Bassoon F-sharp fingerings

by

I recently set out to try to make sense of the handful of bassoon high F-sharp fingerings that I was aware of. As it turns out, I had no idea what I was getting into. I looked at a number of online and offline sources, and ended up with about 60 fingerings (yes, you read that correctly). I have compiled them into a document for your reading pleasure, with sources listed.

A few points:

  • The sorting is fairly arbitrary; I tried to organize them into groups and orders that made some kind of sense to me. The indications “Legato” and “French” come from the venerable Cooper/Toplansky book; the rest are my own.
  • The numbering is strictly for convenience.
  • I mostly omitted fingerings that seemed to be specifically for individual trills.
  • Many of the sources indicated pitch characteristics; I have not included these since so much depends on the individual instrument, reed, etc. If you are looking for a good fingering for pitch alteration, there are plenty here for you to try out.
  • Some of the authors differentiated between half-hole, one-third-hole, etc. I have normalized all of these with a visual half-hole representation, since I find the exact amount of opening to require experimentation anyway.
  • I did try all these fingerings myself, and was able to produce approximately an F-sharp with virtually all of them, with varying degrees of difficulty.

I welcome corrections, and would be mildly curious if you have other good published or otherwise reputable sources (not anecdotes) that list fingerings I have missed here. I will update the PDF as needed. I’m much less interested in hearing which fingering is your personal favorite, unless you have something more to contribute to the conversation, but some of you will email me or leave it in the comments anyway.

Okay, on to the list. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here:
F-sharp fingerings for bassoon: a perhaps-unnecessarily-comprehensive listing

Version 1.0: initial release

Learning fingerings as shapes

by

I observe that many woodwind players, when learning a new fingering—whether a beginner learning a standard fingering or an advanced student learning a new alternate fingering—tend to think of them as sequences: “This finger plus this finger and this finger and this key over here.” Sometimes my students even want to recite the fingering aloud … Read more

Playing full-spectrum music

by

I’m far from being a photography expert, but I do have one trick. (This is a music-related post, I promise.)

In general, good photos take advantage of the eye’s full light-to-dark range. In other words, the very darkest part of the photo should be very black, and the very lightest part should be very white.

Here’s a photo that doesn’t meet those criteria—the darkest and lightest parts of the photo are both sort of medium-grayish.

blah

But a quick “auto-level” procedure in photo-editing software (like the free Gimp) corrects this by adjusting each pixel of the photo, basically making the dark ones darker and the light ones lighter:

Read more

Favorite blog posts, May 2013

by

Here are some high-quality woodwind-related blog posts from May, in no particular order. Mark Catoe and Tim Gordon discuss music education, careers, and, of course, woodwind doubling: Interview with Tim Gordon Flutist Meerenai Shim opens up about success, failure, pursuing your dream, and dealing with the practicalities: To Each Her Own Jennet Ingle is always one of … Read more

Fifth anniversary

by

I always think that the worst blog posts are the ones where people blog about their blogs. So brace yourself. Sorry. I try not to indulge in this kind of thing too often.

Anyway, today is the fifth anniversary of my first, rather inauspicious blog post. (You might notice that I do have posts dated older than that; those are older writings, many from college courses, that I retroactively turned into blog posts.) Five years isn’t that long by most measures, but it seems that, in the sea of abandoned blogs out there, five years and still active isn’t something to take for granted.

I was working on a graduate degree in multiple woodwinds performance at the time this blog was born, and had read and reread everything I could find online about woodwind doubling, plus as many print sources as I could get my hands on. I will admit that the conceit did cross my mind that one day my website might be a primary web destination for woodwind doublers, and I flatter myself that that is now the case. Woodwind doublers form a fairly small club, but still the growth has been gratifying:

Five years of site traffic
Five years of site traffic

What excites me even more than the traffic is the engagement. I’ve been pleased and flattered to hear from many, many of you—everyone from young, aspiring doublers to old friends to colleagues in academia to musicians who are some of my real heroes. Thanks for your emails, blog comments, content contributions, donations, and other shows of support.

A few other things I’m really proud of:

Read more

Individuality, conformity, and music students

by

I found myself relating to Jennet Ingle’s recent blog post about an independently-thinking oboe student and the subjective qualities of tone. I related both to the student and to the teacher.

… I had to lecture a student on Sound a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t believe how uncomfortable it made me.  It is truly such a personal thing.  I felt like I was criticizing his smell, or his personality – it was that delicate for me.

I don’t actually think I am leading him wrong in insisting that he sound more “American” to fit in at his Midwestern college – but I hated telling him so.   I would love for him to use his own unique voice and have it be accepted for what it is.  But instead I have to encourage him to get more generic, and to sound more like everyone else.  This rubs me wrong, philosophically.

