DRQOD: Ghandarvas and powdered wigs

ByBret Pimentel

I always enjoy Patty Mitchell’s “BQOD” (Blog Quotes Of the Day) over at oboeinsight. I’m in the thick of dissertation writing these days (technically, it’s “doctoral document” writing, since I’m working on a DMA, not a PhD), and this morning I ran across a couple of items that won’t make it into the finished product but are too fun to keep to myself. And so I present my Dissertation/Document Research Quotes Of the Day:

1. From How to Play the Bansuri: A Manual for Self-Instruction Based on the Teaching of Devendra Murdeshwar, by Lyon Leifer. The bansuri is an Indian transverse flute. Ragas are, to oversimplify, scales on which Hindustani melodies are based.

Sage Narada and the Gandharvas

An ancient legend tells of the great musician and wise man called Narada. Once, while practicing he was visited by a spirit who transported him to a celestial realm. There he saw the most beautiful creatures, dressed in the finest of of fabrics, but broken, distorted and clearly in agony. When Narada asked his guide what had caused this agony, he was told that these pitiful creatures were gandharvas, ragas whose forms had been crushed by his own faulty renditions.

I shudder to think how many ghandarvas I’ve tortured with my own “faulty renditions.”

2. From The Virtuoso Flute-Player, by Johann Georg Tromlitz, written in 1791, and quoted in the outstanding The Essential Guide to Irish Flute and Tin Whistle by Grey Larsen. Totally unrelated to the previous quote, except in that I read it this morning and got a chuckle out of it.

When the weather is very hot, and one perspires freely, one commonly loses one’s embouchure in the course of playing, since the flute slips away from the place on the chin where it is supposed to rest, on account of the perspiration which prevents it from making firm contact, and impedes the progress of the piece. Quantz suggests a remedy: in such cases one should touch one’s powdered wig, and wipe the powder that sticks to one’s fingers onto that part of the chin so as to stop up the pores, and one will be able to play on without interference. But this is not correct; the powder does not stop up the pores, and the perspiration keeps on flowing, and now it mingles with the powder to form a viscous and slippery dough, far more injurious to the secure placement of the flute than perspiration alone. When I meet with this problem I wipe the perspiration away and continue to play. Meanwhile the most intelligent course is not to play any long, difficult and non-stop pieces during hot weather.

Tromlitz’s solution to the slippage problem—not playing difficult pieces on hot days—reminds me of the old joke where a patient says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this,” and the doctor says, “Well, don’t do that!”

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    Not good

    ByBret Pimentel

    I like to use a Socratic-ish method in my private lessons, and ask my students questions. It means that I have this conversation several times per day:

    [Student plays.]

    Me: How did that sound to you?

    Student: Not good.

    Me: What didn’t you like about it?

    Student: It didn’t sound good.

    Me: What aspect of it didn’t sound good to you? The tone? the pitch? the phrasing? the articulation?

    Student: Um, I guess the articulation?

    Me: What didn’t you like about the articulation?

    Student: It wasn’t good?

    It’s an ongoing battle to get my students to listen more deeply than that. Was the articulation “not good” because it started with air noise instead of tone? Because it was accompanied by an unwanted percussive sound? Was the articulation technique perfect but you failed to follow the composer’s markings? Or was it something else?

    Photo, David Bailey
    Photo, David Bailey

    Often the “not good” is a combination of factors, but if my students can identify even one of them, then they can immediately start working in a focused way to improve it. If it’s just “not good,” then they tend to just play it again from the beginning without any clear approach to making it sound better, and repeat until frustrated.

    Part of my job is to help them identify and verbalize the desirable and undesirable phenomena in their playing, and to teach them the techniques for manipulating the variables involved (breath support, voicing, embouchure, finger technique, and tongue technique, to name the most obvious ones). But it’s up to them to take that information and run with it. For my students to become independently-functional musicians, they need to learn to listen critically to themselves and troubleshoot.

    For yourself and for your students, don’t be satisfied with bland value judgments (it sounded “good” or “bad”). Be factual and descriptive about what you hear, and tackle problems in a methodical way. Practice smart!

