For years I’ve been joking (well, not entirely joking) that whenever someone has tried to explain the concept of conical bores in saxophones to me, my head feels like it’s going to explode. Well yesterday AM, I happened to come across a website from the School of Physics, at the University of New South Wales, which might finally allow me to retire this sign…
Now I have a confession to make: I spent my high school years avoiding science classes. I suck at science & at math. If you were looking for me in high school, you could have found me in the band room nearly 50% of the time. The other 50% was taken up with the required courses that got me into university.
Once I was in university, I took the “science for arts students” classes (read: science for the total science moron courses) like: Introduction To Contemporary Issues In Health Sciences, to meet the university science requirements for graduation. And at grad school, no surprise here, quantitative methodologies, was my greatest challenge.
So given all this, it’s not really surprising that I couldn’t quite grasp the differences between conical versus cylindrical bores. However, Joe Wolfe’s article, How Do Woodwind Instruments Work? , has finally allowed me a glimmer of understanding, into the mysterious (at least to me) world of woodwind bores. (And I’m not talking about the kind we meet at parties who play an instrument, and talk our ears off and bore us to tears. 🙂 )
Wolfe, who also happens to be a composer, works as a physicist, studying the acoustics of musical instruments and the voice. He has also written another article of interest to sax players titled, Saxophone acoustics: an introduction. This great intro on the topic, has lots of links to more articles, which explain things further. Being a science moron, I will need to read this about 10 or more times, before it really sinks in. (My doctor-prescribed drug cocktail which, in the words of my former neurologist, makes me “stupid”, doesn’t help me attention, recall, or grasp of concepts either.) 
One of the articles that I found really interesting, was part of the doctoral research of Jer Ming Chen. In Saxophones and the vocal tract: the acoustics of saxophone players, something that I’ve experienced, and I’ve heard many other players speak and write about, is finally explained.
When I play my altissimo notes, I just hear the notes I want, and they come out. Well according to the research conducted by Chen, this is because I am using my vocal tract. Here are a few excerpts from the article published on-line:
For a few decades, acousticians – and some musicians – have debated how important the vocal tract is in the playing of clarinet and saxophone. We have recently made direct measurements of the resonances of saxophonists’ vocal tracts, while they played. Over the standard range of the instrument, the tract resonances vary among players and have no simple relation to the note played. In the high (altissimo) range, the professional saxophonists studied all tuned a strong resonance of their tracts systematically to frequencies slightly above that the desired note. The amateurs studied did not tune a strong resonance and were also unable to play notes in the altissimo range.
What was the debate about?
Some scientists thought that the influence of the vocal tract in clarinet or saxophone playing was ‘negligible’, while others thought that the player needed to adjust the vocal tract for every note. Musicians’ opinions are also varied, although many agree that the tract configuration could be kept constant for most conditions, and varied only for extreme or exotic effects. No-one really knew: it is difficult for players to be quantitative or even explicit about what they do with their vocal tracts…
What are the key findings of our recent research?…
• Over the standard range of the saxophone, different players used their vocal tracts in different ways, sometimes making little change at all. In no case was there a consistent relation between resonances of the tract and the note played.
• In the high (“altissimo”) range, the professional players in this study all consistently tuned a strong resonance of the vocal tract to a frequency slightly above that of the note to be played.
• None of the amateurs in this study tuned the vocal tract and none of them could play in this altissimo range.
How do saxophonists learn to do this? Can anyone learn it?
Our studies don’t answer this question. It usually takes saxophone players some years to learn how to modify the vocal tract appropriately: they report that they need to ‘hear the note in the head’ before playing it, and adjust the tongue appropriately. We cannot say whether anyone can learn it. However, nearly everyone learns, at an early age, how to produce, reliably, the dozens of different vocal tract configurations required to speak one or more languages. Experienced players say that an important part of the technique is learning to ‘hear the note in the head’ before you play it.
Does a skilled player use the glottis subconsciously when playing?
Apparently. None of the players to whom we have spoken are aware of it. However, the magnitude of the resonances are consistent with a glottis in the nearly closed position, something like the position used for whispering.
I find all this very interesting. The next time I practice, I will pay closer attention to what is happening in my vocal chords when I go for my altissimo notes.
The School of Physics, at The University Of New South Wales, will be studying other areas of saxophone performance, such as multiphonics & sub-tones, and other woodwind instruments as well. I’m sure that those research findings once published, will be an interesting read too.
