Picaruelo's origami: THE SAXOPHONE

When I saw Eric Joisel's Great Jazz Band in the Joisel's exhibition in Zaragoza back in 2013, one of the instruments that caught my attention was the saxophone.

Eric Joise's saxophonist in the Zaragoza Exhibition in 2013.

Since the moment I decided to create my own Jazz Band I knew the saxophonist would be one of the first musicians I would fold. In Joisel's web site there are a couple of photos showing a CP and the folded instrument:

Saxophone CP in the upper part

Two different saxophones folded by Joisel

The idea behind this design is simple and relatively similar to the clarinet I had already folded a few months ago. It is a rectangular paper divided in 9 stripes all along. It forms the keys with a square tessellation. Joisel also reduces the diameter of the tube from the bell to the mouth.

I was thinking about trying to replicate this model but in the end I preferred the idea of making the keys similar to the clarinet's keys. This is the end result:

My own design for the saxophone folded from kozo paper and painted with acrylic deep gold

In the CP you can see the nine stripes that will form the four sides of the square tube and the keys of the instrument. The ninth stripe is just for closing the model. Only the first row of keys is detailed in the CP. There are 20 keys in total, 18 in six rows with 3 keys each (three fingers per hand) and 2 to form the left hand rest and the right thumb hook. Comparing the clarinet CP with this one you can see it is very similar but adding more keys and bending folds at the bottom to make the bell.

The clarinet CP that inspired me to create the saxophone

When I designed my final saxophone I had to decide how many keys to fold. When you look at a real saxophone it looks really complex, with the body surrounded by keys, levers and hooks. I chose to fold three to accommodate three fingers per hand but I guess any other number would be as good as this one. It would be as simple as adding more key lines to the CP. In this photograph you can see a real person playing the saxophone and how the fingers are placed.:

Saxophonist example pressing three keys with each hand. Original image here

There are a lot of different mechanisms around the tube making the number of keys to fold a difficult choice.
Original image here

Let us see some photos of the folding process:

The paper with the nine stripes and the upper row of keys precreased

After folding the 9 stripes

We start to fold the keys, you can see one on top (the front key) and one in the middle of the photo (one side key)

We proceed with the folding

We close the paper

And squeeze the paper to put the keys together

Repeating on the other side we get three keys

This is the back side of the paper. It doesn't stand flat

We repeat with the rest of the keys including the two back keys

Finally we squeeze each key to give it the final form

Although in the following photos not all the keys are finished it is better to do it now when the saxophone is still relatively flat. Latter it becomes harder to manipulate. This was my first attempt after designing the model and I didn't realised it

The back side with all the upper keys folded

We star to bend the tube

This is the first bending of the tube

We repeat three times

We make another bending fold

And one last bending fold to separate the bell from the tube slightly

This is the final shape of the tube

We start with the bell.

We fold this little triangle

We push it inside

After repeating with all the flaps

The same area from the back side

We separate the layers to make the end of the paper the wider we can

And finally shape the bell

The last step is folding the mouth piece

A little moisture and modelling takes us to the final result

Finally I don't want to lose the opportunity to thank Victor J. Quintero for his help to deduce Joisel's saxophone CP. After seeing my saxophone's photo in my flickr he deduced and sent me this CP.