Bret Pimentel, woodwinds

Woodwind playing and pedagogy

Keeping your fingers “close”
ByBret Pimentel August 26, 2020September 12, 2021
There’s a common idea with woodwind players and teachers that it’s important to keep your fingers close to the keys. Keeping the fingers within a certain reasonable distance does have benefits:
- It’s easier to keep track of where the keys are and not “miss,” especially for beginners
- Allowing the fingers to rise too far can introduce tension into the hands
But I think finger-closeness is a concept that gets over-taught and over-stressed. It seems to be motivated by a desire for finger speed (or some euphemism like “fluidity”).

Assuming the fingers are within a reasonable range, I think working toward extreme closeness probably doesn’t offer much if any speed increase, but does make tension more likely. It’s a micro-optimization only worth thinking about when you’ve solved every other problem with your technique, and even then your results may differ on whether it’s productive (or even counterproductive). Definitely don’t stress out your beginning students over it.

Try this if you like: bring a finger down onto a key from, say, 1-2mm above the key (about the thickness of a couple of credit or ID cards). Then try from ten times that distance, 1-2 cm (the width of a fingernail or two). What do you notice about speed? How about tension?

Keep the fingers close enough to stay in position and not bend backward, but don’t worry too much about dialing in extreme closeness.
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Woodwind playing and pedagogy

Clarinet vibrato
ByBret Pimentel August 24, 2020September 12, 2021
The question of whether the clarinet should use vibrato has been argued to death, and I won’t pursue the question further here. Suffice it to say that it’s a matter of taste and a matter of tradition.

American and European classical clarinetists usually don’t use it. Why that particular quirk of taste and/or tradition has taken hold probably can’t be pinned down for certain. But there are some weak theories that are worth retiring for good:
- That the clarinet’s sound is somehow special or has unique properties that make vibrato unnecessary or undesirable.
- That vibrato cannot be artistically executed on the clarinet.
- That the orchestra just “needs” a vibrato-less sound, and clarinetists happened to step up to volunteer.
I don’t see any reason to believe that the clarinet is uniquely unsuited to vibrato, or that there’s anything inherently “right” about the clarinet being vibrato-free.

Among proponents of clarinet vibrato, there is disagreement about which body part(s) produce the effect—the lips? the diaphragm? the cheeks? This is essentially a settled matter among clarinetists’ closest cousins, saxophonists, who nearly universally produce vibrato with jaw movement. I find this to be the only really viable option on the clarinet, as well, since it can be manipulated mostly independently of tone, response, intonation, and dynamics (by maintaining stable embouchure and breath support).

As to why vibrato hasn’t become standard in the clarinet world, my best theory is that the clarinet’s unique high voicing is relatively easily disrupted by jaw vibrato. While it’s very possible to do clarinet jaw vibrato well, it does take some care to do it without destabilizing the voicing and causing pitch and tone instability. I suspect that over the centuries clarinetists have found this to be a mild deterrent, and instead have leaned into clear, vibrato-less tone as a virtue.

In any case, some classical clarinetists have used it with great success, but the prevailing tradition is a pure and un-embellished tone, without even a trace of vibrato.
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Woodwind playing and pedagogy

Should I buy a “step-up” instrument?
ByBret Pimentel August 7, 2020September 12, 2021
Should you buy a “step-up” or “intermediate model” woodwind instrument? In most cases, I think the answer is no.

For flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, or saxophone, I think the wisest course, if you can afford it, is usually to start with a high-quality, best-in-class student-model instrument. The advantages of this are:
- Lower price range (though maybe in the upper part of that range)
- High-quality student instruments are easier to play than low-quality ones, giving beginners an advantage and a positive experience
- Quality student instruments can, in some cases, be used all the way through high school band
- Quality student instruments retain their value better, so you may be able to recoup some of your investment if the instrument falls into disuse or you replace it with a more advanced model
At some point, the option may be suggested, by an educator or a salesperson, to “step up” to an intermediate model. My experience with these is generally:
- The price range is not much lower than professional-quality instruments
- The quality not much better than good student instruments
- Sometimes they have some cosmetic differences that make them seem more “professional” or luxurious but which do not give any real advantage to the player
So, in most cases my advice is to skip the step-up instrument. Instead consider investing in some private lessons with a good teacher. These will bring much greater benefits.

