Which saxophonists' tone do you have a problem with?

esoj: you're indie so go away you ;)

I love everything abt him. i hope someone will list someone i have a prob with bcz i was thinking abt it after i posted this q and i still can't come up with one.

x-post; er, 'schmaltzy' on alto bob? anything but that surely.

And even though I really like him as a person and a bandleader and composer, I have to say that Ken Vandermark's tone is kind of ass.

the 70's stuff with george russell is not pretty, maybe you mean that julio?

it's that way he hangs on the note for just too long, and maybe something of that blues lick element that annoys despite the other elements of his compositions -- not a problem on the fast tunes, which i dig more, except maybe on the head

braxton's tone can sometimes sound just too pure -- ok he can twist licks nicely at the end, but on his less obviously rhythm based tracks he sometimes gives me a pain, sounding like a someone poking on a synth thats filter is too wide -- the extreme for me is when he plays the frigging flute, but that doesn't answer your question except in addressing braxton's overall tone

i keep on thinking that the quick flash shimmering "keening" quality of juimmy lyons' work is the best way to use an alto -- it leaves a mark sufficient to state the idea w/out indulging the alto sax sound which sometimes seems just too broad

but i say that's the fault of the instrument, not the player

he has been superceded, ok !!

instead of sending cheques to his estate howabout just following up on one or two dozen of the players that took coltrane's ideas and freed them from that frustrated turmoil of a life that his art reflected so clearly

i mean, braxton is just the most obvious post-coltrane player, but he emerged in the '70s, so hey, there're plenty of post-Braxton players these days

with abstract music, consumers often seem twenty years behind the action -- talk to your local free-er players -- if familiarity helps, i'm sure they can rip off a 'trane or coleman cover for you and add their own elements of improvisation with their own particular tone colour-- ain't live music exciting ?

and another idea, if the tone is getting to you, then maybe just find some other music with new notes in it and maybe you'll get sick of the tone of that eventually too, huh ?

but again, 'trane tried lots of things which so many players have been _subtly_ infuenced by to the extent that what was good about 'trane has now been incorporated into what they're doing now -- don't forget, 'trane had five years max to push all his new ideas through, which to this listener left him little time to get his harmonic range up to those ambitious tasks, let alone his tone

which is to say that i've enjoyed much more the individual members of borbet. showing off their chops in other settings with players that force them to behave

roger you are gonna have to do better than that. Braxton's samll group work i've really enjoyed. as far as the alto goes, well, lets just say i don't need to hear anymore stuff that is composed for saxophone (heard berio's sequenza for alto and that just didn't grip me in the way that Braxton's stuff can, search 'for alto, 'koln 1978' and '19 compositions' (I think) on new albion where he is 'intense', but only for a minute or two, its all concentrated and its a blast!).

as far as Zorn goes, love his tone and I was just listening to company 91, volume 3. that year, zorn was present and he has that control over his screams and so on, just like jordan puts it. His improvising on it is something i always enjoyed and I'd wish he'd stopped composing and just stuck to improv and doing stuff like masada (he is coming here this month and i hope to see that. his duo with chadbourne on incus is a winner. a wonderful deconstruction.

uh, yeah, i agree

i've seen so much crit of brax done using throwaway claims like boring, academic, scientific, retentive, square

and both braxtob and zorn has improvised with a variety of people, and then sometimes composer, sometimes director, sometimes simply participant -- how do you write off everything all these guys have done

i feel the same as julio -- if you're gonna slag zorn and braxton then at least
a) tell us why, beyond playground rock music name-calling
and/or
b) suggest someone who does it better

the tone of this thread bothers me somewhat -- "who's tone do you have a problem with ?" -- o.k., well let's at least get something constructive out of it, beyond obligatory swipes at kenny g type people or stuff like "brotz is too rough, mithcell too po-faced, jarmen too zen, coleman to weird, ..."

please -- _why_ do you have a problem with such'n'such ? who would you suggest is doing a better job with the same sort of music ?

(it's funny, but as soon as i saw roger's post, i felt the same "problem" with it's tone coming on that julio seems to have had)

so roger, more please

''the 70's stuff with george russell is not pretty, maybe you mean that julio?''

well I've only that from other ppl so i don't know, really. can you recommend something?