Bb tenor saxophone

E4

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.

At frequencies below about 1 kHz, this curve looks rather like that for D4 and D#4, but raised in frequency. At higher frequencies, however, the situation is complicated by the cut-off frequency. Here, the 1 kHz cutoff is also weakening the third peak. The first peak can be reduced in magnitude and shifted in frequency using a register hole (operated by the octave key). See E5.

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 soprano sax on written E4: same fingering but sounding one octave higher.

Sound

Sound spectrum of a Bb tenor saxophone played using fingering for E4.
For more explanation, see Introduction to saxophone acoustics.

Sound Clip

You can hear E4 played.