Is a curved soprano saxophone harder to play than a straight soprano saxophone?
I’m a saxophonist. I play alto but dabbled in soprano when I was part of saxophone quartet. The leader brought along a straight and curved soprano sax and I was curious as you are as to whether the straight soprano was easier to play than the curved. I can tell you from experience that the straight soprano is much easier to play than the curved. Also, the sonority is everso slightly different, and from a person perspective, I musch prefer the sonority of the straight soprano. When you think about it logically, the fact that the curved soprano sax is curved means that when you breath, you are going to have to work harder to get the air to flow downwards then upwards than you would do to just blow and let the air flow straight down with a straight soprano. You may be interested to know that Adolphe Sax’s original sopranos were straight. Larger saxes were curved and looped to enable the players to reach the keys and to allow the instrument to be carried. In terms of a strap, there are som
