Bb tenor saxophone

D#5

Conventional Fingering

Impedance

Fingering a key depressed a key not depressed a hole covered a hole uncovered a part of the mechanism that is not normally touched Details in fingering legend. Acoustic schematic a closed tone hole an open tone hole Non-specialist introduction to acoustic impedance Non-specialist introduction to saxophone acoustics Notes are the written pitch. Frequencies are the sounding frequency, for Bb saxophone. Unless otherwise stated, the impedance spectrum is for a Bb saxophone.

This is the second note in the second register – meaning that it plays at the second peak on the impedance spectrum. It differs from D#4 (the corresponding note in the first register) in that it uses a register hole. This causes a leak in the bore that weakens the first impedance peak, but has little affect on higher peaks – see register hole for an explanation, and compare with D#4, whose impedance spectrum is almost identical except for the first peak. Above about 1 kHz, the curve is irregular: see the discussion in cut-off frequency.

Compare with the impedance spectrum for a soprano sax on written D#5: same fingering but sounding one octave higher.

Sound

Sound spectrum of a Bb tenor saxophone played using fingering for D#5.
For more explanation, see Introduction to saxophone acoustics.

Sound Clip

You can hear D#5 played.