Excerpt From Santy Runion

An Excerpt from Santy Runyon's
Suggestions For Woodwind Players
"...I would like to explain to everybody how I

found out about a very novel and practical way to
teach woodwind instruments. This happened at
Missouri University when I was very young and I
was playing for my meals at Sampson's Café
every evening for two meals a day. A young
college professor came there every night for
several weeks. He finally approached me and
said, he thought I was getting the wrong kind of
a sound out of the saxophone. I, of course,
responded that I was plenty aware of that. I said
to this gentleman, "what do you think I practice
eight hours a day for? If I thought I was great, I
wouldn't have practiced that much."
He invited me over to his laboratory where he had one of the first electronic
instruments called a Theramin. The Theramin consists of a box with radio tubes
producing oscillations at two sound-wave frequencies above the range of hearing.
Together, they produce a lower audible frequency equal to the difference in their
rates of vibration. Pitch is controlled by moving the hand or a baton toward or away
from an antenna at the right rear of the box. This movement alters one of the
inaudible frequencies. Harmonics, or component tones, of the sound can be filtered
out, allowing production of several tone colors over a range of six octaves.
This man was also was knowledgeable enough to make a quarter tone organ - not
half steps, like the piano. He manufactured this quarter tone organ himself, devised
a keyboard for it, and wrote music for it - quite a talented young man.
He asked me if I had a mouthpiece I didn't care about. I had several that weren't
very good. What he did was cut off the tip of one of the mouthpieces and just took
the shank that went on the cork. The object of using this shank that goes on the cork
was to build a little container for a speaker and attach it to this Theramin. He had an
arrangement that looked like a three-dial radio. He set the speaker in motion by
turning on the theramin, and changed the pitch from sharper to flatter, or higher or
lower, you might say.
We attached this speaker to the saxophone with

this cutoff shank of the mouthpiece. This set the
column of air in motion that was already in the
saxophone, and you could play in the low register
of the instrument. When you got the speaker to
sound 880 vibrations a second (CPS) you could
play all over the instrument, upper register as well
as lower register. If you got is below 880 CPS, you
could play the lower register fine, but the upper
register wouldn't respond. When you got is above
880 CPS, the upper register would play fine. If you
released the octave key, it would stay in the upper register. Only when you got it on
880 vibrations per second would the sax play in both registers.
Now you understand that this is without any air at all, because, as a matter of fact,
the saxophone is not a vacuum. It is full of air already. The object of this little device
was to set the column of air in motion that was already in the instrument. There is
no need to blow it full of air because it is already full of air.
I thought this was a very unique experience. You could play all over the instrument
with a nice sound. When you duplicate this by playing on the mouthpiece, with the
reed on the mouthpiece, (playing the saxophone in the regular way), you can put the
mouthpiece on the instrument in the proper place so it plays in tune. If you play
tighter than that, then you throw the pitch of the instrument sharp, so you have to
pull the mouthpiece out. Saxophones are not designed for the mouthpieces to be
pulled out too far. With the mouthpiece pulled out too far, it throws the high notes
flat with the low notes. So what you have to do then is to "pinch" to get those notes
in tune.
...Bear in mind that when this little speaker was turned on - when it was activated -
the only human element involved in playing the instrument was myself fingering the
instrument. The sound was very good and the volume depended upon the amount of
energy that was fed into the speaker. When the volume was turned down, the
saxophone still played, but softly. When the volume was turned up, and the intensity
of the speaker was increased, more volume was produced by that process. No
human element was involved, no wind being blown, and nobody's mouth was on the
mouthpiece. This thing was playing just through the vibrations of the little speaker
that he built.
As it turned out, the optimum results were obtained on Alto Saxophone by producing
880 cycles per second on the mouthpiece. It turned out that the embouchure
pressure was right in the middle. It was neither too tight nor too loose, and it
produced all the notes on the saxophone with excellent results. The same process
was used in determining the note that should be used on the Tenor, which is a "G"
concert, one tone below the "A" 880, and on the clarinet, one tone above the "A"
880, which is a "B" concert. So it is "B" for the Clarinet, "A" for the Alto, and "G" for
the Tenor, and a major third lower, an "Eb," is for the Baritone Sax. (These are
concert notes.)..."
For more information be sure to read Santy Runyon's Suggestions for Woodwind
Players

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Excerpt From Santy Runion

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An Excerpt from Santy Runyon's

Suggestions For Woodwind Players

"...I would like to explain to everybody how I

We attached this speaker to the saxophone with

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