Back to the instruments

Good sound.
Good company.

This project celebrates the saxophone family with interactive 3D studies, open photography, and sampled sound.

3D model & rendering

Alto saxophone owned and played by Charlie Parker, Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, object 2019.10.1a-g. King Super 20, circa 1947. Model provided through Smithsonian Open Access; the object page identifies this media as public domain. Open Access information.

The scan has been reoriented and scaled for the studio, with adjusted lighting and added interactive key targets. Desktop uses the 4K texture derivative; mobile uses the 2K derivative. The geometry and surface detail come from the real instrument. Click targets use a simplified one-note mapping, not authentic saxophone fingerings. No Smithsonian endorsement is implied.

Rendered with Three.js 0.186.1, including OrbitControls, RoomEnvironment, and GLTFLoader, under the MIT license. Draco geometry decoding is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.

Instrument photographs

Photographs on the family page are sourced from Wikimedia Commons. Backgrounds removed with AI for this site; the edited alto, soprano, and baritone images are distributed under the same CC BY-SA 3.0 license. Images are visual illustrations, not fingering diagrams.

The sound

FluidR3 GM saxophone samples, rendered by MIDI.js Soundfonts / gleitz, provided under CC BY 3.0 as documented by that project. Samples are played at adjusted pitches. The studio currently plays only the alto. Its sound is synthesized from these samples and is not a recording of Charlie Parker or his instrument.

Tap a model key for a short note. Hold a piano key to play; release it to stop. Sample recordings have a finite length. Written notes span C4–C6 and sound at the selected instrument’s transposition. Rare experimental instruments vary in design and tuning.

Listen

As Time Flies is a two-bar alto saxophone arrangement transcribed from the user-supplied sheet music by Tyrique Payne (Ty’s Music). Careless Whisper is a short alto saxophone hook transcribed from the score PDF supplied for this project; the source score names Newbury Sax School. The built-in arrangements of Amazing Grace, When the Saints Go Marching In, and Auld Lang Syne use traditional public-domain melodies. A little improvisation is an original studio phrase. Named contemporary songs require a MIDI file supplied by the listener; no recordings or transcriptions of those songs are bundled. Imported MIDI files are processed locally in the browser tab and are not uploaded or saved to the repository. Use files you have permission to use.

Further reading

Yamaha’s guide to the saxophone family introduces the most established family members. The broader collection also includes the rare sopranissimo, contrabass, and subcontrabass registers.

Rare-register references: Eppelsheim instruments.

Design & code

Original interface inspired by the clean typography and product presentation of Apple. This is an independent project with no Apple affiliation. DM Sans by Colophon Foundry, served by Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License. Source code is available on GitHub under the MIT license; third-party assets retain their own licenses.