Favorite blog posts, April 2024
- oboealli (Alli Gessner): Air/embouchure balance
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Thumb position for oboe, clarinet, and saxophone
Proper position of the right thumb for oboe, clarinet, and saxophone can affect player comfort, ease of technique, and risk of injury. (Thumb position is important for flute and bassoon as well, but I find the issues different enough that I won’t lump them in here.)
For oboe and clarinet, the right thumb supports the weight of the instrument. There’s a temptation to place the thumbrest near the base of the thumb, since it feels like a stronger, more stable position.
But this puts the fingers in a cramped and awkward position (upper joints removed for visibility):
Instead, the thumbrest should be positioned at or near the base of the thumbnail, which allows the right hand to be in a much more open and natural position.
If this feels too heavy, and especially if it causes pain or tension, the instrument can be supported with a neckstrap. This takes some of the weight off the thumb. Some oboe and clarinet thumbrests have rings for this purpose. There are also neckstraps available that can connect directly to the thumbrest itself, using a small leather tab.
For the saxophone, the main weight of the instrument is not supported by the thumb, but by a neckstrap. However, the right thumb should exert some forward pressure to help establish the correct angle between the mouthpiece and the embouchure. As with the oboe and the clarinet, the thumbrest should contact the thumb approximately at the base of the thumbnail to encourage a natural, relaxed position for the fingers.
As always, adaptations should be made as necessary to accommodate hands of varying shapes and sizes, but natural, unstrained position should be a priority.
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Favorite blog posts, March 2024
- The Babel Flute (Rachael Simon): Can I Fix My Own Flute?
- Best. Saxophone. Website. Ever. (Pernille Bévort): 4 Powerful Exercises for Saxophone Sound and Flexibility
- Kristopher King (bassoon): Shipping Contrabassoons
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Go ahead and use a fakebook
I felt a lot of stress and pressure during my years in college and graduate school, about jazz and Learning Tunes. Nobody who is anybody uses a fakebook! You have to Learn the Tunes! Do you know All the Tunes? Why don’t you know More Tunes?
My teachers told me I would never make it as a jazz player unless I knew hundreds of tunes by heart. Melodies, chord progressions, and “standard” intros and outros. And since I’m a reed player, I would need to know them in at least a couple of keys. I tried, but I found it pretty daunting. My teachers seemed to think that meant I was doing it wrong, in some way they could not specify.
And besides, fakebooks are bad! They have mistakes, unlike other kinds of sheet music! Plus, the fakebook version of that tune might not be the true and authentic secret original version, but merely a common and tasteful reworking! And if you’re looking at a fakebook, you’re trapped within the confines of the printed page, literally unable to play anything creative!
My university degrees are in “classical” performance, and in multiple instruments, so jazz has never been my sole concentration. If I had done more focused and advanced study of jazz, I suppose I would have had to Learn All the Tunes, or flunk out and fail to make it in the business.
But it was never my goal to be the next big name in jazz. I love to play jazz music, but I’m quite content to do my best impressions of my favorite players, take modest solos, and yes, use a fakebook. Of the musicians in the world who play jazz at some level, very few are recording on Blue Note or headlining at the Village Vanguard.
For hobbyist or part-time jazz players, a fakebook can be very useful. Using a fakebook on a gig means I can just play the tunes the group wants to play, rather than slinking away in shame at my failure to Know them All. It means we’re all on the same page, so to speak, about keys, chord changes, forms, intros, and endings. The practicality of low stress and high versatility wins out over the ideal of never looking at a music stand. I can Learn Tunes by playing them frequently in a relaxed atmosphere. And if I forget a chord or a melody note, I can fall back on my musical skill of reading notation.
Is learning tunes by heart preferable? Probably, ideally. If you’re in a jazz studies degree program, or trying to break into the top-level jazz scene in a major market, you may indeed find it necessary to memorize a whole lot of tunes as quickly as you can. But for the rest of us, there’s no shame in using a fakebook.
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Favorite blog posts, February 2024
- The Flute Examiner (Jessica Dunnavant): That’s What You Get for the Money
- Flute Journal (Riley Lee): Some Thoughts on the Music of Hildegard Played on the Shakuhachi
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): Stravinsky’s Secret 4th Piece for Solo Clarinet
- Saxophone Technique (Sarah Anne Wolkowski): Everybody Hurts
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What would go wrong if you played louder?
