Tone isn't that important in jazz. Hence, the importance of the saxophone, an instrument rightly reviled in classical music for mostly sounding awful.
I'm only half joking here. I'm a guitarist, and was having a conversation with a trumpet-playing friend once. I was talking about the technical struggle of legato playing at speed, something hard for trumpet players as well, but easy for saxophones. My friend was like "Yeah, but they have to play the saxophone". Few players can get a beautiful sound out of it, and only after years of struggle. Brass and guitars, on the other hand, have naturally beautiful tone, and are easy to get to sound nice.
The importance of melody over tone, and the melodic advantages of the saxophone, explain its popularity in jazz.
>Tone isn't that important in jazz. Hence, the importance of the saxophone, an instrument rightly reviled in classical music for mostly sounding awful.
Jazz doesn't have a fixed ideal of timbre. The saxophone has immense timbral versatility and expressiveness, which is integral to it's role in jazz. The saxophone emphasises every nuance of breathing and embouchure. The smoother, sweeter-sounding clarinet disappeared from jazz with the dawn of bebop. The clarinet will still do those silky legato runs, it's only marginally more difficult to finger, but it just doesn't speak with the same expressiveness. A similar argument could be made about the use of brass mutes, especially plungers - they don't make a particularly pretty sound, but they're tremendously expressive.
The obvious example here would be Albert Ayler, whose playing is either exquisitely expressive or grotesquely ugly depending on your perspective. Compare his tone with Ben Webster or Johnny Hodges and you'll see my point.
Mildly cantankerous sidebar: if classical musicians really cared about quality of tone, they would have adopted the cornet a century ago. British brass bands rightly revile the trumpet as the vulgar, shrill cousin of the cornet.
I agree with all of this. Saxophone is a highly expressive instrument... just not a pretty one. And I'm a huge Albert Ayler fan (which also gets back to melodic ideals... Ayler's great compositions are great in part because they're such simple, euphonic Circle-of-Fifths things, like folk music or gospel. To jazz nerds, Ayler is difficult. To non-nerds, Ayler is much easier to understand than most jazz.)
I think part of the reason classical saxophone is reviled is because the "correct" tone for saxophones in a classical setting is kind of bad (with apologies to my old saxophone professor). In classical music you are expected to play with a particular tone that sounds kind of harsh and honky to me. In jazz, on the other hand, having a unique and identifiable tone - especially on saxophone - is extremely important. At least, it used to be. Compare the sounds of Ben Webster [1] (breathy, rich vibrato, almost cello-like sound in the upper register, as around 2:32 in the linked video), John Coltrane [2] (harder-edged, brighter, more pure), Stan Getz [3] (light, airy, "pretty").
But yes, you have to work at it. Unlike, say, guitar, where you just pluck the string and that's that ;)
Oh, I wish good tone from a guitar was as simple as just plucking a string! It's an inherently pretty sound, but control and expressiveness are quite challenging (moreso because two different hands are involved in tone, each doing completely different things that must be coordinated).
As an aside, I've been intensely practicing a particular Miles Davis three-note riff (seven, if you count sounded notes rather than pitches), in part as a tonal exercise. The quarter notes need to be as intense and snappy as possible; the sixteenth notes need to be smooth and flowing. It's a really difficult shift to get the pick from "I'm gonna KILL this note" to "I'm going to gracefully flow these notes" - especially at fast tempos. I have no idea how Miles pulled it off on trumpet.
You don't like the sound of saxophones? Wow. Well, everyone has their own sound on saxophone, 'the sound of saxophones' doesn't mean much.
Not sure why you think trumpet is vastly easier to get a beautiful sound from than saxophone. That's silly.
The importance of melody over tone? Wow, never heard of that. All you say sounds like you are judging jazz by classical (I imagine) criteria, and of course it doesn't do well.
Saxaphone is 'reviled' in classical music because its tone is very crunchy and uneven compared to most of the other instruments of the band. I think in tone it is pretty similar to the bassoon, but even a chunky, honky instrument like the bassoon is very smooth compared to sax. Bassoon 'sings'[1], saxaphone 'yells'[2]. Given that, sax has very little place in a classical setting because it doesn't have that bell-tone or sine-wave sound that most other classical instruments try to achieve.
