Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

For those of us who are slowly learning to transpose because of a brass or woodwind instrument that we are learning to play, I would vey much like to know why the instruments are in different keys. For example, the alto sax in Eb and the tenor in Bb.

I have learned that there is a C saxophone but they are rare and not thought of very highly as far as I can tell.

Why weren't all instruments in the orchestra based on the same key, C, for example?

admin wrote:I have learned that there is a C saxophone but they are rare and not thought of very highly as far as I can tell.

I didn't know RIC made a C series saxophone!

I too, always wondered why we have such oddities as E♭ horn instruments.

Here's some interesting reading about it:

https://www.saxquest.com/forumThreadVie ... adUID=3317

My answer, for purposes of this forum:

Probably the same way, 200 years from now, people will wonder why in the heck the low string of a guitar was tuned to E.

Yep, wish I had an answer here. Chances are, there was some very minor reason for it many years ago.

I was a brass player in school and I asked about it a lot. The best concensus I could perceive said it was done to avoid using lots of ledger lines, since the ranges are about a fifth apart. Simple treble and bass clefs (not to mention alto or tenor clefs) just don't cover those middle ranges well. As someone who has logged hundreds of hours composing and arranging for jazz bands, I believe this is most likely. The common fingerings theory stated in the link above is also quite relevant and valid in my opinion.

Thanks Jason and John. A good link and some interesting hypotheses.

And, at least in the case of some woodwinds (saxes and clarinets), written notes correspond to certain fingerings, so, if you learn to read alto sax music, you can also read tenor, bari, soprano, etc., without having to learn new fingerings each time.

A note about the C saxophones: the "C Melody" sax (technically a tenor sax in C instead of Bb) had its brief moment in the sun because the player could read and play along with piano music. I think they didn't get much respect because they were seen as not-serious instruments aimed at casual players. Of course, almost any sax from the old days is pretty good by modern standards, but nowadays they suffer because mouthpieces can be tough to find. A C Melody mouthpiece should be between the sizes of regular tenor and alto mouthpieces. There are some, but they're not common and not cheap. I paid almost as much for a C Melody mouthpiece as I did for a whole (ratty) Buescher C Melody sax!

From what I've heard from sax players, any C saxes made were mostly junk. I'll bet if someone made a nice one today there would be a small niche market.

Last night I confirmed this with a sax expert I know. All or most C saxes ever made were junk, thus, they never caught on.

Further thoughts:
So few people learn horns (in the USA at least) from self-teaching or private lessons. They usually learn in a school band, where you do the same thing as everyone else. The history just persists itself. Guitar is commonly self-taught and has more freedom to evolve. Just my 0.02c.

Thanks for the additional comments, JDog. I used to play tenor but now I have an alto. Transposing on the fly is not as bad as it sounds.

True. Once you learn to think of notes in numbers (scale degrees and chords) you're free to play any song in any key. Good exercise for people who want to learn how to do this: learn Happy Birthday in every key.