Subtone
Subtone is essential as a way of generating sound when playing the saxophone and clarinet , especially in jazz, but occasionally also in contemporary music.
While in classical music the tone should sound evenly across all registers, some jazz saxophonists try to elicit a wide variety of timbres from their instruments. In traditional jazz you often hear the subtone in the lower register, a breathy, quieter, gentler tone in which the air noise clearly resonates.
The subtone is particularly often used in ballads on the tenor saxophone, often in combination with vibrato . Ben Webster and Stan Getz but also Archie Shepp and Grover Washington play z. B. often subtones in the lower registers. Not all players can generate the typical subtone sound on their instruments, modern mouthpiece / reed combinations often make this much more difficult or do not produce an attractive sound.
There are different views on the creation of the sub-tone, some of which are contrary to "correct" playing techniques and the influence of reed and mouthpiece. Subtones can be created, for example, by rolling the lower lip a little forward so that the reed is dampened a little by the lip and vibrates less. The lower jaw can also be dropped a little.
Occasionally, the swing clarinetist also speaks of a subtone in the "low register".
Individual evidence
- ↑ Denis Gäbel, Michael Villmow: Saxophone For Dummies . John Wiley & Sons, 11 October 2011, ISBN 978-1-118-08974-3 , pp. 261-.
- ^ Richard Ingham: The Cambridge Companion to the Saxophone . Cambridge University Press, February 13, 1999, ISBN 978-1-107-49405-3 , p. 127.
- ^ Gunther Schuller: The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945 . Oxford University Press, 1991, ISBN 978-0-19-507140-5 , pp. 13-14 on Benny Goodman .
- ^ Percy Alfred Scholes: The Oxford companion to music: self-indexed and with a pronouncing glossary and over 1,100 portraits and pictures . Oxford University Press, January 1, 1955, p. 191.