  • Review: Characteristic Etudes for the Woodwind Doubler by Gene Kaplan

    ByBret Pimentel

    I’ve previously reviewed a couple of Gene Kaplan‘s publications, sets of duets for woodwind doublers. Recently Gene was kind enough to send me a copy of his latest, Characteristic Etudes for the Woodwind Doubler.

    Unlike his previous doubling-duet books, this is intended for a lone woodwind doubler to use in developing his or her doubling skills on flutes (including piccolo and alto flute), oboe and English horn, clarinets (E-flat, B-flat, and bass), saxophones (soprano through baritone), and bassoon and contrabassoon. (Gene suggests that substitutions can be made, so, for example, oboe can be used if you don’t have an English horn.)

    The book includes short etudes in a variety of formats, including ones to strengthen instrument switches within familes (e.g. piccolo to flute to alto flute) and switches between families (e.g. flute to clarinet to…). It also has a section of “Difficult Woodwind Pairs” etudes, plus some slightly longer and more advanced etudes for each of the single instruments addressed in the book.

    The etudes are in varied styles and not overly technically demanding, sticking mostly to moderate tempos and comfortable ranges. The focus here is on the switching, which happens frequently and in short but mostly manageable windows. (Unlike Gene’s duet books or Paul Saunders‘s books with backing tracks, there’s no built-in mechanism to enforce the quick switches, so you’ll need a metronome to keep yourself honest.)

    Here’s a video demo with a couple of sample etudes:

    This is the only doubling book I’m aware of that covers such a broad woodwind family. It’s unusual to see books that include the double reeds or even complete-ish flute and single reed families, much less both. If you are interested in improving your skills on a large number of instruments for Broadway-style doubling gigs, this makes excellent sightreading, or more in-depth work for instruments or switches that you find difficult.

    Get your copy from Gene’s website.

    Thanks, Gene!

  • How many instruments do you play?

    ByBret Pimentel

    “So, how many instruments do you play?” I get this a lot.

    The way I prefer to answer is this: I play all of the major modern woodwind instruments, plus some folk and ethnic woodwinds.

    That answer usually doesn’t cut it. Read More “How many instruments do you play?”

  • Trevor Wye’s “Flexibility I” flute exercise

    ByBret Pimentel

    One of my favorite flute warmups is “Flexibility–I (after Sousseman)” from Trevor Wye’s Tone book. (Just buy the whole omnibus edition and thank me later.) This exercise is value-packed and meticulously thought out, and leads inevitably to some fundamental truths about flute playing.

    The exercise is slurred arpeggiated figures, like this:

    wye-1

    As you might expect, the figure gradually expands to larger intervals and notes in the third octave. It’s challenging to make the intervals smooth and accurate, but especially so if your approach to flute tone production is based on unclear or faulty pedagogical concepts. Wye provides some very crucial advice that is key to getting the most out of the etude, and to developing a solid approach to tone production.

    Wye suggests first playing the etude omitting the highest notes, and dynamically shaping the figures as follows:

    wye-2

    The forte dynamic on the lowest notes demands a low, open voicing and strong breath support, feeding into an aperture that is “focused” (small). The dynamic shape, stretched mostly across a single note (B-flat here), also requires the aperture to be agile and flexible, opening slightly for the loudest notes and closing slightly as the volume decreases.

    The next step is to “work up” to the high note, “so that it sounds softly, but not flat:”

    wye-3

    There is a lot going on here. The aperture has to continue to move flexibly in order to produce the dynamic effect. Voicing has to be low and open to make the low notes full and responsive. Breath support has to remain powerful and steady to keep the pitch buoyed up. And something has to happen to produce the register change.

    Many flute teachers suggest making the aperture smaller to achieve the higher registers, but this ties register to dynamics—the larger aperture makes the low notes loud, and the small aperture makes the high notes soft. Others suggest something like increasing air pressure or using “faster” air. This can be accomplished by increasing breath support and/or by using a higher voicing; changing these has a destabilizing and register-bound effect on pitch and tone. It also creates the opposite dynamic problem from aperture-based register changes: the higher notes are always loud, and the low notes are always soft.

    The most effective approach is to allow the embouchure to push forward for notes in the upper registers, and to relax back for lower registers. This allows breath support, voicing, and aperture to function separately, and intonation, tone, and dynamics to be manipulated independently. The Wye exercise demands all of this from the flutist.

    This is a great exercise to incorporate into a daily warmup. I especially like it for its coverage of several flute tone production concepts, since doubling on several instruments means I don’t have as much time to devote to the flute as I would like. Work on it slowly and deliberately—as Mr. Wye points out, “this may take time.”

  • Selecting alternate fingerings

    ByBret Pimentel

    When several fingerings are available for a note, how do you choose the “right” one for a situation? Below are some criteria you might use in that decision, but be aware that it is virtually always impossible to meet all the criteria, so you have to choose the one that best balances the pros and cons.

    fingerings
    make cool fingering diagrams with the Fingering Diagram Builder
    • Which one would involve moving the fewest fingers? (Look at the previous note and the following note.) In general, moving fewer fingers is safer because it reduces the risk that the fingers will fail to move at exactly the same time.
    • Which one lets you make tidy, positive motions like lowering a finger onto a key or lifting it up from a key? Sliding fingers from key to key is harder to do accurately.
    • Which one lets you keep most or all of your fingers moving in the same direction? It is easier to keep your fingers synchronized if they are all either pressing down together or rising up together.
    • Which one keeps the movement in one hand? It is easier to keep your fingers synchronized if all the moving fingers are on the right hand, or all on the left hand.
    • Do the fingerings have different pitch tendencies? Does one sound more in tune in this situation? (It may be necessary to consider “just” intonation.)
    • Do the fingerings sound different tone-wise? Which one best matches the tone of the surrounding notes?
    • Do the fingerings have different response characteristics?

    That might seem like a lot of mental effort just for one note, but if you practice conscientiously over the long term, it will become more and more automatic. In the meantime, use a pencil to mark in reminders for which fingerings to use on things you are practicing.

  • Recorder notation vs. band/orchestral woodwind notation

    ByBret Pimentel

    At the request of a reader, I’m going to try to clarify some things about notation for recorders. (I touched on it previously in an article about woodwind key nomenclature systems.)

    Those of us who play modern band/orchestral woodwinds are familiar with a system in which, within a family of instruments, a notated pitch always corresponds to a certain fingering. No matter how large or small the instrument, the same fingering always corresponds to that same written pitch, even though the smaller instruments produce higher sounding pitches and the larger instruments produce lower sounding pitches. For example:

    E-flat clarinet B-flat clarinet A clarinet Bass clarinet
    Notated pitch
    Fingering
    Sounding pitch

    This is convenient for clarinetists because, essentially, they only need to learn one set of fingerings to be (in that respect) prepared to play any instrument in the clarinet family. Note also that even the bass clarinet is notated in treble clef, as are its even lower cousins. All the major modern woodwind families (flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and saxophones) use this approach: consistent clefs, and consistent correspondence of notated pitch to fingering. The transposition is a function of the instrument’s size.

    Because of the prevalence of this system in the Western woodwind tradition, it’s an understandable error to assume that the recorder family is notated in the same way. But recorders typically use a different system, in which each instrument is notated in concert pitch, and the fingerings change depending upon the instrument. Or, to be more precise, each instrument is notated in a sort of “concert pitch class,” since some of the recorders are notated as transposing by one or more octaves, but a notated C always produces a sounding C. Bass recorder and lower are notated in bass clef. Here are the most common ones:

    Descant (“soprano”) recorder Treble (“alto”) recorder Tenor recorder Bass recorder
    Notated pitch
    Fingering
    Sounding pitch

    Recorder players must learn two sets of fingerings, one with the instrument’s lowest note being C (for descant and tenor recorders), and one with the instrument’s lowest note being F (for treble and bass recorders), and must be prepared to read in two clefs. Read More “Recorder notation vs. band/orchestral woodwind notation”

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