Learning to play a woodwind: is previous woodwind experience a disadvantage?

ByBret Pimentel

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

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.

To be very general, I find that the woodwind players get started more quickly on a new woodwind instrument, being able to immediately (if crudely) apply concepts of airflow, finger technique, and articulation transferred from their primary instrument.

Meanwhile, the harp majors and operatic sopranos need to be taught things that woodwind players take for granted. (Hold the flute out to your right, even if you’re left-handed! No, you can’t just buy one reed to use for both saxophone and bassoon! Remember, blow into the pointy end!)

But, once the first, steepest slope of the learning curve is conquered, it’s often the non-woodwind players who have more success in further developing and refining their sound on the new instrument, learn fingerings with greater accuracy, and even score better on the written tests. I think it’s just too hard for a proficient woodwind player to learn a new instrument from scratch; the temptation to fall back on established habits is too great.

In my ongoing quest to thoroughly master each of the woodwind instruments, one of the biggest mistakes I made along the way was to ignore beginning method books. I did get good teachers early on, and asked for their help in developing good fundamental skills. I got some excellent instruction on embouchure formation, tone concept, and other basics, but my teachers and I mostly failed to deal adequately with lower-level technical material. (In my teachers’ defense, few had much experience, if any, teaching beginning lessons to someone with proficiency on another woodwind.) I had several teachers comment, in fact, that they felt it unnecessary to drill me on basic etudes, since, after all, I already had “good fingers.”

The result has been that I have struggled with some basic technical stuff: upper register fingerings on flute and bassoon, crossing the register breaks on the clarinet, articulating cleanly on the oboe, and so forth. This semester I am doing a little bit of clarinet playing in the university’s wind ensemble, surrounded mostly by undergraduate clarinetists. In many ways, I have the advantage over them in terms of musical experience and maturity, but they run circles around me in terms of fluency on the instrument. I have been spending some time with the Klosé method, desperately trying to shore up some basic skills.

If I could do it over again, I would ask my teachers to spend less time on too-advanced literature (my first flute piece was a Mozart concerto) and more time on basic material like the Trevor Wye Technique book for flute, the Barret oboe method, the Klosé clarinet method, and the Oubradous bassoon scale studies. I did get my basics covered on saxophone, my first instrument, but I would recommend the Lacour 50 Easy and Progressive Etudes for those in search of really basic study material. And do these right! Work with a qualified teacher, and put in serious time and effort on each study, even the really easy ones.

Each new woodwind instrument has to be approached from the ground up. No shortcuts!

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  • Don’t say this to your beginning oboists

    ByBret Pimentel

    Here is a version of a handout I provided recently to graduate students at the American Band College, a summer program for school band directors.

    Band directors, don’t say this to your beginning oboists:

    • “Shh.” As a university oboe teacher, I routinely meet young oboists who play like they are terrified of making a sound. They often report that in their school band experience, every time they play the director gives them “the hand.” Playing softly on the oboe (or any woodwind) is an advanced technique. If you possibly can, encourage your beginning oboists to make big, resonant, confident sounds. Defend them from classmates who compare them unfavorably to waterfowl. It will pay off when you have a rock-star oboe soloist, with a glorious, ringing sound, for your high school wind ensemble.
    • “The oboe is really hard.” There’s a pointless myth that the oboe is at or near the top of the list of “hardest” instruments. Like any instrument, it has its own learning curve. But it’s quite manageable for a motivated student. Don’t give them unnecessary reasons to stress over it.
    • “Take this fingering chart home and figure it out.” Of course ideally all your students would be taking private lessons, right? But the oboe has a few unique quirks, like its fussy and delicate reeds, that really heighten the need for some specialist instruction. If you possibly can, get your beginning oboists in touch with qualified private teachers ASAP.
    • “Lip it up.” “Tighten your embouchure.” This is bad advice for any woodwind instrument. It’s a band-aid solution for flat pitch, buzzy tone, or squeaks. A good oboe embouchure is almost no embouchure at all—the lips remain pretty close to a neutral, non-oboe-playing position. (Do allow the corners of the mouth to come inward, and the lipstick part of the lips to roll in over the reed a bit.) Solve pitch, tone, and response problems with a relaxed, light embouchure, powerful breath support, correct voicing (low, “oh” vowel, warm air), and good reeds (preferably handmade and/or adjusted by the student’s private oboe teacher).
    • “Check out this oboe player on YouTube.” Listening and watching is a good thing, for sure. But be cautious about who you recommend: there are various “schools” of oboe playing in different parts of the world, that value different tone ideals and use differing posture, embouchure, and reeds. Generally the American-school players value a silky-smooth, relatively dark tone, and use a posture that keeps the oboe at around a 45° angle to the body. If you hear a livelier, brighter tone and see a more trumpet-like instrument position, that may not be the model you want for your young American oboists. (All the regional oboe sounds are lovely and valid, but oboe sounds from other locales should be presented with some context.)
    • “You can’t march it.” You’re absolutely right that oboes do not belong on the marching field, and your oboists should find some other way to get involved. But please encourage the oboe as a worthwhile pursuit for young musicians. It has a noble history and repertoire, is sought-after by university music department scholarship committees, and will bring something special to your concert ensembles.

