Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

While waiting for computers to finish doin' stuff ...

One side effect of Baitcon was that I returned home bearing one more instrument than I'd left with. It's a "bamboo sax", or as some folks call it, a "saxaflute": straight bore (which makes it Not A Sax despite what the maker calls it, but that's okay 'cause I'm all about the sound), simple system (there is a thumb hole, but it's basically pennywhistle/six-hole flute fingering), single reed in a saxophone mouthpiece, apparently G-myxolidian tuning (I need to double-check whether that F is sharp or not). I've seen other bamboo-pipe-with-sax/clarinet-mouthpiece arrangements, at least one brand of which has a more complex fingering and more sharps and flats available, but this one is simple-system.

I think it's more accurate to say that I have become the instrument's "keeper" rather than it's owner. I am the third person to have it, and only the first paid any money for it; my plan is to play it as long as it is useful to me and I'm still exploring what it can do, and pass it on to someone else who will find it fascinating and/or useful once I've acquired a more versatile single-reed instrument and started to find this one limiting. At a guess I'd say a couple years, but it could take longer if I finally get used to pennywhistle fingering and/or discover fingerings for the accidentals.

Here's the thing: at Pennsic, do you think I'll get away with claiming (well, "politely asking others to pretend along with me") that it's a chalmeau (the ancestor of the clarinet)?

The other big question is whether I'll master dynamics on the reed enough to play softly before someone else in my camp complains about the noises I make trying to play it.

Oh, and another cool thing about Baitcon[*] was getting to borrow a soprano sax for a while, and discovering that I need not be as afraid of soprano single-reeds as I am of soprano double-reeds. I have trouble controlling the pitch on a soprano krumhorn or cornamuse, despite being comfortable on alto, tenor, and bass. But the soprano sax seemed fairly easy to control, to the extent that I could reliably get sounds out of it at all, and no harder to make sound than an alto sax. I was surprised. Of course, I'd forgotten most of the fingerings, but that's, I suppose, is what happens when one picks up an instrument one doesn't actually play and hasn't touched at all in a very long time. I'm still hoping for an insanely-great-yard-sale-deal-to-brag-about-for-years tenor sax miracle (hey, I don't buy lottery tickets so I have to be delusional about something else), but I'll stop giving soprano horns funny looks.

[*] There were a great many other, as yet unreported by me, cool things about Baitcon.