Jay Coburn

And when you walk in, you're just surrounded by saxophones of all shapes, sizes, materials.

And you can actually go there too.

If you're a bit of a saxophone geek, just search for Paul Cohen online.

You can find his email address.

And if you send him a message, he will invite you to view his collection too.

If you can play, bring your own mouthpiece, and he'll let you have a go on all these saxophones.

Yeah.

And as well as being a professor, he is a professional musician too.

So he uses some of these instruments himself in his work.

Okay, first up is a slide saxophone.

So you've heard of a slide guitar, I'm sure, but there is also a slide saxophone.

And so instead of having loads of holes and keys all over it, this is just a straight tube.

This one's actually made of wood, and there is just one long hole down the side of it.

And the player kind of presses down a long strap, like literally just a fabric strap.

to make that hole longer or shorter, which means you can do a glissando or a slide.

And this is how it sounds.

I think it sounds kind of like a theremin, you know, that weird electric instrument.

Yeah, it's a really expensive kazoo or something.

So I have the extremes of the saxophone now, the biggest and the smallest.

So Adolf Sax designed a whole family of saxophones at different pitches.