They still boil down to technique and style, particularly with bending and vibrato, but the tremendous care you used to have to use to make sure no two notes ever overlapped is gone, and the independent velocity and foot controller control over timbre and growl etc. gives a wider range of expression than sampled saxes, even without a BC.

The biggest challenge now that the basic sound is so good is copping the virtuosity of most sax players. They are arguably the height of complex solo playing, and masters of long extended solos of chromatic and modal magic..! In fairness, sax players spend their entire lives around soloing, they don’t have much to do with comping and chording, so they got a head start on getting that one thing right!

I knew a great young sax player that would sleep with his horn, wake up and put it in his mouth and practice! He would practice on the breaks on gigs we did!

He’s with Brubeck lately. That’s what it takes in sax world…

Time to break out those Bird and Trane transcriptions! 🤯