One of the things in repair that really attracts me to the art is the act of “striving”. This doesn’t come as a surprise, I’m sure. It is a trait common among artists, musicians, and craftsman. But what exactly is striving, and what does it have to do with woodwind repair and life more broadly? Well, I would argue that it is the seed from which achievement and progress grows, and therefore it has guided human beings for eons. It is how we have made ourselves better. It is how we have become who we are, both as a species and as individuals.

I had an interesting experience just the past week regarding striving. I was in Toronto returning a saxophone to a client. The case had a strap, so I was carrying the horn on my shoulder. As I walked by a window, I caught my reflection and I was instantly transported back to when I was living in the city, trying to make it as a young musician (with much more hair!). I remember what it felt like. I remember living in that way, doing whatever it took to pursue the gig, get better as a musician, practicing as much as I could. I remember the feeling of being emersed in the lifestyle of striving for “The Right Art” as it is called in “Zen in The Art of Archery”. It gave me direction, motivation, and purpose. What is at the core of that is also at the core of all arts, including woodwind repair.

When I am overhauling a saxophone (or any woodwind) there are very small, almost unseen things that make a very big difference in the set up. Things like key fit, tone holes being level and key orientation, on the outside can be almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye, and can even be almost imperceptible to experienced saxophone players. So, why would a technician painstaking spend hours on these minute, nearly imperceptible details of a repair? In a word, “striving”. It is in these microscopic details that your skills as a technician improve. Anyone can replace and set up a pad on a saxophone, but it is in the elements around the pad that make a massive difference in the way the instrument plays and feels. In the documentary “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” The Japanese master sushi chef, Jiro Ono says:

“I do the same thing over and over. Improving bit by bit. There is always a yearning to achieve more. I’ll continue to climb, trying to reach the top, but no one knows where the top is. Even at my age, after decades of work I don’t think I have achieved perfection, But I feel ecstatic all day. I love making sushi. That’s the spirit of Shokunin”

Seeing how far you can take it and pushing yourself to be more accurate is the mechanism by which we improve as technicians, musicians, and people. And if you aren’t actively trying to improve, why are you doing it? What happens if you are not striving? As far as I can tell you are doomed to languish in mediocrity and allow your full potential to fly by. Without it, life becomes dull, mundane, ordinary. We must never submit to the mediocre, allow ourselves to say, “Meh that’s close enough”. It isn’t, and it never will be. It retracts from beauty and excitement of the world when we give up on striving for that pinnacle. It retracts from the beauty in ourselves when we give up on striving.

This striving is also where the fun is in the task, the art, the practice, or whatever method you are pursing. Sometimes to try something and it doesn’t work. Sometimes you try it and it’s close, but not what you expected. Sometimes you try something, and it works of better than you expected! You surprise yourself and that starts the falling in love with the art all over again, and pushes that need and ability to strive even more.  

One of the things I remember from when I was an apprentice was when I passed a horn I had set up to Marius (my repair teacher) for inspection. He looked it all over and passed it back to me saying “Okay”. I misunderstood what he meant. It didn’t mean that I was done, or that I had “arrived” as a technician. It meant I was on the path. Striving means you are on the path to better yourself and better your skills, and in some small way, better the world around you. But it is not a path that has an end point. Striving doesn’t lead you to a goal. The goal is the striving itself. Like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, the idea is to always get up, and work on the task, even if you don’t feel like it (sometimes especially if you don’t feel like it). To quote Jocko Willink:

“If I ever pushed the rock up the hill and it stayed there, I’d push it back down myself”.

There is no end point. There is no arrival. The act of striving is more than a goal. It is a way of life. It is a choice. One that is immune from the superficiality of modern instant gratification. It is rewarding in and of itself. It is better than shares of Facebook or likes on Instagram. It is difficult, and perhaps that is how it proves that it is worth while.

Every post on the body of and musical instrument is soldered on (Not welded. A popular misconception). The parts of keys themselves are brazed together, which is a similar procedure, but it requires much more heat and different supplies. When soldering, which is the method of joining two pieces of metal together by melting a softer tin/lead mixture in between them, the prep work is the most important part of the procedure. For a start both pieces must fit together as close as possible. This will ensure that the solder has a completely touching surface area to bond to. Secondly, the pieces must be as clean as you can make them. If the pieces are dirty the solder won’t hold, no matter how much heat you use. Next you have to use flux. Flux is used to prevent the metals from oxidizing when they are heated, which will also prevent the metals from joining. The rest is timing. You have to get a feel for the amount of heat, the direction of the heat, where to place the torch and when to apply the solder to the pieces you are joining. Without doing these steps, you end up with a burned, unjoined mess of an instrument. Soldering on silver is even more difficult. Silver will show all of your mistakes right away. As I have said in this blog many times before, this has taught me something true about life. It’s all in the prep work.

 When you are undertaking a task (instrument repair or otherwise) if you launch yourself into it without doing any practice or research, you are likely to get very different results than if you read, watch, listen, plan and practice. Make no mistake, I’m not saying to never be spontaneous, I’m just saying think about what it is you are doing and attain as much information as you can ahead of time. For example, if you want to be a success (whatever that means to you) you are unlikely to show up to Home Depot in your pick up truck grab a ton of 2×4’s and start building your dream home. You should maybe consult with a contractor, draw up some plans or at the very least read a book on building houses. When I am playing with bands and I take a solo, of course I am improvising and allowing myself to hear and feel the music and be as spontaneous as I can. But what goes unseen is the hours of personal practice and full band rehearsal that goes into it before hand.

          Another example from the world of instrument repair is when I am seating pads on tone holes. Obviously, the goal of a quality repair is to get the pads to seal all the way around a tone hole with a light touch. But the actual seating process is only the last step in the set up. First, I make sure the rod for the key fits snugly in the head of the post, then I make sure the faces of the post are flat. Then I make sure the keys are swedged perfectly between the posts and the rod fits perfectly in the key tube. Then I make sure the key cup is flat and not warped (as they often are). Then I make sure the tone hole in perfectly flat and smooth. Once that is all done, I make sure the key cup is centred over the tone hole, and that the spring tension is at the correct strength. Then I select the pad which not only fits the key cup perfectly but is also as even across its surface as possible. I’ll iron the pad to make sure the skin is tight on top of the felt and then I make sure there is the right amount of shellac in the key to give the pad the right amount of protrusion out of the key to connect with the tone hole. Once you have done all these steps, the pads will almost seat themselves.

          The prep work for whatever you are doing is essential. Again, this is why patience is so important. You crawl before you can walk, you walk before you can run. We often get so consumed by what we want, we don’t always slow down and ask ourselves if we have set up the proper circumstances for success in the first place. It doesn’t matter how much you want that dream job, if you don’t have the experience to warrant the appointment. If you haven’t practiced the tunes for the gig, you won’t put on the best show you can. Take a minute (and a deep breath), slow down and ask yourself if you’ve done the prep work. You might get it fast and dirty, but remember, silver will show all your mistakes.

          Brass is a metal alloy, made from copper and zinc. It has a relatively low melting point, around 900 to 940 degrees Celsius (depending on the composition) which makes it an ideal metal to be used in casting. Many churches are adorned in brass, from crucifixes to door handles, giving them a grandeur that impresses upon anyone entering, the significance of what they contain. Important buildings have brass trimmings and rails, portraying a regal status in an otherwise bland concrete jungle. It can be polished over and over again to a high gloss finish, and undoubtedly its similar appearance to that of gold is part of why the metal is always in common use. Of course, my primary interaction with brass is in saxophones.

          I have been working with saxophones (and therefore brass) for 20 years. To be in contact with a substance for that long you start to notice things about it along many different dimensions, and if you approach it with an imaginative mind, you can draw parallels between it, and life in general. One of the most intimate way I connect with the brass of a saxophone is when I am removing dents. To remove dents technicians, use a variety of tools, mostly all of them steel and in some cases rare earth magnets. I have come to think of brass as less like a metal and more like clay. When I am removing dents from a saxophone, I first have to find the steel tool underneath the brass and position it under the dent. Then, depending on if I am pushing, hammering, burnishing, etc., I can see the brass moving and taking the new shape I am molding it into.

          Sometimes brass even seems to have a life of its own, for example: sometimes a saxophone can be warped. It isn’t uncommon for the upper section to be leaning forward, which bends keys, rods and damages tone holes. Once the bend is taken out, in a procedure violent enough the owner likely couldn’t watch, the brass can bend back into its damaged position (only slightly of course) which will require further corrections after the instrument sits for 24 hours. This is what is called metal memory. Another characteristic of brass is “work hardening”. A dent will stretch the metal, and once that happens it can never go back in its original place (although you can get very close). As you work a dent out of brass the metal compresses, which makes it harder. I have worked on instruments which have had such poor dent work done to it, it was almost impossible to correct.

           So here we have a metal, something that we usually think of as hard, solid, ridged and permanent, which can be shaped into virtually anything we like. It can be reshaped after it has been damaged, although the scars can be still be seen. The metal becomes harder with every impact. It has a beauty to it, that once polished resembles gold, a substance which has captured the worlds collective imagination for thousands of years. It is here that I can’t help but notice between brass and life itself.

           When we are born, an alloy of our mother and father so to speak, we have the potential to be anything with the right forging and craftsmanship. Each person, has within us the ability to be the doctor who creates the cure for cancer or to be the first person to walk on the surface or Mars, or if forged improperly, the chance to turn into a monster. Again, like brass, if we are damaged, we can reshape ourselves. The scars may be visible, and we are hardened, we may never return to our original shape, but with the proper skill and craftsmanship we can get very close. Again, like brass, if we polish ourselves up, work on our blemishes, until we shine like gold, we can impress out into the world our significance and grandeur and even capture the worlds imagination.