Saxophone: Belgium musical instrument

The saxophone which can also be called the sax is a conical-bore woodwind musical instrument that is usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to the mouthpiece of the clarinet. This musical instrument was invented by a Belgian instrument maker called Adolph Sax in 1846. Adolph sax wanted to create a musical instrument that would be most powerful and vocal of all the woodwind instruments and the most used of the brass that would fill the gap middle ground between the two sections. He got an exclusive right from the government to market the saxophone on the 24^th of june 1846 in two groups of seven instruments each. Each of the series is made up of instruments of various sizes differing transposition. The series pitched Bb and Eb that were designed for the military bands has shown extremely popular and most sax  we meet today are from this particular series. Instruments that are from the orchestral series pitched in C and F and they never acquired a foothold. And today the Bb and Eb instruments have substituted the C anf F instruments in classical music. The saxophone is proving to be appealing in the military band music and it is the most commonly used or linked with Jazz and Classical music. There are considerable materials available for performance of concert music in the classical idiom for the members of the sax category. The players of this musical instrument are called saxophonists.

The saxophone was built and developed in the year 1846 by Adolph sax, a Belgian instrument producer who is also a flutist and a clarinettist working in Paris, France. Sac started with the development of an instrument with the projection of a brass instrument and the nimble of a woodwind while he is still working in his father’s instrument shop in Brussels. He intended that the instrument should play overtone at the octave different from the clarinet that rises in pitch by a twelfth when it is played overtone. Before his work on the saxophone, Adolph has already made many improvements to the bass clarinet by upgrading the keywork and the acoustics of the instrument and extending the lower range of the instrument.

The saxophone is made up of a nearly conical tube of thin brass and sometimes coated with silver, gold or nickel and also flared at the tip to generate a bell. At intervals parallel with the tube are between 20 and 320 tone holes of differing size in conjunction with two very small speaker holes to help the playing of the upper register. These holes are covered by keys called pad cups containing soft leather pads that are closed to generate an airtight seal; some of the holes stay open and others are closed. The keys are kept under control by buttons that are pressed by the fingers while the right thumb rest to assist the saxophone balanced. The fingering of the musical instrument is mixture of that of the oboe with the boehm system and is very alike to the flute or the upper register of the clarinet.  The best and the simplest design of saxophone is the straight conical tube, besides the sapranino and soprano saxophones are normally of this straight design. Meanwhile, as the lower pitch instruments would be unacceptably long if it is straight, for erqonomic reasons, the larger instrument normally join with a U-bend at or a little bit above the third lowest tone-hole.

Most saxophones both the past and present instruments are manufactured from the brass but they are categorized as woodwind musical instrument rather than the brass as the sound waves are produced by a reed that swings between two points and not the players lips against a mouthpiece as in the brass musical instrument because they are different pitches that are produced by opening and closing key. The screw pins that link the rods to the posts and also the needle and the leaf springs that make the keys to return to their rest position after being released are collectively produced of blued or stainless steel. Most saxophones that are being produced since the year 1920 have soft touches made from either plastic or mother of pearl. After completing the construction of this musical instrument, the producer usually apply a thin coating of clear or coloured acrylic lacquer or even silver plate over the bare brass. The lacquer or plating is there to protect the brass from oxidation and also maintains the shiny appearance. Many types of and colours of surface finish have been used over the years and it is also possible to plate the musical instrument with nickel or gold and a number of gold-plated saxophones have been existing. Plating the saxophone with gold is a very expensive process; this is because gold does not adhere directly to brass and as such, the brass is first plated with silver before gold will be used. This musical instrument uses a single mouthpiece just like the clarinet. Although most players of this instrument use reeds produced from Arundo donax cane, since the 20^th century, some have also been made of fiberglass and some other composite materials. The mouthpiece of this instrument is larger than that og the clarinet, it has a wider inner chamber and does not possess the cork-covered tenon of a clarinet mouthpiece because the neck of the instrument is fixed inside the mouthpiece but the mouthpiece of the clarinet is inserted inside the barrel. The most essential difference between the clarinet embouchure and the saxophone embouchure is that the saxophone mouthpiece should enter the mouth at much lower or flatter angle that the clarinet, also the clarinet embouchure must be more firm than the saxophone embouchure.

The saxophone first gained popularity in the suitable activity it was designed for; that is the military band. Even though the musical instrument was ignored in Germany, French and Belgium military took a good advantage of the instrument that Adolph Sax designed particularly for the military bands.