Featured Book: Improve Your Doubling: Advanced Studies for Doublers

I reviewed the book myself a couple of years back.

The jazzreview.com review is by Peter Westbrook. He gives some nice perspective on woodwind doubling:

The practice grew out of the need for players to cover parts on more than one instrument in the big bands of the 1920′s and 30s, and spread to the pits of Broadway shows and the TV staff orchestras at NBC and CBS. Saxophonists were initially expected to double on the clarinet until it was largely replaced by the flute in the 50′s, as it saw more acceptance in jazz. The 60′s brought new colors, adding oboe and bassoon parts for doublers—or triplers—to deal with, until players such as the legendary Romeo Penque appeared on the New York studio scene prepared to play every woodwind instrument known to man, often in quick succession, a situation further complicated by the re-emergence of the clarinet on the 1980′s. I counted over 20 instruments stacked up in front of the five-piece reed section of the Maria Schneider Orchestra at a recent concert.

Mr. Westbrook evaluates the Vadala book as “an indispensable part of every woodwind player’s training,” which I would consider to be somewhat of an exaggeration, though I do think the etudes are interesting and worth a look for an advanced doubler.

I was also intrigued by the mention of “legendary” doubler Romeo Penque, with whom I was not familiar, but whose credentials certainly seem to be in order.

Excerpt from Fisher Tull, Sarabande and Gigue

I heard some very fine playing during the auditions, but many of the students were fooled by the “senza vib.,” with some going so far as to use fairly extreme vibrato at the beginning of the note.

As my blog readers already know, of course, senza vibrato means without vibrato.

I think it’s a fairly common mistake for musicians at, say, an undergraduate collegiate level to either ignore or guess at the foreign words in a musical score. But the consequences can be, well, comical.

As musicians we all have to be little bit multilingual. I recommend this inexpensive, portable, and excellent source to my students and to all of you:

One of my fine colleagues offered some similar advice on her flute studio blog.

I recently got my own copy of The Woodwind Anthology, a massive two-volume collection of articles from The Instrumentalist and Flute Talk magazines. I’ve used this anthology from various university libraries throughout my  long college education, and found it to be a go-to source for pedagogy classes and comprehensive exam preparation.

Inexplicably, Instrumentalist is selling these right now for $37 for the set. Check it out here. The shockingly low price makes me wonder if this has gone out of print. If you’re interested, I suggest ordering soon.

There are articles here from 1946 to 1998. There must be at least a thousand. The list of authors reads like a who’s-who of woodwind playing over the last sixty years. 1985 pages in all—nearly six bookshelf inches. I kid you not.

Volume 1 includes flute articles and other articles of general woodwind interest; Volume 2 covers the reed instruments. There is enough information here to keep a woodwind player seriously busy for a long time. This is also a priceless resource for woodwind teachers—there are few topics that you couldn’t find in here for lesson or masterclass material, course readings, or general inspiration. The articles are arranged chronologically in each volume, with exhaustive indices by instrument and topic and by author.

• Want information on clarinet mouthpieces and reeds? 29 articles listed.
• Bassoon teaching techniques? 15 articles.
• Saxophone origins and development? 22 articles.
• Interviews with major flutists? 56 articles.
• General woodwind care and repair? 27 articles.
• I think you get the picture.

Highly recommended, especially for educators and students.

Most of the articles deal with technique fundamentals on specific instruments, which should make this book valuable to school band directors, but it also works quite well as a handbook for woodwind doublers; in fact, there are several articles that deal specifically with doubling, by Mike Duva, James Nesbit, Elsie Parker, and Albert Regni.

There are a few odd things  about the editing of the book. The “cookbook” theme gets old pretty fast—a number of the articles seem to have things like a list of “ingredients” unnecessarily tacked onto the text (“Ingredients: Motivated young bassoonists and supportive directors!”). The book also sports culinary graphics.

Another strange choice is that the articles are in alphabetical order by author, which seems to have pretty limited usefulness. It would make more sense to group the articles by instrument, or at least to provide an alternate table of contents with the articles organized in a more useful way. Still, if you’re interested in all five instruments, it makes a good cover-to-cover read.

The Woodwind Player’s Cookbook seems to be in somewhat short supply, sold out at a number of retailers’ websites, but copies are available here and there. List price is $24.95.

To sum up: I recommend The Woodwind Player’s Cookbook for excellent content by excellent players and teachers, despite some editorial weirdness.

1. From How to Play the Bansuri: A Manual for Self-Instruction Based on the Teaching of Devendra Murdeshwar, by Lyon Leifer. The bansuri is an Indian transverse flute. Ragas are, to oversimplify, scales on which Hindustani melodies are based.

Sage Narada and the Gandharvas

An ancient legend tells of the great musician and wise man called Narada. Once, while practicing he was visited by a spirit who transported him to a celestial realm. There he saw the most beautiful creatures, dressed in the finest of of fabrics, but broken, distorted and clearly in agony. When Narada asked his guide what had caused this agony, he was told that these pitiful creatures were gandharvas, ragas whose forms had been crushed by his own faulty renditions.

I shudder to think how many ghandarvas I’ve tortured with my own “faulty renditions.”

