Those of us who play modern band/orchestral woodwinds are familiar with a system in which, within a family of instruments, a notated pitch always corresponds to a certain fingering. No matter how large or small the instrument, the same fingering always corresponds to that same written pitch, even though the smaller instruments produce higher sounding pitches and the larger instruments produce lower sounding pitches. For example:

	E-flat clarinet	B-flat clarinet	A clarinet	Bass clarinet
Notated pitch
Fingering
Sounding pitch

This is convenient for clarinetists because, essentially, they only need to learn one set of fingerings to be (in that respect) prepared to play any instrument in the clarinet family. Note also that even the bass clarinet is notated in treble clef, as are its even lower cousins. All the major modern woodwind families (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and saxophones) use this approach: consistent clefs, and consistent correspondence of notated pitch to fingering. The transposition is a function of the instrument’s size.

Because of the prevalence of this system in the Western woodwind tradition, it’s an understandable error to assume that the recorder family is notated in the same way. But recorders typically use a different system, in which each instrument is notated in concert pitch, and the fingerings change depending upon the instrument. Or, to be more precise, each instrument is notated in a sort of “concert pitch class,” since some of the recorders are notated as transposing by one or more octaves, but a notated C always produces a sounding C. Bass recorder and lower are notated in bass clef. Here are the most common ones:

	Descant (“soprano”) recorder	Treble (“alto”) recorder	Tenor recorder	Bass recorder
Notated pitch
Fingering
Sounding pitch

Recorder players must learn two sets of fingerings, one with the instrument’s lowest note being C (for descant and tenor recorders), and one with the instrument’s lowest note being F (for treble and bass recorders), and must be prepared to read in two clefs.

The reader who contacted me described a musical theater situation in which a part for treble recorder had been erroneously notated as if the recorder were a transposing instrument: the copyist treated the treble as a band/orchestral instrument “in F,” so the player had to use C fingerings to produce the correct pitches.

The reader asks:

Is this notation common practice in Broadway shows? It would seem counter-productive to me; it’s both incorrect notation for the alto recorder and also makes it more difficult to play the part on flute if necessary (as is surely often done). The only questionable benefit would be making it slightly easier for someone who had only played soprano recorder to pick up an alto.

I’d love to hear your experience and opinions on the matter!

I have seen it done both ways. My preference is that recorders are notated with the non-transposing system for the sake of consistency with the existing recorder tradition; it doesn’t make sense to me to put the burden of adaptation on those who have actually made the effort to learn to play recorders properly. But for the sake of accessibility, it might be wise to provide some kind of ossia or cue notes, for recorder dabblers who either haven’t researched the instrument enough to know its tradition or haven’t spent the time in the woodshed to learn both sets of fingerings.

I hope that helps!

Related posts:

1. Understanding woodwind key nomenclature systems
2. Masato Honda plays recorder
3. The woodwind doubler as orchestral utility player

I’ve taught college-level woodwind methods courses for a few years now. This is a course primarily for instrumental music majors, who will go on to become school band or orchestra directors, and who need a crash course in the playing and pedagogy of each instrument that will be in their future ensembles. At the places I’ve taught, it means taking students from zero to playing a little bit of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone, all in one semester. It’s a semester-long sprint.

There are a handful of textbooks available for these types of courses, most of which I own, and none of which I use in class. I’m continually surprised by the material that is and isn’t covered in these books.

I try hard to keep my courses focused on core concepts, like position/posture, breath support, basic embouchure, voicing, and finger technique, and I try to keep those concepts as simple and clear as possible. I have students observe each other’s playing of these instruments, identify things that don’t look and/or sound right, and put their observations into terms of those basic concepts. (“So-and-so’s pitch sounds unstable, and his embouchure appears to be moving a lot. Perhaps keeping the embouchure still and increasing breath support will help to stabilize his intonation.”)

I find discouragingly little discussion (or even understanding) of these concepts in many of the published texts. Instead, I find what appears to be a lot of filler—not bad information, necessarily, but information that’s far from mission-critical. The students in these classes will mostly end up teaching beginning or intermediate students in large-group settings. They need to understand the fundamentals in ways that will help them problem-solve efficiently.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m certainly not opposed to knowledge for knowledge’s sake. I’m just saying that for an already too-short woodwind methods class, that 300-page book could perhaps be trimmed down to 100 or even 50 clear, concise pages, for significant savings of money, trees, class time, shelf space, and brain cells. Here are some examples of things that I’ve seen in actual classroom-intended woodwind methods textbooks, that just plain don’t need to be there:

• An exhaustive history of the bassoon, going all the way back to its Renaissance-era progenitors. I personally didn’t read that much bassoon history until I was studying for my doctoral comprehensive exams; I think a future school band director can safely refocus his or her efforts on something of more immediate usefulness.
• A thorough explanation and endorsement of the clarinet double-lip embouchure. While this technique can be useful, it’s non-standard, and should probably be introduced at the discretion of a private teacher, not a school band director, and in a private lesson, not in a band hall.
• Multiple-tonguing techniques for reed instruments.
• Surveys of various and obscure vibrato techniques.
• Circular breathing.
• Details of how woodwind instruments are manufactured.
• Flute harmonics used as an extended technique, and their notation.
• Photo essays of clarinet and saxophone reeds in various stages of manufacture, from cane field to finished product.
• Saxophone altissimo fingering charts.
• The use of not only bass and tenor clefs for bassoon, but also alto clef.
• Photos of obsolete tools for making oboe reeds. For that matter, I don’t think we need photos of modern reedmaking tools in this situation.
• A chapter on the history and repertoire of the wind quintet.
• Lists of college-level repertoire.
• Charts comparing single-reed mouthpiece tip openings and facing lengths.
• Discussion of the playing technique of not only the alto and bass flute, but also the E-flat flute. In the same book: bass saxophone.
• “Special problems” of the clarinet range above altissimo G.

If you are teaching a woodwind methods course, I suggest that you keep your lectures and class activities very focused, and even a little repetitive. You don’t need to cover “new” information in each lecture. You need to reinforce fundamental concepts, just like your students will hopefully be doing someday with their beginning bands. It’s tempting to gloss over concepts that are crucial but difficult (to you or to your students) and to spend time on less-critical but more easily-prepared activities (“Let’s compare the phrasing in some recordings of the Mozart clarinet concerto! Or look at photos of ancient flutes made from animal bones!”). Do your homework, consult with your colleagues (or invite them to guest-lecture?), and relentlessly edit your syllabi and lecture notes down to the basic concepts that your students will use daily in their own classrooms.

Related posts:

1. Private teaching methods of university music professors: Observations, analysis, and application
2. Fact and fiction in woodwind teaching
3. Learning to play a woodwind: is previous woodwind experience a disadvantage?

I think for many doublers the clarinet’s left-hand “sliver” key seems useless or problematic. For example, the sliver key is easy to press by mistake when intending to cover the middle and/or ring finger holes. And even when reaching for the sliver on purpose, it’s easy to accidentally cover part of the ring finger hole, producing an E-flat or B-flat that is flat and stuffy.

The left-hand sliver also lacks any real analogue on any of the other common woodwinds, so its use is a technique that doesn’t transfer easily from another instrument. Flutes, saxophones, and standard bassoons don’t have any key in that spot. The oboe has a trill key there, but its usage isn’t similar. Among the standard band/orchestral woodwinds, only the contrabassoon has a key positioned here that is used in a similar way to the clarinet family. Especially for saxophonists, the right-side fingering is much more familiar.

The Woodwind Fingering Guide (still the best fingering source on the web) lists three E-flat/B-flat fingerings in its standard clarinet fingering chart, with only the right-side-key fingering marked as “basic.” The left-hand-sliver fingering is described as a “Chromatic and trill fingering,” to “use in combination with D₄ [D below the staff] and A₅ [A above the staff].” (The “one and one” fingering using both index fingers is also listed, though it might perhaps be better relegated to the “alternate” fingering chart.)