And if you intend to audition for college scholarships, participate in competitions, or otherwise play at a high level, the private teacher is a crucial resource when you are ready to buy a professional model. These are instruments suitable for the demands of college music programs and at least semi-professional playing situations. Because they are expensive, it’s worth choosing one very carefully, and a good teacher can help you figure out what you need, connect with a reputable dealer, and get the best price.
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Favorite blog posts

Favorite blog posts, July 2020
ByBret Pimentel July 31, 2020July 31, 2020
- Steve Neff Music Blog: The Best Saxophone Embouchure: Where’s that Bottom Lip?
- Jazz-Sax.Com: Pedalboard 4.0
- ProneOboe (Jennet Ingle): When to Cheat
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): Should you take a practice break? and 21 Clarinet Compositions from the 21st Century
See the woodwind blogs I’m following, and suggest others!
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Musicianship

Starting at the right tempo
ByBret Pimentel July 24, 2020September 12, 2021
For me it’s an ongoing challenge to start a piece of music at the right tempo. Here are a few tricks I have used:
- Practice, a lot, with a metronome, to internalize and habituate the tempo.
- If circumstances allow, check a metronome backstage immediately before beginning the piece.
- If circumstances allow, have a metronome with you on stage. Most have a “silent” function that you can use to discreetly double-check.
- Maybe your piece has a fast or tricky part, and you’re worried that you will go too fast and that part won’t go well. Sing that part in your mind before you start to play, so you can pick a tempo that will work for that part.
- Be aware of your tendencies. For example, if the adrenaline of performance makes you tend to rush, you can adjust accordingly.
- Find a song that you know really well and have thoroughly internalized, that has a tempo very close to the one you wish to play at. Sing a few bars of the song mentally to find your tempo. For example, here’s a list of songs that have a tempo of about 94 beats per minute—I bet you can find at least a few that you know.
Good luck!
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Woodwind playing and pedagogy

Don’t say this to your beginning oboists
ByBret Pimentel July 18, 2020September 12, 2021
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.
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Announcements and news

Update: COVID-19 wind playing resources
ByBret Pimentel July 9, 2020July 9, 2020
In a recent blog post I offered a few personal thoughts on wind playing and the COVID-19 crisis, and began listing some articles and resources related to the topic. I have now moved those to a separate and freshly-updated page.

If you are aware of other resources, feel free to bring them to my attention and I will consider including them. I don’t have firm criteria for what to include, but I’m generally leaning toward scientific papers and other primary sources that appear to be written in good faith and with a responsible approach to accuracy.

I am not outright rejecting articles that are funded or otherwise promoted by businesses that might stand to profit from the information presented, but I am noting those potential conflicts of interest. (A well-regarded global company whose products I use recently shared one of the articles I’ve included, with their own headline affixed that I found misleading and reductive.)

My best understanding at this point is that there’s still a lot we don’t know about the safety of playing wind instruments during a highly-contagious outbreak that targets the respiratory system. Please be as smart and safe as you can, so we can all make music together again soon.

Articles on COVID-19 and wind playing
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Favorite blog posts

Favorite blog posts, June 2020
ByBret Pimentel June 30, 2020June 30, 2020
- How To Make Oboe Reeds (Tim Feil): Oboe Reed Diagrams
- heather roche (clarinet): Playing with some new ways to demo multiphonics…
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): The Vegan Clarinet
See the woodwind blogs I’m following, and suggest others!
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Woodwind playing and pedagogy

Understanding response and stability
ByBret Pimentel June 19, 2020September 21, 2021
A few years ago I drove a friend’s car. The accelerator was much more sensitive than I was used to, and it caused a jerky ride: every time I touched the gas, the car lurched forward. It was a different experience driving a moving van full of heavy furniture. No matter how much I leaned into the accelerator, the speedometer crept upward with painful slowness.

