Doubling fees under fire in Denver

ByBret Pimentel
oboe and English horn
Photo, quack.a.duck

The Colorado Symphony Orchestra, like so many others, is facing a financial crisis that threatens its ability to continue making music. An opinion piece in Sunday’s Denver Post criticizes the Denver Musicians’ Association (AFM Local 20-623) for its unwillingness to budge on certain elements of its agreement with the orchestra.

The issues here are complex, and I hope that the DMA and the CSO will be able to come to a solution that is fair to all involved and that keeps the music alive. But this point in the authors’ list of complaints caught my eye:

Musicians performing on more than one instrument receive “doubling pay.”

I don’t have the full details of the doubling pay currently available to CSO members (though the amount doesn’t appear to be the issue here—it’s the fact that any doubling pay is offered that seems to offend). But a slightly-outdated agreement between the DMA and the Boulder Philharmonic, summarized below, shows a typical doubling pay structure, and it’s a reasonable guess that the CSO’s is identical or very similar:

  • 25% bonus for first double
  • 10% for each additional double
  • B-flat and A clarinets count as one instrument
  • Alto and tenor saxophones count as one instrument
  • Alto and bass clarinets count as one instrument
  • Piccolo, larger flutes, English horn, E-flat clarinet, contrabassoon, soprano saxophone, and saxophones larger than tenor each count as a double, even when used in common combinations (like flute plus piccolo)
Though I am not currently a union member (due to a dearth of union gigs in my area), I frequently ask for doubling fees when negotiating my pay for gigs. Here’s why doubling fees make sense to me as a woodwind player:
  • Each additional instrument I bring to the gig represents a significant financial investment on my part: purchase, maintenance, reeds and other accessories, and insurance, not to mention high costs in past and continuing study of each instrument.
  • Each instrument—even two instruments in the same family, like oboe and English horn—requires separate study, practice, and effort. The money I earn isn’t really about the time I spend at the gig. It’s about the thousands of hours I’ve spent becoming the musician that can do what is required. If I’m playing two instruments on the gig, then that’s a double helping of preparation I’ve put in. If it’s oboe and English horn, or bassoon and contrabassoon, then I’ve put in separate hours making reeds for each instrument.
  • Doubling is very much a money-saving practice for those who hire musicians. I’ll happily play four instruments for 145% of scale, and a smart contractor will happily pay that rather than the 400% of scale that it would cost to hire four separate musicians.
I hope to see a compromise struck in Denver that acknowledges the value that doublers bring to an ensemble.

Similar Posts

  • Woodwind organizations

    ByBret Pimentel

    I recently renewed a few memberships in some of the woodwind-related professional organizations. I like to stay current with as many of these as I can, because I enjoy receiving their publications and attending their conferences whenever possible. Most offer some other benefits like score and book lending libraries, eligibility for a group instrument insurance plan, member directories, and exclusive website content.

    Membership is especially useful for woodwind folks in academia—students and professors alike—who are hoping to build their vitae. There are opportunities to publish articles, interviews, reviews, and such in the organizations’ publications, and to perform, present lectures and demonstrations, and participate in competitions and masterclasses at the conferences. Students can usually join the organizations and attend the conferences at significant discounts.

    The groups I’m listing below are the major ones that North American woodwind players ought to seriously consider joining. There are others, mainly regional groups, of which I list as many as I’m aware elsewhere on this site (see flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone organizations). Read More “Woodwind organizations”

  • Clarinet pinky fingerings

    ByBret Pimentel

    Recently I discussed the topic of clarinet “pinky” (little finger) fingerings with my woodwind methods class. With all that school band directors have on their plates, it’s not surprising that this topic doesn’t always get taught thoroughly to beginners. It can be a bit of a puzzle to a non-clarinetist, but the important concepts can be mastered with a minimum of effort if they are taught clearly.

    This is an important thing for woodwind doublers to understand, too, since they may be bringing with them some fingering habits that worked well on their other instrument(s), but which may not apply to clarinet in the same way.

    The following notes on the clarinet require use of a pinky key:

    These notes require left hand pinky These notes require right hand pinky
    left hand pinky notes right hand pinky notes
    These notes use EITHER left or right hand pinky
    fingerings using either pinky

    Pinky keys are also used in the altissimo register, in resonance fingerings, and so forth, but for today we’ll focus on the notes in the chart. If you’re unfamiliar with the fingerings, check them out at the Woodwind Fingering Guide.

    The crucial decision-making deals with the notes in the last row of the chart, which each have two fingering possibilities—one using the left pinky, and one using the right pinky. If your clarinet is in proper adjustment, there shouldn’t be a difference in tone or intonation between the two fingerings, as they open or close the same toneholes. (With a poorly-adjusted clarinet, it’s possible for, say, one fingering to open a certain pad wider than another pad, perhaps affecting pitch and tone.) So our only criterion will be ease and precision of fingering.

