person holding white paper

Listing your woodwind doubles

ByBret Pimentel

Here is a question I’ve gotten a few times recently: if you’re a woodwind doubler, and need to list your instruments, in what order do you list them? Here are some options:

  • Use a common “score” order, like: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, saxophone. To musically-literate folks this may be the closest thing to a sort of neutral listing, giving no special preference or ranking to the instruments. (But it can of course be misinterpreted.)
  • Use a ranking, such as by which instruments you play best or prefer. If, like me, your ambition is to play your doubles equally well, and to be a hire-able professional on them all, then listing them this way may weaken that impression.
  • Do a hybrid of ranking and score order, such as listing a strongest/primary instrument first, and the rest in score order. That’s my preferred approach for general cases like on my website or business cards. For me, it’s: saxophone, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon. That highlights my strongest instrument (for now, at least), and also puts it out front for jazz, rock, and blues gigs, which make up a substantial part of my freelance career.
  • Tailor the list to the situation. If I’m submitting a brief biography for an appearance at, say, a clarinet conference, I’ll put the clarinet first. That hopefully helps people see me as a member of the group, rather than a visitor.
  • Randomize. For something like a website, it’s relatively simple with a little coding knowledge to use a different order every time, and help prevent yourself from being pigeonholed. You could also randomize photos of yourself holding or playing various instruments, or video or audio recordings. Here’s a simple example.

To sum up, you’ll have to consider your skills and goals as a doubler, what kind of work you do or want to do, and to whom you’re presenting yourself.

Similar Posts

  • Interview: bassoonist and inventor Trent Jacobs

    ByBret Pimentel

    Last summer I finally got myself a Little-Jake setup so I could experiment with some electric bassoon playing. The inventor of the Little-Jake, Trent Jacobs, is a performer, educator, and reedmaker, and I’ve linked to his blog posts on a number of occasions.

    Trent was kind enough to answer a few questions about himself and about the Little-Jake.

    Tell us in a nutshell about yourself and your career.

    I have a bachelor of music degree from the Lawrence University Conservatory of Music, and Masters and DMA degrees from the University of Illinois. My primary teachers were Monte Perkins and Timothy McGovern. I moved to Minneapolis in 2009 where I started work at Midwest Musical Imports, and began freelancing and teaching as much as I could around the full time job. In about 2010 I started making reeds commercially under the Weasel Reeds brand, which grew significantly over the years. I started teaching bassoon and music theory at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire in fall of 2015 and left MMI shortly after. I now teach there and in my studio in Minneapolis, continue with the reed making business, help in raising my two children (which includes Suzuki violin lessons), and freelance when I’m able.

    What is the “Little-Jake?”

    The Little-Jake is a small and inexpensive wind instrument pickup, designed to mount directly to the bocal of the bassoon or similar location on other woodwinds. It gets the name from a nickname I had when I was a little boy. My fathers friends called him “Jake” as short for Jacobs so when I was around I was “little Jake” while he was “big Jake.”

    What was the impetus for creating it?

    In about 2005 while I was working on my DMA, I started working out that my thesis/project would be somehow related to jazz bassoon. Years prior I was a pretty competent jazz guitarist, but didn’t ever translate that to bassoon much, and never improvised on bassoon until then. So when pursuing jazz bassoon in all facets I encountered (again) the music of Paul Hanson, and his electric bassoon playing.

    If you know anything about Paul’s setup at that time, you’ll know he was using a pickup that was no longer being made or serviced by the inventor, and was an unusual piece of gear with odd technical requirements. The only thing on the market available to anyone else was actually a control booth earpiece that functioned as a microphone well enough when fit to a bocal (the Telex pickup).

    I was curious about it and happened to have a third-hand connection with Mark Ortwein at the time, and I knew he had a Telex setup which he let me borrow. It worked, but I was rather unimpressed with the sound quality I could get through my guitar amp and pedals, so I set out to make something I liked better. Quite a few dozen experimental pieces later I had a prototype I was close to happy with, that worked with the Telex fitting.

    What kind of background or skills did you have that made it possible?

    It’s rather embarrassing to say, but the first skill needed in making something like this is soldering, which I learned by modifying gaming consoles to play homebrew software. I had learned to do that with some tutorial videos on the internet and had made a few small electronics projects so I had some idea what I was doing. I also got some help from the guy that makes the Altoids box preamps that are now commonly bundled with the Little Jake in the technical aspects of circuit building.

