I recently set out to try to make sense of the handful of bassoon high F-sharp fingerings that I was aware of. As it turns out, I had no idea what I was getting into. I looked at a number of online and offline sources, and ended up with about 60 fingerings (yes, you read that correctly). I have compiled them into a document for your reading pleasure, with sources listed.
A few points:
The sorting is fairly arbitrary; I tried to organize them into groups and orders that made some kind of sense to me. The indications “Legato” and “French” come from the venerable Cooper/Toplansky book; the rest are my own.
The numbering is strictly for convenience.
I mostly omitted fingerings that seemed to be specifically for individual trills.
Many of the sources indicated pitch characteristics; I have not included these since so much depends on the individual instrument, reed, etc. If you are looking for a good fingering for pitch alteration, there are plenty here for you to try out.
Some of the authors differentiated between half-hole, one-third-hole, etc. I have normalized all of these with a visual half-hole representation, since I find the exact amount of opening to require experimentation anyway.
I did try all these fingerings myself, and was able to produce approximately an F-sharp with virtually all of them, with varying degrees of difficulty.
I welcome corrections, and would be mildly curious if you have other good published or otherwise reputable sources (not anecdotes) that list fingerings I have missed here. I will update the PDF as needed. I’m much less interested in hearing which fingering is your personal favorite, unless you have something more to contribute to the conversation, but some of you will email me or leave it in the comments anyway.
Today I found myself in the embarrassing situation of arriving at a rehearsal, contrabassoon in tow, without a single contrabassoon reed. Luckily the problem was easily solved—the reeds were literally just a few moments away, and I didn’t miss a note of rehearsal.
The problem, of course, is that the contra is a university-owned instrument, used by several student bassoonists, and so I don’t like to leave my reeds in the case. I just keep them in my bassoon case, with my bassoon reeds, and usually this works out fine since it’s rare that I go anywhere with the contra unless I have my bassoon along, too. But on the rare occasion that it happens, like today, I can easily forget to bring the reeds with me.
A number of years ago, when I started to get really serious about the doubling thing, I decided I needed a bag in which to keep my non-instrument-specific stuff. For example, in prior years as a dedicated alto saxophonist, I kept my accessories in my saxophone case: a metronome, a tube of cork grease, and so forth. When my instrument cases began to multiply, I found myself sometimes without an accessory that I needed. Buying more tubes of cork grease isn’t a big deal, but multiple metronomes can turn into real money for a college student. So I invested in a cheap messenger-type bag. Read More “My doubling bag”
The chin is much-discussed in clarinet pedagogy. Keith Stein suggests a “stretching” of the chin, making it feel “long and pointed” and “rather hard.” David Pino, a student of Stein’s, echoes this. Jane Ellsworth describes a chin that is “drawn downward” (while the jaw provides a “controlled” “upward pressure.” Michele Gingras advocates a “flat” chin. Bil Jackson indicates that the chin “flattens naturally” when the lip configuration and voicing are correct. Tom Ridenour explains that the chin should be “down and flat” and that this happens “virtually automatically” as a result of proper voicing.
The chin gets somewhat less attention in saxophone teaching, but some pedagogical examples can be found. Larry Teal indicates that the “chin muscles” should support the lower lip (as the jaw drops downward), and Timothy McAllister agrees. Tracy Heavner recommends that the chin muscles be “held flat against the chin” with a sensation of those muscles “pushing … down and away from the body.” Brian Utley advocates a “firm but relaxed [chin] position.”
Most of these sources seem to generally agree that the “chin” (or something) must be flattened or stretched or firmed in some way. Let’s look more closely at exactly what is being described, and how it does or doesn’t differ from the clarinet to the saxophone.
“Chin” is probably not a specific enough term for our purposes. Is it a bony structure? a muscular one? The pedagogical literature is rather unclear and contradictory about exactly how the “chin” moves, and even whether it is actively engaged or whether its movement is a result of some other thing moving.
Additionally, there is a common misconception in single-reed teaching that the lower lip forms a “cushion,” without which the teeth would contact the reed. This creates an embouchure that is formed by pressure from the jaw, with the lips serving passively as a gasket, and the lower lip taking quite a bit of abuse from the lower teeth.
A better way to form the embouchure is to bring the jaw (and teeth, and chin) down, away from the reed, and allow the muscles of the lips to form the embouchure. This moves the effort from the larger, stronger jaw muscles to the smaller but more supple muscles of the lips (of the citations above, Teal’s describes this the most clearly). For early beginners (or those who have played for many years with unnecessary jaw pressure and the resulting shredded lower lip) it may be necessary to gradually develop a little endurance in those muscles.
Taking this approach, it becomes clear that the pointing/stretching/whatever, which is actually mostly jaw movement, must be more extreme for the clarinet than for the saxophone, to accommodate the clarinet’s steeper angle.
Left: clarinet jaw position (more open). Right: saxophone jaw position (less open). Note that the lower teeth clear the reed; the lip will rise to meet the reed and form a muscle-based (rather than jaw/teeth-based) embouchure.
However, the chin area does have muscles, too, and these play an additional role. The lower lip has an acoustical damping effect on the reed, which plays a role in response, tone quality, and volume. Pulling the muscles around the chin downward around its bony structure (this is independent of jaw movement!) firms the lip slightly, reducing the damping. Allowing the muscles to relax softens the lip, increasing the damping. To take an oversimplified view of one aspect of this, we could say generally that the smaller clarinet requires a slightly firmer lip (and thus less damping) to accommodate its higher frequencies (pitches), while the larger saxophone needs less firmness (more damping) to accommodate its lower ones. Note that firmness of the lower lip should not be confused with overall embouchure “tightness.”
