Brass doubling?

ByBret Pimentel

I have now successfully completed both my written and oral comprehensive exams, and am one large step closer to finishing a doctorate in multiple woodwinds performance.

In the oral exam, one of my professors asked why woodwind doubling is a well-recognized musical specialty, but doubling on brass instruments is not.  The question was an odd one, especially since brass instruments fall precisely outside my area of expertise. I didn’t have a good answer, except that brass players seem to be particularly protective of their embouchures, and presumably don’t want to risk ruining them by switching instruments. (That seemed to be satisfactory for purposes of the exam.)

I do know of one school that offers a “woodwind specialist” master’s degree, a “string specialist” master’s degree, and, yes, a “brass specialist” master’s degree: Michigan State University. (Degree descriptions here.) The string degree requires one primary instrument and one secondary, the brass degree requires one primary and two secondaries, and the woodwind degree requires one primary and three secondary instruments. I expect if anyone is doing the string degree, they do violin/viola or cello/bass, hoping to get one of the “high strings” or “low strings” teaching jobs. The only combination of three brass instruments that strikes me as marketable is trombone/euphonium/tuba, a “low brass” specialist.

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  • Wind controllers as “practice” woodwinds

    ByBret Pimentel

    Can you use a wind controller, like the Akai EWI, the Yamaha WX, or the Roland Aerophone, as a convenient and/or quiet way to practice a “real” woodwind instrument, like the saxophone or the flute?

    No, not really.

    You can practice some very limited aspects of woodwind playing. For example, each of those wind controllers has fingering patterns that resemble (but are not identical to) the fingerings of standard woodwinds. If you are in the very early stages of playing a woodwind instrument and still trying to memorize fingerings, I suppose you could use a wind controller to help you with that specific task, to the extent that the fingerings do match.

    The Akai instruments have saxophone, flute, and oboe modes, plus the more flexible “EWI” mode that is quite saxophone-like, and even a couple of variations of a valved-brass-inspired mode. The Yamaha WX5 has several saxophone modes and a flute mode. The Roland instruments are set up to map fairly directly to saxophone fingerings, even going so far as to include some of the saxophone’s more problematic features like “palm” keys. However, with that exception, none even have all the keys needed to learn proper saxophone, flute, or oboe technique.

    (None of the instruments currently has a clarinet mode, presumably because the real-clarinet phenomenon of overblowing to odd-numbered partials raises some complications for an electronic instrument capable of many octaves of range. And none of the instruments has the physical keys to reasonably approximate bassoon technique.)

    Plus, in all cases, including the Rolands, none of them can fully imitate the “feel” of a standard woodwind. Beyond the very basic stage of learning fingering patterns, much of the fingering work that woodwind players practice has to do with nuances of the fingers’ interactions with the keys. Even switching from one flute to a slightly different model of flute can mean having to re-adapt to the keys’ precise locations, spring tensions, etc. Switching between a flute and a wind controller is a much larger leap.

    And, of course, no major wind controller currently provides a realistic approach to tone production. None has a reed that functions as such, and none has a flute-like embouchure hole. There are some superficial similarities like breath pressure being mapped to volume, or a bite-able mouthpiece that allows for something like saxophone-style jaw vibrato (or to the ill-advised reed instrument technique of bending pitch with jaw movement).

    So, can you practice on it? Not really.

    But the good news is that wind controllers (particularly, in my opinion, the Akai EWIs) have lots of potential as instruments in their own right. (If you aren’t familiar, look no farther than Michael Brecker’s playing for an eye-opener.)

    Rather than looking at wind controllers as a “practice” instrument or a low-budget stand-in, consider a wind controller to be an additional avenue for expression. Playing it well requires just as much hard work, but also brings worthwhile creative rewards.

  • |

    What I listen for in scholarship auditions

    ByBret Pimentel

    It’s scholarship audition season again, which means I get to meet and listen to some very nervous high school seniors (and community college sophomores).

    My university is a small regional one, so our audition process probably isn’t as intense as some of the big name-brand music schools. If you’re preparing for an audition, you should definitely check in with that school to see what they expect, but here’s what I usually hear auditionees play, and what I’m thinking while I listen. Read More “What I listen for in scholarship auditions”

  • Written jazz articulation problems

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    Stylistically-appropriate articulation has long been under-taught in jazz education. (Or waved away with a “ya gotta listen”) . But that is changing , with some recent guides and method books starting to find some consensus about best practices. Concepts like which notes to accent, or how long to sustain certain notes, apply to all jazz instrumentalists. But wind-instrument players have the extra complication of which notes to tongue or slur. This distinction is critical to good jazz style.