My university students are often, at least at first, quite timid about playing loudly. (This is probably a side effect of learning the instrument in a school band program. They learn to play quietly because their section is too loud. Or, they get the hand from a band director who doesn’t have the time or bandwidth to correct tone production issues.)
When I push them in lessons to play with soloist-level dynamic range, they often give me a weak mezzo forte instead of the fortissimo I’m looking for. The more I ask for volume, the more they dig in at an unimpressive medium-ish.
At this point I usually ask what they think would go wrong if they played louder. The consensus seems to be that it would sound “bad,” in ways that they generally can’t quite pin down.
So I give them permission to play so loud that something goes wrong. Then they usually find some volume they have been holding in reserve, but still fall short of what they are capable of. I usually have to insist more and more firmly that they play louder and louder to show me what will go wrong.
And, virtually all the time, nothing goes wrong. They find some more available volume, and probably a fuller tone to go with it. If I’m lucky, they learn the lesson and feel less timid about volume in the future.
The issue does often come back when we encounter something new, unfamiliar, or stressful, like a complicated ornament or a note outside their comfortable range. In those cases, I have to remind them to go ahead and put air into the instrument, and to allow whatever bad thing they are dreading to go ahead and happen. If it does (and it usually doesn’t), we can hear it and troubleshoot it. But sabotaging themselves by choking off the air just guarantees failure.
Use your air confidently and powerfully. You might discover that what you have been worrying about isn’t a problem at all.
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Favorite blog posts, January 2024
- DoctorFlute (Angela McBrearty): Tight Embouchure No Problem
- Nicole Riner, flutist: How can we better counsel our music students and their families?
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): Why is my mouthpiece green? (And other weird clarinet questions you’re too embarrassed to ask your teacher)
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How to do long tones (and why)
Long tones are at the core of most woodwind warmup routines. The most simple and obvious version is this:
Simple sustained notes are good for developing consistent breath support, which is required to keep the long tone steady in pitch, volume, and tone color. (Some teachers also suggest them for developing “embouchure strength,” one of the harmful and pervasive myths of woodwind playing.)
Many players and teachers recommend a version more like this:
This is a worthwhile improvement, as dynamic change requires a flexible and relatively relaxed embouchure on top of steady breath support. Exercises like the Herzberg long tones use this concept.
But I like this even better:
The first thing to notice is the addition of extreme dynamic markings, from niente (“nothing,” essentially zero volume) to fff (which should be understood here as maximum controlled volume). Achieving a note that starts from 0%, crescendos smoothly and evenly to 100%, and then back to 0%, is much more specific and demanding than just a general “get louder, then softer.” It requires powerful breath support that starts before the note sounds and continues until after it ends, as well as a tuned-in voicing and well-functioning equipment. (And it can serve as a diagnostic to find issues in these areas.) Exercises like the David Weber chromatic exercises use this approach. (At the link, scroll down to “Longtone 1.”
Less-advanced players should start and end as softly as possible and work toward a true niente. Players at all levels should take the opportunity to discover and then improve their loudest dynamic level.
The second thing to notice is the addition of a tempo marking. This demands that the dynamic changes happen within a specific timeline, as of course they do in real-world music. Faster or slower tempos than the one marked here may be used; each presents its own challenges.
A very thorough long tone warmup might involve playing these on every note within the instrument’s range. Each will have slightly (or severely!) different demands. For a more practical approach, consider a rotation: on day one, do these on the instrument’s lowest note, and the note a fifth above that (or some other interval), a fifth above that, and so forth. The next day, start on the second-lowest note, and the next day the note above that, and so forth.
Happy practicing!
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Favorite blog posts, December 2023
- Peter Spitzer Music Blog: A Complete History of Rico Reeds – dissertation by Neal Postma
- International Clarinet Association (Jessica Bell): MPINGO: A CLOSER LOOK
- The Babel Flute (Rogier de Pijper): Key Clicks: why you should hear the keys while playing
- Nicole Riner, flutist: (Chamber) music is the cure!
- The Vintage Clarinet Doctor – Blog (Jeremy Soule): Re-padding vs. Overhauling A Clarinet pt.1
- oboealli (Alli Gessner): Do you keep a reed log?
- DoctorFlute (Angela McBrearty): Arm Placement for Better Tone
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Favorite blog posts, November 2023
Just one post to share this month:
