Breath support, register breaks, and resistance

ByBret Pimentel

A few months ago I wrote this about the clarinet:

If breath support, embouchure, and voicing are correctly established, then Crossing the Dreaded Break ceases to be a Thing. It’s just another note: a moment ago you were playing B-flat, and now you are playing B-natural. As long as your fingers get where they are supposed to go, then that’s all there is to it. Personally, I don’t even use the word “break” with a beginning student—there’s no need to get them all uptight about what really is a non-event.

My point was that crossing a register break is merely a fingering issue, and shouldn’t be turned into a big to-do about embouchures and equipment purchases and so forth. And I stand by that, but there is something I glossed over a bit that perhaps ought to be revisited in more detail, and that applies to register break crossings on all woodwind instruments.

The point that I want to return to is that of breath support. If it, and some other basic tone-production matters, are “correctly established,” then break-crossing is indeed nothing more than a new fingering or two. But assuming that breath support is 100% correct with a student just reaching the break-crossing stage is often a mistake.

Each note on the clarinet (and on any woodwind) has a certain level of resistance—that is to say, it requires a certain amount of air pressure to get the air column vibrating. Some notes are more resistant, and some are less resistant. As a sort of general oversimplification, we might assume that a long-tube note (with more toneholes closed) is more resistant than a short-tube note (with more toneholes open). Other factors do apply, of course: the size of the toneholes, whether the fingering is a “forked” fingering, and more, but let’s isolate tube length for the moment. So for the clarinet, having a break between A-sharp and B, we would expect to see this kind of resistance change while crossing the break:

Taller grey bar = higher resistance
Taller grey bar = higher resistance

(Note that the bar graphs here are strictly illustrative and not based on any real measurements.)

A beginner who is accustomed to the lower resistance of a few chalumeau-register notes might have intuitively developed just enough breath support to make those notes respond. When he or she attempts to cross the break, the breath support isn’t enough to overcome the increased resistance:

resistance-across-break-bad

The breath support needs to be high enough to power the most resistant notes, and the less-resistant ones certainly do not suffer from it; on the contrary, their tone and pitch stability are improved by the additional support:

resistance-across-break-good

My college-level clarinet students have mostly mastered this, though sometimes they slip a bit. More of them still struggle a little with the transition across the higher break into the clarinet’s altissimo register, especially if they are timid about squeaking and tend to reduce airflow as they approach the high notes. My other reed-playing students sometimes have similar problems: oboists’ and saxophonists’ fourth-line D is sluggish (D-flat too, for oboists). With the bassoon, resistance throughout the instrument’s “beginner” range is generally fairly low and response isn’t as much of an issue, but lazy breath support manifests itself in a big way as pitch instability.

So crossing the break is not specifically a breath support issue; breath support needs to be powerful enough and constantly applied, to improve response across the break but also to improve virtually every aspect of woodwind tone production.

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  • Woodwind Doubler Census 2021 results, part 3: training/education

    ByBret Pimentel

    Thanks to all who participated in my 2021 woodwind doubling survey, and to those who helped spread the word. I’m releasing the results in installments, so be sure to use my social media links, RSS feeds, etc. to keep up.

    I got 284 responses, an improvement over 2011’s 187. The numbers for each of these questions don’t necessarily add up to exactly that number, since not everybody responded to every question.

    Which was your first instrument, among the major woodwinds?

    2021 Data
    flute 37 13%
    oboe 13 5%
    clarinet 106 38%
    bassoon 6 2%
    saxophone 119 42%
    none of these apply 1 ~0%

    2011 Data
    flute 22 12%
    oboe 10 5%
    clarinet 77 41%
    bassoon 5 3%
    saxophone 73 39%

    Which of these have been part of your education on woodwind instruments?

