Here's a thread NOT about our gear, for a change!

One of the things most typical about a sax, and other winds and horns, too, is the ability to change TIMBRE drastically between (or even during!) notes. Unfortunately, due to the static, snapshot nature of samples, this is very difficult to do with just velocity (you can change timbre even on quiet notes). But there IS a workaround...

If you play a scale up and down your keyboard, you will hear that between certain notes, the timbre changes as you go from one sample (at that velocity) to another (at the same). This is due to the fact that virtually no arrangers out there have a different sample for each individual note, but use the same sample for a range of notes (and the smaller the range, the more natural the sound).

Now, think about these adjacent, but different sounding samples. By using your bend lever (or a pitch switch if you have one) you can play the same note three different ways. You can just play the note. You can play the note BELOW where you want to be, but before you strike the note, you can bend UP to that note. And you can play the note ABOVE your target note, and bend DOWN before you hit it. So you have two or three ways, depending on sample ranges, to hit the exact same note, but all three (or two if the range is bigger) will sound totally different, timbrally.

The REAL trick is learning, for each sound (they are always going to be in different places) exactly what notes you can do this to, and which you can't. Learn the sample boundaries of your favorite sounds. Exploit them for timbral variation.

A simple exercise to practice is to play a scale, or a lick, and practice bending the note up pre-strike for one time through, play it straight one time, then play the same scale or lick bending down pre-strike. Try to get it as clean as the straight version, even when bending. It takes practice, but dramatically opens up your soloing palette.

Take a careful listen to the timbre as you either bend the note up, or down... Which of them sounds more realistic. Do you prefer a single note repeated line that goes do-be-do-be-do-be, or does it sound better as be-do-be-do-be-do (tough to write about this, but you'll hear it in a flash)? The same technique can make blues guitar string bending (they'll often bend a string to a note, then play the same note on an open or fretted string) quite realistic, too.

Give it a try...
-------------------------------------------------

Sorry if I am telling you experienced players something you already know, but perhaps there are some bend lever newbies that might benefit from this...

Good post. Helpful, useful information. Something to practice.

I have been doing this some times, for some time now.

It "disappeared" when I started using softsynths, since the samples themselves were much better.

What's a scale?

chas

You can still do it on the softsynths as well, though... In fact, it works better at times on these because every single note (on some of them) is sampled separately, often at many different velocity levels. This means you don't have to learn where the boundaries are, they are on every separate note! And you get a choice of them by either bending a whole tone for one tone, or a half step for another.

The main thing that most of the softsynth saxes don't do is automatically remap samples on identical notes. In other words, you want to play a repeated note (da-da-da-da-da) at the same velocity (it's not a crescendo or diminuendo), but you want it to phrase differently (da-do-be-do-ba-da) so you don't get that giveaway machine gun repetition. This technique, even on sophisticated softsamplers, can still open up your possibilities...

And it's the ONLY way to do it in hardware....

Ask a fish. They've got loads of them.