Occasionally I’ve run across the attitude that the sliver key could perhaps be removed or wedged shut to prevent accidental venting. I think this would be a waste, and all clarinetists of an intermediate level or higher should get used to using this key as an equal partner with the right hand key—not merely as an alternative for rare occasions.

Here are a couple of examples from well-known solo repertoire where the left-hand sliver makes sense:

From Debussy, Première Rhapsodie. Click to enlarge.

In this example from Debussy, the E-flat occurs four times, each time preceded by E-natural, and followed in three cases by D—this is the aforementioned “chromatic” usage. Among the three most-common E-flat fingerings, the sliver is clearly the best technical choice here. While one-plus-one works equally well (from a technical standpoint) moving from E to E-flat, E-flat to D is compromised by having  to move two fingers, each on a different hand, each moving in a different direction; the intonation issues of one-plus-one further complicate its use. The right-hand-side fingering is less hairy, but does involve moving fingers on both hands simultaneously (a maneuver which should, of course, be possible, but which carries unnecessary risk of mistiming).

From Finzi, Five Bagatelles. Click to enlarge.

This excerpt from the first of Finzi’s Five Bagatelles highlights some other use cases. In the second measure of rehearsal number 4, a well-trained clarinetist will use the two lowest right trill keys for G-flat, which would make a transition to one-plus-one or right-side E-flat unnecessarily awkward, particularly since the E-flat then moves right back to G-flat. The sliver key allows for crisp, tidy finger movements. In the last two measures of this excerpt, the sliver key again constrains the fingers to similar motions in adjacent fingers of a single hand.

If you are new to the use of the left-hand sliver (or just a little rusty), I suggest conditioning its use for both E-flat and B-flat with slow, deliberate scale practice. Start with the chromatic scale and B-flat major, then look for appropriate places to use it in other major and minor scale material.

Related posts:

1. B-flat and A clarinets: redundant?
2. Information overload: oboe F fingerings
3. Clarinet pinky fingerings

Most of the studios require scales to be played in octaves, but I prefer a different approach. To the chagrin of my students (oboists/clarinetists/bassoonists/saxophonists), I require that they are played in this format:

1. Start on the first scale degree, in the instrument’s lowest octave.
2. Proceed upward in an even rhythm (such as even eighth notes) to the highest note in the instrument’s “range” that falls within the scale (according to an upper range limit that I set).
3. Proceed downward to the instrument’s lowest note that falls within the scale.
4. Proceed back upward to the starting note.

So, for example, an oboe student’s E-flat major scale goes like this:

I also require arpeggios, following the same rules:

Here is why I insist on full-range scales:

• It develops practical technical fluency. A major reason to practice scales and arpeggios is to condition fingering patterns that will appear frequently in music. Composers, in my experience, don’t seem to be interested in restricting scalar or arpeggiated patterns to an instrument’s most convenient octaves.
• Likewise, composers can’t be counted on to time a scalar passage so that the first scale degree always falls on a strong beat, nor to give that note an agogic accent. Full-range patterns in even rhythms encourage learning scale and arpeggio vocabulary in a more meter-agnostic way. (A more complete way of doing this would involve practicing scales and arpeggios in duple and triple rhythms and perhaps others, and starting the scale at different places in the metric pulse.)
• Full-range scales develop tone, response, familiarity, and confidence in the instrument’s extreme ranges. For example, a clarinetist playing major scales in octaves will likely play the altissimo G exactly once (in the G scale, assuming an upper range limit of G). Using the full-range method, a clarinetist will reach that note in seven different scales, and will reach the nearby F-sharp in the other five.
• For instruments with smaller “standard” ranges, a full-range approach gets students playing scales in more than just a single octave, such as perhaps the G, A-flat, and A scales on saxophone and oboe.

