Christmas-time seems like the ideal time to talk about a self-playing saxophone, because I can think of quite of few of my vintage sax-playing colleagues (as well as myself) whose eyes would light up like those of little kids at Christmas time, if we were able to see this in person… I’m not even going to mention what would happen if one of us were to find one of these under our Christmas trees! 😆
I don’t even know how I happened to come across this a couple of nights ago, but I ended up on the web site of man from Sweden, by the name of Jörgen Städje. Jörgen’s non-professional page tells some very interesting stories, among them about his travels to the National Museum from Musical Clock to Street Organ, in Utrecht, Holland.
Of his visit to the museum, Jörgen writes:
Holland is the promised land of self-playing instruments (like Switzerland, but in Sweden we always think of Holland) and in Utrecht you’ll find the “National Museum from Musical Clock to Street Organ,” in which we saw a number of fantastic machines from the previous century.
Source: www.qedata.se
[The above] picture shows a self-playing saxophone, a personal instrument. Note the clockwork box that drives the music roll. Also note that the Q.R.S. company that made the music roll, still exists and still makes some hundred thousands of rolls per annum, for various mechanical self-playing instruments.
While obviously not nearly as high-tech as the robotic saxophone player, built by the Takashima R&C Laboratory, at the Hosei University in Japan, the Q.R.S. player saxophone is still pretty damn cool. It certainly has a very unique place in saxophonic history.
Helen – it’s just that I have an ebay search set up with “old antique vintage (etc.)” to look for wayward C-Mels (or anything else) just advertised as “old sax” – so the search tends to pull out little nuggets from time to time…
Until I happened to come across this fellow’s website, I had no idea these things even existed. Now I find out that they’re on eBay on occasion! 😯
I sometimes do feel like I’ve been in a coma and just woke up. 😀
I think it’s a free-reed instrument like a melodica or harmonica, so each hole produces a different note. This basically makes it an automated melodica (not harmonica as those have different blow and draw notes) and not really a saxophone at all.
This is how most “toy saxophones” operate, so it isn’t much of a surprise I suppose.
I’ve very occasionally seen versions of this ‘player-sax’ on ebay before. So far I’ve managed to resist the buying impulse…
Interesting to note from the roll that it may actually play chords rather than a simple melody line – is ‘multiphonic’ the right word ?
Just might have to buy the next one, unless this posting makes them become a very collectible cult 🙂