on 880 vibrations per second would the sax play in both registers. 
 
 Now you understand that this is without any air at all, because, as a matter of fact, the saxophone is not a vacuum. It is full of air already. The object of this little device was to set the column of air in motion that was already in the instrument. There is no need to blow it full of air
 because it is already full of air. 
 
 I thought this was a very unique experience. You could play all over the instrument with a nice sound. When you duplicate this by playing on the mouthpiece, with the reed on the mouthpiece, (playing the saxophone in the regular way), you can put the mouthpiece on the instrument in the proper
 place so it plays in tune. If you play tighter than that, then you throw the pitch of the instrument sharp, so you have to pull the mouthpiece out. Saxophones are not designed for the mouthpieces to be pulled out too far. With the mouthpiece pulled out too far, it throws the high notes flat with
 the low notes. So what you have to do then is to "pinch" to get those notes in tune. 
 
 ...Bear in mind that when this little speaker was turned on - when it was activated - the only human element involved in playing the instrument was myself fingering the instrument. The sound was very good and the volume depended upon the amount of energy that was fed into the speaker. When the
 volume was turned down, the saxophone still played, but softly. When the volume was turned up, and the intensity of the speaker was increased, more volume was produced by that process. No human element was involved, no wind being blown, and nobody's mouth was on the mouthpiece. This thing was
 playing just through the vibrations of the little speaker that he built. 
 
 As it turned out, the optimum results were obtained on Alto Saxophone by producing 880 cycles per second on the mouthpiece. It turned out that the embouchure pressure was right in the middle. It was neither too tight nor too loose, and it produced all the notes on the saxophone with excellent
 results. The same process was used in determining the note that should be used on the Tenor, which is a "G" concert, one tone below the "A" 880, and on the clarinet, one tone above the "A" 880, which is a "B" concert. So it is "B" for the Clarinet, "A" for the Alto, and "G" for the Tenor, and a
 major third lower, an "Eb," is for the Baritone Sax. (These are concert notes.)..." 
 
 ----
 
 (from Paul Coats)
 
 No, I don't believe Santy made this up, fabricated a "story". For what reason? Just because you and I may not know all of the details does not make it untrue. And Santy was not an electrical engineer. He was a saxophonist. That he did not know all of the details of how the professor achieved this
 effect is understandable.
 
 Paul Coats
  
    
  
  
     


      
                 
                 
 

I agree with everything you wrote.  I would be very interested to read one or two specific examples of the oft repeated charge that "the published material [on theory] appears to be very much in error".

