This morning I was searching for a website that would describe how to clear a browser’s cache, and I happened to stumble upon a How To Wiki. Although I ended up finding a much better source for the cache information I was seeking, I was drawn back to see what, if anything, the wiki had that pertained to saxophones.

While trying to keep an open mind, I had visions of articles like some of those infamous ones on ehow.com like How to Correct a Bent Baritone Sax. (My poor Medusa is still in the shop getting straightened out after my repair efforts.)  😉

Seriously though, I was wondering if wikiHow would hold any valuable nuggets of information, or if these articles would just be a rehash of the same old, same old, with some potentially dangerous stupid shit thrown in for good measure.

As of this morning, wikiHow shows that if you enter saxophone in the search box, there are 21 articles in the category. The topics of these 21 articles are:

• Play the Alto Saxophone
• Switch from Clarinet to Tenor Saxophone
• Assemble a Saxophone
• Assemble a Tenor Saxophone
• Buy Your First Saxophone
• Carry a Saxophone Safely
• Change Instruments from Bb Clarinet to Soprano Saxophone
• Clean a Saxophone
• Do Vibrato on a Saxophone
• Hit Altissimo Notes on the Sax
• Improvise on the Saxophone
• Know What to Keep in a Saxophone Case
• Learn the Saxophone If You Play the Flute
• Play Jazz Saxophone
• Play Jazz on the Sax
• Play the Saxophone
• Play the Tenor Saxophone
• Prepare a Reed for a Saxophone
• Remove a Cleaning Swab from a Soprano Saxophone
• Troubleshoot a Saxophone
• Tune a Saxophone

The first article I read was How to Change Instruments from Bb Clarinet to Soprano Saxophone.

How to Change Instruments from Bb Clarinet to Soprano Saxophone

from wikiHow – The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Does your band have too many clarinets and not enough saxophones? Are you wondering how to switch from one to another? It’s easy! Here’s how.

Steps

1. Obtain a Soprano Saxophone to practice on. They’re generally more expensive than a Clarinet, so you may want to rent one at first.
2. Check the case for the following: Clean out rag on a weighted cord, cork grease, mouthpiece and ligature, and possibly a polishing cloth. If these items are not present, you will need to purchase them separately.
3. Check to be certain the instrument is in good working condition. The pads should be clean and soft with no age cracking and each note hole must seal air tight. Those pads are the substitutes for your fingers… so be sure they are in good working condition.
4. If purchasing, shop around online. Some nice instruments can be had at significant discounts from what you’ll find in a music shop that sells only new instruments.

Fingering

1. Practice the new fingering. Fingering on a saxophone is the same for the upper register as it is for the lower register. The only thing you have to do is remember the register key by your thumb. The Saxophone notes run (all fingers down and all valves closed) C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C in both upper and lower register. This is the same as the lower register on your clarinet, so you have, in effect, already learned saxophone notes.

• Note: All saxophones have identical fingering, so once you’ve learned soprano saxophone, you know the fingering and can play any saxophone so long as you have music for it. (Transposed into the correct key signature by the music company or composer.)

Practice

1. You will need to practice playing the saxophone, especially the upper register notes, to get used to the fingering when your eye falls on each note in the music. This can take a while, so plan to spend an hour a day doing this for at least two weeks before attempting to sit in band and play the saxophone instead of clarinet. It may help to abandon the clarinet for this period of time to help retrain your brain in the new fingering.

Embouchure

1. Your lower lip may be sore for a few days with the new mouthpiece and reed on the saxophone. Generally speaking though, the only difference here is that you will be blowing your tone into a metal tube instead of a wooden one, which produces a “metalic” sound rather than a “hollow” or “wooden” tone.
2. Enjoy the versatility of the saxophone! With practise, you can make it sound like a horn, a clarinet, or an oboe. Or play it for it’s own unique reed/brass hybrid sound that we’ve all come to love.

Related wikiHows

• How to Assemble a Saxophone
• How to Prepare a Reed for a Saxophone
• How to Play the Saxophone

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Change Instruments from Bb Clarinet to Soprano Saxophone. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

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There are so many things in this article that are problematic, that I scarcely know where to begin—not the least of which is that sopranos are often not welcomed in bands since there is no music for them in most scores. 

As I read through more of the 21 articles, I was left with the impression that many of them were written by high school students, or players with limited experience on the instrument. It seems to me that this wiki is an example of online non-information, and in part misinformation, being disseminated through the Internet.

Over the past week I’ve been having discussions with a couple of different people about the over-saturation of information on the ‘Net, and how this has led to people not reading the full text of anything anymore.

As evermore of these online sources spring up, truly good sources of information become harder and harder to find through search engines.

As Google churns up 1,503,389 hits for whatever we enter into the search box, we become overwhelmed by the choices of information. How do we filter the good from the bad? How do we find the 1 good site out of 5,843 bad ones?

I don’t have any answers. I wish I did. I just know that when I’m looking for something I am overwhelmed, and I too find myself verging on a form of ADD while Googling a topic, or searching the new threads and posts on SOTW. And that, for someone who hasn’t before suffered from attention deficit disorder, is frightening.