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I made a small modification to my Hercules instrument stands so I could clip them onto my instrument cases for easier carrying.
The stands all have this same yellow sort of teddy-bear-head piece on the bottom:
Remove the nut from the center of the bear’s forehead:
I bought a handful of these. They are almost the right thing for the job:
…but they don’t quite fit: the holes are too small. The metal seemed fairly soft and not too thick, so I managed to open up the holes a bit with a handheld drill and a 1/4″ wood-drilling bit. It would probably be safer and more precise to use a drill press and a proper metal-drilling bit.
Or, even better, can anyone recommend a premade part with two 1/4″ (65mm) holes about 1″ (3cm) apart, no thicker than about 1/16″ (1mm), preferably without sharp corners?
Anyway, with the holes slightly enlarged, put the part in place and replace the nut.
This worked well on all my Hercules stands, with a minor modification for the bassoon/bass clarinet stand. The “forehead” bolt was too short to get the nut back on with the extra piece in place, so I installed it off-center. It works fine.
I’d be curious to hear about your favorite equipment modifications in the comments.
Beginning woodwind players, including doublers, sometimes cheat a bit on fingerings, using fingerings that are almost right. If you’re doing this, it’s likely that you have notes with poor tone, intonation, and/or response. If you think you are getting away with it, you’re probably mistaken, and you may be cementing bad habits that are going to become even more apparent as aspects of your tone production improve.
Flute
The most common culprits at a beginning or intermediate level are the right-hand pinky and the left-hand first finger.
The pinky should stay down for virtually every standard fingering, with the exceptions being anything below the low D, anything above the high (4th-ledger-line) A, and the D in the staff. This is not only crucial to the pitch and tone of many notes (you’ll hear it as your embouchure improves!), but also helps to stabilize the instrument.
The left-hand first finger must lift for second-octave D and E-flat. You can probably make the notes respond without doing so, but you’ll sound better and struggle less if you do it right.
It’s tempting to be a bit lazy with the various octave mechanisms: the half-hole, the first (thumb) octave key, and the second (side) octave key. Practice slowly and carefully:
I’d like to address the term “voicing,” which I think is often misunderstood. Here’s my best definition:
Voicing refers to the relative size of the oral cavity, which can change depending on the position of the back of the tongue.
There are a number of other terms that are used to describe this same concept in woodwind playing. I don’t take issue with any of these terms individually, and I think that as a teacher it’s useful to have a variety of possible ways to explain this concept. (These terms can become problematic, however, when they are used in opposition to each other: “Open up, and blow cooler air.”)
Here are some examples of ways of describing voicing. I consider the terms in the left column all to be descriptions of the same thing, and those on the right to be likewise equivalent to each other. Read More “What is voicing?”
With traditional woodwind instruments, the fingers work together to change the effective length of the instrument’s body tube by opening and closing toneholes. Woodwind fingerings at their most basic use the fingers in sequence. For example, a certain note might be produced with an “open” fingering (all toneholes open). When the “first” finger (the one closest to the mouthpiece) closes a hole, the pitch drops, perhaps by a whole step. Adding the next farther finger drops the pitch again, and so on toward the bell end of the instrument.
“Forked” fingerings, in which a lower tonehole is closed while one above it is open, often produce somewhat inferior results—notes that are mismatched in timbre and/or intonation. (Some modern woodwinds use special mechanisms to correct for this, such as the F resonance mechanism on a high-quality oboe.)
An electronic woodwind-style instrument, such as the Akai EWI series, uses a fingering system that is designed to be similar to a traditional woodwind, so that a traditional woodwind player can easily adapt to it. But this is an arbitrary choice. Since the instrument’s tone production system uses electronic circuitry and software, rather than a vibrating air column, the fingering system don’t necessarily have to use the fingers in sequence, and forked fingerings don’t have any inherent problems. The fingerings can be invented completely from scratch, with no acoustical limitations.
EWI fingerings are designed to draw upon the best of both worlds—the familiarity of traditional woodwind fingerings, and the flexibility of a non-acoustical fingering system.
Note that the current-model EWI4000s, using version 2.4 of the operating system, includes several fingering modes. The mode I am considering here is the “EWI” mode, as the “flute,” “oboe,” and “saxophone” modes sacrifice some flexibility for the sake of increased familiarity to traditional woodwind players. You might consider this article to be subtitled, “Why you should be using the ‘EWI’ fingering mode.”
The current manual (“revision D”) shows a mere 17 fingerings in its EWI mode fingering chart (11 chromatic pitches, with B-flat through D having fingerings in two octaves, and B-flat having one additional alternate fingering). But many, many more are possible.
We can consider the individual EWI keys as having individual functions, rather than being inherently interdependent. For example, pressing none of the keys produces a C-sharp:
C-sharp
Adding any key will alter the C-sharp pitch by a given amount:
key
pitch change
(in semitones)
exceptions
LH 1
-2
LH bis
-1
If both LH 1 and LH 2 are pressed, LH bis has no effect
LH 2
-2
If LH 1 is not pressed, LH2 produces -1 (this makes LH middle finger C possible)
LH 3
-2
LH pinky 1
+1
LH pinky 2
-1
RH side
+1
No effect when used in combination with LH pinky 1
RH 1
-2
If LH 3 is not pressed, RH1 produces -1 (this makes 1 + 1 B-flat possible)
RH 2
-1
RH 3
-2
RH pinky 1
+1
RH pinky 2
-1
RH pinky 3
-2
If I press LH 1, LH 2, and LH 3, the pitch is lowered from C-sharp by a total of 6 semitones, producing the G fingering familiar to saxophonists, oboists, flutists, and clarinetists.
