Why the OCGenie and SopSaxGenie was invented

Being a music enthusiast, the inventor of the Oboe/Clarinet Genie (OCGenie) and Straight Soprano Saxophone Genie (SopSaxGenie) has read stories of professionals and amateurs having to quit playing the Oboe, Clarinet, Oboe d'Amore, Basset Clarinet, English Horn or Straight Soprano Saxophone because of the unbearable pain in their right thumb or right elbow. He has also observed with empathy, grade and high school students playing the clarinet with their instrument's bell held tightly and awkwardly between their knees. Nothing on the market could help relieve the weight on their thumb-rest.

The inventor himself experienced pain learning to play the Oboe and Clarinet. After years of trying and testing, he arrived at this final form of the OCGenie that has been proven to really work.

An OCGenie or SopSaxGenie works like a player's discreet assistant. Diligently and faithfully, it will adjust itself at every instant, relieving as much weight as possible from your thumb-rest and accommodating all your expressive movements with the music. It will make it easy for you to control your instrument as you have learned previously, and to avoid any unnatural movements that can jam the reed into your lips or teeth.

You do not need to disengage the OCGenie or SopSaxGenie from your instrument between pieces or movements of music. Just pull your instrument naturally to rest on your knee, and OCGenie or SopSaxGenie will oblige. You can fully set up the OCGenie or SopSaxGenie with your instrument and go on stage elegantly in your natural way, ready to play without further awkward preparation. When you initiate your playing position, the cord of the OCGenie or SopSaxGenie will automatically adjust to the appropriate length. It can extend up to 34 inches, giving you the freedom to hold the instrument in any playing or rest position. The one-size-fits-all design works for all age groups with no extra adjustments.

The OCGenie will come to your service complete with two thumb-rest ring attachments to make two of your instruments ready to be played in a few minutes.

The Straight Soprano Saxophone players also have the same kind of weight pain problem as the Oboe and Clarinet players; even worse. A typical Sop Sax is twice as heavy as an Oboe or Clarinet.

We are now offering the SopSaxGenie using the same inventive technology as the OCGenie to provide for the first time, a complete heart-felt physical relief on the thumb-rest for the SopSax players.

How the OCGenie and SopSaxGenie provide thumb pain relief while all other devices cannot

The particular group of reed woodwind musical instruments characterized by the Oboe, Clarinet, Oboe d'Amore, English Horn, Basset Clarinet and Straight Soprano Saxophone are small enough to be made essentially rectilinear from one end to the other. However, due to the intricate amount of key work, the weight of these instruments in playing position is usually greater than the amount that occurred in their primitive ancestors. In present-day forms, they are all made with a conventional thumb-rest located on each instrument at a location that approximately allows the right-hand thumb of the player to support the instrument while allowing the other fingers of the right hand to manipulate the different keys or tone holes of the instrument while playing. The left-hand thumb in playing these instruments is assigned the task of acting on at least one key that produces the higher-register notes in combination with the action of the other fingers of both hands. Thus, the left-hand thumb provides practically none of the support against the weight of the instruments, because its position on the instruments is completely away from the center of gravity of the instruments in the usual playing positions. The left-hand thumb initiates the instruments into playing position. In addition, it assists the player's embouchure, defined in the art as the formation of the player's lips and teeth around the mouthpiece of the instruments, thus stabilizing the instruments during playing.

It is well known to any player that balancing one of these instruments with the delicate embouchure and the fingers of both hands against the weight of the instrument requires a great amount of skill to be acquired through hours of practice in spite of the constantly-increasing pain in the right-hand thumb which has to support most of the weight of the instrument.

Further analysis reveals that the player's embouchure cannot contribute generally to support the weight of the instrument because it is far away in all usual playing positions from the center of gravity of the instrument. Practically the total weight of an instrument in this particular group during playing is supported by the thumb of the player's right hand. Consequently, with just a conventional thumb-rest on an instrument of this group, considerable strain in the right hand and its thumb is felt by professional, amateur or student musician players alike, during prolonged musical performances or practice sessions. The strain may become so unbearable that it hinders the ability to play the instrument. Continuous strain can cause severe repetitive-strain syndrome in the right wrist and known to have compromised or terminated promising musical careers or cause considerable frustration of many players who are unable to produce the unique beauty of the musical sounds they aspire for themselves in playing one of these instruments.