You’ll notice that I like everything slurred. Articulation studies do of course have their place, but with scales and arpeggios I’m mostly looking for good finger movement and consistent tone, and tonguing can hide some problems.

One issue with this method is the question of how to handle the “turnarounds” in melodic minor scales. For example, consider C-sharp melodic minor on the bassoon, with an assumed upper limit of B-sharp. For the ascending version of the scale, the extreme notes of the scale are low A-sharp and high B-sharp, but for the descending version the extreme notes are B and B. My (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) solution, to give students a uniform way of approaching melodic minors, is that the highest note of the scale is taken from the descending version and the lowest is taken from the ascending version:

This is, to my ears, the least awkward way to play melodic minor scales full range, but of course a thorough technique-building regimen will ultimately require mastery of all possible turnarounds, regardless of awkwardness.

Happy practicing!

Related posts:

1. How well do you know your major scales?
2. Introducing the Random note picker
3. Abe Weiss on practicing

There are three things to consider when evaluating a reed. I consider these same factors for either single or double reeds, and prioritize them in this order.

1. Response. The overriding concern for me is that the reed responds exactly as I expect it to. A reed that is stiff, sluggish, stuffy, or otherwise unresponsive isn’t a good reed (at least in its current state), even if it “has a good sound” or whatever. Many reed players, I believe, are consistently using reeds that are overly stiff, often in the name of “good” tone.
2. Stability. This is the flip side of the coin from response; a reed that is too responsive is uncontrollable. (Think of the gas pedal and brake in a car: unresponsive pedals make the car feel lethargic, but overly responsive ones make for a jerky ride.) With an unstable reed, it’s hard to play in tune, hard to control dynamics, and hard to keep the tone consistent.
3. Tone. Once I’ve selected a reed that has the right balance between response and stability, I evaluate the reed’s contribution to tone quality. Remember that the reed is only one of many factors that affect tone, and that tone is relatively easy to manipulate if the reed is responsive and stable. Resist the temptation to rank your reeds based on their tone alone.

(Okay, sometimes I also have this problem.)

The solution, in most cases, is quite simple.

Step 1: Use the correct voicing. For oboe it should be low and open, like blowing very warm air. This is usually the result:

Step 2: Use powerful abdominal breath support. Voilà:

I find that once voicing and breath support are balanced against each other, a good oboe with a good reed is one of the easiest woodwinds to play in tune, and responds easily in all registers.

This is, generally speaking, true of all of the woodwinds: solid breath support plus a stable voicing appropriate to the instrument are the recipe for reliable, in-tune notes from low to high.

Related posts:

1. Breath support
2. What is voicing?
3. Voicing, part II

There are some inexpensive and easily-obtained tools that are useful to have around. Most of these things you can easily buy locally; only a few require buying from a musical instrument repair supplier (MusicMedic.com and Ferree’s Tools are a couple of good suppliers that happily sell to non-pros). These are tools and supplies suitable for small repairs and maintenance, the kinds of things that you can do mostly with common sense or with instructional materials available online. The most expensive item on my list is a “selection” of sheet cork, which I have pegged at about $20 to get smallish pieces in a few different thicknesses. You can get my entire list for less than the cost of a decent clarinet mouthpiece.

Click each item for a description.

(see larger image)

Click column headings to sort.

Related posts:

1. Take your instruments apart
2. Learning to play a woodwind: is previous woodwind experience a disadvantage?
3. Do it yourself: replace a tenon cork

Most woodwind instruments come in several sizes, and a naming system is required for describing the size and pitch of each. The most familiar for players of modern Western woodwinds is that used for (for example) the clarinet and saxophone families, with most of those instruments being described as “in B-flat” or “in E-flat.” However, there are several other systems in use in the larger woodwind family tree. This can be confounding for newcomers to folk, ethnic, and period woodwinds, but I’ll attempt to shed some light on things.

