The New York Times’s “Lens” blog did a nice piece on Steve Gorn, a woodwind doubler who has turned his primary focus to the bansuri (Indian bamboo flute). Surf on over to see a nice photo and hear audio of an interview/performance. (Both photo and audio feature Gorn’s soprano saxophone playing.)
Steve Gorn on his beginnings as a woodwind player:
I advanced relatively quickly with the clarinet. When I got into eighth or ninth grade I got into a lot of jazz, and I started playing saxophone at that point. Jazz became much more of a focus. I played clarinet in the school orchestra.
On his path toward Indian music:
All through my college years I was drawn to the avant-garde [jazz] style. I was imitating it. I later realized that a musician has to find his own authentic voice. Here I was playing jazz music that largely came out of an African-American culture, something different from the way I was brought up, and looking back at it I thought the best I could do was to try to imitate that. But for some reason, and it doesn’t make sense from a logical point of view, when I got involved in Indian music I found a music where I could really find my own authentic voice.
On teaching:
One can have many relationships in music. I teach some people who are professionals and have aspirations to really work on Indian music as professionals. And I teach other people just because the flute is an accessible kind of instrument. These are people who just want to step outside of themselves and make some music.
My objective, when I give a lesson to a student, is to help them find their own voice. I try to make it as personal as possible, especially if somebody is really interested in really going at it. Then it’s really a delightful journey that will allow their authentic voice to speak through music.
I decided to leave a space in the survey for general comments, and many of you took the time to remark on a variety of subjects. Many of them were directed to me personally or seemed otherwise non-public in nature, so I’m not going to list them all, but I’ll share a few and summarize the rest.
Some of you politely made suggestions on how the survey could be better:
There’s a big gap between “casual dabbler” and “semi-pro”. I suggest an additional category: “serious amateur” or something like that.
It would be good to have a skill level between casual dabbler and music major (something along the lines of “good amateur”). As the poll currently is, it suggests that I play recorder to the same standard as sax. I would consider my recorder and flute playing better than “not at all” but my sax and clarinet playing not to be at the level of “music major”, hence they all closest to “casual dabbler”. I guess it’s too late to change the poll now, but I thought I’d offer my opinion anyway :).
maybe ask music arranging abilities. Small ensemble writing for different woodwinds is necessary in my working fields.
Not sure what your intent is with this data, but I do think that there are some fields that would be nice to have/know of (of course maybe for the next time you do this)… For example,
-“what do you consider your strongest/primary instrument”,
-consider having three columns in the instruments section like: own/play/don’t own
Didn’t know how to answer some of the questions because I’m still a high school student
I think these are all good suggestions, and ones that I would probably take if I could do the survey over. (At this point I have no specific plan for future surveys, but haven’t ruled the idea out, either.) Read More “Woodwind Doubler Census results, part 8: final comments”
More results from the Great Woodwind Doubler Census of 2011. Enjoy!
Education and training
Q: Which of these have been part of your education on woodwind instruments?
Out of 187 total respondents, every one answered this question. The complete wording of the possible responses was as follows:
school band/orchestra program (high school or younger)
private lessons outside of school
summer camps, workshops, or other formal programs outside of school
university band/orchestra program
university/conservatory bachelors degree with concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds
university/conservatory bachelors degree with single-instrument or other music concentration
university/conservatory masters degree with concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds
university/conservatory masters degree with single-instrument or other music concentration
university/conservatory doctoral degree with concentration(s) in multiple woodwinds
university/conservatory doctoral degree with single-instrument or other music concentration
other university/conservatory music degree or certification
self-taught on one or more instruments
The biggest surprise to me was the number claiming bachelors degrees in multiple woodwinds. I assume that many of these must be double majors or other oddities, since there are very few true bachelors degree programs in multiple woodwinds available.
The chin is much-discussed in clarinet pedagogy. Keith Stein suggests a “stretching” of the chin, making it feel “long and pointed” and “rather hard.” David Pino, a student of Stein’s, echoes this. Jane Ellsworth describes a chin that is “drawn downward” (while the jaw provides a “controlled” “upward pressure.” Michele Gingras advocates a “flat” chin. Bil Jackson indicates that the chin “flattens naturally” when the lip configuration and voicing are correct. Tom Ridenour explains that the chin should be “down and flat” and that this happens “virtually automatically” as a result of proper voicing.
The chin gets somewhat less attention in saxophone teaching, but some pedagogical examples can be found. Larry Teal indicates that the “chin muscles” should support the lower lip (as the jaw drops downward), and Timothy McAllister agrees. Tracy Heavner recommends that the chin muscles be “held flat against the chin” with a sensation of those muscles “pushing … down and away from the body.” Brian Utley advocates a “firm but relaxed [chin] position.”
Most of these sources seem to generally agree that the “chin” (or something) must be flattened or stretched or firmed in some way. Let’s look more closely at exactly what is being described, and how it does or doesn’t differ from the clarinet to the saxophone.
“Chin” is probably not a specific enough term for our purposes. Is it a bony structure? a muscular one? The pedagogical literature is rather unclear and contradictory about exactly how the “chin” moves, and even whether it is actively engaged or whether its movement is a result of some other thing moving.