But that is only one possible combination. I could also produce a G with, for example, LH 1, LH 2, and RH 3. Or LH 3, LH pinky 2, RH 1, and RH pinky 2. These fingerings would be extremely unlikely to work on a traditional woodwind, but with the EWI the possibilities are wide open. As long as the total pitch change adds up to -6 (and accounting for any of the listed exceptions), you get a G.
Standard G fingering.(LH 1 + LH 2 + LH 3) = (-2 + -2 + -2) = -6 = G
One alternative G fingering.(LH 1 + LH 2 + RH 3) = (-2 + -2 + -2) = -6 = G
Another alternative G.(LH 3 + LH pinky 2 + RH 1 + RH pinky 2) = (-2 + -1 + -2 + -1) = -6 = G
These examples are illustrative but likely have few real-world applications. For a more practical example, consider trills, which among traditional woodwind players are a subject of endless discussion and books upon books of awkward, complicated fingerings. An ideal trill fingering involves moving only one finger, preferably one that can be moved in a rapid, controlled, non-awkward way. Continue reading for a musical example and sound clip →
As a ten-year-old beginning saxophonist, I was taught to form an embouchure like this:
Put your top teeth on the mouthpiece
Let your lower lip sort of roll or squish over your lower teeth
Close your mouth
That’s how I played for years. As I advanced and started to practice more, I would sometimes hurt the inside of my lower lip, drawing blood or forming blisters or scar tissue. I considered this a badge of honor: I practiced until I bled.
But I don’t play that way anymore, nor do I teach students that way. I made an important change to my embouchure that lets me play for extended periods pain- and blood-free, while sounding better and having more control.
The problem with the lower-lip-over-the-teeth approach is that it sets the lower lip up to serve as a sacrificial cushion, to protect the reed from the lower teeth. Sure, you can just tell your students to “stop biting,” but if you’re teaching them an embouchure that’s based on biting, then good luck.
It’s more useful to think of the embouchure this way:
Put your top teeth on the mouthpiece
Let your jaw hang open a bit, so your lower teeth stay clear of the reed
Keep your jaw open, and allow your lips to close around the mouthpiece and reed.
This approach makes sure the lips are used to form the embouchure, not the jaw. It improves tone, response, dynamic range, and more, and virtually eliminates lower lip pain.
If you are used to a jaw-formed embouchure concept, you might find that switching to the lip-formed embouchure leaves you feeling like you’ve lost some control of pitch and tone. If so, double-check your breath support; with the jaw out of the way you will need to depend on those support muscles more for stability.
I recently got a copy of the 1984 Tito Puente disc El Rey. I’m sorry to say I wasn’t familiar with the names of any of the other musicians on the album—everyone sounds absolutely incredible—but I was blown away by the flute and tenor playing of Mario Rivera.
A quick Google search later and I can see that the late Mr. Rivera ranks among the heavies of Latin Jazz, and I have been missing out on his playing before now. Pick up a copy of El Rey and check out his virtuosic charanga-style flute playing (on Puente’s Oye Como Va, for example—that’s right, Tito Puente wroteit, not Carlos Santana) and some really tasty tenor sounds, too (check out the Latin cover of Giant Steps).
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The saxophone’s lowest notes can be notoriously unresponsive. This is partly due to the instrument’s acoustics, particularly its fairly extreme conical bore. (For technical details, see for example Acoustics of Musical Instruments by Chaigne and Kergomard, section 7.4.6.1.) The oboe and bassoon, whose bores are conical but not to such an extreme, have this problem to a lesser extent, and the tips that follow apply to those instruments as well.
For the best chance at successful low notes you need:
A well-adjusted, high-quality instrument. Even a small leak anywhere on the saxophone makes the lowest notes more difficult. And the best-designed and most meticulously-made instruments help to minimize the difficulties of the low range.
A good mouthpiece and reed combination. This may involve tradeoffs: a mouthpiece/reed combination that really improves the low register may, for example, make the highest notes more difficult. Since mouthpieces and reeds vary in so many ways it’s hard to make reliable generalizations, but often I find that a wider tip opening with a softer reed tend to favor the low register more (and the high register less).
Good, stable fundamentals of saxophone technique. Breath support, voicing, articulation, and embouchure (let’s include jaw position in embouchure here) should be properly set, and shouldn’t change for the low register. If you find that you need to increase breath support, lower your voicing, change your embouchure or tonguing, or open your jaw to make the low notes succeed, then you should probably already be doing those things, in every register. Don’t make the low notes even harder by creating a moving target.
To expand on that last point a little, if you find that your low notes need a little extra help, then a small alteration to your voicing is the right way to provide it. But know the tradeoffs: lowering your voicing as you approach the low register affects pitch and tone, besides creating instability in your tone production technique. Manage these concerns by aiming for the smallest possible change.
Have you considered something like this D-ring with clip? It has a 0.25″ mounting hole, and seems like it would protrude enough for your purposes. Not sure whether the swivel action of the D-ring would be a plus or a minus.
I hadn’t considered these, but it seems like they might work. I’m estimating based on the D-ring size, but my guess is that the hole is not quite large enough on these either (to fit over the Hercules bolt, I mean).
Have you considered something like this D-ring with clip? It has a 0.25″ mounting hole, and seems like it would protrude enough for your purposes. Not sure whether the swivel action of the D-ring would be a plus or a minus.
I hadn’t considered these, but it seems like they might work. I’m estimating based on the D-ring size, but my guess is that the hole is not quite large enough on these either (to fit over the Hercules bolt, I mean).
If you click the “Technical Specs” tab, sort of in the middle of the page, it gives plenty of measurements (including hole diameter).
Sure enough—I missed that in the link and in your original comment. Interesting idea.