Bret Pimentel, woodwinds

2014 in review

ByBret Pimentel December 31, 2014January 1, 2018

Here are some of the things that went on here at your favorite woodwind blog during the past year.

The runaway hit of the year in terms of sharing on Facebook/Twitter/etc. was my look at “the amazing shrinking woodwind section,” a sort of commentary on how woodwind doubling has changed since the mid-20th-century “Golden Age” of Broadway. Some more doubling-related items: a look at the clarinet for saxophone players, a musing on playing multiple woodwinds in recital, and the question of the “main” instrument.
A number of the other articles that got a lot of traffic and social media love were related to practice techniques and philosophies: one on what I call “anchoring,” one listing some ways to practice technical passages, one about memorizing, one about knowing whether you are playing something “right,” and one about just plain slowing down. Most of these, of course, originate from conversations with my students. We have a lot of conversations about practicing.
Some articles, as always, dealt with specifics of woodwind playing, like one about chronic flatness on the clarinet and one about saxophone hand position.
I reported on a few items from my professional life, such as a visit to ClarinetFest, the presentation I gave there, and the fact of my doctoral dissertation becoming available online. I also shared some warts-and-all videos from a multiple woodwinds recital performance.
I did twelve new installments of my “favorite blog posts” from other people’s woodwind blogs. At this point I have well over 500 woodwind-related blogs in my feed reader, and I at least skim every new post. Many of my favorite posts end up coming from a relatively small handful of extra-good blogs, but that’s not a foregone conclusion and sometimes a dark horse slips in there. If you think I might not be following your blog yet, let me know and I’ll check it out. It has to be at least somewhat woodwind-related and have a syndication feed such as RSS or Atom (most blogging platforms like WordPress or Blogger already have these built in). On a related topic, I’m a little behind on updating my various lists of woodwind players’ sites and blogs (such as the woodwind doublers list), but I’m hoping to catch up in 2o15. Feel free to get in touch if you feel like your site should be listed but isn’t and I’ll give it priority consideration.
I did one set of “required recordings” in January, but skipped August this year since my university reed studio has turned over since I started the required recordings and so I’m in reruns now. When I end up picking some new ones for my students, I’ll share them with y’all too.
There has been a lot of discussion about the problem of musicians being expected to give away their performance talents for free, but I also felt the need to address the idea of original content like blog posts being used by for-profit companies without actual compensation to the creators. This was a reaction to being approached by a woodwind-related company whose products I have purchased frequently over the years, to see if I would like to let them re-“print” some of my blog posts on their website in exchange for what they called “exposure.” I refused but I have witnessed a number of friends and acquaintances boasting about their content being “selected” for this dubious honor. If you are creating original content, I encourage you not to give it away to businesses that do not intend to share their profits with you, even if they try to make it seem like a compliment.
Another year, another April Fools’ Day post that apparently nobody liked but me. I remain undeterred.
I reviewed Ben Britton’s new saxophone overtones book and the ReedGeek tool.
There weren’t any major updates this year to Broadway Doubling in Musicals or the Fingering Diagram Builder, two of this site’s most popular features, but I’m always tinkering with some new ideas. Stay tuned.
As always, there were a few posts that I hoped might generate some lively conversation but didn’t. A couple that spring to mind were one about coaching student chamber ensembles and one about college music study on “auxiliary” instruments (like tenor saxophone or bass clarinet). It’s not too late if you want to chime in.
I introduced some original t-shirt designs that are currently for sale to help support my activities on this blog, and a number of you fashion-forward people are already turning heads in your new woodwind-related apparel. If you don’t have yours yet, be sure to check them out.

If you have read anything interesting or useful here during the past year, I hope you will consider leaving a comment, getting in touch via email or social media, buying a shirt or sending a donation, contacting me about advertising opportunities for your relevant business, and/or pointing your all your woodwind friends toward bretpimentel.com.

Thanks for reading in 2014, and best wishes for the new year!