    In classical music, wind players usually perform articulation markings with accuracy. But printed jazz music can take varied approaches to articulation markings.

    Some charts for experienced players have sparing articulation markings or none at all. The composer, arranger, and/or editor trust the performers to apply appropriate style:

    Jazz tune with no articulation

    Others, particularly more recent ones, use markings that reflect the crystallizing best practices:

    Jazz tune with best-practice articulation

    But may otherwise well-written charts, bafflingly, use markings that are not stylistically appropriate:

    Jazz tune with poor articulation

    Some red flags include long slurs and staccato markings. Experienced jazz players instinctively ignore these bad markings and use better articulation practices. (Long slurs can in some cases be explained away as “phrase” markings. But since they are visually indistinguishable from slurs, it’s better to omit them.)

    Occasionally a good jazz composer or arranger will use an articulation marking in a surprising or unusual context. It’s up to the performers to determine whether this is an intentional break from typical jazz style, or an editing error.

    In some cases, a composer/arranger might even choose a particularly anti-swing articulation as a kind of joke. This is usually followed by a figure that should be played with exaggerated, correct swing and articulation. This heightens the contrast between “good” and “joke” style:

    Jazz tune with "joke" articulation

    Jazz players and educators are responsible to know and apply correct articulation, using their best musical judgment to override the written parts when appropriate.

  • Professional-sounding ornaments

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    When I’m working with new or prospective college music students, one thing that I often hear in their auditions or early lessons is awkward ornamentation. Here are some common pitfalls:

    • Aggressive grace notes. Notice how grace notes are printed smaller on the page? They aren’t there to call attention to themselves. They are usually adding weight or importance to the following note. Give that note a little extra volume/tenuto/stretch/stress, rather than accenting the grace notes themselves.

    • Weak trills. Don’t let your breath support sag. Blow through the trill like it’s part of the phrase (because it is). Every note of the trill, no matter how fast it goes by, needs a full, clear, in-tune sound.

    • Short trills that aren’t short enough. If you don’t have an exit plan for your trill, it’s easy to get stuck in it and be late for the next note. It’s especially a problem for shorter trills, like on a quarter note. To make sure your trills aren’t interrupting the rhythmic pulse, decide exactly how many notes they should have. The shortest version (for trills starting on the lower pitch) is three notes—the starting note, the upper note, and back to the starting note. Five or seven notes (hitting the upper note two or three times) makes it sound more convincingly like a trill, if there’s time. Decide what number makes sense for the style and tempo, and practice it slowly and deliberately with a metronome so you can land on the following note right on time.

    • Missed accidentals or key signatures. Even within ornaments, key signatures still apply, and accidentals still carry through the measure. Check carefully and mark in any sharps or flats that will help your accuracy.

    • Uninformed interpretation. Ornamentation is an art, and takes into account musical style, historical context, harmonic context, rhythm and meter, and a lot more. If you possibly can, listen to lots of recordings by professional players and see how they approach the ornaments. Listen for note choices, rhythms, emphasis, and articulation. While you’re still accumulating the knowledge and background you need to make good ornamentation choices on your own, there’s nothing wrong with stealing some ideas from musicians you admire. Also: a surprising number of Baroque composers wrote books on how to play ornaments, so if you’re playing something in that style it may be worth checking to see what the composer themself had in mind! (Quantz‘s chapters on appoggiaturas and “shakes” are a good example for woodwind players.)

    Graceful ornaments raise the maturity level of your playing, and audition judges notice. Don’t wing it!

  • Why my college band chair placements ended up not mattering a bit

    ByBret Pimentel

    Over 20 years ago, I was a brand-new music performance major. This is a story about that first year of college that I’ve told many times to my own college students.

    I arrived at college with the confidence granted me by a freshly-minted high school diploma and a track record of first-chair saxophone school band placements. I eagerly auditioned for the university concert bands and jazz bands, and was gutted to find myself placed not only in the lowest groups (the #3 band in both cases), but doubling up parts with other players. Devastatingly, a fellow freshman saxophonist landed spots in both the #1 groups.

    It was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I hit the practice rooms hard, gradually worked my way up, and in my senior year finally got spots in both top bands. By that time I had gotten serious about woodwind doubling, and earned a fun and important spot in the top concert band outside the saxophone section. And I got the lead alto chair in the top jazz band (and couldn’t help but enjoy a little that the classmate I had envied so much was sitting second).