Here are the four primary systems. The names are my own:

• Modern. This system is used for modern Western orchestral/band woodwinds and brasses. In this system, each member of the instrument family (such as all of the clarinets) match a written pitch to a fingering, so that, for example, a written C can be fingered the same way on any of the clarinets, and the actual pitch produced depends on the instrument’s size. (Playing written C, incidentally, produces the sounding pitch for which an instrument is named: Playing “C” on a B-flat clarinet produces a sounding B-flat, “C” on an A clarinet produces a sounding A, and so forth.) This is convenient to the clarinetist, but awkward for composers, copyists, conductors, and others dealing with multiple transpositions. It also leads to oddities such as the lowest contrabass clarinets, like all their clarinet siblings, being notated in treble clef.
• Non-transposing. The recorder family, for example, is always notated at concert pitch. (Or sort of at concert pitch—all the major recorders but the alto [treble] and tenor recorders actually sound an octave higher than written.) This means that a recorder player must actually learn more than one fingering system: all holes closed on a soprano (descant) or tenor recorder produces a C, but all holes closed on a sopranino, alto, or bass produces an F. Therefore, the recorders are non-transposing instruments (disregarding the octave). This system adds an element of difficulty for the recorder player, but greatly simplifies score reading. The bass recorder reads bass clef, which seems intuitive in terms of score notation but is a surprise to modern woodwind players.
• Six-hole. Pennywhistles, so-called “Irish” flutes, and some other simple-system flutes use a naming system based on the note produced when six fingers (the three middle fingers of each hand) cover their respective holes. Thus, a flute whose six-finger note is D is referred to as a D flute. For most modern woodwind players, it’s familiar for this six-finger note to be a written D, but the fact that the six-finger note produces a sounding D makes this flute a concert pitch instrument, or what in modern nomenclature is a “C” instrument.
• Three-hole. This of course works the same way as the six-finger system, except that it is based on the note produced when the three middle fingers of the top hand (usually the left hand) are covering their respective holes. This system is used most notably for bamboo simple-system flutes such as the Indian bansuri and Chinese dizi. Thus a D flute in the six-hole system would be renamed as a G flute in the three-hole system.

For many simple-system woodwinds using six- or three-hole naming systems, there is no well-established standard for writing parts in Western notation. Among the proposed systems, I think the simplest to understand for modern Western woodwind players is to transpose parts so that the six-hole note is always notated as D below the treble clef staff. This puts flutists, oboists, clarinetists, and saxophonists at ease by playing on the similarities in their fingering systems (with a “six-hole” D), and transposes the parts for different sizes of instrument in the way to which modern woodwind players are accustomed.

Okay, let’s try an example. Suppose that you have a simple-system flute (with an embouchure hole and six finger holes that produce a major scale). When all six holes are closed, the sounding pitch is D. Here is how that instrument would be described in each system:

Here’s another example: a simple-system flute with a three-hole note of B-flat.

I hope this information will come in handy for woodwind players who are new to folk, ethnic, and period instruments when reading notated parts (remember, alto recorder uses different fingerings than soprano) or purchasing instruments (remember, a dizi in D isn’t the same size as an Irish flute in D).

A few weeks ago, I replaced the bell tenon cork on this clarinet with a composite cork product, made from compressed cork bits. It’s cheaper than traditional solid cork, so I thought I would give it a try to see how well it compares. But the cork I used was too thin, and the bell was too loose. I’m going to try the experiment again with a thicker composite cork, but you can do this exactly the same way whether you’re using solid or composite. You can get either kind from MusicMedic.com.

First peel off the old cork.

Remove as much of the old cork and glue as possible, so the new cork will be smooth and even.

Measure a piece of the old cork to see how thick it was. A small sliding caliper is handy for this, if you’ve got one.

Find a new piece of cork that’s the right thickness. In this case, I’m intentionally going a little thicker than the old cork.

Cut a strip to the right width for the groove in the tenon, long enough to wrap around plus a little extra. Since the cork is crumbly, especially the composite cork, you need a very sharp blade to get a clean cut. I’m using a new razor blade.