Favorite blog posts

Favorite blog posts, December 2014

ByBret Pimentel December 31, 2014January 1, 2018

Some highlights from the woodwind blogosphere in December:

Cate Hummel discusses the qualities of a good beginner-level flute. Good advice for those willing to do their homework; not a glib list of models to buy (which would just go out of date quickly anyway).
Bassoonist Cayla Bellamy finds inspiration to attempt the impossible.
Saxophonist Bill Plake prefers a good teacher (or good self-teaching) over a rigid “method.”
Doubler “ericdano” shares a list of favorite blogs (sort of jazz-saxophone-oriented) from the past year. Thanks for the mention!
The always-insightful Barry Stees shares a tip for diagnosing and fixing (cheaply and easily!) a common bassoon defect.
Sherman Friedland discusses the first three notes of the Debussy clarinet rhapsody (and more).
“Komuso Lady” from A Shakuhachi Journey muses on intonation.

Woodwind playing and pedagogy

Purposeful fingering choices

ByBret Pimentel December 15, 2014July 20, 2022

I have gotten into the habit of grilling my students about their fingering choices: “Can you tell me which fingering you used for the last note in that phrase, and why you chose it?” Often they take this (and often correctly so) as an indication that I disapprove of their choices: “Oh, I guess I should have used the other fingering.” But I would like them to actually answer the question that I asked—why did they use the fingerings that they did?

Usually the answer is either that he or she has a “usual” fingering for that note and didn’t bother to consider any others, or that he or she finds the alternative fingering to be physically awkward or hard to remember. As you might guess, I do not find these reasons satisfactory. Professional-level command of an instrument requires a thorough knowledge of fingering options, a thoughtful, purposeful approach to choosing from among them, and conscientious practice to habituate them.

Ideally, there should never be a situation where a woodwind player falls back on a “usual” fingering for a note; each possible option should be considered and weighed each and every time. (Training and experience can automate this to some extent within common patterns of notes, such as scalar or arpeggiated passages.)

In some situations a student knows that a different fingering is the “right” one but shies away from it because they can’t remember it or have difficulty executing it. (One example is the left E-flat fingering for beginning oboists; reaching for the left-hand key can move the ring finger enough that it fails to cover its hole.) These situations are resolved simply through careful repetition until they become a part of (so-called) “muscle memory.” There are a number of method/exercise/etude books that provide material for practice of unfamiliar fingerings (the Klosé clarinet method and the “Universal” saxophone method are some time-honored examples.)

An amateur tries to get the job done with a few low-quality tools. A professional keeps his or her toolbox fully stocked with sharp, high-quality tools and knows just which ones to use to get the job done right the first time.

Announcements and news | Fun

Woodwind t-shirts now available

ByBret Pimentel December 10, 2014December 10, 2014

I won’t make a habit of posting advertisements here, but I wanted to make you all aware of a new way you can support what I do here at bretpimentel.com while also increasing your own cool factor. Behold the woodwind doubler t-shirt:

the agency sent Sven, their most broodingly handsome t-shirt model

It’s a nice quality American Apparel tee available in a variety of attractive and fashionable colors, with the logo in either black or white. A modest profit goes toward keeping the lights on here at your favorite woodwind blog and supports development of additional projects (like, for example, the Woodwind Doubling in Musicals list or the Fingering Diagram Builder).

The 5-instrument shirt is especially awesome, but there is also a saxophone-clarinet-flute version for the classic doubler, an oboe-bassoon version for the masochist, and a saxophone quartet version for those who want to “double” but prefer not to learn any new fingerings. I thought the four saxophone reeds looked sort of like cell phone reception “bars,” so there’s also a version with a dumb joke.

quartet-sm jokezoom-sm

There’s probably still time for holiday delivery if you order soon. Order now and be the best-dressed in the orchestra pit.

Favorite blog posts

Favorite blog posts, November 2014

ByBret Pimentel November 30, 2014January 1, 2018

Here’s good stuff from the woodwind blogs in November. The flutists and bassoonists were especially busy this month.

