A few names that need mentioning for recent extra-awesome support and/or ideas are bassoonist Dave Wells (check out his high-quality and handsome bassoon fingering charts), saxophonist/doubler Evan Tate, saxophonist Bart Walters (who blogs over at Music Collective), pianist Jason Gray, and clarinetists Kellie Lignitz and Rachel Yoder (who included the FDB in their column in The Clarinet and on Clarinet Cache). You internet people sure are nice!

Check out version 0.4 of the Fingering Diagram Builder, or read on for a guide to what’s new and improved.

• Okay, okay, I’m finally giving up on my vertical-accordion-style menu, which I liked but which seemed to confuse people and which got unwieldy when you opened too many menus at once. The new tabbed menu is boring and vaguely corporate, but more familiar, and more usable on a variety of screen sizes.
• You can now save your own custom keywork presets: if you have an instrument with unusual keywork, you can set it up using the “Keywork details” tab, then click over to “Custom presets” and save it for future use.
  
• You can also save what I’m calling custom “styles.” The impetus for this was that I’ve had some fingering chart projects that I’ve returned to add fingerings to later but couldn’t recall all the details of the diagrams I had created previously: were they “tiny” or “small?” were the lines “thick” or “heavy?” and so forth. Now you can set things up they way you like them for an individual project, then save them using the “Custom styles” tab. I’m already finding the “Dropbox folder” setting to be a timesaver (you are using Dropbox, aren’t you? You should be).
  
• Note that both the custom keywork presets and the custom styles are saved to an individual browser, so if you switch computers or even web browsers, you won’t see your custom stuff. Maybe in a future version, but for now I’m trying to avoid fussing with logins and passwords and such.
• I’ve added a piano keyboard diagram, suitable for various educational purposes. You can decide how many keys it has, up to 88.
• The transverse simple-system flute fingering diagram now has a bunch of optional keys for historical or “Irish”-style flutes.
• The oboe fingering diagram now has the option of a thumbplate, if you are into that sort of thing.
• The saxophone high F-sharp key looks much nicer and more recognizable. The old one was designed to accommodate sopranos with a high G key, and that is still available, but the larger and sexier high F-sharp key is now turned on by default.
• I have repositioned the saxophone left hand palm keys into a little more conventional, and hopefully clear, configuration.
• The clarinet diagram now has an option for a right hand C-sharp/G-sharp trill, like the one on the Leblanc by Backun clarinets (and a few others).
• After repeatedly downloading diagrams for my own use and then shrinking them down in an image editor, I’ve added a new “teeny” size option. If you are making diagrams this small, you will probably want to set line thickness to “heavy,” and maybe create your diagram at a larger size first and then click “teeny” to shrink it.
  
• Several of you contacted me about a bug where if you saved images with custom filenames, and used the same filename more than once (like to overwrite one you had already downloaded), the original one would get downloaded again. This is fixed.
• Introducing .tif files in the previous update proved to be popular, but the much larger files occasionally caused problems on the backend that crashed the FDB. I believe this to be fixed now.
• All along, .png files were supposed to be (losslessly) compressed for smaller file sizes before download. At some point, that stopped working. It is now working again.
• Adding the ability to save custom keywork presets and custom styles led to a need for more flexible and capacious storage than the previous system that used browser cookies. Your stuff is now saved using your browser’s “local storage” protocol instead, if available. You won’t notice any difference. As with cookies, all your information is still stored on your own computer, not on a server.
• I’ve fixed a bug dealing with image offsets in .png files, which you possibly noticed if you tried to edit downloaded .pngs in a program like Gimp.
• I have made numerous other small bug fixes, stability and speed improvements, aesthetic and usability improvements for desktop web browsers, and aesthetic and usability improvements for iDevices. In all, it’s over 100 fixes, improvements, and new features by my count.

As always, I welcome your feedback, suggestions, and bug reports. I also really like it when people fill me in about the projects they use the FDB for.

Enjoy!

• A shocking 187 woodwind doublers participated in my Great Woodwind Doubler Census, and I reported the findings in exhaustive (exhausting?) detail.
• I was pleased to announce the releases of versions 0.2 and 0.3 of the Fingering diagram builder, and to introduce a lot of features and improvements. The plan at this point is to continue to work on it as time permits, and I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve that I hope you will like. I also shared some of the impetus behind the FDB, and some of the problems I hope it will, in a small way, help to solve.
• I started a series of do-it-yourself posts dealing with simple woodwind repair tasks (such as replacing saxophone palm key pads and replacing tenon corks), which I hope to continue in the coming year.
• I started a series of interviews with people working in cool woodwind-related jobs, which I hope to continue. (I’m interested in your nominations/requests.)
• I harnessed some frustration about teaching private lessons, and channeled it into creating a little game (the bidding war between Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley is still ongoing).
• I ranted about classical musicians’ attitudes toward jazz and jazz musicians.
• I reported on some fun offline woodwind-related activities, including the Clarinet Academy of the South, the National Flute Association conference, and my own annual faculty recital at Delta State University.
• I explained a little about the intersection between my faith and my music.
• I expounded what I think is a really crucial concept in woodwind playing, which the woodwind-blog-reading community received with a deafening roar of almost no attention whatsoever. I guess they can’t all be winners. Come back and read it again when you get into playing ethnic flutes, and thank me later.

Remember, you can keep up with my humble blog in 2012 via feed reader, Twitter, or email. I try to cover a lot of ground here, so if you’re interested in narrowing things down, you can find a blog article you like and click on any of the related “instruments,” “categories,” or “topics,” and then subscribe by RSS or email up near the top of the page, under the main header and just above the first article on the page, like so:

Also, I love to hear from the highly intelligent, talented, and attractive people who read my stuff, so please don’t hesitate to check in if you see something you like, something you don’t like, or something you would like to see more or less of. Or if you just want to say hello.

And, as promised:

My New Year’s resolution

It’s the same as every year: spend more practice time working on fundamentals. Every year I become more convinced that the way to sound amazing is to fill as many hours as possible with long tones, scales and arpeggios, and other stuff that my younger, more foolish self had filed under “boring.”

This was driven home again for me earlier this month while listening to hours of auditions for my university’s high school honor band. The auditionees were extremely talented, but for many the preparation seemed to be concentrated in playing as many notes as possible in as short a time as possible. But the students who got placed in the top chairs were the ones who played with even technique, solid tempo and rhythm, clear and ringing tone, precise intonation, dramatic dynamic range, and crisp articulation, even if their notes-per-minute count was a little lower.

Thanks for reading, and happy 2012!

Related posts:

1. Vinny Golia review
2. The Great Woodwind Doubler Census of 2011
3. Faculty woodwinds recital, Aug. 30, 2011

• Quiz students (or yourself) on scales, arpeggios, fingerings, key signatures, ii-V7-I patterns, chord voicings, or whatever. Click “Show options” to pick which notes you want to include.
• Set “How many?” to 12, and generate 12-tone rows.
• Set “How many?” to three or four, and generate chromatic or diatonic motives for inspiration for your compositions or improvisation practice.
• Or whatever.

As always, feel free to contact me with bug reports, feature requests, or mockery of my humble coding skills.

Enjoy!

I’m pleased to share some audio from my Delta State University faculty recital a few weeks ago.The big event of the evening was the premiere of Sy Brandon’s Divertissement for multiple woodwinds and piano, which seemed to be well received. It’s gratifying to be involved in the creation of a piece that fills a gap in the small multiple woodwinds repertoire—something than can be played by a woodwind doubler, without having to bring in a concert band, a truckload of electronics, or obscure instruments. The audience seemed to enjoy the derring-do of the final movement, which involves six instruments.

I’ve studied the Bonneau Caprice en forme de valse in the past and have had students perform it, but this was the first time I played it in public myself. Since I’m trying to balance a half-dozen or more instruments, I tend to shy away from pieces that seem too technical, and, in that respect, this was the riskiest piece on the program. I was mostly pleased with how it turned out.

