As we wind down 2023, we are now full-in on Christmas and holiday party season. I just wanted to take a minute and wish everyone who regularly visits my site health and happiness for the remainder of 2023, and all of 2024.  The New Year will see some major changes coming for Bassic Sax. The site will be down for maintenance for a bit while that work is ongoing. So while the site is still live, on behalf of everyone associated with Bassic Sax: Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays The post Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays ’23 first appeared on The Bassic Sax Blog ..read more

It is time again for what has become as [almost] annual tradition: the Bassic Sax Christmas gift roundup of saxophone-inspired gifts and collectibles that might find their way under your tree if you’ve been nice. However, if you’ve been naughty, I have some other stuff that you might find as well.  After what seemed like hours of painful searching in places like Etsy, eBay, and general Google searches, I narrowed things down to the following for 2023. To keep things fresh, none of these have appeared in previous years’ lists. The “Nice” List If you’ve been a nice saxophone player in 2023 ..read more

A collection of MOP key work on some of my vintage saxes I was having an interesting conversation on a sax discussion board the other day about my new SX90R Shadow tenor. A bunch of us were kicking around moving from vintage to new/modern horns.  A member of the forum pointed out that in addition to the good ergos of new horns, he preferred the lack of regular maintenance and repairs that his new horns required, when compared to vintage horns.  I pointed out that I am not in any way becoming a new horn, or even a modern horn player. Other than my brand new Shadow, my next newest horn ..read more

Given what’s going on in the world right now, I thought we could all use a bit of retro humour. You know, a chuckle from a time when things seemed, well, just a little simpler than they are today.  Enter Marilyn Monroe’s Thanksgiving photoshoot circa 1950. Here we see the star photographed as a pilgrim with a musket, alongside a turkey.  Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends and readers near and far! Tomorrow of course marks the official start to the Christmas season with Black Friday sales kicking off a holiday-buying frenzy. Therefore I wish you all a nice, simple holiday ..read more

It was 209 years ago today that a man was born who would forever change the musical landscape. Antoine-Joseph “Adolphe” Sax improved and invented many instruments, but he is of course most well known for the instrument that still carries his name to this day: the saxophone.  So as we take our horns out today, let’s pay homage to the man who made this all possible. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If it weren’t for Sax, we might all be playing something that looks like this….  or maybe this…. Thank you Mr. Sax. Your life was not easy, and you certainly never saw great pro ..read more

The Canadian Thanksgiving Day long weekend takes place almost six weeks earlier than the American one. For most Canadians—except many in Atlantic Canada for some reason—it is a statutory holiday. It was our Governor General of Canada, Vincent Massey, who in 1957 issued a proclamation that a day of Thanksgiving for the bountiful harvest would be observed on the second Monday in October. Because of Thanksgiving falling in October, there is the inevitable crossover with Halloween. This year we have the added bonus of having a Friday the 13th in the month as well. The result? A virtual cornucopia ..read more

Soprano Alto Tenor  Other Instruments Source: Wonderlane on Flickr.com We’ve all done it at some point: We’ve looked in our closets at our clothes and gotten rid of the stuff we haven’t worn in years. I recently came to the same realization as a sax player: I have too many vintage beauties that I have not used in the past 10+ years, and likely never will. However, unlike the used clothes that we donate to charity, these vintage beauties should go to homes where they appreciated and loved—like there are loved here. My wish is that they find homes where they are played like any good s ..read more

Since COVID closed down the world’s longest undefended border for over a year, I haven’t been down to the US very often. When I have been down visiting my friends, I haven’t had many chances to do any shopping. That all changed earlier this month, when my long-time friend Kenton and I went to our favourite music store: Bellingham Wind Works.  I was staying with Kenton and his wife Wendy, in Anacortes, WA for a few days. Since we’re both saxophone players, he and I decided to spend an afternoon trying out horns at Wind Works. Flutes & sax mouthpieces: what could go wrong? Kenton was lo ..read more

I have been so busy doing some work for my tech, and working on much needed updates for my site, that The Bassic Sax Blog has really taken a backseat. So a few weeks ago I decided to take a quick trip down the news sections of some search engines and find what has been happening over the past couple of years. (Yes, it had really been that long since I looked at current saxophone happenings. Wow! I had really let things slide.) True, most of these stories are now in fact history, and no longer news. Nonetheless, I felt they were important/strange/curious enough that they should be included here ..read more

Well here we are: the unofficial end of summer. I am not clear where the last 3 months of this calendar year went, but I must say, on a personal level, I am sad to see this season winding down. However, for the sake of the planet, the end of summer can’t come soon enough. We can only hope that fall will at last bring an end to the draughts that plague our province—which is normally known as being a rainforest.  Given that BC and Canada are having their worst wildfire season in history, our air quality on the coast has been very good so far. I would say in total, we in the Lower Mainland h ..read more