One of the most obvious and successful methods of relieving the weight of any woodwind musical instrument in playing position is to use a supporting strap. One way is to anchor the strap comfortably around the neck. Another way is to wear the strap around the back on one or both shoulders such as found on a class of very heavy bassoons, contra-bassoons, bass clarinets or saxophones of any size with a pronouncedly curved neck near the mouthpiece. These successful straps include a hook which fits through a ring integrally formed on the thumb-rest of this class of instruments. The length of the straps is adjustable into a fixed amount by each experienced individual player before playing. It does not need any further adjustment during playing. However, when these successful straps are similarly designed into straps for the group of instruments characterized by an Oboe, a Clarinet, and a Straight Soprano Saxophone, they have been rejected by any experienced player as not at all helpful, and even considered dangerous. The cause of this peculiar poor performance becomes obvious when the players have had the time or a reason to evaluate these latter straps with some engineering analysis.

The cause of success of the straps of the group characterized by the bassoons and saxophones with a curved neck is that the mouthpiece on all of these instruments is oriented so that when a strap's length is properly adjusted by an experienced player for the proper angle or any other angle of playing, the right thumb of the player just has to push the thumb-rest away from the player's body to reduce the pressure of the weight on the right thumb. The strap of these curved-neck instruments can only move the mouthpiece up in an arc in front of the player and into the player's embouchure more or less precisely for playing but not haphazardly to the point of jamming the reed into the player's lips or teeth in an unexpectedly constrained manner.

Observing the success of this group of straps leads to the revelation of the real cause of failure of similar straps designed for the group characterized by the Oboes, Clarinets and Straight Soprano Saxophone: the real cause of failure is due directly to the lack of a curved neck near the mouthpiece on these straight instruments. Regardless of being adjusted by an experienced or a novice player, when the fixed length of the strap of this group of straight instruments is determined, the weight relief on the right thumb is perceived only through a definite small arc described by the thumb-rest around one point on the back of the neck of the player with the radius defined by the already-fixed length of the strap. The only way to continue to perceive the weight relief on the right thumb and to suitably position the instrument mouthpiece to the player's embouchure is determined by two constraints. First, move the thumb-rest so that it would be at the maximum distance from the back of the player's neck determined by the already-fixed length of the strap. Second, make the angle of the straight body of the instrument and the straight line formed by the strap between the back of the player's neck and the thumb-rest to have the same angle chosen during the preliminary adjustment of the strap. Satisfying both of these constraints at the beginning and during playing one of these instruments with the correct embouchure is very difficult and exasperating. Moreover, satisfying strictly the first constraint while not satisfying the second can easily lead to the danger of jamming the reed into the player's lips or teeth accidentally with regrettable consequences.

The invention leading to the implementation of the OCGenie and SopSaxGenie can provide a complete solution without causing any hindrance to the playing of these instruments in other respects.

This solution comes with the low cost of ownership, simplicity and non-intrusiveness in use, reliability, durability, easy set up before use. The instantaneous adjustment to differences in size and changes in player's natural position and movements during playing, resting or going on stage, adds on to an aesthetic blending with the appearance of the instrument.

With this invention, the player experiences the freedom of raising the instrument into playing position and during playing at any angle pointing the instrument to the ground. The player does not sense a strange force in any direction on both hands except the familiar force of the weight pushing down on the right thumb. This force is drastically diminished due to the real physical force resulting from the combination of the original force on the thumb (before the adoption of the invention), and the well calculated up-pulling force that the invention is vigilantly exerting now on the thumb-rest. This up-pulling force creates physically a component force in line with but opposite to the gravity force of the weight of the instrument on the thumb-rest, and thus will diminish the weight gravity force by an intended amount to provide a clearly perceivable relief on the right thumb of the player.