  • Doubling-specific skills vs. instrument-specific skills

    ByBret Pimentel

    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!

  • |

    Dissertation: Woodwind doubling on folk, ethnic, and period instruments in film and theater music

    ByBret Pimentel

    My doctoral dissertation is now available online through the University of Georgia library:

    Woodwind doubling on folk, ethnic, and period instruments in film and theater music: Case studies and a practical manual

    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.

    Read the full text at the UGA library website

  • Woodwind Doubler Census 2021 results, part 1: demographics

    ByBret Pimentel

    Thanks to all who participated in my 2021 woodwind doubling survey, and to those who helped spread the word. I’m releasing the results in installments, so be sure to use my social media links, RSS feeds, etc. to keep up.

    I got 284 responses, an improvement over 2011’s 187. The numbers for each of these questions don’t necessarily add up to exactly that number, since not everybody responded to every question.

    Gender identity

    I provided more options for gender identity than in 2011’s survey. Here’s the breakdown. (Percentages are of those who answered the question.)

    2021 Data
    Male 222 78%
    Female 49 17%
    Female, Transgender 1 ~0%
    Nonbinary/nonconforming 10 4%
    Transgender, Nonbinary/nonconforming 1 ~0%

    2011 Data
    Male 146 78%
    Female 41 22%

    Age

    As was the case 10 years ago, the numbers skew toward the younger end. I’m not sure if this is affected by the survey being distributed primarily online. No respondents claimed to be younger than teenaged or older than in their 70s.

    2021 Data
    Teenage 22 8%
    20s 72 25%
    30s 67 24%
    40s 40 14%
    50s 41 14%
    60s 35 12%
    70s 6 2%

    2011 Data
    Younger than 20 19 1%
    20s 54 10%
    30s 31 29%
    40s 36 17%
    50s 33 19%
    60s 12 18%
    70s 1 6%

    Region

    I provided options for this that broke down by continent. A few of you island dwellers responded with “other” and specified locations in Oceania and the Caribbean. I probably need to rethink this question for 2031, but for purposes of data reporting I have lumped everyone together into continents for now.

    The continued absence of responses from Africa and South America may be related to language barriers and/or other factors. I did get a few responses from Asia this year, which I didn’t in 2011.

    2021 Data
    Asia 3 1%
    Australia 11 4%
    Europe 20 7%
    North America 249 88%

    2011 Data
    Australia 11 6%
    Europe 12 6%
    North America 162 87%

    Which of these best describes where you live?

    The “city, but not a ‘major’ one” option was added based on feedback from the 2011 survey. A few of you used the “other” option to explain more complicated living situations (such as multiple locations), and for reporting purposes I’ve taken the liberty of lumping those into the categories I thought were the closest match.

    2021 Data
    major city or metropolitan area 127 45%
    city, but not a “major” one 69 24%
    suburb or exurb 63 22%
    rural or remote area 24 8%

    2011 Data
    major city or metropolitan area 93 50%
    suburban area 66 35%
    rural or remote area 23 12%
    other 5 3%

    Describe your current level of formal education (in any field).

    “Less than high school diploma” is a new option this yea. The categories in the graph are abbreviated; the full text from the survey is in the data table.

    2021 dATA
    Less than high school diploma 8 3%
    High school diploma or equivalent 6 2%
    Some college 33 12%
    Bachelors degree 70 25%
    Some graduate school 18 6%
    Masters degree 103 37%
    Doctorate 38 13%
    Other degree type or comparable certification 6 2%

    2011 Data
    High school diploma or equivalent 8 4%
    Some college 28 15%
    Bachelors degree 59 32%
    Some graduate school 16 9%
    Masters degree 53 28%
    Doctorate 16 9%
    Other degree type or comparable certification 6 3%

    Thanks again for your participation and stay tuned for more survey results.

  • More on the science/fiction of woodwind materials

    ByBret Pimentel
    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”

  • |

    Planning breaths

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    When learning a new étude or repertoire piece, it’s common to practice at first with focus on the notes, often playing them at a slow tempo and/or divided into chunks. This is a good approach for mastering the needed finger technique, but it may neglect one of the crucial parts of a performance: breathing.

    In some music, it’s obvious where to breathe. But in a page of nonstop sixteenth notes, it’s harder to find the right places, and to execute them gracefully. Adding to the problem, I find that when I am nervous or playing under pressure, my breathing is one of the first things that falls apart: I start breathing in unaccustomed places, or skipping breaths that I know I really need.

    I recommend establishing a breathing plan early in the process of learning new music. That way you can practice the breaths just like you practice the notes—they become a part of your muscle memory, and will happen automatically even under pressure.

    The first step for a wind player should be to mark in the musical breaths, the ones that demarcate phrases. These are breaths that you will take (or possibly fake) regardless of your need for oxygen, because they serve the music. How exactly to do that is beyond the scope of this post, but here are a few quick tips:

    • Beware breathing at bar lines. They look like nice stopping points, but often don’t make musical sense. (They are there only for your convenience in counting.)
    • Background in music theory helps a lot, but you can also use your ears to help you figure out intuitively where a phrase comes to rest, or steal ideas from a good recording.
    • To go deeper, consider studying phrasing, perhaps from a book like David McGill’s. (Put that one on your wish list if you haven’t read it already!)

    Once the breaths required by the music are in place, you may decide you need more, perhaps because you haven’t worked the piece up to its full tempo yet (or because the piece isn’t written with sensitivity to your desire to survive). Mark in-between “survival” breaths as needed, perhaps in parentheses so you remember which ones they are. Put them in the best places you can find, and execute them as musically as you can, but as your tempo increases you may be able to skip them. If so, be sure to erase them so your marked-in plan stays up to date.

    Choosing places for survival breaths is a trial-and-error process. Mark some in and give them a try, then adjust as needed. If you feel uncomfortable while playing, this can lead to panicked decisions on stage, so choose breaths for your comfort.

    Particularly for the oboe, you may find you need some “breaths” where you can actually exhale stale air. Mark these clearly, too.

    Always update your pencil marks if you decide to change the plan at all, so that your plan is 100% clear and you can practice it in a consistent way. You can change your mind later, as long as you change your marks.

    To summarize:

    • Start early in the process of learning a new piece.
    • Mark in musical breaths, which you will observe even if you’re capable of playing longer without stopping.
    • Mark in survival breaths, if necessary. Use trial and error to get them right.
    • Practice the breaths just as diligently as you practice the notes.
    • As you get closer to the performance, you might alter the breathing plan as your interpretation evolves, or as you no longer need some of the survival breaths.
    • Be strict about keeping the markings current, and about playing just what is marked.

    Well-planned, thoroughly-practiced breaths contribute to a relaxed, musical performance.

2 Comments

  1. Pingback: No It’s Not Too Late To Learn Saxophone! – ScionAv
  2. Pingback: How To Learn Saxophone: The Importance Of Practice – ScionAv

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