Unheard of Instruments in the Saxophone Family

hey everyone i'm sergeant first class brian sakawa saxophonist with the us army field man and today we are here at the home of dr paul cohen saxophonist educator and i hear owner of quite the collection of saxophones is that true paul i have a few instruments that i collect over the years some of them i play some of them i write about and some of them are my professional horns they're kind of everywhere some there some there some here some there which ones you want to see would you mind showing us all of them let's start over here let's go so glad sam was wrong for that i need a next step dr cohen this collection is absolutely amazing as a saxophonist it's like being in heaven um there are so many things here that i don't even know what they are i've never seen in person before and like i know we're all super excited to see them so choose one let's talk about it let's talk about a few of them yeah so what is this here this is the rifle and husted slide saxophone an instrument made in the 1920s part of a series of slide saxophones that manufacturers made at the time but this is the most elaborate in many ways the most functional give it a try it's a soprano saxophone with two octa keys okay so make my trombone friends jealous here wow that was wild outstanding that's standing very well and of course it goes down another octave too if you want to play low rock oh really wow that is something the slight saxophone from the 1920s tell me about this guy this is the amazing conusex an innovative instrument made by khan in the late 1920s around 1928 they advertised this instrument for about six months it became instantly rare nobody bought it because it's in the key of f it looks a little strange there's no music written for it at the time and the depression hit the next year so they made we know of about 20 or 25 that we can we can track down uh that are left and this is one of two that i have in my collection you have two out of 25 yeah i used to have three uh that's pretty and as i said in the advertisements it plays like a saxophone it sounds like an english horn and because of the bulb at the bottom it looks like a hexaphone okay let's try it it really does sound like an english horn what a beautiful sound you get out of it that's that's really something it has a range to low a and up to high g and it really requires its own special f mezzo mouthpiece in order to sound like it does well thank you for letting me use your mouthpiece nice playing i recognize this instrument because i've i've heard of it being used to demonstrate overtones obviously there's no keys what can you tell me about this one the summer company made this instrument for me uh some time ago and i went out to elkhart to give a lecture on my instrument collection i toured the plant and i worked out of the roster book for many many years and i asked if they could make one for me and they first said yes we'd be happy to do so and they said they would do it during the summer when their production was much lighter they did that for me they sent it to me in in september as a courtesy i was very grateful with a little note saying we made two of them we're never going to do it again it's so distraught that our production aligned to take each individual part to make sure it didn't go through the regular assembly that it really screwed up the production for the whole day but we're happy to have them and hope that you can use it for your uh for your teaching and i've used it ever since well it's really cool because we cover overtones in the dvd so i'd love to try some on it tribe it's an overtone monster the world's most perfect low b flat it works it works it works very well and then one thing to note to think about this even though this is um uh made on a off of a bundy body our professional saxophones whether they're selmers or yanagasaurus or yamahas if you strip down all the keys take all the tone holes remove the mechanism that will all look this emaciated the sling so something to think about this slim little tubing is our alto saxophone that we do all over our country playing on neat all right the one that i really want to know about as soon as i walked in is this bad boy over here two backs what what can you tell me about this instrument the two backs is a new instrument it's been made only for the last 20 years or so by benedict applesheim from germany he's a genius instrument designer and maker this is a contrabass saxophone with a slightly different shape to make it more compact it has a range an octa below a baritone same range as the traditional big contrabasses that we sometimes see and what's amazing about this instrument is even though it's big and looks un unwieldy it's the easiest playing of almost all my instruments and is a great sounding horn you should try it i gotta try this one out i guess i don't need a neck strap for this one yeah so we got to pick out a couple of our favorites so what are some of your favorites that you have in your collection can you show them to us well one of my favorites is a favorite because of the size and because of its rarity combined i have a curved king sarping in the saxophone that's the only one they ever made and i got it through a wonderful set of circumstances but i'd like to show it to you is that one over there absolutely this is a real favorite of mine this is a curved king sarpenino the only one they ever made it's ornately engraved it's brilliantly made has a detachable neck and it's gold-plated but beyond that it has a really terrific sound this one is intriguing to me i honestly i've never seen an instrument like this before it's a saxophone it is a second it's a saxophone but it has no keys we've seen the keyless one but it has a piece of leather so can you explain a little bit about this one this is another slide saxophone from the 1920s this one was also made by the king company from cleveland this slide saxophone indeed has a slit in the middle of the horn so one moves the fingers down up on the leather to to change the length of the slit being covered it's got notes impregnated on the straps you can actually play discrete notes and you can get a complete range on the instrument it was a novelty horn for the 1920s that was my next question when were they when were they using it where were they playing 1924 1925 these were strictly novelty horns and they didn't expect them to have a great life span so that they weren't greatly made and they were somewhat disposable so because of that few of them were made and even fewer than exist around this is the the king c saxophone very cool now we just had a look at one of the smaller instruments in your collection i hear you've got quite a big one somewhere else in the house yes i have to park it in another part of the house because it's too big for this room let's go out and find it great well dr cohen um what do we even say about this one right here this is the granddaddy of all saxophones this six foot six inch instrument was made in the first part of the 20th century and it's only one of 25 that were made we know of about 12 that are left wow this is an e flat country based saxophone an october below the baritone and it first was used by the military as a marching band instrument in the early part of the 20th century could you imagine like marching and that's what they're even there even the guy who got there where the strap would go on wow that proved impractical even for the military and they later replaced it in the early 1920s with the e-flat contrabass cerusophone that's part of the story but this instrument is magnificent in its stature and has floor wrestling quality of sound it's an extraordinary instrument to have there it is that goes from middle c down to low c and then b all right flat that doesn't work nope scales are too hard how about how about arpeggio c eg nope that's ridiculous well it does take a little time and it takes a mouthpiece that's best suited to the size of the instrument to get the better response so the contrabass mouthpiece itself is enormous and that as hard as it is to look at blowing it it actually makes it work better with the instrument but it takes some time to play that's i'd have to practice a lot well dr cohen we've seen quite a few saxophones today but i know that's not all of the saxophones that you have so where can we find out more information you know i have 150 instruments in my collection and with a lot of unusual variants of the ones i've already seen and they're all completely fascinating but you can go to my website at 204publishers.com learn some more information about the instruments and some other recordings and some music for these things as well as come to see my lectures from time to time in the area it's a great resource another great resource whether you're a beginning or an advanced student is the saxophone standard our comprehensive guide to playing the saxophone we invite you to check that out on our youtube channel youtube.com backslash u.s army field band dr cohen it's been a real pleasure thank you so much it's great to have you guys here come back there's much more to show you awesome