--- In MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com, <kymarto123@...> wrote:
>
> I don't think that the theory I have read is wrong, but it only works to a first approximation because of the complexity and interactivity of the factors involved. I don't believe that anyone recommends trying to build an instrument by numbers, and all of the published work that I know is quite
>  clear about the limitations of theory in the real world. 
> 
> That doesn't make the theory invalid or wrong. It is important to know, though, just what the theory can do and what it can't.
> 
> Toby
> 
> STEVE GOODSON <saxgourmet@...> wrote:                                                 
>   Speaking as a former student, friend, and Endorsing Artist of Santy¡Çs, I want to share the most important of MANY great lessons I learned:
>    
>   You have to continually experiment and actually build and try out different ideas. You will never learn what works, and most importantly what doesn¡Çt work, until you build one and play it.
>    
>   Santy probably forgot more about what happens inside a saxophone that I will ever know. He was quite well versed in all of the theory. He did believe that there was a big difference between drawing pictures and talking about things and in actually building mouthpieces, playing them, and then
>  building another that was slightly different and seeing if it played better or worse.
>    
>   Everyone I know who is actually in the business of designing saxophones and saxophone accessories is pretty familiar with all the theory, and applies it. That being said, I am unaware of any company that goes straight from a theory based design into production. Everyone, without exception,
>  builds prototypes, because there is still much that is not understood, and much of the published material appears to be very much in error.
>    
>    
>    
>       From: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com [mailto:MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of tenorman1952
>  Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2010 8:22 AM
>  To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
>  Subject: [MouthpieceWork] Re: Fact and Fallacy About Mouthpiece Pitch
>   
>   
>    
>     
>         In Santy Runyon's own words:
>  
>  http://www.runyonproducts.com/sugg.preview.html
>  
>  An Excerpt from Santy Runyon's Suggestions For Woodwind Players 
>  
>  
>  "...I would like to explain to everybody how I found out about a very novel and practical way to teach woodwind instruments. This happened at Missouri University when I was very young and I was playing for my meals at Sampson's Caf¾­¥¢ every evening for two meals a day. A young college professor
>  came there every night for several weeks. He finally approached me and said, he thought I was getting the wrong kind of a sound out of the saxophone. I, of course, responded that I was plenty aware of that. I said to this gentleman, "what do you think I practice eight hours a day for? If I
>  thought I was great, I wouldn't have practiced that much." 
>  
>  He invited me over to his laboratory where he had one of the first electronic instruments called a Theramin. The Theramin consists of a box with radio tubes producing oscillations at two sound-wave frequencies above the range of hearing. Together, they produce a lower audible frequency equal to
>  the difference in their rates of vibration. Pitch is controlled by moving the hand or a baton toward or away from an antenna at the right rear of the box. This movement alters one of the inaudible frequencies. Harmonics, or component tones, of the sound can be filtered out, allowing production of
>  several tone colors over a range of six octaves. 
>  
>  This man was also was knowledgeable enough to make a quarter tone organ - not half steps, like the piano. He manufactured this quarter tone organ himself, devised a keyboard for it, and wrote music for it - quite a talented young man. 
>  
>  He asked me if I had a mouthpiece I didn't care about. I had several that weren't very good. What he did was cut off the tip of one of the mouthpieces and just took the shank that went on the cork. The object of using this shank that goes on the cork was to build a little container for a speaker
>  and attach it to this Theramin. He had an arrangement that looked like a three-dial radio. He set the speaker in motion by turning on the theramin, and changed the pitch from sharper to flatter, or higher or lower, you might say. 
>  
>  We attached this speaker to the saxophone with this cutoff shank of the mouthpiece. This set the column of air in motion that was already in the saxophone, and you could play in the low register of the instrument. When you got the speaker to sound 880 vibrations a second (CPS) you could play all
>  over the instrument, upper register as well as lower register. If you got is below 880 CPS, you could play the lower register fine, but the upper register wouldn't respond. When you got is above 880 CPS, the upper register would play fine. If you released the octave key, it would stay in the
>  upper register. Only when you got it on 880 vibrations per second would the sax play in both registers. 
>  
>  Now you understand that this is without any air at all, because, as a matter of fact, the saxophone is not a vacuum. It is full of air already. The object of this little device was to set the column of air in motion that was already in the instrument. There is no need to blow it full of air
>  because it is already full of air. 
>  
>  I thought this was a very unique experience. You could play all over the instrument with a nice sound. When you duplicate this by playing on the mouthpiece, with the reed on the mouthpiece, (playing the saxophone in the regular way), you can put the mouthpiece on the instrument in the proper
>  place so it plays in tune. If you play tighter than that, then you throw the pitch of the instrument sharp, so you have to pull the mouthpiece out. Saxophones are not designed for the mouthpieces to be pulled out too far. With the mouthpiece pulled out too far, it throws the high notes flat with
>  the low notes. So what you have to do then is to "pinch" to get those notes in tune. 
>  
>  ...Bear in mind that when this little speaker was turned on - when it was activated - the only human element involved in playing the instrument was myself fingering the instrument. The sound was very good and the volume depended upon the amount of energy that was fed into the speaker. When the
>  volume was turned down, the saxophone still played, but softly. When the volume was turned up, and the intensity of the speaker was increased, more volume was produced by that process. No human element was involved, no wind being blown, and nobody's mouth was on the mouthpiece. This thing was
>  playing just through the vibrations of the little speaker that he built. 
>  
>  As it turned out, the optimum results were obtained on Alto Saxophone by producing 880 cycles per second on the mouthpiece. It turned out that the embouchure pressure was right in the middle. It was neither too tight nor too loose, and it produced all the notes on the saxophone with excellent
>  results. The same process was used in determining the note that should be used on the Tenor, which is a "G" concert, one tone below the "A" 880, and on the clarinet, one tone above the "A" 880, which is a "B" concert. So it is "B" for the Clarinet, "A" for the Alto, and "G" for the Tenor, and a
>  major third lower, an "Eb," is for the Baritone Sax. (These are concert notes.)..." 
>  
>  ----
>  
>  (from Paul Coats)
>  
>  No, I don't believe Santy made this up, fabricated a "story". For what reason? Just because you and I may not know all of the details does not make it untrue. And Santy was not an electrical engineer. He was a saxophonist. That he did not know all of the details of how the professor achieved this
>  effect is understandable.
>  
>  Paul Coats
>