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:
Sy Brandon has shared his work on the fifth movement of Divertissement, the newly-commissioned piece for multiple woodwinds soloist with piano. This movement, “Romanza,” features the oboe, and completes the total count of five woodwind instruments. Dr. Brandon has indicated that there are six movements planned, and I know he has been toying with the idea of the sixth movement involving switching between instruments.
It has been really interesting to see this piece take shape, and I hope you are keeping track of what he is doing over at Composing Insights. He makes his process very transparent, and, with each post, solicits comments from his readers about the compositions in progress. I have left some comments and gotten some insightful responses, and have even seen some of my suggestions incorporated into his revisions. I know he would welcome additional comments, especially from skilled doublers who might be interested in studying and/or performing this piece when it is completed. Go take a look, and add something to the conversation.
I am pleased to announce that this fall I will be joining the faculty of the Delta State University Department of Music. DSU is located in Cleveland, Mississippi, in the beautiful and historic Mississippi Delta region.
I had the privilege of visiting the DSU campus last month, and fell in love with the charming campus, the outstanding music faculty, the state-of-the-art performance and recording facilities, and, of course, the bright and friendly students, for whom I got to present a performance and masterclass.
I’m looking forward to getting started at Delta State, where I will teach all of the reed instruments (oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone), woodwind methods, and other music courses. Classes start August 17th! Read More “Go Fightin’ Okra”
The most recent release of the Fingering Diagram Builder introduces some “shortcut” controls that make it easy to turn certain keys on and off. For example, with a quick check/un-check of a box you can turn on clarinet half-holes or some non-standard keys.
Or, as always, there’s a dropdown list of “key sets” (which I referred to as “presets” in previous FDB versions) to turn on and off the right keys for a complete instrument variant.
“Bass clarinet, pro,” for example, turns on (among other things) the right thumb keys down to low C found on many professional bass clarinets. “Standard Boehm” turns them off.
All of these menu controls work by changing the behavior of the keys present in the instrument diagram. The behavior of each key, or group of keys, can be set to “Always,” “Never,” or “As needed.”
If you have a specific set of keys in mind, you can set the behavior of each key directly. Let’s say I have a fancy new oboe with a left-hand “long” C-sharp key and a left thumb low B key, and I want to make a fingering chart to map out some of the new fingering possibilities. (There’s currently an easy check-box for the left C-sharp, but we’ll ignore that for now to explore the hands-on method.)
I’ll start with the thumb B key. If I open the “Keywork details” section of the menu, and then the “More keywork details” section, I see a long list, partially pictured here.
The last key in the picture is the key I want to use in my fingering chart. Before we go on, notice that its name is aligned all the way to the left, meaning that it is a stand-alone key, not part of a group of keys. A little above it you can see the name “Thumb octave keys,” with four keys below it and indented. “Thumb octave keys” is a group, and the keys listed below it (“First octave key,” etc.) are in that group.
Okay. “Left thumb low B” is currently set to “Never,” which is pretty self-explanatory: the key simply never appears in the diagram.
Setting it to “Always” is also clear enough: the key will be visible all the time, pressed or not. If I set it to “Always” and don’t press any of the oboe keys, here’s what the diagram looks like:
Visible in this image are the six “main” keys, with a little horizontal line visually separating the left hand from the right hand, plus the thumb low B key. All of these are now set to “Always.” The other keys—the octave keys, the little finger keys, etc., are not visible. This particular layout is probably not what I want. Some people like every available key (including the octave keys, etc.) to be visible in every image, but I prefer and recommend showing only the most relevant ones for the particular fingering. The left low B will only be relevant for a specific note or two.
So let’s set that key to “as needed” instead. Since this key isn’t part of a larger group, its “as needed” behavior is easy to understand. When it’s pressed, it appears in the image. When it’s not, it doesn’t. I will still be able to see where the key is while I’m using the FDB, because it will appear in gray outline when I hover over the diagram with my mouse or trackpad, or appear constantly if I’m using a touch device, but it won’t be part of the downloaded image.
If I set it to “As needed” and hover my mouse pointer over the diagram in the FDB, I see this, with the left low B present:
And if I download the image, I see this:
Now let’s turn to the left C-sharp key. Since it is part of a group (“Left little finger keys”) its behavior is a little more complex. Here’s what the group’s behavior settings look like for the “Conservatory” key set:
Several of the keys are set to “Always,” and several are set to “Never.” But the group itself is set to “As needed.” Here’s how that works: if none of those keys is pressed, the FDB determines the group is not “needed,” so none of the keys are visible. But if any of the “Always” keys is pressed, the FDB considers the group needed and makes it visible, including all the “Always” keys within it. (The “Never” keys are still not visible.) So, for example, if I press the “Left E-flat,” I get this:
Only the left E-flat is pressed, but the other keys in the group appear too, to give a little visual context.
So, to make the left C-sharp available, I will set it to “Always.” But when an oboe has a left C-sharp, the left F-key usually gets moved over a little and has a little different shape. So I’m also going to set “Left F” to “Never,” and “Left F (with low C-sharp),” a key designed for this situation, to “Always.” Now I have this (low C-sharp in red, altered left F in yellow):
By setting the behavior of individual keys, you can do just about any combination of keys you can think of. And you can use the “Custom key sets” menu to save your settings for future use.
This system also makes it relatively easy for me to add obscure or unusual keys to the diagrams, and keep them hidden except when people need them for specific purposes. So, if there are keys you would like to have in your images, and you didn’t find them in the “More keywork details” list, let me know and I’ll consider adding them in future versions. It’s extra-helpful if you can send good photos.
Enjoy!
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.
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.
My electronic setup was a Shure SM58 microphone (for flute and oboe), a PiezoBarrel clarinet pickup, a Little-Jake bassoon pickup, and a NUX B-6 saxophone microphone, all connected to a Yamaha MG10XU mixer. From there the signal was routed through a Boss GT-1000CORE multieffects unit and a Boss RC-600 looper.
Here’s the program and video playlist:
As of February 2020, I’ve made some substantial updates to my catalog of music written for players of multiple woodwind instruments: Music for woodwind doublers
There are a few pieces I have listed as currently being researched, mostly cases where I am awaiting responses from composers. And I now have a special section for pieces that, unfortunately, I believe to be unavailable. If you have any leads on these pieces, or can offer any other additions or corrections, I’d be very interested in hearing from you.
When I take a step back and look at the list, it’s surprisingly robust. There are works by composers and musicians of the stature of Samuel Adler, Georges Barrère, Irwin Bazelon, Thomas Filas, Clare Fischer, Ralph Hermann, Bernard Hoffer, and Claude T. Smith. There are an encouraging number of pieces written in the 21st century. (I also have a new commission in the works, which I’ll hopefully be able to share details about sometime in the next few months.)
A fair number of the pieces have significant obstacles to performing, such as a need for an orchestra or concert band, or electronics, or less-common instruments. But there are a good number that are performable with just woodwind soloist or with woodwind soloist and piano, and some are flexible about instrumentation.
I must imagine for a lot of composers the prospect of writing a multiple-woodwinds piece is something of a hard sell. There’s a very limited number of musicians capable of performing multiple-woodwinds works, and not every doubler plays all the same instruments. If you are interested in playing these kinds of pieces, I hope you will find composers to work with, and let me know so I can add new pieces to my list.
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.
Here’s the program and video playlist:
