Bb soprano saxophone

D4

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.

At frequencies below about 1 kHz, this curve looks rather like that for A#3, B3, C4 or C#4, but raised in frequency because the tube is effectively shorter because of the three open tone holes (see tone holes). At higher frequencies, however, the waves propagate past the open tone holes with greater ease, and the situation is more complicated. See the discussion in cut-off frequency. However, the 1 kHz cutoff means that there are only three strong peaks, so only three notes that one can 'bugle' with this fingering. The first peak can be reduced in magnitude and shifted in frequency using a register hole (operated by the octave key). See D5.

This note is, acoustically at least, a cross fingering: there is a key closed below the first open key, as the schematic inset shows. Because of the large size of the tone holes, cross fingerings have little effect at low frequency.

For general comments about the first register, see A#3. Compare with the impedance spectrum for a tenor sax on written D4: same fingering but sounding one octave lower.

Sound

Sound spectrum of a Bb soprano saxophone played using fingering for D4.
For more explanation, see Introduction to saxophone acoustics.

In the sound spectra for the low notes, we can notice a sudden increase in the negative slope of the spectral envelope that occurs close to the cut-off frequency of about 1.2 KHz.

Sound Clip

You can hear D4 played.