Channel: The United States Army Field Band

Views: 8,251,520

Rating: 4.8883696 out of 5

Keywords: army, soldier, saxophone, conno, sax, contra, subcontra, woodwind, tubax, overtones, saxophones, unusual saxes, unusual saxophones, paul cohen, bass sax, contrabass sax, contrabass saxophone, slide saxophone, slide sax, bass saxophone, tenor sax, sax demo, sax demonstration, free saxophone lesson, free sax lesson, how to play the saxophone, how to play saxophone, how to play sax, unusual instruments, crazy musical instruments, cohen, dr. cohen, saxophone museum, sax collection

Id: p-b6I1ihh2s

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 21 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/JWGhetto]

can a sax player explain what the guy was struggling with playing the lowest tones on that huge sax?

[u/audeus]

I wish they had played the one with the leather strap. That's a fascinating concept for a slide instrument

[u/YMK1234]

Man I want that thing in the end. Neighbour annoying? Fuck it, I'll just play a few bars and rattle the plates in his cupboard.

[u/sk3pt1c]

I didn't know Woz was into saxophones :)

[u/black_spring]

I really enjoyed hearing Bach's Fugue in G Minor on Saxophone (starts at 7:15 or so in this video) so I searched it... and these four guys were the top result.

https://youtu.be/pRJqsHBKP1Q

[u/Hootbag]

The last one is something you'd expect to be played by the Whoville band.

[u/KomusUK]

What did I just watch!? Im not sure if I want to join the army or a brass band, but I was entertained.

[u/Axewerfer]

If anyone wants to hear some of these instruments in action, check out the Nuclear Whale Saxophone Orchestra. I got the chance to see them in concert, and the sounds they get out of their horns are incredible.

[u/[deleted]]

So is it some unwritten code that joining the army band is like a direct promotion from E2 to E7?