In a blog post from last week, New York City composer Joseph Phillips discusses his ensemble Numinous and his decision to use woodwind doublers instead of a conventional orchestral woodwind section.
Joseph Phillips. Photos stolen from Joseph’s post.
When I started Numinous back in the fall of 2000, I knew I wanted flexibility of colors in the woodwind section. Even though I’m a saxophone/woodwind player, I didn’t want a saxophone dominant sound to the section. I also didn’t want to have 10 woodwind players to cover saxophones, oboe, English Horn, flutes, clarinets, and whatever woodwinds I happen to write for. So the most natural solution was to have woodwind doublers who would be able to play multiple instruments. Of course with the demands of my music, I didn’t want or need a typical jazz saxophone doubler: someone that plays maybe passable flute or clarinet but not well enough to match their saxophone abilities. In addition to being able to improvise well on all of the instruments, I really need musicians whose abilities on the other woodwind instruments are all fairly equal and could move easily between jazz, classical, and popular genres.
One of Numinous’s woodwind players is Ben Kono, who currently plays the reed 1 book for Jersey Boys on Broadway. In Joseph’s blog post, he interviews Ben about his woodwind abilities:
On Vipassana you play 8 different instruments, but truth be told, how many instruments can you play? What are some of the more unusual or interesting ones?
Ben Kono
As a woodwind specialist, I am classically trained on all five woodwind families of the orchestra: saxophones, clarinets (Bb and Eb soprano, bass), flutes, oboe/english horn, and bassoon. In practice, however, I tend to play some more than others, and I have left bassoon completely behind. About fifteen years ago or so, I became interested in indigenous musics from other countries and started to collect instruments from my travels, some of which I have incorporated into my own music. I have performed and recorded (in various degrees of success) on the “kena” flute from South America; the “khaen” pipes from Thailand; and the “dizi” flute from China. Of course, as a Japanese descendent I have a special interest in the shakuhachi flute which I was exposed to early on by my aunt who performs traditional Japanese music on the shamisen and koto. I played it on a Pulse Composers concert, and the lesson I learned is that playing western music on it is a lot more difficult than I imagined! So in answer, I am constantly adding and subtracting the number of instruments.
Read the whole thing here. And if you’re in the New York City area, hear Numinous perform Joseph Phillips’s Vipassana this week. Ben Kono will be playing piccolo, flute, alto flute, oboe, English horn, and soprano and alto saxophones.
Numinous performs Vipassana
Wednesday October 28, 2009 8:00pm
$10 Brooklyn Lyceum
227 4th Avenue (Park Slope)
Take the M or R Train to Union Street
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.
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.
I find that once voicing and breath support are balanced against each other, a good oboe with a good reed is one of the easiest woodwinds to play in tune, and responds easily in all registers.
This is, generally speaking, true of all of the woodwinds: solid breath support plus a stable voicing appropriate to the instrument are the recipe for reliable, in-tune notes from low to high.
I teach a woodwind methods class as part of my graduate assistantship (and was the teaching assistant in the class for several years before teaching it on my own). In this class music education students get a crash course in playing and teaching the woodwind instruments, in preparation (too little!—but that’s another blog post) for careers as school band directors. My class is made up of woodwind players, brass players, percussionists, keyboardists, and even vocalists. It is interesting to see how to woodwind players fare in comparison to the non-woodwind players. Read More “Learning to play a woodwind: is previous woodwind experience a disadvantage?”
It was completed in 2009 so some things are already out of date. Also, lately I’m trying to steer away from the term “ethnic” instruments (“world” instruments seems slightly less problematic until I can find a better solution).
Enjoy(?).
ABSTRACT
Woodwind doubling is the practice of playing instruments from more than one woodwind family. In musical theater and film music, woodwind doublers are valuable for their ability to produce the sounds of a varied woodwind section for a fraction of the cost of hiring a specialist musician to play each instrument.
Since the 1990’s, composers and orchestrators in musical theater and film scoring have shown increased interest in instrumental sounds from outside the traditional symphony orchestra. Many have featured folk, ethnic, or period instruments as solo instruments, bringing authentic sounds to scenes set in faraway locations or historical periods, giving an exotic flair to fictional locales, or simply adding new colors to the usual palette of instrumental sounds.
Composers of film and theater scores have used ethnic woodwinds, in particular, in their scoring. To meet the demand for ethnic woodwind sounds, many prominent woodwind doublers on Broadway and in Hollywood have adopted these instruments, in addition to their usual arrays of modern Western instruments.
Eight folk, ethnic, and period woodwinds recently employed in film and theater scoring have been selected for study in this document: bamboo flutes (especially the Indian bansuri and flutes used by some flutists in Irish traditional music), the Chinese dizi, the Armenian duduk, the Native American flute, the panflutes of Romania and South America, the pennywhistle, the recorder, and the Japanese shakuhachi.
For each instrument, a representative example of use in theater or film music has been selected and transcribed from a commercial audio recording. Each transcription is discussed with emphasis on demands placed upon the ethnic woodwind musician. Additional discussion of each instrument includes suggestions for purchasing instruments, fingering charts, description of playing technique, description of instrument-specific performance practices, discussion of various sizes and/or keys of each instrument, discussion of instrument-specific notation practices, annotated bibliographies of available pedagogical materials, lists of representative recordings (including authentic ethnic music and other music), and information on relevant organizations and associations of professional or amateur musicians.
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.
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.
Thanks for posting this! Your site is a great resource for woodwind players. One thing I left out of Joe Phillips’ interview was the concept of the “schlep”. After you add all those instruments together, plus their cases, you have an enormous mountain of horns to haul! Having a car is one thing, but my gig tonight is in Brooklyn via subway during rush hour—and it’s pouring rain! If I’d thought ahead, perhaps a zipcar would have been in order. It’s worth it though because the music is gorgeous—be sure to check out Joe’s sound clips on the Numinous website. Ben
Hi Bret,
Thanks for posting this! Your site is a great resource for woodwind players. One thing I left out of Joe Phillips’ interview was the concept of the “schlep”. After you add all those instruments together, plus their cases, you have an enormous mountain of horns to haul! Having a car is one thing, but my gig tonight is in Brooklyn via subway during rush hour—and it’s pouring rain! If I’d thought ahead, perhaps a zipcar would have been in order. It’s worth it though because the music is gorgeous—be sure to check out Joe’s sound clips on the Numinous website. Ben
Ben – Thanks for stopping by and for the additional behind-the-scenes peek. Good luck tonight with the subway and the music!
Bret, it has been good reading some of what you are up to in the blogworld; thank you for posting about Numinous and my interview with Ben.
why is the woodwinds off beat