Oddly, his area of expertise is given as “bassoon, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, flute and bass clarinet.” Doug certainly does play all of those instruments well, but it seems strange to mention bass clarinet specifically (but not, say, English horn or piccolo). I’ve had the same thing happen to me—for some reason, people are anxious to count bass clarinet as a sixth woodwind separate from the clarinet.
Congratulations, Doug, on your new job and a nice profile in the local press!
I have released version 0.7 of the Fingering Diagram Builder. Mostly it supports some new instruments. Let me know if you run into bugs or have suggestions or feature requests.
Here’s what’s new:
I fixed a bug that was preventing saving custom presets. Not sure if anybody noticed.
Viennese oboe diagrams.
German clarinet diagrams, in Oehler and Albert variants.
French bassoon diagrams, in Jancourt and modern Buffet variants.
The (Conservatory) oboe diagram now (optionally) has a thumb low B key.
The (German/Heckel) bassoon diagram now (optionally) has an offset C-sharp trill (hat tip to Trent Jacobs).
European woodwindy goodness. L-R: Viennese oboe, Oehler clarinet, Buffet bassoon
Note that I do not play or own a Viennese oboe, an Oehler- or Albert-system clarinet, or a French bassoon, nor am I suitably fluent in European languages to 100% understand the related pedagogical literature, so I could really use some assistance on making sure these new diagrams look right and things are named properly. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have suggestions/improvements.
As always, I’m glad to hear from folks who are using the FDB, and to see the cool things you are making (websites, blog posts, books, posters, handouts…). The FDB generates thousands of images every month, which I think is pretty cool.
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I performed a recital with a faculty colleague on our campus at Delta State University, and again at the University of Mississippi (“Ole Miss”). Program and videos are below.
The idea behind the first half was to play Paris Conservatory competition pieces from 1916 (100 years ago). The Büsser and Lefebvre pieces are not unknown, and the Fauré Fantaisiefor flute and piano is core repertoire. The Paul Puget Solo for bassoon and piano was much harder to find, as it seems to have been out of print for some time. The University of Michigan library has it, and was willing to send their yellowed copy on interlibrary loan for a fee. (I am hoping to get it up on the IMSLP. Update: it’s now on the IMSLP.) If anybody is familiar with the piece, I would be curious to hear from you.
No special theme on the second half, just a couple of contemporary works I wanted to do. Greg Pattillo’s Three Beats for beatbox flute was a fun challenge and a crowd pleaser. (My beatboxing has a long way to go. Also: I bought the piece as a PDF through Pattillo’s website, but the site seems to have been updated and now I can’t find it to link to.) And Roberto Molinelli’s Four Pictures from New York is a charming piece for saxophonist playing soprano, alto, and tenor, performed here with piano but also available in several ensemble versions. I copied Otis Murphy‘s substantial cuts to the third movement, which make sense for the saxophone/piano texture.
I released version 0.6 and then version 0.7 of the Fingering Diagram Builder. Most of the improvements were either minor fixes or additional instruments, such as the Viennese oboe, the Albert/Oehler clarinets, and the French bassoon.
I shared interviews with woodwind players Sal Lozano and Sarah Cosano. (Nominations welcomed for future interviews.)
I did another 12 monthly installments of my favorite blog posts. Last year I reported that I was tracking about 500 woodwind-related blogs. Now it’s at about 600. Drop me a line if you have one (such as yours) to recommend.
Most years I complain a bit about how nobody liked my April Fool’s Day joke post, but this year’s entry attracted enough attention to be embarrassingly gratifying. (The weather info seems to be temporarily[?] broken due to a thing beyond my control. Sorry.)
If you have read anything interesting or useful here during the past year, I hope you will consider leaving a comment, getting in touch via email or social media, buying a shirt or sending a donation, contacting me aboutadvertising opportunities for your relevant business, and/or pointing your all your woodwind friends toward bretpimentel.com.
Thanks for reading in 2015, and best wishes for the new year!
I’m pleased to present something I’ve been working on, on and off, for a while now. I’m pretty excited about it, and I hope you will check it out and let me know what you think.
This project developed from my own need to quickly and easily create fingering diagrams for the woodwind instruments that I play and teach. Frequently I find myself scribbling saxophone altissimo fingerings onto a scrap of paper during a private lesson, cutting-and-pasting at the photocopier to put together simplified charts for a woodwind methods class, or penciling cryptic markings into musical scores to remind myself which pinky finger to use.