    Consider this passage, and we will walk through a systematic thought process for selecting fingerings:
    example 1

    Read More “Clarinet pinky fingerings”

  • The future of woodwind instruments

    ByBret Pimentel

    Here are a few predictions (or wishes) about the woodwind instruments we might be able to buy in the future.

    Personalized ergonomics

    With the amount of worry musicians expend over repetitive motion injuries and other playing-related ailments, it’s truly baffling that instruments are still almost entirely a one-size-fits-all affair.

    For just one example: for generations, saxophonists have applied cork or other stuff to their palm keys to help avoid collapsing the hand to press them. Most of the finest saxophones in the world still offer palm keys in a single height, meant to accommodate child and adult hands, male and female hands, large and small hands. (A couple of exceptions are Keilwerth’s wrench-adjustable left hand palm keys, and Cannonball’s “Stone Series” instruments, which can be purchased or retrofitted with stone touchpieces of varying heights for both left and right palm keys.) And this is only one of the ergonomic issues of saxophones and other woodwinds.

    Imagine buying a production woodwind instrument that had fully adjustable keywork that could be matched to your individual hands. This could be done with interchangeable parts, or with keywork adjustable via screws or other means.

    Related to this is a need to re-examine the possibilities of plateau (“closed”) keys. Most of the modern woodwinds have at least some fingerholes or keys with holes in them, and these cannot be moved to accommodate ergonomics without affecting pitch and tone. But the touchpieces on a saxophone or bass clarinet can largely be located according to convenience, to open or close toneholes somewhere else on the instrument’s body. Our largely unfounded derision of plateau keys on woodwind instruments prevents us from embracing much better ergonomic possibilities.

    New materials

    Far too much credit is given to materials, especially if those materials are costly and pretty, for their contribution to an instrument’s sound. Inventors have created incredible new materials for aerospace, automotive, and electronics applications. Why couldn’t we make woodwind instruments out of amazing new materials that are inexpensive, crack- and dent-resistant, sustainable, lightweight, and beautiful? (Buffet-Crampon’s “Greenline” instruments are an example of high-quality instruments made from synthetic materials.)

    A move to new materials could reduce investment in instrument purchase and maintenance, prevent the heartbreak of a new clarinet or oboe cracking, stop over-harvesting of certain woods, and reduce repetitive-motion injuries.

    And it wouldn’t be the first time woodwind players gave up traditional materials for better ones; there aren’t a lot of players still using boxwood flutes and clarinets.

    Imagine, too, the possibilities of reeds and pads that are long-lasting, stable, and consistent.

    Player-maintainable

    It’s axiomatic among woodwind players that good instrument technicians are getting harder to find. In my rural area, it’s a 2½-hour drive to a city where I can get my high-quality instruments worked on competently, by people doing instrument repair in their homes rather than in music stores or commercial repair shops.

    Many woodwind instruments have at least some adjustment screws or other relatively intuitive ways to keep them adjusted and playing well. Installing pads is still somewhat of a specialist art, but imagine how that could change with improved materials for pads and for toneholes, and with approaches like MusicMedic’s “self-leveling” Neo Pads.

    Imagine instruments that are user-adjustable using common household tools or tools included with the instrument, supplemented with detailed instructional videos. Some routine tasks like pad or bumper replacement could become the player’s responsibility, or something that could be done by a minimally-trained music store employee, school band director, or private teacher.

    Your turn

    Let me know what features and qualities you would like to see in the woodwind instruments of the future!

  • B-flat and A clarinets: redundant?

    ByBret Pimentel

    I wrote this a few years back for a graduate school course. The professor, not a wind player, raised the question of why I limited the discussion to clarinets in B-flat and A, and ignored, for example, the C clarinet. The reason for this, which may not be obvious to a non-clarinetist, is that the B-flat and A instruments use the same mouthpieces, reeds, and sometimes even barrels. Since other sizes of clarinet require their own mouthpieces and reeds, there is a clearer separation between these instruments.

    Photo, Ollie Crafoord

    Alert concertgoers will be aware that the orchestral clarinetist is often seen on stage with not one, but two clarinets, which appear to be nearly identical. These are clarinets in the keys of B-flat and A, and, in truth, they very nearly are the same—identical in keywork and playing approach. The difference is one of an inch or so in length, giving the A clarinet a range that is deeper by one semitone.

    It seems a redundancy to have two instruments so close in range. The ubiquity of the B-flat and A clarinets is a vestige of the clarinet’s early days, when its simpler keywork made it poorly suited to playing in more than a handful of keys; early clarinetists owned several instruments of different transpositions so that they could play in whatever key was required. But the modern instrument has a more involved mechanism that allows much more chromatic agility. The problem that remains is that the clarinet has accumulated two hundred and fifty years of repertoire, some of which calls for the instrument in B-flat, some of which calls for the instrument in A, and even some that calls for a little of each. Read More “B-flat and A clarinets: redundant?”

