Why is the saxophone considered cheesy nowadays?

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auntblabby
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23 Nov 2020, 7:30 am

Mountain Goat wrote:

naturalplastic wrote:

Mountain Goat wrote:

Only if you put cheese in it. What is cheesy? I don't know what it actually means.

"Cheesy" means like "corny", out of date, or just out place. Not sure where the term comes from, but it may have something to do with "cheese cloth" that they ship big things of cheese wrapped in. If you you tear cheese cloth it sounds exactly like a fart. Hence the expression "who tore the cheese" that you would hear on TV in the Nineties.

Never heard that on TV.
Is cheese cloth still used? I thought it was?

cheesecloth is still used for filtering sediment in home-made wine. :hic:

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23 Nov 2020, 7:59 am

Yes. I thought we had used it. My Mum stopped making home made whine after my Dad used to drink it before it was ready.

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auntblabby
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23 Nov 2020, 8:19 am

mebbe that could be the germ of an adult gumdrop test :idea:

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23 Nov 2020, 9:25 am

ironpony wrote:

Oh I haven't done any mixing yet on it. With the trumpet I just meant in general I thought. I want the istrument to produce a sexy, lustful feel though. I googled what people thought were the sexiest instruments and the ones that come up most are sax and guitar. But trumpet didn't come up as one so far.

Well, I was going to say - PM me if you do get it far enough that you want to get a second opinion. I obviously wouldn't say anything about the creative direction but I'd at least try to identify where it's sitting in the mix, whether it needs more reverb, possibly filtering of certain frequencies, etc.. Without hearing it though it's difficult to say much other than I don't know what they mean by 'cheesy' unless they're really thinking it's an 80's instrument.

I was producing for about twelve years. Ended up calling it quits or at least long hiatus though when the mixing/mastering process took so much that it ate into my creative drives.

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techstepgenr8tion
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23 Nov 2020, 9:29 am

Blocks and Escher cooking with sax, and to good effect. Then again a warning - it's a 2018 tune that's styled in a 1997 drum and bass way which means it's loaded with 1980's sound score, so while it's a gorgeous tune and the sax sounds great it probably is, at least in the 1980's sense, cheesy, but - it's cheese I can endorse. :lol:

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techstepgenr8tion
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23 Nov 2020, 9:32 am

In a way I'd almost think of the sound of a saxophone as something like a cross between trumpet and oboe. Not sure if that analogy is helpful but maybe thinking of it's oboe'ish edges is useful.

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23 Nov 2020, 2:14 pm

The analogy helps. But I never thought of the oboe as a sexy or sultry instrument either.

naturalplastic wrote:

ironpony wrote:

Well I wanted to use the sax for a film project where it's suppose to give that film noir femme fatale feeling, where you have a femme fatale type character, who is up to no good, so to speak.

But I am wondering, is the sax perhaps too on the nose sounding for that nowadays? Should I use a trombone in the lower range perhaps instead, or does it not have the same femme fatale effect as the sax?

A trombone is not gonna communicate "femme fatale". Its too loud, and too brassy.

The saxophone is sort of bridge between the brass instruments and the woodwinds. It has a reed, but has brass type bell. So it combines the two types of sound. So you get the sexy sultry sound that you cant get with clarinets/oboes on one hand, nor with trumpets and trombones on the other.

But it might that for a modern movie, thats not meant to be a spoof of Forties film noir, it might come off as too obvious and too heavy handed. So maybe you could use a mellow synth sound, or guitar sound, or something.

Oh okay. Well my project is a crime thriller set in modern times. I could go for a spoof of Forties film noir and make it obvious intentionally, and own it, and do something like this for the small track I have in mind:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DfLvqpLlpM

Or I could do something like this and make it less of a spoof of old noir:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwVHqry4yug

But it seems you hear a lot of guitar like this in the 90s, so would it come off as spoofing 90s neo-noir then? Or which type would communicate femme fatale, more effectively? Or I could have both an electric guitar and sax playing if that's best?

But also, if you say the trombone does not sound sultry enough, would a bass trombone sound a lot more sultry in it's range?

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24 Nov 2020, 4:43 pm

A bass trombone, like a tuba, sounds about as "sultry" , and seductive, as a fart.

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24 Nov 2020, 7:17 pm

Oh okay, what about a bass sax? Same thing?

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24 Nov 2020, 7:29 pm

Bass clarinet is clearly the way forward

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techstepgenr8tion
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24 Nov 2020, 8:49 pm

naturalplastic wrote:

A bass trombone, like a tuba, sounds about as "sultry" , and seductive, as a fart.

I'm sure that does work for some, maybe even on those grounds.

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ironpony
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24 Nov 2020, 8:55 pm

Well I think a bass trombone sounds less flagelent in it's higher notes though.

auntblabby
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24 Nov 2020, 9:18 pm

ironpony wrote:

Oh okay, what about a bass sax? Same thing?

adophe sax's original model was the bass, it was deliberately pitched one whole tone lower than a bassoon, as he meant it to be competition for it. the original was wide-bore and had a very stout, stentorian tone with tremendously strong fundamental tones rather like a tuba. subsequent models were narrow bore which lessened the lung requirements of players but lacked a lot of the low-frequency oomph of the original. that said, it is meant to augment the bass volume of tubas and string basses in an ensemble, or for adding musical character to a song or symphony. nobody thinks of it as sounding "sexy" unlike its little brother the baritone sax which in the right hands has a sultry quality in its higher tones.

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24 Nov 2020, 9:28 pm

Oh okay. If I go with the sax, I was thinking of a bass or baritone, because I thought that would express sexy and sultry, without the cliched cheeziness of the tenor hopefully.

naturalplastic
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26 Nov 2020, 9:02 am

auntblabby wrote:

ironpony wrote:

Oh okay, what about a bass sax? Same thing?

Yes. And its the even smaller siblings: the alto, and tenor sax, that are most commonly used. And no kind of sax is actually commonly used in symphony orchestras playing classical music today AFAIK.

That's interesting about the early history. Knew it was named after its inventor - Adolf Sax - French musician and inventor who lived from 1814 to 1894. According to Wiki he invented the full range of saxes from soprano to contrabass. Intended for use in symphony orchestras and for marching bands. Today its almost NEVER used in symphony orchestras playing classical music, and only rarely used in marching bands. But his invention would conquer the world decades after his death in the twentieth century when used by African American jazz muscians.

For pioneering jazz saxophonists Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Illinois Jacquet, the main "axe" was the tenor sax.

Charlie Parker's main axe was the alto sax.

In modern commercial "smooth jazz" you have Grover Washington jr (alto and tenor sax), and Kenny G (tenor, alto, and soprano sax), Candy Dulfer (alto), Gato Barbieri (tenor).

I am not aware of anyone famous for playing the baritone, or bass sax.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 26 Nov 2020, 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

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26 Nov 2020, 9:40 am

I think the sax rocks.

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