Barry Stees offers some suggestions on cleaning up bassoon articulation.
Tammy Evans Yonce gives a brief review/introduction of the cool “Glissando Headjoint.”
Meerenai Shim offers some do-it-yourself ergonomic flute customizations.
Betsy Sturdevant learns something about bassoon reeds from Elvis. (Sort of.)
Cate Hummel makes a suggestion on what to do with flute embouchure “corners.”
The Flute Journal blog is rerunning some of Chris Vadala’s woodwind doubling columns from Saxophone Journal. This one’s title says “extended” flute techniques, but it’s really more of a basic flute articulation lesson for doublers.
Trent Jacobs shares a proposal for amplifying the bassoon while maintaining its natural tone.
Clarinetist Sherman Friedland shares some thoughts on testing instruments.
Oboist Jennet Ingle finds a silver lining in a bad gig.
The Powell Flutes Flute Builder blog gives us a peek at the engraving process.

Musicianship

Practicing, boredom, and guilt

ByBret Pimentel November 25, 2014July 20, 2022

In my first semester as an undergraduate music major, I struggled with practicing. I felt guilty about not putting in as many hours as I knew I should, but more than that I felt guilty about the reason: I was bored and frustrated in the practice room. I loved playing music, but going into the practice rooms felt like serving time: counting down the minutes until my hours were done, or sneaking out early with a pang of shame, while my playing more or less failed to improve. I didn’t talk to my teacher or my classmates about it because I thought my lack of enthusiasm for practicing was a sign of some kind of personal weakness.

But things got better. I gradually developed better ideas how to practice, and started to see results from it. My progress motivated me to get back into the practice rooms even more, and over the next few years practicing became my favorite part of the day.

As a teacher, I have tried to be sensitive to this problem. I find that my students who struggle with practicing are sometimes afraid to talk to me about it, and want to brush aside talk of their declining practice hours with thin excuses about having a “busy week.” But if we can address the problem honestly and openly, I can offer some suggestions to help them enjoy their practice time more and get more out of it.

I don’t think that there is a one-size-fits-all solution for practice room boredom, but in general I think these are some good starting points:

Put practicing on your daily schedule, and stick to the plan. It’s tough to scrape up enough enthusiasm for practicing when it’s the thing you have been putting off all day, and now it’s the only thing standing between you and some much-needed sleep.
Be goal-oriented in your practicing. Make a list of things that need improvement about your playing, and tackle a few things during each practice session. If you’re not sure what needs improvement, be sure to take good notes in your next lesson—as a teacher, I consider it my primary responsibility to help students hear what they really sound like, and what they could sound like. Or, don’t wait: make a recording of yourself (a smartphone makes this super easy), listen back, and jot down a few things that need work.
Don’t just try to improve your playing, work on improving your practicing, too. It’s an art form of its own. Soak up new practice ideas from your teacher, your classmates, and anywhere else you can find them. (Here are some of mine.) And, of course, invent your own.
Know your limits. Personally, I find that I can give about ten minutes of good, focused attention to a practice task before my productivity starts to decline, so I switch tasks at least that often. If I haven’t perfected something within ten minutes (and usually I haven’t), I’ll come back to it later with fresh energy. Figure out your own attention span and work with it, rather than against it.
Be honest with yourself and with your teacher about how your practicing is going. I guarantee your teacher can relate. She or he will probably have some great new ideas you can try, but might not know yet that you are in need of them.
Ride out the tough patches. Even once I started to get better at practicing, there still were (and still are) days when I just don’t feel like it. But there are lots of things in my life that need to be done that I don’t always feel like doing, and I still seem to manage. Sometimes the hardest, most tedious practicing seems to happen right before a breakthrough.
Start. I asked one of my students once what he found to be the hardest thing about practicing. He looked me in the eye and said, “Getting it out of the case.” Once he had his instrument assembled, he explained, it wasn’t so hard to just start practicing.

You know practicing is important, and you love to make music. If your practicing is making you miserable, don’t give up on it! Make it fun and productive.

Musicianship

Jazz swing notation

ByBret Pimentel November 8, 2014September 13, 2022

Sometimes a well-meaning composer or arranger will try to approximate a jazz swing style notationally in this way:

This is wrong.

Sometimes he or she will take this approach:

Also wrong. So is this one:

The idea of “tripletizing” eighth-note rhythms is especially pervasive, and misleading if taught without nuance. Composers are sometimes guilty of this; so are conductors, arrangers, and educators.