  • Buying woodwind instruments

    ByBret Pimentel

    General advice

    The information on this page is intended for beginning and intermediate players, including woodwind doublers who already play another instrument. Here are some rules of thumb:

    • Get the advice of a good teacher, preferably one that doesn’t get a sales commission from a music store. It’s okay to ask advice before starting lessons. A good teacher wants you to have a good, working instrument.
    • In fact, be very skeptical of anything you are told by music store salespeople. My students frequently begin lessons with poor, non-working woodwind instruments that were highly recommended by the guitar player working behind the counter. Ask the salesperson to demonstrate the instrument. If they can’t do it, there’s little reason to take their recommendations.
    • The most important consideration for a beginner’s instrument is its condition. Woodwind instruments use pads made of leather, skin, or cork that MUST seal properly. Poorly adjusted instruments are one of the top causes of frustration in beginning players. Don’t waste your time fighting with a leaking instrument. Cosmetic flaws like worn or scratched finish or small dents (except in vital spots such as a flute’s headjoint or saxophone’s neck) do not necessarily affect an instrument’s playability, but may be warning signs of larger problems. It is possible to buy a non-working instrument and have a good technician restore it to playable condition, but it would be a good idea to get their appraisal of the instrument before you buy it.
    • Don’t buy musical instruments from department stores, megastores, or warehouse stores. These temptingly cheap instruments are made from inferior materials and are almost always in poor adjustment. Good repair shops won’t even work on them because they tend to break under the normal strains of routine maintenance.

    Read More “Buying woodwind instruments”

  • Woodwind teaching resources for school band directors (and others)

    ByBret Pimentel

    If you are teaching a woodwind methods course, you might be interested in my book.

    Photo, Nick Findley

    Students in my woodwind methods classes are usually music education majors, planning careers as school band directors. In my class, they get their one-semester crash course in playing and teaching the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. Clearly there’s a lot of information that they will need but which will be easily forgotten—I can’t give a trumpet player three weeks to learn to play the clarinet, and then expect her to remember many fingerings once the playing test is done, the clarinet is returned, and I’ve given her a bassoon contend with.

    So I have them prepare a woodwind notebook over the course of the semester, with lecture notes, class handouts, fingering charts, and other things that will hopefully be valuable resources to them in their teaching careers.

    One of the things I ask them to include in the notebook is some resources that they have discovered independently. The idea here is to have them find things that they think they will need, and to become acquainted with some good sources for woodwind information along the way. I tell them that information found on the web will only count if I think it’s reliable, and I encourage them to send me links for advance approval.

    Usually my classes figure out that I can’t very well reject anything they print from my website, so I usually see a lot of my own stuff appearing in their notebooks. I don’t object to this as long as they choose well, but sometimes they don’t. Last semester’s submissions included my review of the AKAI EWI 4000s, which, of course, is not part of our curriculum, and even some of my links pages, which become considerably less useful on paper, since you can’t click through to the good stuff.

    So I figured I might as well share my own selection of posts from this blog that I would encourage future band directors, or other woodwind players or educators, to put in their notebooks: Read More “Woodwind teaching resources for school band directors (and others)”

4 Comments

  1. As a fellow musician, in my heart I sympathize with your first and second bullet points. Unfortunately the artist often ends his argument there. As a fellow participant in our capitalistic society, it’s your last bullet that really carries the day. I’m so glad you pointed it out.

    One wonders if the Denver Post opinionators (recently departed members of the Colorado Symphony’s Board of Directors) have some axe to grind.

    Reply

  2. Truth be known……….. Your “illustrious” union should be fighting this battle for the musicians. This is why we pay WORK DUES and MEMBERSHIP. ……
    Your not a union member???
    OK, you always have “hope” that the producers will recognize and respect your plight (and cough up the extra money you have invested in your craft)…. Hahahahahahaha.

    Reply

    1. Ray, these are great points you bring up, and I would love to have the union in my corner. But there just aren’t union gigs where I live, so if I were to renew my membership I wouldn’t work at all. I hope at some point the union has the influence everywhere that it has in the major markets.

      In the meantime, I’m finding that being a doubler outside the major markets is rare enough that I do have some leverage negotiating doubling pay.

      Reply

  3. When we were discussing doubling rates in one of the orchestras I play with an interesting situation was brought up that I had not been aware of:

    The list of instruments that received doubling pay excluded Piccolo/Flute, Oboe/English Horn, Eb/Bb/A Clarinet, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet and Bassoon/Contrabassoon. When I brought this up they said that is was old language from a previous orchestra in our town. As it turns out, the third woodwinds had negotiated full-time status (despite playing in fewer performances) in exchange for doubling fees. Now, we are not a full-time orchestra yet, so the language was quickly changed, but it did strike me as a fair compromise for that specific situation.

    Anyway, I have no idea of the specific situation in Colorado, but I thought I’d throw that out there.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments that take a negative or confrontational tone are subject to email and name verification before being approved. In other words: no anonymous trolls allowed—take responsibility for your words.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.