All of Poulenc’s woodwind sonatas are on my short list of favorites. I learned the oboe sonata from scratch for this recital. The clarinet sonata I have performed in bits and pieces, and, having spent a good part of the summer focused on the clarinet, I wanted the clarinet sonata to be essentially the finale of the program (the Ray Pizzi piece being a sort of programmed encore). The clarinet sonata ended up being the performance that I was least satisfied with—there were a number of mistakes, several of which were total surprises, and my sound on that instrument still isn’t what I want it to be.

Ray Pizzi’s Ode to a Toad has been on my to-do list for a while now, and it was a hit with the audience. Finishing the program with an unaccompanied piece, and on the bassoon to boot—an instrument that is still in many ways outside my comfort zone—wasn’t a choice I made lightly. But after the recital I could hear people humming it in the lobby, so I’m calling it a success.

Time to starting thinking about next year’s program!

The piece is now available for purchase from the Co-op press website. It’s priced at an extraordinarily reasonable $6.95 for a PDF download (at the time of this writing), and U.S. customers can opt for a print copy for a still-affordable $16.95. The individual movements, any of which would make a charming short piece for a recital, are also available at just under two bucks apiece (PDF).

Among the few pieces in existence for multiple woodwinds soloist, this one has, in my opinion, the fewest logistical barriers to performance: it doesn’t require a large or unusual ensemble (just soloist and pianist), and it doesn’t require any unusual instruments, electronics, or other gear. There is also some flexibility in which instruments are used—movements may be selected from:

1. Intrada (flute)
2. Nocturne (alto saxophone)
3. Valse (bassoon)
4. Marche (clarinet)
5. Romanza (oboe)
6. Galop (piccolo/flute/oboe/clarinet/bassoon/alto saxophone, OR just piccolo)

For flute/clarinet/saxophone doublers, the Intrada, Nocturne, Marche, and Galop (piccolo version) would make quite a nice combination.

I find the work to be challenging but not dauntingly so. I would say the individual movements would be quite playable by an undergraduate music major on each instrument. The piccolo version of the Galop calls for some level of confidence and finesse with that instrument. The multiple-woodwinds version has only two measures of optional piccolo, but it is at the very end of the piece, after a very fast switch from flute, and it goes to high G.

The language of the piece is modern, but with one foot planted in tonality; it’s stimulating enough for an audience of musicians, and accessible enough for lay audiences. The writing is witty, and there’s an extra element of visual humor, especially if you play the Valse (which calls for an optional low A extension tube) and if you play the mutiple-woodwinds version of the Galop (which has a few daringly fast instrument switches).

For a woodwind doubler, this is an appealing, playable piece for very little money.

I have added this piece to my list of works for multiple woodwinds. Please contact me if you know of other works, or can offer any additional details on the works already listed.

Go poke around the new-and-improved FDB, or read on for the full scoop.

Here are the changes for version 0.3:

• Sorry to start the list with a bit of a downer, but this is important: to preserve my own sanity and to speed up the release of future updates, I’m only testing in current browser versions. If you’re using an out-of-date browser, you’re on your own. It might work, it might not. The good news is that you can update for free in a matter of minutes, and it’s not even hard to do. (Also, at this time I can personally test only on a Windows computer, at least until there’s a serious uptick in donations, so I’m especially grateful for bug reports from Mac/Linux/??? users.)
• In a similar vein, the ever-popular Internet Explorer still does not play nice with the FDB. The release of IE9 came close to making it possible for me to offer IE support, but still no cigar. This remains a high priority and I promise I’ll fix it if Microsoft or I can ever figure it out. In the meantime, try an excellent free alternative browser. If you’re one of the rare and special folks who uses the Opera browser, you may discover some slightly odd but non-crippling interface behaviors. I don’t know why.
• I continue to relentlessly reorganize and rename the menus. Sorry. Hopefully version 0.3 is the clearest and most intuitive so far. The menu interface has minor usability improvements as well.
• The interface in general has a number of aesthetic and functional improvements.
• You now have a choice between saving diagrams in .png format, which is what I recommend for onscreen uses like websites, or .tif format, which, depending on your software, can produce much clearer printed diagrams.
• There’s a centralized spot in the menu area for error messages and other notifications now, replacing the old, annoying pop-up notifications.
• If you’re a Dropbox user (and you definitely should be—it’s free and awesome), there’s now an easy way to share your fingerings. Sign in to your Dropbox account in the “Save options” menu, and check the “Use public folder” box. When you click “Save image,” your diagram will appear like magic in your Dropbox’s public folder, and the FDB will give you a link that you can email, Tweet, embed in a web page, tattoo on your body, or whatever you’re into. It’s none of my business.
• The flute, oboe, and clarinet diagrams now allow for special fingerings that use the rings or perforated keys. To enable these, or any of the other new keywork options listed below, look in the “Diagram options” menu, “Keywork details” submenu.
• The clarinet, bassoon, recorder, and simple transverse/endblown flute diagrams now allow for half-holing, including the upper half and the lower half, on all finger holes.
• The diamond-shaped oboe half hole is a little bigger, which improves legibility at small sizes. There’s also an option now to use a half-circle shape instead.
• The clarinet diagram now has a built-in setting for full-Boehm instruments. The clarinet diagram also now offers a special low F key, such as that on the Buffet “Tosca” clarinets.
• The saxophone diagram now includes some obscure keywork options, like a harmonic key (such as that available on some of the current Selmer models), a left-hand low A key for baritone, and a vintage-style G-sharp trill key. I’m interested in accommodating people’s strange keywork needs, so let me know what other keys you would like to see. Send photos if you can.
• The recorder diagram now has an option for low F/C and F-sharp/C-sharp keys, like for tenor and bass (as well as some treble) instruments.
• The simple transverse flute diagram now has a built-in setting for Baroque flute, complete with RH pinky key.
• More colors. I hope that will create additional possibilities for educators and other creative dreamer/hippie types. I caved and decided to include white—this technically isn’t necessary if you make good use of the “Keywork details” menu, but having white available in the color palette can be a handy shortcut.
• As before, you can choose from thin, medium, or thick lines, plus now there’s an option for “heavy.” This is a great option for smaller diagrams.
• It should be more straightforward now to create standard blank fingering diagrams, like if you want to print them out and color them in yourself. I do this to create fingering quizzes for my woodwind methods class. Just choose your instrument, then click the “show all” button in the “Diagram options” menu. To undo this, click “show default.”
• I’ve added Facebook “Like” and Google “+1″ buttons. Click away!
• Major bug fixes: some alert users have reported that their downloaded images don’t match what they are seeing onscreen, mostly keys either appearing or disappearing. I believe this is at least mostly fixed for up-to-date-browsers.
• Major bug fix: the FDB is supposed to save certain of your menu options when you leave the site, so they will still be there when you return. (They reset after 30 days, but why would you stay away that long?) This wasn’t working as reliably as I would have liked in version 0.2, but it’s much better now.
• I have officially licensed all diagrams created with the FDB under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. This is a very slight tightening-up of my previous “send-a-donation-if-you-use-these-for-profit-pretty-please” policy. You’re still totally welcome and encouraged to use the diagrams for websites, blog posts, teaching, academic work, and other not-for-profit things. The license technically requires that you give me credit for my work, which is not what I would have specified in a license of my own design. I do appreciate being credited, but we’re still cool if you don’t. The non-commercial thing is more serious, but I think in most cases we can still settle up with a token PayPal donation if you want to use the diagrams, or derivative works, for profit. Send me an email. Thanks for your respectful use of my hard work.
• I’ve seriously, significantly improved a bunch of other things under the hood. That mostly won’t matter to you, except that things will hopefully run a little smoother and faster overall. Also, I’ve made it significantly easier for myself to add new features and improve old ones, so that should mean more good stuff coming your way.

I love hearing what people are using the FDB for, so keep me posted on your woodwind-fingering-related projects. If it’s especially awesome and available on the web, I’d be interested in featuring it in a future blog post.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Fingering diagram builder, version 0.2
2. Introducing the Fingering diagram builder
3. How to make a bad fingering chart

Faculty Recital
Delta State University Department of Music
Recital Hall, Bologna Performing Arts Center
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
7:30 PM

Program

Divertissement for multiple woodwinds and piano
Sy Brandon (b. 1945)
World premiere

1. Intrada
2. Nocturne
3. Valse
4. Marche
5. Romanza
6. Galop

Caprice en forme de valse for alto saxophone
Paul Bonneau (1918 – 1995)

Sonata for oboe and piano
Francis Poulenc (1899 – 1963)

1. Elégie
2. Scherzo
3. Déploration

Sonata for clarinet and piano
Francis Poulenc

1. Allegro tristamente
2. Romanza
3. Allegro con fuoco

Ode to a Toad
Ray Pizzi (b. 1943)

Notes

Sy Brandon’s Divertissement for multiple woodwinds and piano (an adaptation of a prior work for oboe, percussion, and piano) was written in fulfillment of a Co-op Press Commission Assistance grant award, and is presented tonight in its world premiere performance. It is one of few existing works that features a woodwind musician playing multiple instruments. The composer says about this piece:

The Intrada [for flute] is energetic and playful with a lot of interplay between instruments. The Nocturne [for saxophone], being a night piece, is both lyrical and mysterious. The Waltz [for bassoon] is in a flowing waltz tempo with occasional shifts away from three beats in the measure. The Marche [for clarinet] is not a piece that would be used in a parade. It is a march that exists in the mind of a child who is playing with toy soldiers; therefore there is playfulness and humor that would not occur in a functional march. Lyrical lines and expressiveness are the predominating features of the Romanza [for oboe]. The piece comes to a rousing close with the Galop [for multiple woodwind instruments], which is a “perpetual motion” type of movement with a lot of rhythmic variety.

Paul Bonneau wrote the Caprice en forme de valse for seminal French-school saxophone soloist Marcel Mule in 1950, and it remains a favorite of saxophonists and audiences today.

Among composer Francis Poulenc’s final works is an incomplete set of sonatas for woodwind instruments with piano. The sonatas for oboe and for clarinet, presented tonight, are frequently performed, as is the flute sonata; a planned bassoon sonata was never begun. The oboe and clarinet sonatas were written within a few weeks of each other, and dedicated to the memories of two of Poulenc’s departed friends and musical colleagues, the oboe sonata to Serge Prokofiev and the clarinet sonata to Arthur Honneger.

Ray Pizzi is best known as a virtuoso jazz artist and studio musician on several instruments, and one of few to distinguish himself as a bassoonist in jazz and commercial music (some of his unique bassoon sounds can be heard in movie soundtracks like Return of the Jedi and Predator 2, as well as television shows like Family Guy). He describes Ode to a Toad as a “whimsical swamp blues.”

—Bret Pimentel

If you’re a woodwind doubler (of any skill level) and would like to be included, send me an email or a Tweet.

If you’re looking for a good list to follow that focuses on a specific instrument, you might try one of these:

• @lhbflute/flute
• @DTclarinet/clarinetists
• @jkmbassoon/bassoon
• @doronorenstein/saxerati
• or @MazzaClarinet/woodwind for a variety of woodwind players who aren’t necessarily doublers

I haven’t been able to find a great oboe list. Let me know if you start one (looking at you, @pattyoboe).

Twitter lists, if you’re unfamiliar, are put together by individual Twitter users, and are a good way to keep track of a group without cluttering up your personal Twitter timeline.

Woodwind doublers on Twitter

The time has come to stand up and be counted. The linked survey is for anyone who considers themselves to be a woodwind doubler of any ability level at all.

