Over the past few years I have written a few articles on one-handed saxophones (see tags), but the two people who did the customizations on the horns were both in USA. Then this morning I happened across a fellow from Amsterdam, who has been making adaptive wind instruments for years.
Maartin Visser is a trained woodwind instrument maker who owns Flutelab, which is located in Amsterdam, Holland. Flutelab will work with players, from beginner to pro level, to customize their instruments around their particular physical limitations. This is how Visser describes the work that Flutelab does:
Adaptive wind instruments
Instruments are mass produced. People are all different. That is why so many players turn to Flutelab to have their musical instrument adapted to their needs. Often, when musicians experience discomfort while playing hey will blame themselves or see a therapist.
To Flutelab, the instrument is the interface between a human and a resonating column of air. It should function right at both sides: the acoustic side and the ergonomical side.
Flutelab has worked on flute, bass flute, , saxophone, clarinet, oboe, recorder, cornet, basset horn, tin whistle, trumpet and folk instruments as the tenora (Cataluna) and Scottisch highland bagpine chanter.
Source: Adaptive wind instruments page on flutelab.com
In this following video, Visser demonstrates how his one-handed saxophone works. It is rather different than the others we have seen.
Here are a few images the customizations that Visser does to the saxophones to make them truly adaptive wind instruments.
Note too that Flutelab’s saxophones are available in both left and right hand-only versions, and that they will work with you to specially adapt your horn to your needs—whatever they might be. For example, the saxophone pictured on the left was customized for a player who lost some fingers in an accident. Now he can play his horn with only two fingers on the right hand.
I don’t know how many other companies in Europe do this kind of work, but I think having access to these type of adaptations would greatly increase a player’s ability to return to his/her pre-injury/illness activities. Having been through something similar nearly eight years ago now, I know how difficult it is to lose one’s ability to play.
As I think I’ve stated before, I’m fortunate that I gained enough of my fine motor skills back that I didn’t need any adaptive mechanisms on my horns. That said, none of us knows what the future holds. We should all be grateful that there are craftsmen out there making these types of custom saxophones should we ever need them.
26 Jul 15
British publication “Winds” featured this instrument on the cover of their spring 1989 issue. Wally Horwood, editor at that time, wrote a two-page article on “A Curiosity in F,” based on all the background information I could find.
The article was translated into French and published by Osni in bulletin no 34.
Hi ted.
Thanks for this. I didn’t realized that this work dates back this far. I’m guessing that the horn they featured in the article was likely an F mezzo-soprano?
Edit: Duh… I forgot about your previous comment below. Of course it was! :duh:
The technology of Maarten Visser is innovative.
Still all one-handed saxophones are adaptations of existing instruments.
As Olaf Diegel has recently 3D-printed a saxophone (without needles and pads) it is now possible to really design a one-handed saxophone or other instruments ergonomical adapted to people.
That has the possibility to change the whole saxophone world.
I am planning on writing about the 3D saxophone today. (I was planning on doing it yesterday, but the weather is too nice and I got distracted.) 😉
Cybersax currently posts photos of a Conn F mezzo configured for a right-hand-only player. I had this horn in my possession a number of years ago, sold it to a Pepperdine Univ. student and it ultimately wound up at Cybersax where it was sold. There are some very good pictures there including my original fingering charts. trm
Sadly Bear’s site went down after he died. There was talk that someone would try to take over the information on the site, but it seems that nothing has happened with that. Pages of it are still available through the web archive site WayBackMachine.
Thank you for pointing out that Conn F Mezzo again Ted. I had forgotten about it. This morning I went to the archive site and saved the info that Bear had on it.
Since you owned the horn, what did you think of it? What was it like to play? How difficult was it to get your head around a totally different fingering system? Who did you get the sax from? Fill in the blanks a bit. I am curious about it.
What’s also curious is that Conn built other one-handed saxophones for Al Miller, but we don’t hear much about those. I know Dr. Cohen was selling some of his collection of rare horns a few years ago, but don’t remember hearing about him selling anything like this. I wonder if he still has the one-handed Conn tenor?
In any event, thanks for chiming in and reminding me about the F Mezzo Soprano.
If you are interested in hard copy from the British journal “Winds” (which features the one-handed Conn F mezzo) let me know by email, a street address to which I should snail mail the article.