Eight live microphone tips for woodwind players

ByBret Pimentel

If you are a classically-trained woodwind player, playing into a microphone might be a new experience for you.

A rock band that I play in (flute and saxophone) does a lot of shows in small clubs and bars, and the sound guy (or girl—I’m using “sound guy” from here on out, with gender-neutral intent) is usually used to miking vocals, guitar amps, and drum sets, and may or may not know what to do with a woodwind instrument. I can often help things along, and make sure the band and I sound our best, by coming armed with a small amount of knowledge.

Here are some basic tips for looking and sounding like you know what you’re doing. I’m assuming here that you’re not doing anything fancy gear-wise (there are plenty of options if you want to buy a clip-on mic), just showing up with your instrument and using the venue’s basic sound equipment.

  1. Hopefully this one goes without saying, but be nice to the sound guy. Running audio equipment for a live performance is a thankless job—if everything goes well, the sound guy goes completely unnoticed, but if anything goes wrong, he takes the blame. A cooperative and grateful attitude from you will be appreciated, and may help make sure you get the assistance you need to sound your best over the PA system.
  2. Basic microphones work great for woodwinds. If your venue is well-supplied and your sound guy is well-qualified, there might be some additional possibilities to explore. But the warhorse Shure 57 and 58 microphones that are staples of virtually every live venue are very reliable options.
  3. Know where to point the microphone. The problem that non-woodwind players may not be aware of is that the sound isn’t emitted from any one point, the way it is from the bell of a trumpet. Every tonehole on a woodwind is a potential sound source, so you either need a whole lot of microphones or a good mic placement compromise.
    • For flute, aim the mic at the embouchure hole. Raise the microphone up too high, then angle it down—this makes sure you’re not blowing into the mic itself.
    • For straight reed instruments like oboe, clarinet, or soprano saxophone, aim at approximately your left hand or a little below. This works pretty well for bass clarinet, too.
    • For alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, you can aim the microphone down into the bell, or just a little higher. Remember that most of the sound doesn’t come out of the bell, but that mic placement happens to catch the instrument at about the left-hand-or-below spot that works well for the straight instruments. Be aware of your low notes, which may suddenly blare into the mic. Some players use this as an effect, and some like to lean away from the mic a little to avoid it.
    • For bassoon, I often see a microphone suspended above the bell, but personally I usually bring the mic a little lower, a few inches closer to the center of the instrument. There are toneholes all along the length of that thing, and in situations where a bassoon is going to be miked, it’s probably not playing those lowest bell notes much.
  4. Play into the microphone. Get up good and close, like within an inch of it. If you usually tend to move around a lot when you play, don’t. Keep track of your proximity to the microphone throughout the performance to make sure you haven’t drifted away. If at any point in the performance you get too loud, the sound guy can turn your volume down, but if you get too far from the microphone, he can’t turn you up. Staying close to the mic makes sure the sound guy has plenty of your sound to work with. And it’s perfectly okay to adjust the microphone stand so that you are comfortable.
  5. Make sure that you can hear yourself well in a monitor. (Those are usually wedge-shaped speakers at your feet.) What you and the sound guy might not realize until it’s too late is that you need the same kind of monitoring that a vocalist needs in order to hear what you’re playing, especially if you’re working with electric guitars and drumsets. If you can’t hear yourself, it will be hard tell whether you’re in tune. With something like flute, if I don’t have a good monitor, sometimes I can’t even be 100% sure that I’m making a sound at all.
  6. At the sound check, when it’s your turn to play into the microphone so the sound guy can adjust some things at the sound board, don’t be shy. Play as high and as low as you’re going to play during the show. Play at your “normal” volume, but also do some very loud playing. The sound guy needs to know what to expect out of your instrument.
  7. Be forewarned that this could be a lot louder than your usual playing situations. You can get inexpensive musicians’ earplugs—I use these—that lower the overall volume of the sound around you. Other kinds of earplugs may filter sound unevenly; often you lose more of the high frequencies. Musicians’ earplugs are designed to let you hear everything in balance while protecting your ears. One thing to consider is that these do create the occlusion effect, like closing an ear with your finger while playing so you can hear yourself better. This can be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on what makes you comfortable. The way to avoid the occlusion effect is to spend some extra money and have an ear doctor take deep ear molds so you can have custom in-ear plugs made.
  8. Hopefully this is another no-brainer, although it can be a pitfall if you’re not used to microphones: be aware that the microphone is on. If you make a comment to the musician next to you, will the entire room hear it? Even if the curtain is closed, the audio may be live!