The car I’m used to driving is somewhere in between—it’s acceleration isn’t quite as zippy as my friend’s car’s, and not as sluggish as the truck’s. With woodwind instruments it’s important to have a similar balance.

Response is how readily the system (you + the equipment) produces tone. A very responsive setup/technique will make a sound with the faintest whisper of air.

Stability is, in a way, the opposite of response. Rather than responding to the slightest puff of air, a more stable setup has some “cushion”—you lean into it a little more to produce a tone.

A very responsive setup takes less physical effort to make a sound, but the sound can be harder to control. The pitch and tone are more flexible, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your preference and playing situation.

A more stable setup takes more effort to produce tone, but it tends to have more steady pitch and tone. Again, this is a tradeoff.

For most players and situations, some kind of middle ground is the right choice: enough response to articulate notes at pianissimo, but enough stability that you don’t have to devote all your attention to keeping things in tune.

Assuming your tone production is a well-oiled machine (breath support, voicing, and embouchure all working well), your equipment choices and condition play an important role. That means matching reed/mouthpiece/headjoint to your instrument, and keeping pads and tenons in good non-leaking condition. For example, a saxophone that blows very freely (or, in other words, is very responsive) may need a little resistance in the reed and mouthpiece (to provide stability). A flute that has a lot of resistance built in may need a freer-blowing headjoint (for ready response).

Develop your basic tone-production technique and make smart, reasonable equipment choices to find the response and stability you require.
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Musicianship

Wind controllers as “practice” woodwinds
ByBret Pimentel June 15, 2020September 12, 2021
Can you use a wind controller, like the Akai EWI, the Yamaha WX, or the Roland Aerophone, as a convenient and/or quiet way to practice a “real” woodwind instrument, like the saxophone or the flute?

No, not really.

You can practice some very limited aspects of woodwind playing. For example, each of those wind controllers has fingering patterns that resemble (but are not identical to) the fingerings of standard woodwinds. If you are in the very early stages of playing a woodwind instrument and still trying to memorize fingerings, I suppose you could use a wind controller to help you with that specific task, to the extent that the fingerings do match.

The Akai instruments have saxophone, flute, and oboe modes, plus the more flexible “EWI” mode that is quite saxophone-like, and even a couple of variations of a valved-brass-inspired mode. The Yamaha WX5 has several saxophone modes and a flute mode. The Roland instruments are set up to map fairly directly to saxophone fingerings, even going so far as to include some of the saxophone’s more problematic features like “palm” keys. However, with that exception, none even have all the keys needed to learn proper saxophone, flute, or oboe technique.

(None of the instruments currently has a clarinet mode, presumably because the real-clarinet phenomenon of overblowing to odd-numbered partials raises some complications for an electronic instrument capable of many octaves of range. And none of the instruments has the physical keys to reasonably approximate bassoon technique.)

Plus, in all cases, including the Rolands, none of them can fully imitate the “feel” of a standard woodwind. Beyond the very basic stage of learning fingering patterns, much of the fingering work that woodwind players practice has to do with nuances of the fingers’ interactions with the keys. Even switching from one flute to a slightly different model of flute can mean having to re-adapt to the keys’ precise locations, spring tensions, etc. Switching between a flute and a wind controller is a much larger leap.

And, of course, no major wind controller currently provides a realistic approach to tone production. None has a reed that functions as such, and none has a flute-like embouchure hole. There are some superficial similarities like breath pressure being mapped to volume, or a bite-able mouthpiece that allows for something like saxophone-style jaw vibrato (or to the ill-advised reed instrument technique of bending pitch with jaw movement).

So, can you practice on it? Not really.

But the good news is that wind controllers (particularly, in my opinion, the Akai EWIs) have lots of potential as instruments in their own right. (If you aren’t familiar, look no farther than Michael Brecker’s playing for an eye-opener.)

Rather than looking at wind controllers as a “practice” instrument or a low-budget stand-in, consider a wind controller to be an additional avenue for expression. Playing it well requires just as much hard work, but also brings worthwhile creative rewards.
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