Enter with caution.

If you frequent any of the various woodwind-related Internet message boards, forums, or listservs, you have undoubtedly encountered some of the wildlife I will describe here. Remember that they can be dangerous creatures, and that it is often best not to attempt interaction with them.

One of the most common animal behaviors witnessed on the message boards is the exchange of gear recommendations. There are two primary families of wildlife the participate in this ritual: the askers and the answerers.

The askers

The askers all share a common behavioral trait: a proclivity for asking total strangers to blindly recommend instruments, mouthpieces, reeds, and other items. Their calls are varied.

Some prefer to remain hidden in the underbrush, offering no clarifying details:

hey guys first time on this board what reedz should I use lolz

Others have a more elaborate song, characterized by pointless oversharing:

Hi, I’m 13 and I have been playing the sax for 3 yrs and 2 months and I RLLY want to sound like David Kozborn and I have a pink Unicorn sax that is the best kind they sell on Amazon and its an E flat alto and I use a SmoothTone mouthpiece size .79c-plus-lyre-medium and Nabisco alto sax reeds size 4.725 but I sand them down to a 4.720 and a Goodyear extra-lite jazz-edition interchangeable-plate ligature but I’m gonna get the super-extra-lite for my birthday and I was wondering what neckstrap should I get. Also I play left-handed.

Still others exhibit a particularly puzzling behavior, seeking recommendations online when they clearly have much better resources at hand:

So I’m a senior flute performance major at Flagship State U. and I take weekly lessons and masterclasses from my flute professor who is the principal in the Major Metropolitan Symphony. Also there are three major flute specialist retailers within an hour’s drive of where I live. So, since none of you Internet people are familiar with my playing, can you recommend a good headjoint, preferably something costing over $2,000?

The answerers

One typical answerer behavior is the terse, non-specific reply, often submitted within seconds of the original post, and sometimes without reading it completely:

yamaha

Others take time to establish their own dominance in the food chain:

i have bin playing clairnet for 3 wks at my school and im pretty sure the best kind is Dandorin or somethin like that

Many have very specific recommendations to make. These recommendations are often for instruments that are no longer manufactured, and take the tone of an aged grandparent explaining to a bored grandchild how no good cars have been made since 1949.

What you really need is the SuperLoud Model 5B. Despite the fact that I mention them in every forum post, nobody seems realize they are the best instrument ever made. There are 40 of them on eBay right now, none of them with bids yet. Yeah, sure, lots of professionals and educators recommend specifically against them,  but you should probably listen to me instead of them. Remember, it’s all part of a conspiracy between the mafia, the government, Buffet Crampon, and PepsiCo.

Of course, some have finer tastes and will only recommend the most expensive options:

Make sure you get one from the WWII era, preferably post-Anschluss but prior to the occupation of the Sudetenland. It will cost as much as a kidney transplant and will require about the same amount of maintenance. It’s expensive but there’s no other way to sound like a real pro. Also, you won’t have to worry about the nuisances of modern instruments, like ergonomic keywork and good intonation.

A certain variety of answerer sees every equipment query as a chance to boast about his or her own acquisitions.

Well, personally I like to use my Mach III for jazz and for music indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, but I prefer my trusty Emperor Superb 49 for reggae and baroque. Of course I also bring both of my Dynamo-Actions on gigs, the nickel-plated one in case we do a ballad and the one with the auxiliary G key in case the temperature in the venue is over 76°F. Plus if my wife isn’t using the van I bring the Mach III½, the Mach IV, the Mach IVB, the Admiral, the Très Inutiles Deluxe, and a harmonica made of solid gold.

And often there is an opportunist waiting to pounce:

I have a 1962 Gewährleistungsausschlußregel that I can sell you cheap. Trust me, this is the only instrument you will ever need. It’s perfect except it needs all new pads and the lower joint is missing. Plays great. Email me dude.

If you dare to observe these creatures in their natural habitat, I strongly recommend that you bring insect repellent and a large grain of salt. (With that warning in mind, check out some woodwind doubling, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, saxophone, wind controller, and/or ethnic woodwind forums.)

