pocket sax

Nov 06, 2009
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Xaphoon = recorder with a reed
by: Pete Petersen

There's a guy here in Portland who sells them out of his music shop. It's kind of a weird quirky cross between a recorder and a reed instrument. The mouthpiece is fixed on, you can't change the way that's set up, reed is approximately the shape/size of a tenor sax reed, and the tone it produces is slightly sax-like, which is I guess why they can get away with calling it a "pocket sax" but that's where the similarity ends. It's a cylindrical instrument which more closely resembles a clarinet (by contrast, saxophones are cone-shaped instruments with a small-diameter tube near the mouthpiece and a large-diameter tube near the bell), and the tone holes are directly covered by fingers instead of mechanical keys/pads as with a recorder.

I did get to play one in the guy's shop, they're kind of fun to mess around on, I guess there are people who take them very seriously, according to their wikipedia article there is a Xaphoon orchestra in Norway -- but I don't see much benefit to use it as a step toward learning to play the sax, it'd be better to just start with a clarinet or even a real sax in the first place.

pocket sax

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