New and significantly improved contrabassoon diagram. Thanks to several of you who contributed with keywork photos and other feedback. I haven’t had recent access to a contrabassoon myself, so if you’re a contra player and see things that need tweaking, please let me know. The old contrabassoon diagram is still available as a key set of the bassoon diagram (now called “Contrabassoon (old),” and the new one is its own separate entry (“Contrabassoon”). I’ll keep an eye on the server logs and if it looks like the old one is still getting a lot of use I’ll keep it around.
I’m pleased to share videos from my recent faculty recital at Mississippi State University. The program was all unaccompanied solo works for clarinets and saxophones.
I’m pleased to announce that I have accepted a new faculty position, teaching clarinet and saxophone at Mississippi State University. It has been a pleasure to work with the clarinet and saxophone studios there on a part-time basis during the past year, and I’m looking forward to hitting the ground running, full-time, in August.
The timing is good, as I’ve just finished my final year at Delta State University due to the closure of its music department (and others) as a cost-saving measure. My heart goes out to those who are still looking for a soft landing.
And if you are looking for a great place to study music, please do reach out! Hail State!
Check out my article published in the June 2025 issue of The Clarinet, “Exploring Synthetic Reeds.” It’s a survey of the synthetic reeds currently on the market for B-flat/A clarinets, plus some general thoughts on the current viability of synthetics for clarinet playing. The article is available in the print magazine, as well as on the International Clarinet Association’s blog, The Clarinet [Online].
The Clarinet doesn’t do product reviews per se, so the article doesn’t include any rankings/judgments/critiques of the individual reeds, but rest assured I’ve got some opinions. Stay tuned!
I’m pleased to share videos from my recent recital mini-tour, performed at Delta State University, Mississippi State University, and East Mississippi Community College. The program was five works for five different woodwind instruments, all using live electronics.
Today is fifteen years since I started the blog. Thanks for all the comments, social media shares, emails, donations, and other connections. I hope you will continue to read and engage.
A few weeks ago I put out a request for questions from my readers. Here are a couple of posts with some answers:
To my own amazement, this blog is rapidly approaching its 15-year anniversary later this month, May 24th. (Some of the content is dated at even older than 15 years, because I wrote it before starting the blog and retroactively turned it into blog posts.)
If you like, send me question(s) about whatever you want, about woodwind playing, doubling, blogging, teaching, or whatever. You can remain anonymous if you like. If it makes sense to do so based on the responses, I’ll answer them in one or more blog posts starting on about the 24th. If the response is low or the questions are not particularly of interest to my audience at large, I’ll answer as many as I can privately.
I’m pleased to share videos from my recent Delta State University faculty recital, featuring the compositions of Yusef Lateef. A few are my own adaptations for altered instrumentation.
Half-holes on the Fingering Diagram Builder aren’t a new feature, but I get lots of questions about how to do them, so here are some instructions I can refer people to.
Easiest way
If you’re making diagrams for flute, (French) clarinet, (German) bassoon, or recorder, and you don’t need anything especially complicated, you can open the “Keywork details” menu and click the option to turn “Half-holes” to “Upper,” “Lower,” or “Off.” For flute the options are a little different, to allow for half-holing in four directions.
Once your desired half-holes are enabled, you can hover your mouse over the keys (or look for the grey outlines on a touchscreen device) to see them. Click/tap on the desired half of the hole to “close” it, or again to re-open it. The “open” ones will not appear in your downloaded image.
clarinet
bassoon
recorder
upper
lower
flute
Lengthwise upper
Lengthwise lower
Widthwise proximal
Widthwise distal
More complicated but flexible way
If you need to turn on only certain half-holes, or mix upper with lower, etc., you will have to roll up your sleeves a bit more. Open the “Keywork details” menu and look for the top-level “Half-holes” heading. Organized beneath this you will see all the available half-holes, organized into groups like “Lower half holes.” I suggest adjusting the settings as follows:
“Half-holes” = Always
Each subgroup containing a desired half-hole, such as “Lower half holes” = Always
Each desired individual half-hole = “As needed”
Each undesired individual half-hole = “Never”
That will make the desired half-holes visible when you “close” them, and invisible otherwise.
In the following example, I have set the clarinet’s left hand first finger upper hole and the left hand third finger lower hole as described.
If you anticipate using a certain half-hole configuration frequently, you can save it for future use. Set the half-holes (and other keywork) up how you want it, open the “Keywork details” menu, and look near the bottom of it for the “Custom key sets” submenu. Open that, type a name for your current set of keys, and click/tap “Add.”
