A saxophone is a woodwind without any open holes covered by fingers. Some holes are always open to make notes, but all of them are closed by a key pad, as opposed to fingers like the other woodwinds you mention, Colin.
I suspect if you covered all the holes with keys and pads you would lose a lot of color if not artistic nuance. Although I'm not a pipe maker, I would guess it would be very difficult to add keys like the Boehm system on an F or G chanter. At least with flat fingered styles of piping you would lose a lot of nuance with keys. Compare Irish wooden keyless flute playing with Irish players of silver Boehm system flutes. They can play faster on the silver keyed flute, and they can be jazzy, but personally I don't see those as advantages. YMMV A fully keyed NSP chanter would make choyting exceedingly easy. ;-) I'm with Richard. On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Richard York <rich...@lizards.force9.co.uk> wrote: > Interesting... would it actually be easier, with all keys and therefore > "all fingers [....] available > to hit keys "? > As it is I'm still teaching my fingers when to move to make all the notes > faster, and still letting my thumb & little finger learn which position is > which, but most of the fingers are limited to their unique notes. > If several fingers were available to hit the same key, I feel instinctively > that it would be more confusing, even though I happily do exactly that on > concertinas and other keyboard instruments. > Somehow the woodwind holding position says different things to my hands, and > I expect a particular finger always to produce a particular note. > > What would you hold it by, given that touching any key would produce a note? > - you'd need some blank bits to keep your fingers on, and then have to lift > them up and move them to the notes. > More confusion. > > I think I'll stick to having holes! > > Richard. > > > > On 22/03/2011 21:28, Colin wrote: >> >> Interesting thought but which woodwind instruments don't have at least 6 >> or 7 open (unkeyed) holes? >> All mine have the standard unkeyed holes along with the other keyed ones. >> Maybe the large amount of metalwork hides the fact the holes are there but >> certainly flutes, clarinets, saxophones, bassoons and oboes have open holes. >> Flutes, of course, go a step further in having keys with holes in them . >> As far as I know, there is no member of the woodwind class made without >> open holes (discounting some bass instruments which would be impossible for >> the fingers to reach maybe). >> >> Colin Hill >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Boris" >> <matthew_p...@hotmail.com> >> To: <nsp@cs.dartmouth.edu> >> Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2011 9:06 PM >> Subject: [NSP] Has there ever been an NSP with _all_ keys (no open holes)? >> >> >>> >>> I was pondering recently, both on the stacatto effect of the keys, the >>> difficulties in only having two fingers free to hit keys, and also >>> thinking about whether a person missing a hand could play bagpipes in >>> general. >>> >>> A thought occurred to me: have any NSP been made which had every hole >>> covered by a key? With such a settup, all fingers would be available >>> to hit keys. I think that's how a lot of modern woodwinds are made; is >>> there any reason besides tradition that this is not regularly done on >>> NSP? >>> >>> -Matthew >>> Arlington, Virginia, USA >>> -- >>> >>> >>> To get on or off this list see list information at >>> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >>> >>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Text inserted by Panda IS 2011: >> >> This message has NOT been classified as spam. If it is unsolicited mail >> (spam), click on the following link to reclassify it: >> http://localhost:6083/Panda?ID=pav_2380&SPAM=true&path=C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Richard\Local%20Settings\Application%20Data\Panda%20Security\Panda%20Internet%20Security%202011\AntiSpam >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> > > > >
