I broke down and added a Venova, Yamaha's "Casual Musical Instrument," to my collection. Since it is a soprano saxophone that fingers like a recorder, you could by a stretch call it a kind of recorder. Just as the Vorson electric guitar and the Kala Ubass (and the Baroquelele that I tried to get a first-hand look at over at Lark in the Morning) are technically ukuleles.
The Venova is also my first single-reed. (My bombarde is a double reed, like an oboe, and so is the crumhorn although in that case it is a reed cap instrument and your lips aren't in contact with the reed). A Rico 2.0 reed, at the moment. The Venova ships with a plastic reed but it is stiff and hard-playing and doesn't sound as good, so I slipped a real cane reed into my mpc right away.
(Yes, I'm already starting to talk sax. They never write "mouthpiece" all the way out.)
From squawk to "that sorta sounds like an instrument" was about an hour on this one. At the moment I'm balancing the needs of tone and range over the needs of not having the neighbors bang on my door; it is actually fairly easy to play softly and I do like the tone with that kind of embouchure but the range is constricted; bottom two notes are rough and I can only get a few notes into the second octave.
Why is another question, one I'm really starting to obsess over. I have yet to get my keyboard arranged so I can start using it again. I have lots of musical thoughts but I'm not really writing or recording anything. It is just endless practice. Practice which keeps underlining how much of an amateur I am and am likely to remain.
Which is maybe why. I can't play an instrument well enough to carry a performance with just that. So instead I'm orchestrating -- and for that, it is nice to have a good pallet of colors.
(The fact that I'm trying to play these all live now, instead of doing them with MIDI...well, that's another issue.)
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