Favorite blog posts, May 2014

Kind of a short list this month, so either all the bloggers are on summer vacation or I am getting pickier.

The amazing shrinking woodwind section: increasing demands on woodwind doublers

21st-century woodwind players need to be able to play a greater number of instruments, from a pool no longer limited to the orchestral woodwinds and saxophones, at a soloist level on each instrument.

Did I play that “right?”

Execution of musical passages isn’t really about “right” or “wrong,” but rather about degrees of rightness. To borrow an idea from manufacturing or engineering, we might think in terms of tolerances.

Irish flute/whistle ornamentation symbols à la Grey Larsen, in Lilypond

If you are nerdy/awesome enough to be into (1) the pedagogy of Irish traditional woodwind playing and (2) open-source text-based music notation software, then you may want to check out my set of symbols for Lilypond.