Posts Tagged ‘saxophone’

John Mills is one of central Texas’ most in-demand saxophonists, arrangers, and composers, covering a complete spectrum of musical styles — jazz, R&B, salsa, classical, rock ‘n roll, world music, country, funk, alternative, blues, folk, gospel, and more — in concert and in the recording studio. During his diverse professional career he has performed, arranged, and composed on a vast number of CD’s, film/TV soundtracks, and jingles.

He is an also an active educator, clinician and adjudicator. While Director of Jazz Studies at Southwest Texas State University, his students won three Downbeat Magazine awards and he designed a bachelor’s of Music degree in Jazz Studies which is now fully approved by the Texas governing board and enjoying success. Some of his former students have toured with the jazz orchestras of Ray Charles, Harry Connick Jr., and Maynard Ferguson.

John Mills’ new CD on 482 Records, Courage “The Way Out Is Via the Door,” teams him with legendary jazz bassist Steve Swallow and revered poet Robert Creeley. This unique project showcases his compositions as well as his improvisations on saxophones, flute, bass clarinet, and textural keyboards.

The Rovner Ligature

Liguatures don’t pop into the mind of most people when they consider upgrading their setup. They do play a significant role in the entire equation though. Today I want to focus on the Rovner’s Light and Dark ligature. One of the qualities in equipment that I look for is consistency, and this is where these shine. They have a fabric band that encircles the mouthpiece and reed and a single adjustable screw which turns from the back side.

One of the benefits of the design is that it is easy to mount the reed accurately as the screw pulls the fabric tight from the back side away from the reed. On the standard two-screw metal ligature the reed will not only slide as you tighten the screws, but the metal will also damage the bark which will ultimately lead to an early demise to your reed. Another significant benefit to the Rovner is by using a flexible material it will provide even pressure and mold to the shape of your reed. This is even more apparent to me how important it is since after using metal ligatures for years I have seen the metal deform to fit the reed and create gouges in almost every case.

One of the less obvious benefits is the ability to change the mounting position giving you some amount of control over how bright the reed will play. Since the material is flexible you can slide the edge of the rovner slightly forward on the reed (twards the tip). By pressing down on the edge which is slighly over the vamp area of the reed as you tighten it, the Rovner will slightly deaden the reed giving a warmer sound by supressing full resonance of the reed. Of course there will be a subtle change in the response of the reed, but nothing that can’t be easily adjusted to after a bit of playing. The other option of course is to slide the ligature further twards the back of the reed allowing it to resonate more freely. This will give a feel and sound more similar to what you would get out of a standard metal ligature especially if you follow the mounting position guide embedded in one of Selmers mouthpieces.

Rovner has a good product here and the benefits for me as a player are numerous. Even though it may seem insiginificant, this ligature saves me time and frustration. Mounting the reed accurately is so important and I am quickly able to do so with this one. These also are very inexpensive especially considering how much some of the botique makers are charging for theirs. Also I have never had a Rovner break on me even with regular use for over a decade.

Well, there you have it. At this point you might be wondering if it’s worth a try. As always if what you have works for you then by all means stick to it! But if any of the above benefits seem like they would be useful to you then it’s a very inexpensive way to test them out. Heck…if you don’t like it sell it on Ebay afterwords and only be out a few bucks on the whole exchange.

Jake Lampe