    2021 Data
    school band/orchestra program (high school or younger) 262 93%
    private lessons outside of school 248 88%
    summer camps 188 67%
    university band/orchestra program 241 85%
    university/conservatory bachelors degree with formal concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds 27 10%
    university/conservatory bachelors degree with single-instrument or other music concentration 182 65%
    bachelors-level study on secondary instrument(s), but not as part of a formal multiple-woodwinds program 111 39%
    university/conservatory masters degree with formal concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds 35 12%
    university/conservatory masters degree with single-instrument or other music concentration 75 27%
    masters-level study on secondary instrument(s), but not as part of a formal multiple-woodwinds program 31 11%
    university/conservatory doctoral degree with formal concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds 10 4%
    university/conservatory doctoral degree with single-instrument or other music concentration 24 9%
    doctoral-level study on secondary instrument(s), but not as part of a formal multiple-woodwinds program 6 2%
    other university/conservatory music degree or certification 14 5%
    self-taught on one or more instruments 167 59%

    2011 Data
    school band/orchestra program (high school or younger) 175 94%
    private lessons outside of school 170 91%
    summer camps 131 70%
    university band/orchestra program 143 76%
    university/conservatory bachelors degree with formal concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds 27 14%
    university/conservatory bachelors degree with single-instrument or other music concentration 97 52%
    university/conservatory masters degree with formal concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds 13 7%
    university/conservatory masters degree with single-instrument or other music concentration 37 20%
    university/conservatory doctoral degree with formal concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds 4 2%
    university/conservatory doctoral degree with single-instrument or other music concentration 5 3%
    other university/conservatory music degree or certification 12 6%
    self-taught on one or more instruments 118 63%

    What factors influenced you first to get involved in woodwind doubling?

    Besides the provided answers, several of you included personal anecdotes of influences including boredom, norms of the early music scene, orthodontia and injuries, career aspirations like instrument repair and studio work, and the Lawrence Welk Show.

    2021 data
    just interested in more than one instrument 202 72%
    required/helpful for a jazz (or other improvisatory music) group you played in or wanted to play in 139 49%
    had or wanted opportunities to play for musical theater 196 70%
    influenced by a teacher or role model 136 48%
    wanted to improve employability 138 49%
    an ensemble you were in (or wanted to be in) needed someone to play a specific instrument, and you were willing to learn it 118 42%
    an ensemble you were in (or wanted to be in) didn’t include the instrument you already played and you needed to learn another 46 16%
    your training/experience as a teacher required you to branch out 56 20%

    2011 Data
    just interested in more than one instrument 40
    required/helpful for a jazz (or other improvisatory music) group you played in or wanted to play in 37
    had or wanted opportunities to play for musical theater 35
    influenced by a teacher or role model 23
    wanted to improve employability 19
    an ensemble you were in (or wanted to be in) needed someone to play a specific instrument, and you were willing to learn it 19
    your training/experience as a teacher required you to branch out 9

    What sources have you used to learn about or otherwise engage with woodwind doubling?

    Besides the provided answers, nine of you wrote in something to the effect of “lessons” or “teachers,” which I didn’t include as an option because I covered formal training in other questions. A few of you also wrote in “YouTube,” which I have lumped in with “social media sites.”

    Thanks again for your participation and stay tuned for more survey results.

  • |

    Planning breaths

    ByBret Pimentel

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

    When learning a new étude or repertoire piece, it’s common to practice at first with focus on the notes, often playing them at a slow tempo and/or divided into chunks. This is a good approach for mastering the needed finger technique, but it may neglect one of the crucial parts of a performance: breathing.

    In some music, it’s obvious where to breathe. But in a page of nonstop sixteenth notes, it’s harder to find the right places, and to execute them gracefully. Adding to the problem, I find that when I am nervous or playing under pressure, my breathing is one of the first things that falls apart: I start breathing in unaccustomed places, or skipping breaths that I know I really need.

    I recommend establishing a breathing plan early in the process of learning new music. That way you can practice the breaths just like you practice the notes—they become a part of your muscle memory, and will happen automatically even under pressure.

    The first step for a wind player should be to mark in the musical breaths, the ones that demarcate phrases. These are breaths that you will take (or possibly fake) regardless of your need for oxygen, because they serve the music. How exactly to do that is beyond the scope of this post, but here are a few quick tips:

    • Beware breathing at bar lines. They look like nice stopping points, but often don’t make musical sense. (They are there only for your convenience in counting.)
    • Background in music theory helps a lot, but you can also use your ears to help you figure out intuitively where a phrase comes to rest, or steal ideas from a good recording.
    • To go deeper, consider studying phrasing, perhaps from a book like David McGill’s. (Put that one on your wish list if you haven’t read it already!)

