Bass saxophone and how to make it easier (a long crash course)

So I have yet to see a in depth video on KZbin on not only the bass sax and all of its quirks but how to make the horn more in tune and how to make it easier to play,
Hopefully this video helps someone out there who is delving into the world of bass saxophone.
Please any questions or criticisms on how to make a video better please let me know

[@Saxman_sam]

Yes I realize I contradict myself sometimes in this video. Just bear with me. Thanks for watching

[@jbturtsanyi9390]

I found that a refaced caravan baritone mouthpiece works super well but I got lucky because my sax is a good 1920’s holten.

[@Saxman_sam]

@@jbturtsanyi9390 oooh does it go up to high F?

[@quippic8]

You have a very nice saxophone!

[@ContrabassChris]

I saw your other video playing the contrabass clarinet - have you done a similar exercise to what you did here with that instrument?

[@Saxman_sam]

I have, I just don’t have a video on it as I do not own my own Bb contra yet. It’s in the works though. But contra is usually a lot more straight forward than bass sax I find.

[@pageseven1792]

So, are you basically saying in this whole video that in order for you to play your bass sax, you have to learn and use alternate fingerings for just about every note? This sounds like it will make it super hard to remember how to play, and also difficult to jump between saxophones if you have others in your collection.

[@Saxman_sam]

No not quite. Obviously for faster passages you will need to use standard fingers. But say for tuning purposes, if you’re holding out long notes, you want the best note you can get right? So there are alternate fingers to make some notes more in tune or to dampen a note to help blend. And as far as my personal bass saxophone goes I can use standard fingers on it just fine, but some notes are going to suck really bad or be really out of tune, just because of the way the horn was built. Think about it, when you’re playing bass saxophone, you’re not playing charlie Parker licks or playing Michael brecker licks or playing something a soprano or an alto would play, no, you’re the bass, the bottom, so you’re playing the underpinning notes, so you’re technique on the instrument should be more than able to incorporate some of these fingerings to help the bass saxophone not be as out of tune or stuffy. usually whole notes or half notes. But for example, say you have a relatively fast passage, obviously you cannot use a whole bunch of alternate fingerings why would you. But, another example, the Octave D and Eb, I do not think it is too terribly difficult to incorporate the Low C# key to vent those two notes, or the Eb key to vent the Low E, I do not think these are terribly difficult to incorporate.

[@Saxman_sam]

I know that first comment was very long, I apologize. On the topic of switching from say, tenor to bass or even baritone to bass, you don’t really need a lot of vent fingerings or alternate fingers because there has been a lot of development on these more regularly used saxophones. So these alternate fingerings for bass would be stupid on a tenor or Bari because of how the horn is built. I even believe I said at some point in the video the reason you need some of these vent fingerings is because where the octave pips are placed on the instrument. Now if you had something like a musicmedic bass with the “Altarac vent” (which I did not talk about) with multiple octave pips to assist in certain notes speaking better (specifically the octave D and Eb) than yes some of these fingerings would be pointless. I do hope this helps some