Good luck!

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    I don’t think a woodwind player really learns the skill of “doubling” so much as he or she learns the skill of flute playing, plus the skill of saxophone playing, and so forth. 99% of being a good doubler is being a good flutist and a good saxophonist and whatever.

    There are only a few aspects of woodwind doubling that are unique to multi-instrumentalists. These are:

    • The physical act of switching instruments. This becomes an issue in Broadway-type situations when instrument changes sometimes need to happen very quickly. It’s worth practicing these little bits of choreography until they can be done as quickly, quietly, and safely as possible. Tips: own good, sturdy stands, and keep your instruments laid out in a consistent way.
    • The mental effort of switching instruments. Years of developing a fine clarinet embouchure can go right out the window when making a quick change from tenor saxophone. The problem isn’t with your lips, it’s with your focus. As you switch instruments, shift gears mentally, too. Tips: warm up thoroughly on each instrument before the rehearsal or gig, and take a brief (sometimes very brief) moment of meditation as you physically change instruments, so that you are 100% in clarinetist mode by the time the reed hits your lip.
    • The guts to play an instrument that isn’t your best one. Even if your secondary instruments are quite strong, it can be unnerving to perform on one instrument when you know you can do better on a different one. Courage! You’ll be that much more experienced when the next gig rolls around. Tips: be aware of your body—is your nervousness affecting your posture? Breath support? Hand relaxation? If so, simply recognizing the physical symptoms can be enough to relieve them. Focus on musical things that you may be able to bring to the table despite technical deficiencies, like blend or phrasing.

    Practice hard!

  • More on the science/fiction of woodwind materials

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    Photo, ~Bob~West~

    There’s an interesting woodwind-related post by blogger “MarkCC” at Good Math, Bad Math, entitled “My Newest Flute, made of… Plastic?!”

    MarkCC recently acquired a new flute of the type used in Irish traditional music, the kind that are most often made of wood. But MarkCC’s is made of polymer, and it sounds like MarkCC has wrestled a little with the issue of whether a plastic flute can really measure up to a wooden one.

    But… Plastic?

    I’ve seen several acoustic studies that claim that the material the instrument is made of isn’t that important. In a wooden flute, the physics show that the head joint is the only part of the flute that really has a significant influence on its sound. But the head joint of a wooden flute is actually lined with metal. So the wood isn’t really having too much influence on the sound.

    As it turns out, MarkCC is something of a doubler, and also plays the clarinet.

    Most people (including me) play on mouthpieces made of hard rubber or plastic – so the primary sound-producing piece of the instrument is plastic. The barrel of a wooden clarinet is (obviously) wood, so according to the physics/acoustics, that’s the only piece of wood that actually has any measurable acoustic effect. And the physics of this isn’t sloppy stuff put together by an instrument company trying to sell their plastic clarinets: to the limits of my ability to understand it, it’s good, solid stuff.

    And yet, I’ve played a whole lot of clarinets, and by god, there’s nothing like a grenadilla wood clarinet. Even the best clarinet makers, even when I put my wooden barrel on a polymer body, it doesn’t sound the same. Of course, that’s subjective, and we humans are notorious for hearing what we want to hear in a subjective situation. And, by god, I’m a math geek. I’ve seen the math, and it’s correct.

    One of the most-linked articles on my blog makes the same point about our expectations about materials coloring our playing experience. It’s worth pointing out, too, that a different barrel made from the same material will also affect the instrument’s sound.

    I do think it’s a grey area to refer to a mouthpiece or barrel (or flute headjoint) as “sound-producing.” The instrument’s parts don’t produce any audible musical sound (unless you hit them with drumsticks)—it’s the column of air contained within them that vibrates in a musically useful way.

    But MarkCC goes on, I believe, to hit the nail on the head: Read More “More on the science/fiction of woodwind materials”

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  • Factors in woodwind instrument response

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    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.
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  • Playing in tune: five factors

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    One of the first “technical” things I wrote on this blog was about playing in tune. I ran across that now-embarrassing post recently and decided it is time to revisit that topic since my thinking about it has crystallized a bit more.