At some point, you end up in a mush of mediocrity.

Go read it

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.

Simple major triads aren’t common in most “modern” (post-1940) jazz. But in the rare cases that they do appear, they are indicated with a single note name:

C major

The letter “C” above the staff is the chord symbol. The notes shown on the staff here are the corresponding pitch classes, stacked in root position in the thirds familiar to students of classical theory, though a jazz musician, composer, or arranger would rarely voice a chord in this way.

Almost always, there should some variety of seventh specified, using the numeral 7 (and when it isn’t specified, it is often implied). By convention, using the 7 alone with a note name indicates the lowered seventh:

C seventh

When a major seventh is intended, it must be specified. Most of the time, when a jazz musician thinks of a “major” chord, this is the chord he or she means, since it is more colorful and stylistically characteristic than the plain triad. A triangle symbol has become common, and is preferable because it is unambiguous and easy to read. Several other symbols are common, however, such as a capital M or some abbreviation of the word “major.” (These persist likely in part because they can be typed using symbols available on a standard computer keyboard.)

C major seventh

The major sixth chord is encountered on occasion, which contains a major sixth scale degree rather than a seventh; jazz musicians will often treat this as interchangeable with the major seventh chord when improvising melodies or accompaniments.

Minor chords are best indicated with a minus sign, and almost always include a lowered or minor seventh. Lowercase m or an abbreviation of “minor” are also fairly common, but, especially in handwritten scores, can be easily confused for major chords.

C minor seventh

Half-diminished chords are expressed in two common ways. The slashed-circle is preferable due to its concision, but the minor-seventh-flat-fifth notation is perhaps equally ubiquitous.

C half-diminished

Diminished (or “fully diminished”) chords also have two common symbols, one using a circle (preferable), and one using an abbreviation of “diminished.”

C diminished

It is worth noting that jazz composers and arrangers tend to prefer legibility over pedantry, and in many cases will use enharmonics to avoid double-flats and the like.

So-called suspended chords, which use the fourth scale degree rather than the third, are commonly referred to as “sus” chords, due to the abbreviation commonly used in their chord symbols:

C suspended

Note that the term “suspended” is used here to describe the quality of the chord, but in jazz music the term does not necessarily indicate the chord’s function—that is to say, the “suspension” may not resolve as expected. Similarly, seventh chords (with the seventh lowered, remember) are sometimes referred to as “dominant” chords, even if they do not serve a dominant (nor secondary dominant) function.

In addition to the basic chord types listed so far, chords can also be extended and/or altered. Chord extensions include the 9th, 11th, and 13th scale degrees (any other scale degrees would be repetitions of notes already present in the chord). These scale degrees can be added individually to a chord symbol with the word “add,” but this happens only rarely. More often, the extensions are assumed to include all those of a lower number: for example, a C¹³chord implies the presence of the 11th and 9th. The 11th scale degree is a special case in major chords, since it is the same pitch class as the 4th scale degree and is unacceptably dissonant in typical situations. It is almost always altered by raising by a half-step, and in the case of a major-quality 13th chord, the implied 11th scale degree is always assumed to be raised unless indicated otherwise.

Extended chords

Accidentals are used to create alterations, with sharps and flats loosely interpreted to mean altering the indicated note by a half-step, even if that involves (for example) adding a natural rather than a flat or sharp. In some cases, parentheses around the alterations are helpful for clarifying whether the accidental belongs to the root note (for example, a C-sharp chord with a natural ninth versus a C chord with a sharp ninth). Notes that can be altered include the fifth (flat or sharp), ninth (flat or sharp), eleventh (sharp), and thirteenth (flat); any other alteration would cause a change in the chord’s basic type. Some copyists prefer a plus sign over a sharp for alterations, particularly in the case of the raised fifth—this eliminates some of the confusion about using the sharp-fifth notation in a key where the fifth scale degree ordinarily has a flat, but also introduces a number of other ambiguities.

