We've been working on another video - the idea to talk about recording saxophones, but it became obvious that many people have never looked at saxophones that hard, so the video stretched a bit - the first section looks at how saxes actually work and how you should not do certain things, and also the kind of detective work you should do when you have somebody with a sax that needs recording. After the explanations - I picked two mics - an AKG 414 and a Shure SM57 and I experimented with three different types of sax (Soprano, Alto and Tenor) to let you hear the kind of tones you can get and the likely problems.

Key clicks, pops and clacking can be heard if you listen carefully. All the clips are unprocessed - so no compression, or EQ or other tricks. You can also hear why reverb of some kind is pretty important for sax recordings.

I've also tried to explain a little about what sax players are actually doing to produce some of the sounds they produce, and how they can mess you up if you are not expecting them. I think the only real rule is that pointing a mic down the bell is the worst place for a mic, unless you really have to - and on a soprano sax, because there is no bend, the straight line tone is really quite nasty.