I have been in the position as a student of trying to do something that I think is a personal artistic expression, and being told that I need to toe the line. I have also been in the position as a teacher of watching a student pursue an individual course that conflicts with what I am trying to teach.

Should music students (or students in any kind of artistic field, for that matter) be expected to conform, or allowed to explore freely? By letting a student do his or her “thing,” am I incubating innovative, boundary-smashing Art? Or am I failing a student by not grooming them in the established tradition?

Read more

Fingering Diagram Builder, version 0.5

by

I am pleased to announce the release of the Fingering Diagram Builder, version 0.5. The updates are mostly tech-nerdy stuff and won’t affect how you use it. Read on to find out what’s new, or just check it out yourself.

It has been a bit over a year since the last “major” release, which I hope didn’t led anyone to believe that the project was abandoned. I still have every intention of continuing to update and improve it, and your suggestions and bug reports (also donations) are always welcomed.

Here’s what’s new:

Read more

Review: Oboe Reed Maker PRO iPhone app

by

I saw a post a couple of months ago by Patty Mitchell (reigning champion of online oboe journalism) about the iPhone app Oboe Reed Maker PRO, and decided to bite the bullet, part with the $1.99, and take it for a spin. Here is my review. As is my custom lately, I have tried to keep the review balanced and accurate by involving the maker of the product. In this case that is Christopher Gaudi of the San Francisco Symphony and OboeClass.com.

(Note that this is a review of version 1.0 of the app, so if you’re reading this after my publication date, then the app may have changed by now. I’ll update this post if I use any future versions that have changes worth mentioning; you’re also welcome to add your own updates in the comments.)

In the world of iPhone apps, I’ve grown accustomed to getting a lot of good stuff for free, and hesitate even to buy a 99-cent app unless I’m sure it’s going to be great. For $1.99, it had better be outstanding! However, in the past I’ve paid the better part of $100 for individual books on reed making, so, realistically, $1.99 isn’t much if you’re looking for a few tidbits of information. And that’s what this app offers. If you’re interested in this thing, think of it as a very cheap book (a pamphlet, really), rather than an expensive app. Here is the main screen, as shown in the iTunes store:

mzl.zazwdwoj.320x480-75

If you’re reading this on my website you’ll see a border that I have added to the image, which reveals some white space at the bottom (the border might not show up in RSS feeds, etc.). Note that this space, in the actual app, contains an advertisement (at the moment, a 1-800 number for a criminal defense attorney). In my opinion, including ads is bad form for a paid application. There are additional monetization efforts built into the app. The “Oboe Gear” button leads to affiliate links to Amazon products, which are providing someone, presumably Mr. Gaudi, with additional income. The “More” button provides income-generating affiliate links to additional paid apps, some ostensibly music-related, some not. Mr. Gaudi responds:

I can understand the criticism of the ads in a paid app though I hope you can understand the need to monetize it. The app wasn’t created for free. There was a considerable cost to produce it and there are costs to revise and update it over time. I hope you can appreciate the need for monetary compensation for those who create a product for sale. My time and knowledge is worth something, just as my private students pay for weekly lessons as do countless other oboe students across the country pay for private lessons.

This is a fair response, I think, if the user knows they are paying for a product that will include advertisements; I was unaware of the ads before my purchase but you can consider yourself now warned. For every other app on my phone, paid versions are reliably ad-free. In my opinion, it would make more sense in the current app marketplace to raise the price on the app itself, if necessary, and scrap the ads, or maybe keep at least some of the ads/monetization and give the app away for free.

The actual useful content of the app is accessed with the green “Reed Maker” and “Reed Doctor” buttons. The “Reed Maker” button leads to a summary of the reed scraping process, starting with a reed blank (tying is not addressed). The summary is ten pages, most with one or two sentences of text, and each showing the same image of a reed with different areas highlighted. Knife technique is not addressed, just which areas to scrape in which order. There are some interesting bits of information here, but be forewarned that this app does not attempt to teach the full process of reedmaking. (It doesn’t specifically claim to, but you don’t know what ground the instruction covers until you buy.) Mr. Gaudi points out:

Read more

The magical properties of air

by

Good breath support, besides helping tone production in obvious ways, can have a surprising (and positive) impact on other aspects of woodwind playing.

Favorite blog posts, April 2013

by

I currently have over 400 woodwind-related blogs in my feed reader, and try my best at least to skim the new posts. In the past I’ve occasionally passed along recommendations about some of the blogs that I think are especially good. I’m considering moving toward something like a monthly list of some of my favorite … Read more