At one end of the strip, sand one side to make a ramp.

Wipe off any leftover cork dust from the sanding. Apply a very thin coat of contact cement to the ramp, to the entire back side of the strip, and to the groove in the clarinet tenon.

Wait a few minutes until all the glue is completely dry.

Starting from the ramp end, press the cork into the groove on the tenon. The ramped side faces up. The dry contact cement bonds instantly, so take your time and make sure everything is lined up right. Sort of massage the cork into the groove with your fingers, to make sure as much surface area of the cork as possible bonds to the wood.

Wrap the cork all the way around, and up onto the ramp. Pay special attention to where the cork overlaps onto itself, and make sure it’s securely bonded.

Trim away the excess cork, and sand the seam smooth.

With the composite cork, the seam is practically invisible if you do a good job with the sanding.

Generously apply a quality cork lubricant.

Assemble carefully.

That’s it!

• The palm keys don’t have any dependencies—they don’t move any other keys and aren’t moved by any other keys. So replacing a palm key pad won’t set off a chain reaction of adjustments you have to make to the instrument’s mechanism.
• The palm keys are sprung to sit closed when you’re not pressing them, which means that the spring will help you get the pad seated, instead of getting in your way. It will also press the pad firmly against the tonehole, overcoming small imperfections in your padding technique. With keys that sit open on their own, the padding has to be extra skilled so you can use a feather-light touch when you play.
• The palm keys are long, so you’re less likely to burn your fingers.
• When you’re playing, the palm key pads take the brunt of the condensation from your breath, so they need relatively frequent replacement anyway. I bet yours could stand replacing.

I’ll walk you through this. I perhaps should confess that I am not NAPBIRT certified or anything fancy like that. You undertake this at your own risk, etc.

I like to clean any gunk off the tonehole, as well:

Next, heat the pad cup to liquefy the glue or shellac. I use an inexpensive butane torch that I got from a hardware store.

Too much heat can scorch the lacquer, so go slowly and be patient. Often, when the glue starts to liquefy, the pad will start to lift out of the pad cup on its own. If not, you can poke the pad with something (not a finger—it’s hot) and see if it’s loose yet.

The adhesive under this pad is clear, so it’s most likely the kind of glue that is used in hot glue guns. You can get it from a craft store. A brownish shellac is more traditional, but seems to be losing popularity. You can get it from places that sell instrument repair supplies.

This pad has the size indicated right on it, so I know which size to replace it with.

But pads are easy enough to measure, especially if you have a cheap caliper. Match the thickness of the original pad, too.

MusicMedic.com is a good place to buy pads (and other supplies) for do-it-yourself repairs, since they will let you buy pads individually, instead of hundreds at a time. If you’re not in a hurry, you can take out the pads that need replacing, measure them, and then place an order for exactly what you need. The pads already on this horn are tan leather with a brown plastic resonator, so that’s what I’m replacing them with, but there are lots of other options.

If you’ve already got pads and the adhesive is still warm enough to be in a liquid state, you can put the new pad right in. Otherwise you’ll need to reheat the pad cup first. If you need to add adhesive, you can heat the pad cup and sort of paint some in there with the stick of glue or shellac. Or put some shavings from the stick into the pad cup and then heat it.

Plop the new pad into place.

If you act quickly, you can put the key back on the instrument while the glue is still liquid, and the pad will hopefully settle right in. If you’re slow or if the pad doesn’t seem to be contacting the tonehole completely, add a little gentle heat to re-soften the glue, then press and release the key a few times. The pressure from the spring will help guide the pad into place.

If the pad still seems to be leaking, you may have a pad that isn’t flat. Or you may have a tonehole that isn’t level, or a key that is a little bent (either of these can be quickly and easily fixed by your favorite professional saxophone technician). But if the old pad was seating well, chances are that a good new one will, too.

Let the glue cool thoroughly, and you’re all done! Nice job.