Saxophone – Explorations

We spent countless hours with saxophonist Jay Reynolds curating a selection of some of the most interesting and creative techniques possible with a saxophone. Taking inspiration from the sound worlds of artists such as Colin Stetson, Bobby Krlic and Mica Levi, we wanted to create a virtual instrument that surpassed what would be expected from a saxophone library and explore new territory with no limitations. Jay is not only a fantastic saxophone player, but also a huge synth and modular enthusiast. We realised that combining his love for saxophone and modular effects was a way to create sounds and textures far beyond what is possible with a Saxophone. We recorded the whole family of saxophones, from baritone, tenor, alto and soprano with the aim of capturing Jay's performance and expression in intimate detail, whilst focusing on the way it could evolve and morph with the help of the modular effects.

The library was recorded under lockdown conditions, remotely from Jay's studio with a selection of top end microphones which were later edited and mixed by Sonixinema's in house engineer. There was a lot of collaboration between Jay and our team to make sure that the source material was as creative and playable as possible. For many of the patches featured in the library, we feature all four of the saxophones placed across the keyboard, to give you the widest playable range as possible. With the help of the character slider, you can use your mod wheel to smoothly fade between the dry signal and Jay's custom effects signal, which included the following; Mutable instruments Rings, Makenoise Erbe-Verb, Makenoise Quad Peak Animation System, Makenoise ModDemix, 4MS Tapographic Delay, Intellijel Quad VCA, Mutable Instruments Warps, Mutable Instruments Ripples, Befaco I4 Instrument Interface, Digitech Whammy Mk1. Jay's microphone set up consisted of a Beyerdynamic M160 into a Cloudlifter for close mic, and an AKG C414ULS for the room, combined with an FMR Audio RNP preamp and the onboard pres my Audient ASP880. The converters were the ASP880 and the I/O was and Audient ID22.