    Had I gotten the seats I wanted right away, maybe I would have coasted through college. And it’s possible I never would have developed an interest woodwind doubling, which now is central to the career that I enjoy so much. Looking back now, having those particular chairs in those particular semesters seems very unimportant, but my growth during those years laid the groundwork for two graduate degrees and a life in playing and teaching music.

    Whatever your current stage in your musical development, there are bigger and better things to come. How you measure up to others matters much less than what you’re doing to get to your own next level.

  • |

    Why scales?

    ByBret Pimentel

    I recently asked one of my (woodwind) students why she thinks I make her practice scales. She didn’t have a ready answer, and I realized maybe I hadn’t been clear about the value of scales. Here are some reasons to practice scales (and arpeggios, and other methodical technical materials):

    photo, Aprilyn Podd
    • To develop good finger movement. Scales provide a systematic way to work each finger, and to work them together in just about every combination.
    • To build familiarity with the instrument. A rigorous scale routine makes you use every key and every fingering on the instrument.
    • To get comfortable playing in every key.
    • To explore the instrument’s range. Full-range scales are a good way to make yourself play in the highest and lowest registers of the instrument every day.
    • To provide a canvas for working on other techniques. Ever notice how woodwind instruments articulate a little differently on different notes? How different notes respond differently to vibrato? How some notes tend to be flat or sharp? Learn your scales well, and then use them as a way to take those techniques through every note on the instrument.
    • To train for musical situations. Most music is made up of bits and pieces of scales and arpeggios. Getting those patterns into muscle “memory” frees up mental bandwidth for sight-reading, ensemble, expression, and more.
    • To develop your ears. Internalize major, minor, diminished, whole tone, chromatic, and other modalities.
    • To satisfy requirements. If you are a music student at just about any level, scales are probably part of your lessons, exams, and auditions for the foreseeable future.
    • To have a familiar, habitual technical workout that you can improve upon for the rest of your life, without need for an étude book.

    Practice scales every day!

4 Comments

  1. C’mon … shouldn’t you have said that woodwind players are simply much smarter than brass players? Any woodwind player knows that. Brass players don’t, of course, because … well … they aren’t smart enough to know.

    ;-)

    Kidding. Of course. (And married to a former trombonist. Guess he was smart enough to stop playing!)

    Reply

  3. What about folks like Ira Sullivan and Seattle’s Jay Thomas and the late Floyd Standifer? They all doubled brass and woodwinds… Patrick Bartley, the up and coming superb alto saxophonist, was recently videotaped making pretty decent bebop sounds on a trumpet… / Many years ago I read a book on swing era jazz that reported that some of the string section players of Paul Whiteman’s orchestra had learned to be adept doublers on sax when needed… / One of Seattle’s finest flutists recently revealed she’d been practicing her violin regularly for a few years and has been doing well in string quartets… I’ve known several trumpet players who are also decent trombonists… And I saw a string group recently where one of the ‘cellists picked up a violin and played beautifully… The Dorsey Brothers both started on trumpet and both could pick up a trumpet in later years and get by… Harry James had been a child prodigy on the drums! The current principal clarinet of the Berlin Philharmonic started out first on piano, then ‘cello, and won prizes on both before taking up clarinet at age 11 or 12… (I’ve performed on clarinet, saxes, flute, oboe and bassoon. I consider clarinet & oboe my main ones…)

    Reply

  4. Congrats Bret! I’m one of those oddballs that doubles on a Brass Instrument. I’d say my main instruments are Bassoon and Saxophone….but in three community concert bands, I’m playing French Horn. I took a Brass 1 class in college and Horn was my chosen instruments. I ended up having to march Horn the following fall and played Horn in Concert Band the next year due to having my Wisdom Teeth cut out (and being told by my oral surgeon to NOT play bassoon for 6 months….that SURE put me on the “poop list” of ,my band director…where I stayed ’til he passed away. Fast forward many years….and had a car wreck in 2005. I had to stop playing Horn completely in 2011 (fractured jaw was the start of it). 2024, I knocked two lower teeth loose with a bari sax mouthpiece. Ended up having dental surgery to remove all teeth and roots. I had to learn how to play EVERYTHING all over again…with full dentures top and bottom. I was not able to have implants due to damage to my jaw from the car wreck. 4 months after the surgery, I picked up a Horn in a music store and the ability was still there…and the tone wasn’t half bad. I went back a week later and bought that horn…and it’s my main Horn to use today, a year later… I may NEVER have the range back to play 1st Horn again….but I’m fine with that. My range is low Horn and I’m FINE with those pedal tones with the occassional rip up to a G. I’m STILL playing woodwinds…but my adopted brass playing ability is still there. I truly did miss not playing Horn for those 13 years.

    Reply

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