The issue with each of these bad notational approaches is that they try to approximate characteristic jazz rhythms with symbols that are rooted in the rather different rhythms of classical music. But real jazz swing rhythms aren’t necessarily dotted or 12/8 or triplets. This leads to problems both for composers and performers.

For composers, using a 12/8 time signature or eighth-note triplets in 4/4 too easily drags the work into a compound-meter feel. And jazz swing is decidedly not in a compound meter: the rhythms are very much duple in nature. Authentic swing almost always has an underlying feel of two notes per beat, even though those notes are not equal in length. Extended or frequent passages with a compound-meter feel (three notes per beat) are dead giveaways of a failure to really absorb swing style.

For jazz-untrained performers, seeing dotted or compound-type rhythms on a page simply doesn’t provide fine enough information to accurately reproduce authentic swing style. It’s perhaps a bit like baking a cake from a recipe with each ingredient rounded off to the nearest tablespoon; the result will approximate a cake but likely won’t be especially successful. And even for the jazz-trained performer, sometimes the dotted or triplety notation can obscure the intended sound, something like typing a sentence into Google Translate, translating it into some other language, and then translating it back into English. (The result definitely loses fidelity.) Or, the poor notation can simply dull or distract from the jazz musician’s more authentic approach.

All of this, of course, begs the question of what precisely is the correct downbeat-upbeat length ratio for a true swing style, if not the 2:1 ratio of the triplety approach or the 3:1 ratio of the dotted approach. That question is larger in scope than I intend to fully tackle here, but I think it suffices to summarize with a few brief points:

Firstly, there’s no reason for it to be a mystery or a matter of “opinion;” using very simple technology we can measure exactly what jazz musicians are doing.
The ratios, if we measure them, are very, very far from consistent, even taken independently of factors like tempo. (There’s a popular but not-uniformly-supportable idea that the notes swing “harder” [greater ratio] at slower tempi and less hard [ratio nearer to 1:1] at faster tempi.) The precise ratios are an expressive, interpretive matter, and ultimately up to the performers.
The rhythms themselves are not the only factors that make swing sound like swing; articulation, phrasing, and other elements are also important, and also beyond the scope of my intended topic here.

What, then, is the best way to notate swing rhythms? I sort of like this one, though it’s not the one I ultimately recommend:

What I do like about the weird grace note approach is that it makes fairly clear the idea that the exact “downbeat” (quarter note) to “upbeat” (grace note) ratio is an interpretive matter. It also evokes what I find to be the most successful method of executing swing rhythms: think in quarter note pulses, and let the upbeats lead to the following downbeats. What I don’t like about this method is that it’s a hassle to write and to read.

My best recommendation is this:

Note the absence of the “two eighths equal triplet quarter-eighth” indication. This way is simple to read and write, reinforces the duple nature of swing rhythm, and doesn’t prescribe a specific ratio. One might hope that a jazz-untrained musician encountering this would seek out some good training or at least listen to some good swing recordings.

Happy swinging.

Announcements and news

Videos: Piazzolla Tango Etudes for multiple woodwinds

ByBret Pimentel November 3, 2014March 14, 2017

Here are some videos from a guest recital I did at the University of Tennessee at Martin a few weeks ago. Among other things, I played Ástor Piazzolla’s Tango Etudes, originally for solo flute, in my own arrangement for multiple woodwinds soloist.

Favorite blog posts

Favorite blog posts, October 2014

ByBret Pimentel October 31, 2014July 20, 2022

Lots of very fine woodwind-related blog posts this month.