    To play a woodwind instrument in tune, there are five factors to address:

    Photo, Shaylor
    Photo, Shaylor
    1. Ears. If you don’t know what “in tune” sounds like, you probably won’t do it by accident. I still like the Tuning CD (now available as a download) for this. Follow the instructions for your instrument and do a few minutes every day over the long term. Sing, too. Electronic tuners have some uses but ear training doesn’t happen to be one of them.
    2. Equipment. Play the best instruments, mouthpieces, etc. you are able to get. If you are picking out new equipment, intonation should probably be your top priority over sexier things like “tone,” which is both more subjective and more malleable. (Incidentally, this is one of the best arguments for playing new woodwind instruments rather than “vintage,” since, generally speaking, incremental improvements mean that each generation of instruments plays better in tune than the one before.) Sure, you can “play” a lesser instrument in tune, but let your equipment do as much of the work for you as possible.
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  • Information overload: oboe F fingerings

    ByBret Pimentel
    First and second octave F on the oboe
    First and second octave F on the oboe

    The oboe typically plays Fs in three octaves. The lower two have a variety of available fingerings, which can be a challenge for new oboists to navigate, particularly because the available fingerings change depending upon the make of the instrument.

    A typical “budget” student model instrument, for example, uses the following fingerings. (For all fingerings given in this article, the one shown corresponds to the lower octave; the higher octave is achieved by adding the first [thumb] octave key.)

    Basic "right" F
    Basic "right" F
    "Forked" F, with E-flat key
    "Forked" F, with E-flat key

    The “right” F is the basic choice, to be used in almost all cases where it is possible to do so, as the tone produced by this fingering tends to be the best match to the tone of the surrounding notes.

    The “forked” F tends toward a sound that might be described as “muted” or sometimes even “fuzzy,” and should therefore generally be avoided where possible (unless the muted or fuzzy sound is desirable for the musical situation—I do like to use the forked F, for example, in the beginning and ending sections of the second movement of the Saint-Saëns sonata). Read More “Information overload: oboe F fingerings”

4 Comments

    1. Hi Bruce,

      Certainly most of this applies to brass instruments as well. I expect the biggest differences might be in microphone placement and proximity, since brass instruments are much more directional than woodwinds (the sound radiates from the bell, rather than from toneholes all over the instrument).

      Reply

  2. Any hints on amplifying a woodwind trio (flute, clarinet, bassoon)?

    Would a single cardiod omni work? If so what would be the optimum position?

    Are separate mikes the way to go. Separate pickups?

    We’d be mixing ourselves. I’m really trying to get some infomed advice before spending any money. Many thanks for any words of wisdom you may have.

    Reply

  3. Geoff,

    One good mic can be positioned to pick up a trio; however, the amount of gain before feedback will be less than micing instruments individually.

    If the only thing being mic’d is these three instruments then I personally would try one mic first. Positioning is important. The mic will need to be where all three instruments are blended the way you like. A good condensor cardioid instrument mic works best. I like the Audix Microbooms which are small in profile, or a small pencil mic like Rode NT5. A Shure SM57 would work however you’ll get better performance out of a condensor mic.

    The right mic in the right position can amplify a set of instruments like this naturally (where you don’t notice that the instruments are mic’d… they are just louder).

    The advantage of a mic on each instrument is typically a richer tone, ability to adjust each instrument separately and the ability to make everything overall louder. The downside is someone needs to keep on top of the mix (or use some light compression) and more gear (cables, mics, stands).

    I tend to mic instruments individually if drums, guitar amplifiers, and other loud instruments (brass) are used.

    If money isn’t an issue, DPA makes an instrument mic, 4099, that comes with several different instrument attachments options. We currently have one for a violin and it is really awesome. Audix makes a nice mic you can attach to a flute, ADX10FLP.

    PS. Cardioid is one mic pattern; Omni is another. Omni is great if you sit in a circle; however, you won’t get as much gain before feedback. Cardioid is great if you are positioned more in a line/semi circle. Speaker positioning in relation to your mic position will also dramatically impact the amount of gain before feedback you’ll get.

    Reply

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