Ask yourself these questions before becoming a woodwind doubler

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For me, there was a point in my education and career when I decided that I was a woodwind doubler, or at least that I was going to be one. Prior to that decision, I had really identified as a saxophonist, or maybe a saxophonist who doubled a little on the side.

If you are thinking that serious woodwind doubling—committing to playing several instruments at the highest possible level—might be your thing, then I suggest you ask yourself these questions:

  • Am I willing to commit major practice time to each instrument?
  • Am I willing to accept a slower rate of improvement and/or more extensive practice routine than I would if I remained committed to a single instrument?
  • Am I willing to sacrifice or at least postpone some high-level performance goals on my primary instrument in order to devote time to my secondary instruments?
  • Do I have the resources and/or financial discipline to accumulate the necessary high-quality instruments and other equipment?
  • Do I have the guts to perform on instruments that aren’t my strongest one(s)?
  • Am I genuinely interested in and motivated by each of the instruments I intend to play?
Photo, stonelucifer
Photo, stonelucifer

If you answered “no” to one or more, then you might be happier and more successful maintaining a single “primary” instrument, and taking a more casual approach to doubling. Or you may not have fully come to terms yet with the realities of woodwind doubling. Playing any one instrument well requires non-trivial investment of time and money, and very little of that can be truly recycled for a second instrument: if it takes you 10,000 practice hours to achieve your goals on your first instrument, expect to take another 10,000 to achieve the same goals on another.

There are of course many advantages to woodwind doubling, which I won’t rehash in depth here other than to list a few: more and/or different employment opportunities, expanded musical experiences, and, for some, great fun. But it’s not for everyone (probably not for most people). If your answer is “yes” to each of the questions above, then carve out some extra practice time, start saving your pennies, and clear your calendar for some new opportunities.

Buying a new instrument for college-level study

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If you are preparing to start a college music degree, you may need or want a new instrument. I strongly suggest that you contact your professor before making this purchase. Every professor is of course different, but here are some things that you are likely to discover in most cases: The professor will be happy and … Read more

Favorite blog posts, July 2013

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Required reading: Christa Garvey reports on this year’s John Mack Oboe camp, and shares some masterclass notes. Her post about the fallacy of “doing more with dynamics” is really excellent, too. Christa wrote several other top-quality posts this month, but I’m going to just mention those two to avoid embarrassing everybody with my gushing. In other conference … Read more

Which instrument to “start” on

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Every so often I am told by a band director or parent that a child wishes to play a certain woodwind instrument, and then I am asked which instrument the student should “start” on, instead of the one they have apparently already chosen.

I don’t see a good reason, at least within the woodwind group, for a beginner to start on a different instrument family than the one they ultimately wish to play. There may be wisdom in some cases in requiring a beginner to start with a “main” family member: a student who really wants to play the piccolo, for example, will find their opportunities limited if they do not have a strong foundation in the flute—they will be of less usefulness to a school band program, and, should they continue to more advanced studies, may find the piccolo’s repertoire and pedagogical resources comparatively limited. I also think the piccolo is inherently a bit more difficult to play, although that in itself is not sufficient reason to deter a strongly-motivated student; however, for some students a more difficult instrument might be frustrating enough to bring their musical pursuits to a premature end. I likewise generally recommend that oboists start with the oboe rather than the English horn, clarinetists start on the B-flat instrument rather than a “harmony” clarinet, bassoonists leave the contrabassoon until later, and saxophonists start on the alto, or maybe the tenor.

Photo, Herald Post
Photo, Herald Post

But I also sometimes run into an attitude that, for example, an aspiring saxophonist really should start on the clarinet. This, I believe, comes from an outdated school of thought that considers the saxophone a “color” instrument in the clarinet family, and concludes that you should start with the “main” instrument, the clarinet, in the same way that you would start with the flute and later add the piccolo. (It may even stem from a more outdated idea that the saxophone is vulgar or a novelty, while the clarinet is respectable.) But surely the saxophone has by now earned full membership in the wind band and has a sufficiently rich solo and chamber repertoire that it need not be seen merely as the clarinet’s half-sibling.

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Update: Woodwind Doubling in Musicals

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I’m pleased to announce the release of a very much new-and-improved version of what used to be my “Woodwind doubling in Broadway musicals” page. Now it’s just “Woodwind Doubling in Musicals,” since I long ago abandoned any idea of limiting it to shows produced on Broadway. Here is what’s new, besides the title: Each show … Read more

How I use my undergraduate core music curriculum every day

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My university students are sometimes unconvinced of the value of their core music curriculum. Like most music programs, the core at my school includes music theory, applied theory (aural skills like sight-singing and dictation, and piano/keyboard skills), and music history. Most of my students will be educators, like I am (most of them will teach … Read more

Problems of wind controller sounds for classical performance

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I’ve been working on a little Baroque repertoire on the EWI in preparation for an upcoming recital. It’s not especially common to play recital-type music on wind controllers—they are far more often used in jazz and popular styles—but I think the instrument has great potential for “classical” performance. (I mean “classical” here, and throughout this post, in the record store sense, not in the more specific musicological sense.)

My EWI is customized with the really excellent Patchman soundbank which seems to be more or less de rigeur for EWI players. It has 100 different sounds designed especially for wind controllers. But it has been difficult to find sounds that work well for me for the music that I’m trying to play.

Before I continue, I should pause to point out that I’m not at all criticizing the Patchman bank, which I’ve unabashedly recommended to everyone I know. These sounds are fantastic. And really, some of the ones that seem worst-suited to this particular application are some of my favorite ones that I’ve used in other situations.

There are also plenty of additional sources for sounds. I personally like the convenience of on-board sounds, rather than plugging into external modules or a laptop, though those are certainly viable options. I also am personally uninterested in playing sampled or acoustically-modeled sounds that attempt to mimic the sounds of “real” acoustic instruments; I want to play a synthesizer as a synthesizer, not as a substitute for something else.

So I’m looking for good synthy sounds that align with the aesthetics of classical performance. But many of the sounds that work really well for other styles of music have features that don’t fit classical music ideals of wind playing. For example, some of the sounds:

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Favorite blog posts, June 2013

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Some of the best woodwind-related stuff I’ve read this month:  Clarinet professor Adam Ballif shares some thoughts on going paperless as a musician, and takes an easily-digestible look at voicing and the clarinet. Flutist Catherine LeGrand gets super-methodical about interval practice and note shapes. Oboist Patty Mitchell attends the IDRS conference and provides a sneak peek into pedagogical sessions … Read more

Bassoon F-sharp fingerings

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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 … Read more

Learning fingerings as shapes

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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