Provision of a thumb-rest ring for use with the OCGenie

Where a thumb-rest ring does not exist on an instrument supported by the embodiments of this invention, an innovative ring attachment provides a reliable thumb-rest ring that can be installed in a few minutes. This will save the high cost of replacing the player's original thumb-rest with a new one that has a ring soldered on. No more agony of waiting and paying a qualified instrument technician to render less beautiful his or her valuable thumb-rest by soldering a metal ring on it. No more having to make do with a leather ring around the thumb-rest that would give a strange feeling on the thumb.

This ring attachment comprises an essentially circular ring of nylon tie loop enrobed with a plastic tubing, and secured onto a conventional or adjustable thumb-rest commonly available, with another nylon tying loop. These nylon round loops and tying loops are specifically made only with the high-performance cable ties available under the trade name Ty-Rap. These ties are produced with a good grade of nylon and have a built-in stainless-steel catch that allows a tying loop to stop at an infinite number of points along the body of the loop, and at the same time maintains the loop with proven great strength and durability. As for the plastic tubing, a commercially available 68-durometer vinyl is chosen as soft enough to allow the tying loop to do the best job in immobilizing securely the round loop onto the upper surface of the thumb-rest, and at the same time, hard enough to work properly with the snap-hook of all embodiments of the invention.

This ring attachment has been proven to work reliably and never to alter the priceless familiar feel of the instrument at the thumb-rest.

Advantages of the OCGenie and SopSaxGenie

From the discussion above, a number of advantages of the weight-relieving OCGenie and SopSaxGenie become evident:
[a] When made within the suitable design measurements, all embodiments of this invention satisfy the primary goal of relieving drastically the deleterious instrument weight pressure on the thumb and the tension in the right arm of the player of an instrument of the group that does not have a curved neck near the mouthpiece such as an Oboe, a Clarinet, an Oboe d'Amore, an English Horn, a Basset Clarinet or a Straight Soprano Saxophone.
[b] The beneficial relieving of the deleterious pressure of the thumb-rest on the right thumb by the weight of instrument is achieved with all embodiments of the invention while freeing the player to walk around the place or to move any body part instinctively when the player's spirit is in tune with the music. The benefit of weight relieving is there, yet the player still continues to enjoy the familiar raising of the instrument into playing position at any random angle of the instrument with respect to the player's body, as well as to enjoy all the techniques and habits of playing the instrument in any familiar position, usually with the instrument pointing to the ground.
[c] When made within the suitable design measurements, all embodiments present no danger for the player in jamming involuntarily the reed into the lips or teeth as with a fixed-length strap or an elastic strap which is designed in a way that has a pulling force toward the embouchure far beyond the weight of the instrument on the thumb-rest at any instrument angle other than a unique and elusive optimum angle that is supposed to provide the weight relief at the thumb-rest.
[d] All embodiments of this invention can be appreciated as aesthetic, inconspicuous, non-intrusive, and artistically blending into the instrument and body of a player during a playing session.
[e] All embodiments come with one size-fits-all for any player of any age group, with no extra adjustments to be made.
[f] All embodiments are inexpensive and simple to make and to use, reliable, durable and fast in set up before use.
[g] No modifications on the instruments before one embodiment is put into use.
[h] When an instrument's thumb-rest does not have a built-in ring to be used with any of the embodiment, a ring attachment will come as part of the embodiment that can be securely put on the thumb-rest in a few minutes to provide a reliable and durable ring for use with the embodiment. Such ring attachment will not alter in any way the familiar feel of the thumb on the thumb-rest, nor would it prevent all the parts of the instrument from being put back properly into its original case. This innovative ring attachment will save a player from the agony of having to spend a lot of time and money to have a metal ring soldered onto the thumb-rest before being able to enjoy the benefits of this invention.
[i] All present embodiments allow the extra benefits of going naturally and elegantly on stage, instrument on hand in front of the chest or with arm fully extended, or resting the instrument on the knees while waiting to play again, when the instrument is secured at the thumb-rest to the embodiment which is already set up for playing.

 

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