Take the spelling test

The topic seems to keep coming up—I ran across one of Tom Ridenour’s fine videos about the subject, and clarinetist Adam Berkowitz wrote about it on his blog today.

Adam uses whistling to explain voicing, which I had mentioned in my article and which I agree works very well. I do differ with his idea that embouchure is part of voicing; in my mind these are two separate aspects of woodwind playing.

Tom’s video predates my own article by a few weeks. He and I both use the analogy of putting one’s thumb over a garden hose to describe the effect of a “higher” voicing on the airstream. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out where I might have gotten that comparison; perhaps Tom and I each stole it from a common source.

Adam and Tom both conclude, and I agree, that for the clarinet the voicing should be quite high. Tom goes on to explain (starting after the video’s three-minute mark) that the saxophone’s voicing is low, like the vowels “oh” or “ah,” and similar to that of the flute or oboe. I agree that the flute and the oboe each have a very low voicing (as does the bassoon), but I think the saxophone’s is somewhere between there and the extreme high of the clarinet.

This, incidentally, is why I find mouthpiece pitch exercises (stay tuned for a future article) to be so essential on the saxophone—on the other woodwinds, you can (to oversimplify) push the voicing to one extreme or the other, but with the saxophone you have to aim for a particular spot in the middle. I find this to be something like the vowel in “word.”

Voicing refers to the relative size of the oral cavity, which can change depending on the position of the back of the tongue.

There are a number of other terms that are used to describe this same concept in woodwind playing. I don’t take issue with any of these terms individually, and I think that as a teacher it’s useful to have a variety of possible ways to explain this concept. (These terms can become problematic, however, when they are used in opposition to each other: “Open up, and blow cooler air.”)

Here are some examples of ways of describing voicing. I consider the terms in the left column all to be descriptions of the same thing, and those on the right to be likewise equivalent to each other.

I do think that “faster/slower air” needs to be used carefully, because the air speed can be altered by changing the voicing or by changing the breath support. (Think of increasing the speed of water in a garden hose: you can narrow the opening of the hose by putting your thumb over it, or you can turn it up at the faucet.)

Every so often I hear a woodwind player deny that they use voicing at all—usually meaning, I think, that they don’t change their voicing from note to note. Under my definition, there’s no such thing as not using voicing, the same way there’s no such thing as not using an embouchure. Any player’s voicing at a given moment is some balance of “warmer air” versus “cooler air” (or whichever terminology you prefer).

The larger issue of how to apply the concept of voicing is a contentious one at best. Stay tuned for future articles!

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 think as woodwind doublers, when talking to players of single instruments, we sometimes give the same impression that obnoxious foreign tourists give—that we have read a few paragraphs out of the guidebook and now consider ourselves experts on the local culture. If you’re a woodwind doubler hoping to function as an honest-to-goodness oboist or clarinetist or whatever, I think it’s worthwhile to speak the language like a native.

A few examples:

• “Sax.” I almost never hear a serious saxophonist use the word “sax,” at least not without a little irony. “Saxophone” is much more dignified.
• “Soprano clarinet.” It’s just “clarinet.” If you need to be really specific, try “B-flat clarinet” or “A clarinet” (or “clarinet in B-flat…”). “Soprano flute” seems perhaps even more obnoxious. “C flute”or “concert flute” if you really must specify.
• “Flautist.” Admittedly, there are probably some people who hear me say “flutist” instead and think that I don’t know what I’m talking about. Those people, in my humble opinion, are wrong.
• “Octave key.” You can use this correctly referring to saxophone or oboe (oboes, of course, have two or even three octave keys, at least in the United States). But it’s just plain wrong to refer to a clarinet’s register key as an octave key, since it doesn’t raise the pitch by an octave.
• “Improv.” This of course comes from the verb “to improvise,” which, in a musical context, can mean to compose music as it is being performed. I’ve heard the abbreviation “improv” used as both a noun and a verb (“Was that an improv?” “Did you improv that?”), but never from people who know how to do it.
• “Jazzer.” Used by only by someone who doesn’t play jazz, referring to someone who does.

As a side note, I always think this one sounds foolish, but it’s common enough argot among musicians:

• “Bari.” Pronounced “berry,” short for baritone saxophone. However, “bari sax” still marks you as a likely non-saxophonist in my book.

I fear that to many woodwind players (or wind players in general, and maybe singers too) breath support is something mysterious. I have often had teachers stress to me the importance of breath support, but I can’t remember ever having one explain clearly what it is.

I’m teaching a woodwind methods class this semester and trying hard to make large and complex aspects of woodwind playing accessible to non-woodwind players, enough that they can effectively teach beginning students in a school band setting. I’m stressing breath support in the class because it cures so many ills—more on this momentarily.

So the working definition that I have been using with the class is this:

Breath support is the engagement of the abdominal muscles (including the sides and lower back) during exhalation.

On their recent test, I asked the class to define breath support, to explain a simple way of teaching it to beginners, and to tell why it is so important. Needless to say, I had made all of these things explicitly clear in class, in lecture and in a pre-test review session.

Many of the non-wind-players in the class did very well on this question—they had taken good notes in class, and were able to regurgitate my definition without any trouble.

Some of my wind players, however, apparently didn’t feel the need to pay attention in class when discussing something so simple as breath support, and then weren’t able to give a clear definition. Many of them discussed inhalation, used vague terms like “good air,” or rambled on about posture. I had more than one student stress the absolutely vital importance of keeping the feet shoulder-width apart, a concept that they didn’t get from me and with which I don’t necessarily agree.