Barry Stees exposes a common bassoon technique weakness (even for players at the highest level) and begins to explore solutions (promising more to come).
Oboist Susan Laney Spector explains some of the difficulties musicians face in the highly-competitive world of orchestral auditions.
Jennet Ingle has a breakthrough with an oboe student just by teaching some vocabulary.
Saxophonist Bob Reynolds does some YouTube archaeology and shows the difference a couple of decades can make in musical maturity, even for a very accomplished player.
Anna Norris and Nicolasa Kuster each share their experiences auditioning for the Chicago Symphony principal bassoon vacancy.
Cate Hummel advises against the “kiss and roll” method of teaching flute.
Oboist Patty Mitchell comments on practicing quantity vs. quality.
Jennifer Cluff shares a methodical flute warmup.
Flutist Katherine Emeneth shares a roundup of tips for “potent practicing.”
Saxophonist Bill Plake explains how to approach technique a little less, well, technically.
David Pierce rounds up some editions and recordings of the Mozart bassoon concerto.
“The Phantom Clarinet” at the Adventures in Woodwindland blog explores the extended low register of the bassoon [update: link dead].
Saxophonist Ben Britton reviews a new weird gadget that, to my surprise, seems to be getting a number of positive reviews. (I haven’t tried it.)
On Powell Flutes’s Flute Builder blog: how a wooden headjoint is cut.

Musicianship

Isolating problem spots

ByBret Pimentel October 24, 2014July 20, 2022

Earlier this month I posted about a fundamental practicing concept that sometimes escapes my less-experienced students. Here is another:

Me: Play your D melodic minor scale.

Student: [Begins D minor scale, plays a wrong note in the second octave.]

Me: Whoops, remember to play B-natural.

Student: Okay. [Starts over, makes same mistake.]

Me: Please start at the second-octave A, and play just from there to—

Student: [Starts from second-octave A, makes the same mistake, proceeds to finish the scale.]

Me: No, I want you to start at the A, play just to the B-natural, and stop.

Student: [Plays.]

Me: Okay, that’s correct. Now—

Student: [Starts over, makes same mistake.]

Practicing in overly large segments is an issue for less-experienced students for at least three reasons. The first is that is it makes it difficult to notice exactly where the problem is happening. Students may tend to “power through” a section and evaluate it as a whole (“That wasn’t very good”), then simply start over again and hope for the best. Sometimes my younger students are surprised when I point out that they are actually making the same mistake over and over. In their minds, it’s a roll of the dice every time, hoping that everything turns out right, and if it doesn’t, then start again and hope for better luck this time. Practicing in smaller segments makes it much easier to identify and isolate problems.

The second issue is that even if the precise problem is known, practicing it within too large a segment increases the cognitive load—it’s hard to devote enough attention to the actual problem when there are so many other notes to think about. Plus, practicing too long of a segment raises the stakes in a way that often doesn’t work well for inexperienced practicers: by the time you actually arrive at the problem spot, the pressure is really on to get it right, since you’ve already invested a lot in this run-through. If you isolate the problem to a much smaller segment, it’s not such a big deal if you have to start again.

The third issue is efficiency. If your goal is to correct one wrong note, which lasts less than a second, and you play 30 seconds’ worth of music leading up to it and another 30 seconds’ worth after it, then you can only get about one repetition done per minute. Even if you get it right, it will take you hours to really solidify that passage. But if you can narrow the problem down to two seconds’ worth of music, you can do many repetitions per minute.

In most cases, the problem that needs fixing has to do with getting from one note to another successfully. It may be that the second note isn’t the right one, or that it doesn’t respond right, or that the articulation isn’t correct, or a variety of other things, but the crucial concept is that there is a pair of notes, and the first note is right, and the second one isn’t.

Step one is to practice just those two notes, not just once through, but many times. If this is only accomplished with difficulty, it may be due to the second note having a less-familiar fingering, or perhaps some kind of particular response difficulty. Practice those two notes—and only those two notes—over and over until they improve. If they don’t, consult a teacher who can help to you diagnose and improve your technique.

If playing the two notes is trivially easy, then the problem is something about the context in which they appear. Add one more note before the first one, and repeat it several times. If it’s still easy, add one more. Continue until the problem returns, and practice that sequence of notes slowly and carefully until it feels natural and solid. If it becomes clear that adding more notes before the problem isn’t what’s triggering it, then start again from the two notes and gradually add notes after them. Sometimes anticipating what follows can cause something to go wrong.

Don’t be overly anxious to put the (former) problem spot back into the “context” of a whole scale or etude or movement. Make most of your practicing small-segment work, and very gradually reassemble the small segments into slightly larger ones. Repeat the slightly larger ones many times, then combine them again into still larger ones.

Take the time to break your practicing down into smaller chunks, isolate the problem spots, and work them methodically and repetitively.