All the questions are optional, so you can skip anything you don’t feel like answering, but thorough responses are much appreciated. The survey will remain open for an as-yet-undetermined amount of time. When there are enough responses to be interesting, I’ll post some analysis here.

The more responses, the better, so please share this with your woodwind doubling buddies. You can use the “Share” buttons (to the left, if you’re reading on a large screen) to pass this along to people via email, Facebook, Twitter, and others, or use this short link as you see fit: http://wp.me/pfZdF-TZ

TAKE THE SURVEY

Update: The survey is now closed. Thanks for your participation!

There are dozens of us! Dozens!

Related posts:

1. Important people in woodwind history

Many of those have been saxophone fingerings, and I attribute this to some kind mentions among the saxophone-blogger community (thanks Doron, Eric, David, Neal, Alistair, and Anton!).

Now I’m pleased to announce the new-and-of-course-improved version 0.2. Go take it for a spin, or read on about the new goodies:

• New instruments!
  • Contrabassoon (choose the bassoon fingering diagram, then open the Keywork menu and click “Keys,”, then select the contrabassoon preset)
  • Akai EWI wind controller
  • Yamaha WX5 wind controller
  • Simple endblown woodwinds. Presets include pennywhistle, quena, shakuhachi, Native American flute (5-hole; 6-holed flute diagrams can be made with the pennywhistle preset), duduk, 6- and 8-hole xiao, and (why not?) valved brass instruments.
  • Simple transverse woodwinds. Presets include “simple flute” (which works well for “Irish” flutes, dizi, and many others) and bansuri.
• You can choose your own filenames now. Or just let the FDB continue to automatically give each one a unique number (the numbers are UNIX timestamps, if you care).
• I’m really excited about this one: Dropbox integration. If you’re not already using this amazing and free service to keep your important stuff synchronized between your computer(s) and handheld device(s), then you are seriously missing out. I personally use it approximately one million times per day. And now you can choose to save your fingering diagrams to your own Dropbox instead of downloading them—just log in using the Options menu. This should be an excellent option for iPhone/iPad folks and others who are download-challenged. [Full disclosure: the Dropbox links I've provided are referral links, and if you use them to sign up, we both get some bonus space. You're welcome.]
• Other general interface improvements for users of at least some mobile and touch devices. I think the best user experience for the FDB is still a large screen and a mouse, but I do what I can for you iPhone/iPad people. Note that I am not cool enough to own those devices (I’ve tested on my iPod Touch, though), so I welcome input and bug reports from people who do use them. I could use input from Android users, too.
• Lots of small improvements to the way the fingering diagrams look and behave.
• Lots of small improvements to the way the interface looks and behaves. I also moved around some menu items into places that I think make more sense.
• Some problem fixes for users of Safari 5. Based on my tests using Safari on Windows, I think everything is okay now, but let me know if you run into continued problems, especially Mac users. Thanks, those of you who reported issues with the previous version.
• Since it seems many people want to create blank diagrams showing all the keys, I’ve added a “Blank diagram” button, which instantly turns on all the keys for the current diagram and keywork preset. You can click “Restore defaults” to go back to something cleaner. To find the buttons, open the Keywork menu and click “Keys.”

I regret to say that I still can’t support any version of Internet Explorer. Maybe if I were a good enough programmer I could figure out how to make the problem child behave. In the meantime, I urge you to consider one of the other excellent, free web browsers, and you may just find that your web experience improves in lots of ways.

As always, don’t hesitate to speak up if you’ve got ideas for future versions, or if you run into issues of any kind. You can get through to me by email or Twitter, or leave a comment below.

One more note. It has come to my attention that some people are using the FDB to create and sell basic fingering charts online. I’m not sure why anyone would pay for them, since good ones are easily found for free. But if you’re using the FDB for commercial gain, it seems to me like good form to make use of my “Send me reed money” PayPal link at the bottom of the page. Just pay whatever the FDB is worth to you—I’m not planning to get rich. But your appreciation, as expressed in U.S. dollars, goes a long way toward spurring on future enhancements and new features. Thanks!