2. From The Virtuoso Flute-Player, by Johann Georg Tromlitz, written in 1791, and quoted in the outstanding The Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle by Grey Larsen. Totally unrelated to the previous quote, except in that I read it this morning and got a chuckle out of it.

When the weather is very hot, and one perspires freely, one commonly loses one’s embouchure in the course of playing, since the flute slips away from the place on the chin where it is supposed to rest, on account of the perspiration which prevents it from making firm contact, and impedes the progress of the piece. Quantz suggests a remedy: in such cases one should touch one’s powdered wig, and wipe the powder that sticks to one’s fingers onto that part of the chin so as to stop up the pores, and one will be able to play on without interference. But this is not correct; the powder does not stop up the pores, and the perspiration keeps on flowing, and now it mingles with the powder to form a viscous and slippery dough, far more injurious to the secure placement of the flute than perspiration alone. When I meet with this problem I wipe the perspiration away and continue to play. Meanwhile the most intelligent course is not to play any long, difficult and non-stop pieces during hot weather.

Tromlitz’s solution to the slippage problem—not playing difficult pieces on hot days—reminds me of the old joke where a patient says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this,” and the doctor says, “Well, don’t do that!”

Mr. Vadala is on my list of “notable woodwind doublers,” and certainly he is an outstanding player on single reeds and flute, but I think what makes him really notable in the (tiny) world of woodwind doubling is that he jumped on the opportunity to establish himself as an expert in the field, by writing this etude book and by contributing a semi-regular column, “Tips on Doubling,” in Saxophone Journal throughout the 1990′s. If you find yourself in the odd position of trying to do scholarly research on woodwind doubling (like I do, now and then), you find a lot of Chris Vadala and not much of anybody else.

So. I’m generally leery of anything that is “for doublers.” I don’t want, say, a clarinet mouthpiece “for doublers”—I want a clarinet mouthpiece for clarinetists. What do I want to sound like when I play the clarinet? A doubler? No. And so I find the idea of an etude book “for doublers” to be a little problematic—wouldn’t I be better off using the tried-and-true etude books for each individual instrument?

This book isn’t an all-in-one source designed to do the job of a program of flute study, a program of clarinet study, and a program of saxophone study. There are definitely things here to challenge and hone your flute, clarinet, and saxophone skills individually, but you’ll need to deal with the standard etudes and exercises associated with each of these instruments on their own. And, frankly, you will need to do that before you pick up the Vadala book, because this is seriously unforgiving stuff.

This book isn’t for beginners or casual doublers. Vadala, with ill-concealed glee, mercilessly harps on the most difficult issues of each instrument, and of switching between them (each etude involves flute, clarinet, and a saxophone of your choice). Don’t expect to spend much time playing in easy keys or in the comfortable middle register. There are also exercises involving sight transposition, improvising harmony lines, and other challenging and useful on-the-gig (but not necessarily doubling-related) stuff.

This book also isn’t double-reed friendly; it’s strictly flute-clarinet-saxophone doubling. That should do it for most jazz saxophonists who are working on their flute and clarinet chops, but, of course, the rest of us will have to rely on Barret and Milde to get our oboe and bassoon chops up to snuff. From this book and Mr. Vadala’s columns, it seems that he isn’t a double reed player, himself.

This book is an excellent wake-up call to aspiring doublers who think that they can squeak by without gaining fluency in the flute’s upper octave, or without working their clarinet fingerings in every key, or without mastering the lowest notes of the saxophone, for example. The introductory text is a good, common-sense introduction that deals with some basic issues about doubling. (Click here to read it online at the Dorn Publications website, and see a sample etude.) It is a substantial amount of material, 70 pages of etudes. And, well, it is the only book of its kind.

Presumably this book is intended for a fairly small market—fairly advanced flute-clarinet-saxophone doublers. I think there might be more of a market for a beginning doubling etude book, something that would challenge beginning doublers to achieve a thorough basic mastery of each instrument, without overwhelming them with extreme technical demands. There might be actually less of a market for a doubling book that involved double reeds. But hey, I would buy it.

If you dare, you can get Improve Your Doubling from Dorn Publications for $19.95.

Materials used for the tube and mechanism include nickel-silver, sterling silver, gold and platinum, while the springs are usually of tempered steel or phosphor bronze, occasionally of gold or another metal. The choice of material, especially for the head joint, influences the flute’s tone: wooden flutes produce a rich tone with a very full fortissimo in the lower register; metal flutes produce a limpid, flexible tone with great carrying power and also allow the player very sensitive control over the tone-colour; gold produces a mellow sound while silver is more brilliant. To achieve a combination of these qualities a head joint of wood or gold is sometimes fitted to a tube of silver.

The idea of different materials having different sounds is, of course, seen as conventional wisdom by flutists (and indeed by wind players in general), but it flies in the face of 100 years of acoustical science. This from my own summary of the topic:

Many woodwind players assume that, say, a clarinet vibrates like a violin soundboard or a drumhead, transmitting sound waves into the surrounding air. And, in fact, a clarinetist can feel the instrument vibrating in her hands when she plays.

The mistake here, according to scientists, is thinking that the vibrating instrument is what is producing the sound. Basic acoustics tells us that the woodwind instrument is merely a container for the real sound-producing body—a vibrating column of air.

Read the whole thing here.

It seems odd that such a scholarly tome as New Grove would fail even to acknowledge the controversy.