Sax Fingerings

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Re: Sax Fingerings

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My pleasure, and no hurry.
Andrew Mowry
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Re: Sax Fingerings

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The previous version may have had a problem where WARBL was requesting too much power, making it not work on iPhones or iPads. Here's the fixed one.
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Re: Sax Fingerings

Post by ubizmo »

Finally, I've had a chance to explore the new recorder fingering. Straight away, I see that we lost G#. This is my fault, for not thinking this through. On a regular recorder the G# fingering is different in the two octaves. You're not trying to reproduce that behavior in WARBL, and the result is conflicts.

Specifically, with the new fingering, X|XXO|XXOO gives you B instead of G#. It's upper-octave counterpart, O|XXO|XXOO does the same (an octave higher, obviously). On a regular recorder, the upper octave fingering is the correct fingering for B, and O|XXO|XOOO would get you G#. So the question is, how should we do it on WARBL? Do we want to emulate the recorder's octave-dependent fingerings or do something else?

If the goal is to do an accurate emulation of recorder fingering, there are a number of changes that have to be made. That would make it very familiar to recorder players; I suppose all others could simply select some other fingering system. If the goal is to keep it recorder-ish but simple, then the solution is simply to assign xo|XXO|XXOO to G# in both octaves. We don't need it for B, since the low octave xo|XOO|OOOO already works in both octaves for that note. And O|XOO|XXOO gets high Cnat. And now that I experiment a bit more, high C# appears to be missing. I'm not sure what to suggest for that. Maybe the best solution is simply all holes open. That conflicts with no lower note and is equivalent to middle C# with thumb open, so it's logical.

There's only one other thing I'd add. The normal middle C# alternate, O|XXO|OOO, is unavailable, since it conflicts with high A. On a real recorder this is no problem because that thumb hole is only cracked, not wide open, for high A. On WARBL there's conflict. Still, I think some such alternate C# is needed. I suggest O|OXO|XXOO.

Thanks for the low C#. I like it.
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Re: Sax Fingerings

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I guess my instinct it to go with the "recordish but simple" option, so that both octaves can be the same. Would that be acceptable for recorder players?

My mistake, I meant for all holes open to play the middle C# and lowering only the thumb to play the high C#. Do you need to have an alternative for the middle C#?
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Re: Sax Fingerings

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By "all holes open" I meant to include the thumb hole, so that should be the high C#. As for an alternate middle C# in addition to X|OOO|OOOO, yes that would be desirable, to have a trill from D. Recorder players use that a lot.
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Re: Sax Fingerings

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Yes, sorry, I was confusing the thumb function with the sax one where the effect is the opposite.

If you think it will be intuitive I can add o oxo xxoo as a C# alternative.
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Re: Sax Fingerings

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Here it is, if you'd like to try it-- I haven't tested all the changes, but here's what I did (all these should work in both octaves):

- Fixed C# so it's OOO OOOO in both octaves
- Added XXO XXOO for G# (both octaves)
- Added OXO XXOO as an alternative C#
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Re: Sax Fingerings

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admin wrote: Wed Oct 02, 2019 7:19 pm Here it is, if you'd like to try it-- I haven't tested all the changes, but here's what I did (all these should work in both octaves):

- Fixed C# so it's OOO OOOO in both octaves
- Added XXO XXOO for G# (both octaves)
- Added OXO XXOO as an alternative C#
Looks good. I'll test it tonight.
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Re: Sax Fingerings

Post by ubizmo »

I gave it a quick try last night, and all looks good, except for the alternate middle C#. That wasn't working. Going from O|OXO|OOOO to O|OXO|XXOO didn't do anything. The regular all-open C# works fine in both octaves, as does D.
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Re: Sax Fingerings

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Oops, sorry, I’ll figure out what’s going on with the C# and get another version to you today. Thanks for all your help on this!
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