Additionally, there is a common misconception in single-reed teaching that the lower lip forms a “cushion,” without which the teeth would contact the reed. This creates an embouchure that is formed by pressure from the jaw, with the lips serving passively as a gasket, and the lower lip taking quite a bit of abuse from the lower teeth.
A better way to form the embouchure is to bring the jaw (and teeth, and chin) down, away from the reed, and allow the muscles of the lips to form the embouchure. This moves the effort from the larger, stronger jaw muscles to the smaller but more supple muscles of the lips (of the citations above, Teal’s describes this the most clearly). For early beginners (or those who have played for many years with unnecessary jaw pressure and the resulting shredded lower lip) it may be necessary to gradually develop a little endurance in those muscles.
Taking this approach, it becomes clear that the pointing/stretching/whatever, which is actually mostly jaw movement, must be more extreme for the clarinet than for the saxophone, to accommodate the clarinet’s steeper angle.
Left: clarinet jaw position (more open). Right: saxophone jaw position (less open). Note that the lower teeth clear the reed; the lip will rise to meet the reed and form a muscle-based (rather than jaw/teeth-based) embouchure.
However, the chin area does have muscles, too, and these play an additional role. The lower lip has an acoustical damping effect on the reed, which plays a role in response, tone quality, and volume. Pulling the muscles around the chin downward around its bony structure (this is independent of jaw movement!) firms the lip slightly, reducing the damping. Allowing the muscles to relax softens the lip, increasing the damping. To take an oversimplified view of one aspect of this, we could say generally that the smaller clarinet requires a slightly firmer lip (and thus less damping) to accommodate its higher frequencies (pitches), while the larger saxophone needs less firmness (more damping) to accommodate its lower ones. Note that firmness of the lower lip should not be confused with overall embouchure “tightness.”
Understanding better the anatomical and acoustical aspects of the “chin” (and, of course, the skeletal and muscular systems that combine there) lead to clearer, more accurate teaching and better single reed playing.
Since I moved to the lovely and historic Mississippi Delta about two and a half months ago, it has been on my to-do list to find a local source for Duco cement to use in bassoon reedmaking. I used to be able to buy it at a certain notorious chain store, but my local store here doesn’t stock it. One well-known double reed supplier sells it for $3.95 per one-ounce tube, which is four times the price I usually pay for it locally.
The Devcon website makes it hard to find information about retail locations, and in fact you have to head over to another web domain to find it. After an unsuccessful morning driving around looking for Duco, I went home and dug up this link:
http://www.itwconsumer.com/wheretobuy.aspx [update: link dead]
Select DUCO® CEMENT, TUBE CARDED and your state. The website doesn’t give retailer addresses, but does provide names. I found a store within a half-mile of me that had it for just under a dollar per tube. Read More “Duco cement and bassoon reeds”
One of my favorite flute warmups is “Flexibility–I (after Sousseman)” from Trevor Wye’s Tonebook. (Just buy the whole omnibus edition and thank me later.) This exercise is value-packed and meticulously thought out, and leads inevitably to some fundamental truths about flute playing.
The exercise is slurred arpeggiated figures, like this:
As you might expect, the figure gradually expands to larger intervals and notes in the third octave. It’s challenging to make the intervals smooth and accurate, but especially so if your approach to flute tone production is based on unclear or faulty pedagogical concepts. Wye provides some very crucial advice that is key to getting the most out of the etude, and to developing a solid approach to tone production.
Wye suggests first playing the etude omitting the highest notes, and dynamically shaping the figures as follows:
The forte dynamic on the lowest notes demands a low, open voicing and strong breath support, feeding into an aperture that is “focused” (small). The dynamic shape, stretched mostly across a single note (B-flat here), also requires the aperture to be agile and flexible, opening slightly for the loudest notes and closing slightly as the volume decreases.
The next step is to “work up” to the high note, “so that it sounds softly, but not flat:”
There is a lot going on here. The aperture has to continue to move flexibly in order to produce the dynamic effect. Voicing has to be low and open to make the low notes full and responsive. Breath support has to remain powerful and steady to keep the pitch buoyed up. And something has to happen to produce the register change.
Many flute teachers suggest making the aperture smaller to achieve the higher registers, but this ties register to dynamics—the larger aperture makes the low notes loud, and the small aperture makes the high notes soft. Others suggest something like increasing air pressure or using “faster” air. This can be accomplished by increasing breath support and/or by using a higher voicing; changing these has a destabilizing and register-bound effect on pitch and tone. It also creates the opposite dynamic problem from aperture-based register changes: the higher notes are always loud, and the low notes are always soft.
The most effective approach is to allow the embouchure to push forward for notes in the upper registers, and to relax back for lower registers. This allows breath support, voicing, and aperture to function separately, and intonation, tone, and dynamics to be manipulated independently. The Wye exercise demands all of this from the flutist.
This is a great exercise to incorporate into a daily warmup. I especially like it for its coverage of several flute tone production concepts, since doubling on several instruments means I don’t have as much time to devote to the flute as I would like. Work on it slowly and deliberately—as Mr. Wye points out, “this may take time.”
Since I moved to the lovely and historic 
I like how throughout time musicians transition from one instrument to another. I know this is the case with me. It’s called expanding.