    Most of the construction of them isn’t all that different from bassoon reed making in my mind. Small pieces have to be fit together in a precise way, it’s just that the tools and pieces are a bit different. The hardest thing in the early days was getting a good connection with the existing Telex pickup bocal adapter being made by Forrests Music. I was fortunate enough to have a colleague in the bassoon studio at the University of Illinois who was an architecture major and had access to CAD and acrylic laser cutting machines. He helped me prototype and get working pieces to allow for a solid connection.

    Eventually I switched everything over to a threaded/screw adapter like what Paul Hanson was using with his FRAP pickups, so he could use my pickups with his existing equipment. That is the only way I make the pickups now.

    What instruments are people using the Little Jake with? Are there others that it theoretically would work with?

    I’ve seen them used on clarinet and saxophone, although not too much. Nearly any woodwind instrument is possible, as long as the player is willing to drill a hole where it’s needed. Clarinet is best done in the barrel, which is easy. Saxophone could use the mouthpiece but the neck is better, similar to the bocal mount for the bassoon. English horn could be done on the bocal but it’s fine work and I don’t know of anyone that’s actually gone there.

    Flute is the one that’s not really necessary, as there are plenty of high quality microphone systems for flute that would be ultimately superior to the sound you could get with the Little Jake anyway, but there is a way to modify a Little Jake and a headjoint of a flute to make it work together. A lot of work and the sound wouldn’t be as good as a commercially available flute mic at the lip plate anyway.

    Oboe is the toughest sell: you have to drill a hole at about where the third octave key is on the top joint. Most oboists aren’t willing to sacrifice a top joint to electrify the oboe, so I don’t think it’s been done. Paul McCandless has done it in the past with a FRAP, but I don’t think anyone else ever has.

    I’m sure there are non-western instruments that it’d work with as well, as long as there’s a place to drill the hole.

    Have you seen any uses of the Little Jake that you found especially surprising?

    I’m just always surprised when I find a bassoonist using it and enjoying it in a rock band setting. I’ve had people send me recordings over the years and it’s pretty cool to see something you’ve created being used in contexts you wouldn’t yourself be in. I was blown away when I discovered a band in Iceland that had a bassoonist using a Little Jake.

    Obviously using a Little Jake opens up a whole rabbit hole of new gear to buy, but what is a good minimum setup that, say, a bassoonist needs just to try out some electric playing?

    The amp is the most important second piece of equipment. The goal of using a pickup with a bassoon is to get the sound space into a place that can be heard even when there are drums involved. When putting together a guitar rig, as an example, the guitar is only half of the sound; the other half of the sound is the amplifier. Ask any guitar player, the amp is absolutely critical when getting the tone you want. All the pedals and stuff you can put between the instrument and amp are just extras. So it’s really important to get an amp that gets you the sound you want at a volume appropriate for what you’re doing. I’ve settled on a really high end acoustic guitar amp, but in the past I’ve used bass guitar amps, powered PA speakers, and guitar amplifiers. It all depends on what kind of sound you want. You can get a good amp used for $100 or less.

    For someone who already has that minimum setup, what are the next few things to consider buying?

    If you don’t know anything about effects pedals, one of the simple and small multi-effect units for guitar or bass guitar are a good starting point. You can experiment with lots of different types of effects and decide what you like to use before investing in more specialized gear. Those multi-effect units can sometimes be found for $50 if you get a good Craigslist deal.

    If you know what kinds of effects you like, you can get dedicated pedals that do that one thing really well. I find that a lot of things respond differently to bassoon than to electric guitar (which is what these things are designed for) so you really have to try things out before you spend the money. It’s always fun to take your bassoon out in a guitar store and start playing through pedals. The people in those shops love it! I also really highly suggest effects units designed with vocalists in mind. A voice or wind instrument is more similar to a bassoon than an electric guitar is. I personally use a lot of pitch shifting effects, modulation effects (phaser, chorus, etc.), and time based effects like delay/echo and reverb. I don’t really use distortion all that much unless I’m really trying to sound like another guitar player in the same band. The other thing that’s always sure to turn heads is an Envelope Filter (sometimes called auto-wah but that’s not really correct). That’s the effect that makes your instrument have that “quack” or “wah” sound when you articulate.

    What surprises or challenges do people run into when electrifying their instruments for the first time?

    Feedback is probably the biggest issue with amplifying an acoustic instrument. Feedback is where the sound from the amplifier or speaker is picked up by the microphone, which creates an audio loop that quickly becomes very loud and usually very high pitched. Acoustic instruments have more problems with this because they themselves are a bit of an amplifying chamber that can pick up the sound of the speakers. You have to learn what effects and volume levels will create that feedback with your own setups and be ready with a plan to control them (be always close to a volume knob that you can zero out if it gets really bad).

    Do you have any favorite bassoon- (or woodwind-) playing tips?

    Don’t play on crap reeds. Life is too short. Practice your damned scales and long tones. Take good care of your equipment: regular instrument maintenance with a specialist on that instrument, store things properly, clean them regularly, buy appropriate cases or covers or whatever to keep things protected. Don’t swing stuff around carelessly. Swab your horn. Especially in my years at MMI I was frequently amazed at how poorly some people, even professionals, took care of their gear. If you’re playing a bassoon at a night club you’d best know that you have the single most expensive piece of equipment in the band probably, and nobody knows it or cares, so watch out for your own stuff.

    Would you like to share anything about your recent medical history?

    In May of 2017 I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. I underwent 9 weeks of chemotherapy and in early November had surgery to remove the tumor, which involved also removing my entire stomach and a portion of my esophagus. I finished 9 more weeks of chemotherapy after the surgery and have started playing again, but I still have a long road to recovery and learning to live without a stomach. I have started teaching and working again and so far things are looking good for my healing. We will do regular scans and hopefully find nothing.

    I found that some side effects of chemo prevented me from making reeds as much as I was used to, and generally being fatigued kept me from playing as much as I wanted. I obviously had to turn down quite a few calls for gigs. I’m fortunate to have a good health insurance plan through my university and have some of the best doctors in the world working on me, so while my income has suffered I have a good safety net. I expect to be in full production of bassoon reeds again in the spring of 2018, so if anyone wants to be notified when I have reeds ready to go again, send a message to me through my website.

    Thanks Trent!

    Check out a couple of Trent’s performing groups:

    And of course his website: Trent Jacobs, bassoonist

  • Why musicians cost money

    ByBret Pimentel

    I very much appreciate this brief article by trumpet player Jeff Purtle: Why Do Musicians Charge? [Edit: article no longer exists, but see the video in Mr. Purtle’s comment below.] Mr. Purtle makes the point that it costs a lot of money to be a musician. This is painfully true for woodwind doublers, who need not only a large number of high-quality instruments, but also reeds, maintenance and repairs, insurance, stands, cases, and more for each instrument, not to mention the cost of lessons or even college or conservatory study.

    I think the overhead costs of being an instrumentalist are a really important and valid point. But I do think are some more reasons why musicians should expect to be compensated fairly for what they do: Read More “Why musicians cost money”

  • Q&A: Personal reflections

    ByBret Pimentel

    A couple of weeks ago I put out a call for questions, in honor of today being the fifteenth anniversary of this blog. A few of the questions asked about my own career and approaches to various things. I’ll try to answer the best I can.

    One reader asked about music education and work/life balance. This person completed a degree in music education but found there was pressure to make teaching a “lifestyle” rather than just a 9-to-5 kind of job.

    To be clear, my degrees are in performance, not music education, though I make my living as an educator at the university level. But most of my students are music education majors, and on the track to become public school band directors. Some of my former students have really embraced that career, have excelled in it, and have wrestled with the work/life balance aspects to various results. Others have burned out quickly and moved on to other career options. I do think sometimes there’s a sort of cult around music as a career—the rueful but revealing jokes about college music majors “living” in the practice rooms, or about high school band directors kissing their families goodbye until after marching band season. It’s a complex and very individual calculus whether passion, time investment, family and other “life” demands, finances, and identity balance in the right ways to make those careers worthwhile. It’s also a moving target: after 14 years and a couple of promotions in my university position, the demands on my time and energy have shifted, and my approach to the job has adapted to make it more sustainable for me and my specific needs.

    A related question came from another reader: am I happy with the balance of teaching and performing in my life, and do I have plans to adjust that?

    As a full-time university music professor, a certain quantity of teaching (and to some extent performance) is non-negotiable. And I live in a rural and relatively remote area, so pre-made freelance performance opportunities are somewhat limited. But there are some choices I have made to adjust my balance. I don’t teach summer classes, so I’ve got a few months each year to do some relaxing/recovery and some concentrated work on projects that are important to me, like preparing recitals, working on online content and tools, and writing. A few years ago I cut loose my private students outside of my university responsibilities, in order to focus on finishing a book and further developing some online projects. I’m fortunate that the book and online things have more than replaced the income from those additional students, and let me have a little more variety in my days. Plus, I get to refer lesson inquiries to my college students, who are usually anxious for the experience and the reed money.

    A longtime woodwind player asked what I do to “keep things fresh.”

    I can respond with some of the things I’ve done, but of course these are specific to my interests and circumstances. I continue to pursue interests in world/folk instruments, and the Zoom era has opened up some possibilities for connecting and studying with expert players around the world. I’m also having fun with combining woodwind instruments with electronics. My university job gives me a venue and audience to do new and/or familiar things on stage, in annual faculty recitals. This blog and my other web-based projects combine my interest in music and woodwinds with my interest in software and coding. I’ve released the one book, and am in the process of writing another. And of course I’m always on the lookout for new etudes, exercises, and repertoire for me and for my students.

    Thanks for the thoughtful questions!

  • What should be on your musician website

    ByBret Pimentel

    It’s cheap and easy to create a website. Any serious freelance musician (or aspiring musician) should have one.

    This should be a website about you, an individual musician. It should be separate from your ensemble’s website or your academic institution’s website. It should exist long-term, and serve as a sort of permanent address for finding you online. If you do most of your online stuff on social media sites or on your organizations’ sites, that’s fine. Your individual website doesn’t have to replace or duplicate any of that. It can simply point people to those resources.

    I won’t go into any technical details here, because there is very extensive information available online about the ways to make websites. Suffice it to say that if you have only enough technical skill to send and receive email and post things on Facebook, there are website services simple enough for you to operate. Or if you want to roll up your sleeves and code every line from scratch, you can learn how to do that too.

    Here’s what you need, content-wise:

    Mandatory items

    • A domain name. Preferably this is something very simple and clear, like your name. Mine is bretpimentel.com. It works well because there aren’t a lot of Bret Pimentels, so web searches for my name usually put my site right at the top of the results.
      • If you have a more common name, you might need to add something meaningful to it. bretpimentelwoodwinds.com might work well, or bretpimentelmusic.com.
      • Pay for a real domain name. It’s not expensive. Something like bretpimentel.freewebsites.com looks unprofessional.
    • At minimum, a simple indication of what it is you do and how to contact you. That’s enough to be your whole website if you like. Here’s an example: “Bret Pimentel is a performer and teacher on the woodwind instruments: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone. Reach him at bret@bretpimentel.com.”
    • Some longevity. Go ahead and prepay the domain name and whatever hosting services you need for a good long time, maybe five or ten years, or set it up to renew automatically.

    Optional items

    • A more detailed biography.
    • A nice picture of you, especially one that helps reinforce what you do (like one where you’re holding your instrument).
    • Links to your social media profiles, YouTube channel, or other online things you want people to find.
    • Links to the websites of things associated with your career, like your performing ensembles or the institutions where you teach.

    Optional items with caveats

    Most of these things have to do with updating the content of your site on some kind of regular basis. That’s worth doing if your intention is to bring people back to visit your site again in the future. If you prefer to use your site as just sort of a digital business card, with no updating content, that’s fine too, and is much less effort to maintain.

    • A calendar of your upcoming performances. Only do this if you are thoroughly dedicated to keeping it up to date. An expired calendar makes your website look abandoned.
    • Recordings (audio and/or video) of some of your performances.
      • If you are hoping your website will help you get hired for things, only include recordings that you think appropriately and honestly reflect your current abilities.
      • Only post material you are certain you have the rights to post. For most individual-musician websites, chances are slim that anyone will take legal action against you for posting copyrighted material, but it’s still decent and polite to respect others’ intellectual property. (Acknowledging your non-ownership doesn’t make it okay to post something that isn’t yours. The copyright owner has to specifically give you permission or license the material to you in some way.)
    • A blog and/or some articles or other resources.
      • Again, this should be your own intellectual property or something you have explicit permission to post.
      • If you start a blog, start with a post that is about something, not a post about how you intend to start blogging soon, or asking people for ideas what to blog about. Lots of blogs start that way, with a single post promising big things to come, and then nothing more ever.
      • You don’t have to blog on any particular schedule if you don’t want to, just post when you have something to say.

    Don’t include these

    • Lists of who you have played with, unless they are significant and career-defining.
      • As a graduate student I got to play at a university event honoring Dave Brubeck, including playing in an ensemble “with” him. For years my professional biography indicated that I had played with Dave Brubeck, even though after the one gig was over he almost certainly wouldn’t have remembered me, much less considered me some kind of collaborator. Listing him on my website was a pretty transparent inflation of the truth. (If he had hired me to join his quartet and go on the road for a few years, that would definitely be worth mentioning on my site.)
      • There have also been many less-famous names I have performed with, and why list those?
    • Lists of the equipment you use. One possible exception is if you have official endorsement deals that contractually require you to include this information. Otherwise, what is the list for? To prove how much money you have spent? To encourage others to blindly buy the same products as you?
    • “Links” lists, except in the rare case that your curation brings something valuable to the table. Lists of sites that you think are interesting or somehow related to your site are an artifact of earlier days of the web. Now if people want to find sites related to a topic, they just do a web search or follow related entities on social media.
    • Gratuitous photo albums, unless there’s a good reason to post them. Being attractive and/or vain isn’t a good reason, if you are hoping people will focus on what you have to offer musically. And you do need permission from the copyright holder.

    A simple website is part of the modern musician’s professional face—you need one the same way you need a phone number, an email address, and black clothes for the gig. You can start for a few dollars and finish in less than an hour, or spend years building it into a powerful communication outlet. Get started today!

  • Clarifying woodwind doubling goals

    ByBret Pimentel

    A couple of months ago, I wrote this as part of a sort of tongue-in-cheek FAQ:

    Q. Should I be a woodwind doubler?
    A. In most cases, no. If you already feel driven to do it, and have the time and resources to devote to it, then maybe.

    I got a comment on this by “C Lee”:

    I’m a teen who started playing pits last year on flute and piccolo a year ago. Since then, I’ve fallen in love with pit, have played in four more musicals and am actively seeking out other gigs to gain experience. In addition, I’ve also taken up the saxophone and have plans to learn as many woodwinds as I can if not all of them. Do you think I should be a woodwind doubler?

    It would be irresponsible to make a recommendation based on so little information, and of course it’s ultimately a very personal choice. I’ve previously suggested some questions worth asking oneself before pursuing woodwind doubling, so I won’t rehash those here.

    But I think it’s also worth considering exactly what you mean by being a “woodwind doubler:”

    • Playing as many instruments as possible?
    • Playing a select group of instruments?
    • Playing multiple instruments as a hobby or part-time semi-pro gig?
    • Studying multiple instruments at a university/conservatory level?
    • Playing professionally or semi-professionally as a specialist on one instrument, but adding doubles to increase employability?
    • Competing for the highest-profile doubling gigs in a major market like New York City or Los Angeles?
    • Performing recital repertoire, orchestral music, and/or chamber music on multiple instruments?
    • Using multiple instruments in the creation of a unique personal repertoire (jazz, avant-garde, electronic, etc.)?

    Your individual goals might include several of these, or others I haven’t listed. And your goals might be a little fuzzy or might change, which is okay. But just “woodwind doubler” isn’t a very clear path. Having some sense of direction might help you make decisions about education and training, investment in instruments, location, practice strategies, and more.

  • |

    University woodwinds job postings, 5/30/08

    ByBret Pimentel

    Being a doctoral student in multiple woodwinds performance, I like to keep an eye on the job listings for university faculty positions that involve teaching multiple woodwind instruments. There usually aren’t many, at least not many that involve a national search. But two positions were posted to HigherEdJobs.com this morning: Read More “University woodwinds job postings, 5/30/08”

One Comment

  1. I usually list them in a modified score, from highest to lowest and by group (Picc, Flute,Alto Flute; Eb, Bb, Alto, Bass Clarinet; Soprano, Alto , Tenor, Bari Sax; Oboe)

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comments that take a negative or confrontational tone are subject to email and name verification before being approved. In other words: no anonymous trolls allowed—take responsibility for your words.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.