    Once the breaths required by the music are in place, you may decide you need more, perhaps because you haven’t worked the piece up to its full tempo yet (or because the piece isn’t written with sensitivity to your desire to survive). Mark in-between “survival” breaths as needed, perhaps in parentheses so you remember which ones they are. Put them in the best places you can find, and execute them as musically as you can, but as your tempo increases you may be able to skip them. If so, be sure to erase them so your marked-in plan stays up to date.

    Choosing places for survival breaths is a trial-and-error process. Mark some in and give them a try, then adjust as needed. If you feel uncomfortable while playing, this can lead to panicked decisions on stage, so choose breaths for your comfort.

    Particularly for the oboe, you may find you need some “breaths” where you can actually exhale stale air. Mark these clearly, too.

    Always update your pencil marks if you decide to change the plan at all, so that your plan is 100% clear and you can practice it in a consistent way. You can change your mind later, as long as you change your marks.

    To summarize:

    • Start early in the process of learning a new piece.
    • Mark in musical breaths, which you will observe even if you’re capable of playing longer without stopping.
    • Mark in survival breaths, if necessary. Use trial and error to get them right.
    • Practice the breaths just as diligently as you practice the notes.
    • As you get closer to the performance, you might alter the breathing plan as your interpretation evolves, or as you no longer need some of the survival breaths.
    • Be strict about keeping the markings current, and about playing just what is marked.

    Well-planned, thoroughly-practiced breaths contribute to a relaxed, musical performance.

  • Factors in woodwind instrument response

    ByBret Pimentel

    Response is how readily the equipment/player combination produces sound. “Good” response generally means that the player-plus-instrument are able to produce a sound that starts precisely when intended, with clarity and with no unwanted additional noise. Many factors affect the quality and reliability of the response:

    • Instrument condition. An instrument with leaks, cracks, problematic dents, etc. will often respond in a delayed or unpredictable way.
    • Instrument quality. The instrument’s design and manufacture also play a role—an instrument of inferior design/build may respond inconsistently.
    • Setup. Mouthpieces and reeds are similarly subject to design and manufacturing flaws, and must also be well-matched to each other and the instrument. A common issue with single-reed instruments, for example, is using a “strength” of reed that isn’t a good fit for the mouthpiece.
    • Breath support. One of the most immediate and effective ways to improve response, even when other factors are less than ideal, is to use powerful, consistent breath support.
    • Embouchure. Any embouchure problem can affect response, but by far the most common is embouchure tightness or tension. Remember that all woodwind embouchures should be relaxed.
    • Voicing. This is one of the least-taught and least-understood, but one of the most crucial aspects of good woodwind playing. Properly-calibrated, steady voicing improves response (and just about everything else).
    • Finger accuracy and timing. Fingers that arrive on their keys or toneholes out of sync, or that fail to form proper seals, impede response like the leaks that they are.
    • Inherent acoustical problems. Even the best-made instruments have some built-in compromises that might make certain notes less responsive even under the best circumstances. A common example is the lowest notes on the flute, the oboe, and the saxophone, which may tend toward slight sluggishness even for the best players and equipment. Players may need to compensate in various ways.
    • Musical context. Related to the acoustical problems of the various woodwinds, certain musical contexts may exacerbate issues. For example, the bassoon has some specific intervals that are hard to slur smoothly, and skilled bassoonists might use special fingerings to improve these.

    For your best response on every note, be sure to address each of the many factors involved.

  • Achieving an ideal tone

    ByBret Pimentel

    A lot of the questions people have about woodwind playing center on tone: how can I get a better tone? a darker tone? a tone like _____’s? There’s not a lot of clarity on this, for a few reasons:

    • Firstly, of course, “good” tone is subjective, and trying to communicate clearly about tone in more dispassionate terms is problematic due to inconsistent vocabulary.
    • Tone is made from a recipe of factors, so it’s hard to isolate individual ones. Will adding another egg improve your cake? Depends on what else is in it. Will a certain warm-up exercise or piece of equipment have a specific effect on your tone? Depends on what other equipment and playing techniques you are using.
    • Much of what affects tone is difficult or impossible to observe and measure.