There's also some history to it. Saxophone is a relatively new invention, dating only to the mid-19th century, well after what people think of as "classical" was mostly done. By the time classical music could adapt, it had already moved in other directions. Saxophone was adopted readily by marching bands because it's portable and loud.
Historically, "jazz" started in the 1890s in New Orleans, when black performers were first allowed to play music in public. They played what was available to them - marching band instruments. Saxophones, brass, bass drums and snare drums. String bass and piano were added as the music moved indoors. Banjo dominated the string section until the electric guitar was invented, as guitars aren't loud enough to compete with all the horns and drums.
Unvarying unvarying belltone or sine wave sound would be more appropriate for something focused only on melody and not on tone, which is the opposite of OP's point. Sax tone has a lot of variability and control.
The melodic advantages of the saxophone are mechanical, not tonal. For example, to play a scale fragment on saxophone, one need only move fingers, while continuing to blow, creating a smooth, legato sound that can be done very fast. Contrast with guitar, where a note must be fretted and then picked, two separate motions that are difficult to coordinate. Smooth legato playing at high speed is extremely hard. Trumpets have a similar problem, tonguing notes to make changes.
And yes, saxophones have a great deal of tonal expressiveness available, especially once overblowing is brought into play. It's just not pretty tonal expressiveness, compared to other instruments.
Meh. Legato on guitar comes at a cost of expressiveness and note choice. When hammer-on and pull-off are your only ways to sound a note, you lose all the coloration available from dynamics, palm muting, distance from bridge, pick angle, and the million other little things guitarists do to make a note special. And note choice? Scales of any substance will force either difficult position shifts, or legato-breaking string switches.
It can be done, and I certainly do it. But it can't be all that's done, or your sound falls flat.
But it fits poorly into an orchestra. Your tone needs to mesh nicely. There is a reason why the well known classical sax pieces tend to use it as a solo voice (e.g., Pictures at an Exhibition).
It's my observations as a jazz musician and a tone nerd. The buzzy, shrill reed sound of the saxophone is difficult for the ear. Trumpets are much closer to the human voice. I've come to prefer saxophonists who revel in the ugliness of its tone, and push its other forms of expressiveness - not just melody, but the marvelous squawky tones only a saxophone can make. (That said, I'm a huge fan of modern master Kamasi Washington, who has a luscious tone.)
Look at it another way... would you rather listen to doves, or geese? Tonal beauty is objective.
A trumpet tone is famously close to a pure sine wave. Among all instruments, trumpet offers perhaps the least natural texture. I suspect all good trumpet players have worked at enriching their tone to avoid sounding synthetic, especially when it's most likely, as in classical music.
(Tries not be be snarky) You didn't respond to any of my points. Why don't you start playing trumpet, see for yourself how 'easy to get to sound nice' trumpet is. Everything you say seems wrong to me, except when you say what you like.
Like Dizzy Gillespie once said, "None of them blow easy". Yes, it's difficult to get good tone out of trumpets. Or violins, or guitars, or drums, or any other instrument. But assuming a skilled player, the tone of trumpet is more appealing to our ears than the tone of saxophones. It's ultimately easier to have nice trumpet tone than nice saxophone tone. Doves vs geese (or more correctly, elephants vs geese).
I've put in a couple of solid decades trying to improve my tone, and practice regularly to work on tonal issues. I appreciate the difficulty that any instrument represents.
Oh I totally would argue that position. (I am much more familar with jazz than classical). My main argument would come from how the two camps tend to practice. Generally jazz musicians will learn the 'changes' (key changes, common chord progression shapes) to a song, and the melody if it has one. At that point they start improvising. If they are really good their improvisation will include dynamic shifts and they will have good tone, but that tone may clash with other instruments. A jazz player will often learn a song before knowing in what arrangement they will be playing, and will play the same song in many different arrangements.
On the other hand, classical music has tone and dynamics written into the score itself. The entire point of the conductor is to anthropomorphize these features of the music, so you know when she is flailing violently you should play differently than when she is shushing you. Additionally, the tone/timbre of the whole piece is set in stone by the composer; A classical orchestra would never think it was ok to let the flutes take a melody written for the trumpets, etc.
Although, I'm not sure that I agree that dynamics and tone aren't as important in jazz.