seamless gliss

[Captain Beeflat]

A friend of mine, a lifelong top flight alto pro, can seamlessly gliss the octave between middle D & top D at at any speed. He cannot explain how he does it & it is not a case of removing his fingers chromatically. He claims that "something happens in his throat". Clearly he is inducing some form of constriction in the throat. The gliss, however, is spectacular.
Does anyone out there use this tecnique, &, if, so, can they explain how it is done

[Morry]

I would guess that it is due to his excellent throat anatomy, and his well-developed skill at manipulating it. I had a tonsilectomy about 10 years back, and the doctor removed my uvula, and some of my soft palatte. Before this happened, I had never worked at altissimo and other advanced voicings. Now, I fear that I may never be able to develop those skills adequately.

[infoquest]

Capt. Beeflat-
Are you saying that he goes smoothly from D2 to D3 while keeping all 6 fingers depressed?? He doesn't vent any keys???

[Captain Beeflat]

Infoquest.
No, that is not what I said. On reaching top D he has the first palm key depressed, & the stack keys open, as one would expect. He is of the old school & appears reluctant to share his considerable skill. However, watching closely, he seems to release the R/H keys together, followed by the L/H keys as a unit, lifting his fingers very carefully. As I say, he is very reluctant to shew how it is done, but the effect, I assure you, is dramatic. He also says that it is "an alto thing" & will not attempt it on a tenor...Bb

[Kareeser]

I'm guessing he's just opening the vents a crack at a time, to alter the pitch...

hard to explain. I sure can't do it, :P

[Troy]

Check out this link on note bending, by a SOTWer named DanB. It describes it very nicely...or at least something similar that would probably work.
http://daniel.mcb.tripod.com/danielmcbreartysaxophonist/id11.html

[No Clever Name]

I can't do it on a D... but I can seamlessly slur an octave and a half down from high F using the front F key. That could do the trick for you, with some practice.

[bariman]

Maybe he just lips one note up and when he raises the next key, he starts with it lipped down, brings it in tune, then sharp, etc. It would take a lot of work to get it seamless, but it could be done. I didn't read that article Troy posted, but that seems the most likely case. Hey Captian, learn how to do the gliss really good, and then suprise him someday, and take a picture of his reaction! That should be good.

Bariman

[ichibaka]

I think what you're talking about could be a technique called smear. I have a senior that can go up the scale effortlessly by just pressing once fingering. its like glissing all the way up. he said its all abt throat position. expanding and contracting the throat. but til now i still cant do it. I agree it sounds really amazing!

[rhyssaxfan]

the easly most impresive thing ive heard in the way of glisses is when a guy from Sydney came up to our school to do a workshop he did a seamless three octave gliss on Clarinet :tongue9:
Seriously incredible. i mean absolutly NO break in the pitch or anything. Completely seamless and smooth.

Yep, i agree, hes a freak

[Eddie McLean]

Artie Shaw could do it on clarrie and he was no freak. He was incredible.
:shock:

[Dr_sax]

It´s probably a trick with the ringed keys on clarrie. I can do it on an open hole flute. It´s a thing of opening the hole slowly before lifting the key. No ringed keys on sax.

[Been-Jammin']

I hear a lot of people call the glisses "smears" too.
I can kind of do this, however, it's not really seamles - I'm still working on it. What works for me is lipping up notes while carefully raising the keys. It's too bad we don't have ringed key/open holed saxes, that would be quite nice.
How I started off was just doing it between 3 or 4 notes, like from Bb up to C#, then just worked on extending the range.
Ooh, I think my favorite example of a smear is a sax quartet arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue, where the soprano does the opening clarinet gliss. You can hear this at Saxtet Publications (http://www.saxtetpublications.com).
I also like the smear joshua redman does in "Blues in the Dark", where he glisses all the way up to..well, the upper altissimo range. Great stuff.
I know of a sax professor whom my teacher auditioned for that required all of his students to lip a note down an entire octave -without changing fingerings, just with the mouth. I can do a fourth on a good day.
So, it's a pretty tough technique to master