Altered chords

Slash chords may be made up of any chord combined with any single specified “bass” note. The bass note may be played by the bass instrument(s) of an ensemble, or in the lowest position in a chord-playing instrument’s voicing (particularly if that instrument is being played unaccompanied). The bass note may or may not exist in the “upper” chord.

C-slash-F

Enjoy:

Joseph Robinson: Principal Oboe, New York Philharmonic

Find it on: Amazon | iTunes

Repertoire: Saint-Saëns Sonata, Piston Suite, Poulenc Trio, Nielsen Two Fantasy Pieces, Dring Trio, Shickele Gardens, Still Incantation and Dance, Martin Petite Complainte

Anthony McGill

Find it on: Amazon | iTunes

Repertoire: Poulenc Sonata, Debussy Premiere Rhapsodie and Petite Piece, Messager Solo de Concours, Rachmaninoff Vocalise and Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Gershwin Three Preludes, Summertime, and It Ain’t Necessarily So

Judith Leclair: Works for Bassoon

Find it on: Amazon | iTunes

Repertoire: Saint- Saëns Sonata, Andres Chants d’arrière saison, Boutry Interférences, Glière Humoresque, Milde Andante and Rondo and Polonaise

Kenneth Tse: Saxophone

Find it on: Amazon | iTunes

Repertoire: Feld Sonata, Muczynski Sonata, Heiden Solo, Morosco Blue Caprice, Benson Aeolian Song, Kaufmann Meditation, Bernstein West Side Story Medley

• 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!

Ryan Lillywhite of Cannonball Musical Instruments

When a person learns a foreign language, they learn first to repeat some standard useful phrases. Then they learn to rearrange the vocabulary and syntax of those phrases to create new ones. Over a lifetime of study and practice, they may learn the language well enough to speak or write with their own distinctive creative voice. But if a student tries on the first day of French class to be creative and original, they aren’t likely to make much sense. To speak the language, you need to hear it, imitate it, and then repeat over and over. Genuine individual originality comes much, much later.

So I was pleased to read an excellent blog post by saxophonist Bob Hartig:

If you listen to a lot of Kenny Garrett, and if you take it upon yourself to transcribe a bunch of Kenny Garrett solos, and if you steep yourself in those Kenny Garrett solos, then chances are you will come out sounding an awful lot like Kenny Garrett.

Now, if that’s all you aspire to, then that’s where you’ll end up: as a Kenny Garrett clone. But if you desire to forge your own voice, then Kenny will simply become a part of your vocabulary, a vocabulary that includes other influences besides Kenny and increasingly reflects your personal explorations with melody, harmony, timbre, and nuance. You are an individual, after all, and the sheer force of your individuality will direct you toward your own sound and approach.

Bob expands on this in the comments section:

A good writer doesn’t become one by attempting to create a different dictionary. He or she develops expertise by becoming conversant with the existing language, and that happens largely through reading the works of great writers who have gone before. Through careful scrutiny and application of how others have handled the English language, the individual’s personal writing style emerges.

Shakespeare is noted for adding a huge number of words and phrases to the English language—undoubtedly one of the most creative minds working in that medium. But how many of the words and phrases in his works were really brand new inventions? Surely less than 1%. And how much did Charlie Parker or John Coltrane add to the jazz language, that wasn’t already there? Their contributions are staggeringly significant, but what they actually created out of thin air was a drop in the bucket among all the notes they played in their careers. For most of us mortals, our truly original contributions to the language (be it English or jazz) are few and far between; most of our creativity happens when we shuffle and remix the materials that are already before us.

Bob backs up  his ideas about the importance of jazz vocabulary with his Giant Steps Scratch Pad project. The Scratch Pad provides a wealth of tasty and useful vocabulary for playing over the chord changes to John Coltrane’s tune “Giant Steps,” a tune that has challenged the best of jazz players for decades because of its unusual and elegantly symmetrical chord progression. Bob was kind enough to send me a review copy of the Giant Steps Scratch Pad Complete, a new PDF-only (at least for now) edition that contains the same material as the Scratch Pad, transposed into all twelve keys. The transposed material makes this especially good for those who aspire to play Giant Steps in all twelve keys, or who double on instruments of different transpositions.