    Let’s look at the physical factors that influence tone:

    • Yes, of course, equipment. It’s axiomatic in woodwind playing that your equipment does affect your tone, but not as much as you affect your tone. Still, your particular combination of headjoint, reed, mouthpiece, ligature, barrel, bocal, instrument, and various other parts and accessories does influence in some way the sound that you make. Equipment of good design and construction, and within typical parameters, will contribute to an essentially characteristic tone quality. (By characteristic I mean easily identifiable as a specific instrument by someone with a musically-educated ear.)
    • Basic woodwind-playing techniques, including most notably breath support, voicing, and embouchure. Assuming these are well-trained, they also contribute to a characteristic tone quality.
    • Some subtle aspects of those woodwind-playing techniques that are hard to pin down. These small things determine how the tone fits into the larger world of characteristic tone qualities, usually described poorly in vague terms like “good” or “pure” or “rich” or “buttery” or “vocal.” For example, an oboist’s embouchure puts different pressures on different parts of the reed. Those pressures can be adjusted very subtly using the small and flexible muscles of the embouchure, but most oboists probably aren’t very aware of exactly what adjustments they are making (though they may know what it feels like). Most are also not very capable of passing that wisdom (i.e. a feeling) along to a student or colleague. Some of them can be described in too-general terms (“bring the corners of your mouth in more”), or can be evoked with spotty accuracy through metaphor or through tone exercises.
    photo, Tom Page
    photo, Tom Page

    So, how do you ever develop a tone that is characteristic, personal, and beautiful?

    • Use appropriate equipment.
    • Employ solid fundamental woodwind-playing techniques.
    • Listen frequently, widely, and at length to good music, particularly on your instrument, to develop a tone concept—an aural impression of your ideal tone. In early stages, that might be based on how deeply you have absorbed the sound of a favorite musician, perhaps your teacher. In later stages, it might be a sort of composite of your favorite aspects of many tones that you have internalized, perhaps even things that inspired you about a performance on an instrument other than your own (or a voice). Ultimately, it might be a tone that you have never heard before, but which you can imagine.

    Here’s why tone concept is so crucial:

    All those subtleties of woodwind technique that affect tone, the ones that are so hard to understand and communicate? You can find them with patient and dedicated practice, if you know what you are listening for. As you have already discovered, your tone tends to change from day to day. This inconsistency can be a problem, but can also be a way of stumbling, even subconsciously, onto something positive. (When it’s a conscious process, your thought might be, “when I hold my embouchure this way, I get a sound that is more _____.”) Additionally, a clear tone concept may aid you in intuitively pursuing it; you already use the muscles of breathing, voicing, and embouchure to intuitively produce a huge and subtly-differentiated set of speech sounds, and for most of those you would be hard-pressed to explain how you make them. If you get comfortable and familiar enough with your instrument through years of practice, you can begin to tap into that intuitive control, but again: only if you know what sound you want to make.

    An ideal tone is a lifelong pursuit—invest in yours by listening and practicing daily.

  • Take your instruments apart

    ByBret Pimentel

    I highly recommend taking your instruments apart.

    Here’s why:

    • There’s no better way to understand the workings of a mechanical device like a woodwind instrument than to take it apart and put it back together again. They’re your tools. You should understand how they work.
    • Take ownership of your instrument’s maintenance. Discover problems that need a repair tech’s attention BEFORE they affect your playing at an inopportune time. Or, even better, use your newfound confidence with a screwdriver to fix minor problems yourself, and consider learning how to change a pad, or at least a cork.
    • Keep your instrument sparkling. With your horn in pieces, you can easily get into the nooks and crannies to remove dust and gunk. Your instrument will shine like new, your mechanisms will move smoothly and quietly, and you’ll feel good about treating your precious horn with such loving care.