Another very common error among the low-scoring wind players was the idea that breath support comes from the diaphragm. The diaphragm is, of course, the star of the show when it comes to inhalation—it is the contraction of this muscle that stretches the lungs, allowing air to rush in. But the diaphragm only flexes in that one direction. Exhalation (in normal breathing) is the result of that muscle relaxing. Of course, for wind playing, the simple relaxation of a muscle can’t provide the kind of air control that we need. Thus, the abdominal (and perhaps intercostal) muscles are also engaged to control exhalation.

Doubtless these vague or erroneous ideas come from my students’ private teachers. Don’t get me wrong: these are good concepts, and even arguably somewhat related to breath support, but they are not breath support per se. I think it’s a shame that there is so little clarity in wind pedagogy.

The example I had given in class for teaching beginners about breath support is to have them tense their stomach muscles, as though bracing for a punch to the gut. This allows them to feel the sensation of engaging those muscles; beyond that it’s a simple matter of reminding students to use their muscles to squeeze the air out of their lungs.

My students mostly also did well at indicating the importance of breath support. I was looking for them to prescribe increased breath support to solve saggy tone and poor intonation. Some also pointed out that it can improve inconsistent response, and even sluggish articulation. In my own playing, I can sometimes solve even more remote problems, like fingering issues, by focusing on breath. (This is likely entirely in my head, but if it works…) One student pointed out that a lack of good breath support will cause students to “fail miserably.” Too true.

How would you have done on my test?

These are worth a read:
Am I a Flutist, or a Flautist?
Is it Flutist or Flautist?

To summarize: there doesn’t seem to be any good reason for English-speaking people to say “flautist.” “Flutist” makes much more sense. Most dictionaries list both, but I’d venture to say that’s only because “flautist” has become acceptable through common usage (if enough people say it wrong, it’s right!).

I’ve heard people say now and then, though I can’t find it documented anywhere, that the terms are gender specific. For example, “flutist” refers to a male and “flautist” refers to a female. I’ve also heard it the other way around. I don’t know why we would have gender-specific terms for flute players when we don’t have them for other instruments.

For what it’s worth, I’ve also observed that “flautist” seems to be especially popular among non-musicians; musicians, level-headed bunch that they are, seem more likely to say “flutist.”

Woodwind doubler (or just doubler) – I mentioned in my last post two problems with this one. The first is that “doubling” seems to indicate only two instruments; the second is that the term, in some contexts, has come to suggest musicians playing instruments on which they are not especially skilled. A third problem is that a layperson may not be able to infer the meaning (which they easily could with “flutist” or “saxophonist.”) Still in all, this is by far the most frequently used term for a player of multiple woodwind instruments, and is the quickest and clearest way to indicate just what it is that I do—provided that I’m speaking to someone in the music business.

Woodwind player - The immediate problem with this is that it isn’t clear enough. A doubler is all of these, but so is a musician who plays only clarinet. Using a plural form, as in woodwinds soloist, solves this problem at the expense of grammatical awkwardness. Woodwind man for some reason, seems to me to suggest a doubler, but it’s too slangy for professional use (ditto for woodwind-er), and of course has the problem of being gender-specific. “Woodwind woman” doesn’t quite have the same ring. “Woodwind person?”

A number of the titles I listed used either artist, soloist, specialist, performer, or instrumentalist (as in “woodwind artist,” “woodwind performer,” or “woodwind instrumentalist,” for example). “Artist,” “soloist,” and “specialist” have a touch of self-aggrandizement; okay for self-promotion (as of this writing, I’m using “woodwind artist” in my bio), but it would be nice to have a non-judgmental term that simply suggests a player of multiple woodwinds, whether of “artist” stature or not. “Performer” seems to go the other direction, making doubling sound like a stunt or novelty act. And “instrumentalist” is just plain redundant—you wouldn’t say “oboe instrumentalist.”

Quite a few possible titles use reed in them (i.e. “reed player,” “multi-reed instrumentalist”). The brevity of “reed player” is appealing, but seems to indicate a player of reed instruments only—though many of the doublers whose websites yielded “reed” titles count the flute among their instruments.

Oddly, Wikipedia currently has an entry for multireedist, but not “woodwind doubler.” (There is an entry for doubling, which gives definitions of the term in several musical and non-musical contexts; the closest it comes to addressing true woodwind doubling is the use of flute-piccolo doubling as an example. There is also an entry for multi-instrumentalist, which doesn’t mention woodwind doubling. [Wikipedia entries are subject to change.])

So, here’s my wish list for a title for what I am (currently “woodwind doubler”):

• Vague enough to allow for any combination of woodwind instruments
• Specific enough to show that I play instruments of multiple woodwind families
• No built-in judgments (negative OR positive)
• Clear, preferably even to a nonmusician
• Concise and grammatically acceptable

“Multiple woodwind player?” How about “multiwoodwindist?” Hmm.

Being asked to play multiple instruments that you normally don’t, but have a bit of facility on them that doesn’t quite match your main instruments.

That doesn’t sit very well for someone like me, whose goal is to play all their instruments equally well.

Today I clicked through some of the links on my list of “doublers” on the web to see what they call themselves. Here are some of the titles I found:

• woodwind doubler
• woodwind player
• multi-reed specialist
• woodwind artist
• multi-woodwind artist
• multi-instrumentalist
• woodwind performer
• reed player
• woodwind recording artist
• multi-instrumental performer
• woodwinds soloist
• multi-woodwind instrument performer
• multi-woodwind performer
• woodwind specialist
• woodwind instrumentalist
• woodwind-er
• woodwind performing artist
• multi-reed instrumentalist
• mulitple woodwind specialist
• multi-woodwind player
• multi-reedist
• woodwind man
• multi-reedsman

In my bio, I am currently calling myself a “woodwind artist.”

In a future post, I’ll comment on some of these titles, and why I like some better than others.