I took the Scratch Pad Complete for a test drive today. For each of twelve keys, Bob provides a series of 4-bar licks or patterns which can be used effectively over the first four bars of Giant Steps. The next four bars of the tune repeat the same progression transposed, so the same set of licks can be used if desired, just in a different key. For each key Bob also gives a series of 8-bar licks that can be used over the tune’s second half. The material is varied—some is slower and more analytical, tracing the chord progression’s voice leading, but much of the material is virtuosic and beboppish. Bob also provides, under separate headings, Giant Steps vocabulary based on the augmented scale, a colorful and inspiring approach to these difficult chord changes.

I used some of Bob’s material to quickly create my own little etude to practice over Giant Steps. I used the same licks in the first four bars and the second four, transposed appropriately, and an eight-bar sequence over the last half. Here’s what I came up with (if you catch any bad notes here, they are mine and not Bob’s):

Play

It’s a bit repetitive (though, let’s be honest, so is Coltrane’s solo). However, these are chord changes that I haven’t played much, and as of this morning couldn’t have played fluently even at this tempo. But in just a few minutes, I was able to put together an effective quasi-etude and get it under my fingers. Now I have a little bit of vocabulary at my disposal for this tune or any others that have borrowed Coltrane’s harmony. With the sheer quantity of material available in this book, I could play for many choruses without ever repeating myself. And in the stages of preparing to do so, the internalized vocabulary would have already started to recombine into new and creative variations.

Bob is open about this book being a “scratch pad,” not a highly-polished method book. There’s great vocabulary material here, but it comes some-assembly-required (for example, the licks are in no particular order). This isn’t a bad thing in the end, since it means spending some time spent in experimentation and discovery.

I do think there are a few notational niceties that could help to move this book out of “scratch pad” status, if Bob should choose to do so for future releases:

• I would like to see the licks numbered or otherwise uniquely identified—this would aid cross-referencing between keys, and would be useful in an instructional setting.
• Additionally, it’s easy to get a little lost in the sea of licks (over 250 pages’ worth). It might be nice to have a reminder on each page in the header or footer: “Key of A-flat, B section”).
• The chord symbols are provided for the first lick on each page, but not any of the others. I presume this is to keep the pages more looking more clean and minimal or to force users to internalize the chord progression, but since this is mostly a repository of raw vocabulary material, I would find it convenient to have every chord change clearly marked.
• My personal preference is for Aebersold-style chord symbols (triangles for major chords, minus signs for minor chords, etc.), as they are concise and relatively visually unambiguous, and in general I would like to see these become a de facto standard for jazz education. Bob uses “MA” and “MI” for major and minor, which I find a little more difficult to read.
• Nowhere in the book can you find the complete chord progression for Giant Steps. I had to drag out a fakebook to be sure I was putting licks in the right places. Not a big deal, but it’s nice to be able to work from one book instead of two. I would like to see the complete progression provided in each key.

Despite those few very minor complaints, I think this is an excellent resource and a good, efficient way to wade into Giant Steps and Coltrane harmony. Kudos to Bob for his great work!

At the time of this writing, the Giant Steps Scratch Pad Complete is available by instant PDF download for $21.95. Single-key editions are still available as well (for C, B-flat, E-flat, and bass clef instruments—sorry, jazz English hornists) for $9.50 each in PDF or $10.95 plus shipping in print.

• 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!

Himie Voxman (1912-2011)

Influential music educator and longtime University of Iowa faculty member Himie Voxman has passed away at the age of 99. If you are a woodwind player, you have almost certainly used, at some point in your musical studies, something written or edited by Professor Voxman.

Check out the Iowa City Press-Citizen’s tribute for a nice overview of his life and career.