    Read More “Take your instruments apart”

  • Focus on fundamentals, not localized fixes

    ByBret Pimentel

    As I’ve discussed here previously, when trying to solve woodwind-playing problems there’s a useful distinction between problem-specific solutions and simply shoring up fundamental technique.

    Here are some examples of problem-specific solutions:

    • Second-octave G-sharp tends to crack on saxophone, especially tenor? When you get to that note, blow warmer air (in other words, use a lower voicing).
    • Low notes on oboe respond sluggishly? Try dropping your jaw a bit as you descend into that register.
    • Flute pitch sagging at softer dynamics? Increase your breath support as you decrescendo.

    Notice that all of these suggestions give you a sort of localized task to perform—make some change to your tone-production technique whenever you play a certain note. This is an exhausting way to play: trying to remember and execute a handful of directives for each note that goes by; discovering that a constantly-changing tone-production technique makes tone, pitch, and response unstable; adding another layer of fixes to try to counteract the instability. It can quickly become too much to process, and higher-order things like musical expression get sacrificed.

    Sometimes these localized fixes are necessary, usually as a workaround to some flaw or compromise in the equipment’s design or manufacture. But much more often the “fix” should be an improvement to fundamental technique:

    • If lowering your voicing helps the cracking G-sharp on tenor, what would happen if you used that lower voicing on every note?
    • If taking some jaw pressure off the oboe reed helps the low notes speak, what would happen if you didn’t add that pressure back in the higher registers?
    • If increasing breath support helps buoy up softer notes, would it hurt the louder ones?

    My guess is that by making these fixes part of your fundamental technique, instead of applying them here and there like bandages, you would discover:

    • a richer, more in-tune tenor saxophone tone
    • clearer, more immediate oboe articulation, with less fatigue/pain
    • flute playing improved in virtually every aspect

    Examine your problem-specific fixes carefully, and try making them your default approaches rather than special-occasion ones.

    When dealing with problem spots in your music, it’s okay to remind yourself of relevant and helpful fundamental techniques, but the ultimate goal should be to remove as much as possible of the mental overhead and physical gymnastics from your playing. Develop good basic technique that lets the instrument more or less play itself, so you can focus on the creative aspects.

5 Comments

  1. Another concept excellently explained Bret!

    I hate to be a “One-note-Johnny” (puns intended), but as I opined a while back on your post about scales, I’m gonna add that I think the EAR plays a role in successful break-crossing. Somehow, just building up the right air-pressure and pushing the right keys like an automaton ain’t gonna do the trick on a clarinet. I’ve found that if the player has trained the ear to expect a given note, it sure helps — sometimes to the almost magical point of making the right tone pop out in a quick passage even if the fingering isn’t exact! That’s probably a difficult concept to teach, but I think it’s in there somewhere….

    Reply

    1. Jack, I sort of agree. I’m not a fan of “magic” as a playing technique, but certainly our mental “ears” can help us, sometimes completely intuitively, to create the right situations for the desired audible vibrations to occur. However, if the air pressure and keys are in place, then the notes will be there! Cue the automaton…

      Reply

  2. I can’t remember if Bret plays an EWI, but if so do you have the same break when using an EWI with, for instance WIVI Winds. They claim to emulate everything an acoustic Wind instr.does and I have trouble sometimes getting some notes to have the full bodied sound for the same reason you discuss here,and the weak notes on Bassoon seem to also be emulated in WIVI. I would appreciate very much tour expert opinion on this.

    Reply

    1. I do play the EWI, but I have not used WIVI.

      As the EWI is an electronic instrument, the actual blowing resistance does not change at all regardless of what note you are playing. It is possible that you are using a softsynth that does imitate the characteristics of individual notes on a traditional woodwind, but it is an artificial construction and unrelated to breath support.

      However, I do find good breath support to be helpful for fine control of dynamics on the EWI.

      Reply

  3. I have noticed that there is a combination of factors that affect the tone and resistance in breath support in playing the clarinet. One of the important factors is the reed. When reeds come from the factory, they are somewhat unfinished and need some adjustment. Making adjustments may allow the reed to vibrate easily. Of course, the correct positioning of the mouth on the reed and mouthpiece are important considerations also. Transitions are easier when all factors come together.

    Reply

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