024 - No Neckstraps

Sometimes synchronicities happen. Today was one of those days.

I’ve taken a temporary short term job working with band students. Today I was confounded by a saxophone student that absolutely abhorred using a neck strap for his instrument. If you don’t know, it’s ridiculously difficult to play a saxophone without using a neck strap. I’d get him set up and the moment I turned my back that neck strap was gone and he was trying to hold it with his fingertips. I have decades of experience teaching this kind of stuff and in all that time I’ve never encountered such an attitude towards a neck strap.

I’m not generally a wind instrument player. I can get around on a sax but it’s not my preferred instrument. Just for fun I purchased a Yamaha Venova a few years ago - a plastic saxophone-like instrument with a synthetic soprano sax sized reed. I didn’t care for it too much but I thought it might be useful to dust off and take with me to my gig. The sax is so lightweight you can wear it around your neck, let it dangle, and it doesn’t weigh much more than your standard lanyard.

But guess what was missing? The neck strap! Why it’s gone, who knows, but the instrument is so short scaled that other neck straps I happen to have can’t be tightened sufficiently to do the trick, well, they can, but they’re so tight I’m choking myself.

Now I’ve got to buy a neck strap.