Understanding better the anatomical and acoustical aspects of the “chin” (and, of course, the skeletal and muscular systems that combine there) lead to clearer, more accurate teaching and better single reed playing.
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I use an inexpensive Fox plastic crutch on my bassoon. The shaft has always been a little too short for my preference, and I wasn’t interested in paying for a custom-made one, so I decided to attempt removing and replacing the shaft. I’m sharing this information here in case anyone else wants to do the same.
I wasn’t sure if the stock shaft was glued or molded into the plastic or if I would be able to remove it without destroying the crutch. But a little heat, slowly applied to the shaft not too close to the plastic, did the trick and the shaft pulled right out. (It’s hot! I used pliers.) The plastic inside the hole was slightly mangled, so I reamed it out a little with a drill bit.
I replaced the shaft with some brass that I had on hand. 3/16″ turned out to be too thick to fit into the bracket on my bassoon, but 5/32″ (just under 4mm) worked. The stock shaft seems to be somewhere in between. I cut the brass a bit too long with a Dremel cutting wheel, so I could gradually trim it down until it was just right.
I cut some shallow notches into one end to imitate the stock shaft, hopefully giving the glue something more to hold onto. My 5-minute epoxy had hardened, so I substituted some gel-type cyanoacrylate (“super”) glue.
After a little trimming I found the length I wanted. (I use my crutch in this position, which I think is less-common, but gives me the “ball” of the crutch right in the palm of my hand which feels good for balance.)
With my minimal skill set and tools, plus a little trial and error, this was a manageable and successful project.
Here is the handout from today’s presentation at the Mid-South Flute Festival at the University of Memphis campus. The audience was small but enthusiastic, asked good questions, and some of them stayed extra long to try out some instruments from my collection.
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I recently had a saxophone student perform a repertoire piece with some altissimo technique in it, and a non-woodwind-playing musician asked me afterward about the instrument’s extended range. This led to further questions about “altissimo” on other instruments. The answers are a little complicated, but here is some information:
The term “altissimo” suggests an extreme high register. The term is widely used by clarinetists and saxophonists, with essentially the same definition: pitches in the instrument’s third register or higher. Basically, this is notes above (written) F-sharp-6 for saxophones or (written) C6 for clarinets. (It’s not really that simple if you factor in alternate fingerings: a clarinetist, for example, might use a trill fingering to produce a D6 in the second register, or a saxophonist might use a “front” fingering to produce E6 or F6 in the third register.) For clarinetists, using some of the altissimo register is a pretty basic technique, part of the instrument’s “standard” range (which extends maybe to G6, depending on who you ask), and accessible to, say, an intermediate-level high school student. For saxophonists, altissimo is viewed as a more advanced technique, outside the “standard” range, perhaps accessible to college-level musicians or motivated high schoolers.
The word “altissimo” isn’t used much in the flute and double reed worlds, though those instruments’ third registers are widely used even by intermediate-level players. (Christopher Redgate does use the term in his writings about oboe extended techniques, but arbitrarily defines it as beginning at G6, well into the instrument’s third register.) The flute’s third register begins (basically) at D6, the oboe’s at C-sharp-6, and the bassoon’s at E-flat-4.
the lowest pitch (written) of each woodwind’s third register
In short, all of the woodwinds do have an “altissimo” range in the sense that they have a third register and higher. But not all of them use that terminology, and those that do differ on whether the altissimo range is “standard” or an extended technique.
I recall as a beginning flutist (coming from background in saxophone) finding the third-octave fingerings to be a confusing, illogical jumble, but they do actually make some sense. There is an incorrect explanation for these fingerings that I hear every so often, and have seen published on a couple of flute-related blogs recently. It goes something like this: the flute’s third-octave fingerings are some kind of combination of two different first/second-octave fingerings. For example:
+
=
?
Or…
+
=
?
If I squint my eyes just right I can sort of see how this almost makes sense fingerings-wise and overtones-wise, but ultimately this system is unnecessarily confusing and also doesn’t reflect acoustical realities.
Here’s a better way to look at third-octave flute fingerings: they are the same as the first/second octave fingerings, with a vent opened. This is very similar to how upper registers are achieved on the reed instruments: by adding an octave or register key or releasing a whisper key to open a vent. Since the flute doesn’t have dedicated vent holes, toneholes are used.
For some of the third octave notes, additional keys must be added or subtracted to improve pitch, tone, or response; again this is analogous to the systems used for the reed instruments. But here are the simplest examples of opening single vents for the third octave:
→
open vent
→
→
open vent
→
→
open vent
→
→
open vent
→
It is probably worth pointing out that having any “system” for remembering fingerings is just a crutch; for a performing musician, the only practical “system” is to thoroughly habituate them to the point that no conscious thought is required. Practice carefully and be on the alert for dubious pedagogy.
After nearly 40 years of playing, a complete new set of F# fingerings! My old trusty one had broken down (still trying to analyse that), but the “Legato” variants have great promise. How did I not know them before?
Some bassoon fingerings are very sensitive to the instrument’s condition. If a fingering that used to work doesn’t anymore, get the instrument to a good technician for some tweaking.
After nearly 40 years of playing, a complete new set of F# fingerings! My old trusty one had broken down (still trying to analyse that), but the “Legato” variants have great promise. How did I not know them before?
Some bassoon fingerings are very sensitive to the instrument’s condition. If a fingering that used to work doesn’t anymore, get the instrument to a good technician for some tweaking.