Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.
Lots of woodwind doubler horror stories have to do with quick switches to flute or piccolo. (“Twenty minutes of hard-driving R&B tenor saxophone, then two bars to switch to flute and enter pianissimo in the third octave…”) Doublers in this situation often beat themselves up about perceived deficiencies in their flute embouchures, and commit to even more hours of Trevor Wye, but never quite seem to solve the problem.
While daily work on the flute embouchure is crucial, as is a good warmup, I think often the real problem is the reed embouchures. If playing clarinet, saxophone, or double reeds is leaving your embouchure too tired, tense, or numb to play the flute at your best, then consider improving your reed playing. Adjust your tone production to be less tense, adjust your setup to be freer-blowing, and adjust your mindset to be focused on efficiency rather than muscular effort. Keep up the flute lessons, but touch base with good reed teachers, too.
When you’re working on a new piece and there’s no place to breathe:
Re-examine. Are you sure there’s no place? Tonal wind-instrument music usually has phrases. To find them might take some careful analysis, or maybe listening to a recording to check out someone else’s solutions. Once you know where the phrases end, you may be able to take a little extra time to breathe in those spots without it sounding disruptive.
Practice. With some effort and repetition, you may be able to play longer phrases than you thought. Make sure you’re really taking a full breath—the inhalation should feel pretty physical, much more so than “normal” (tidal) breathing.
Edit thoughtfully. If the music was written originally for, say, piano or a string instrument (or if it’s just written by a less-experienced wind composer), it may not have good built-in breaths. Where absolutely necessary, consider breaking a slur, reducing the dynamic level, boosting the tempo, or making some other minor adaptation. Mark it in, so you’re in the habit of breaking with the composer’s intent only after serious deliberation.
Be quick. Sometimes a very small, very short breath is all you need to finish out a phrase strong. Find a reasonable musical place to insert one, and mark it in such a way that you will remember not to take too much time for it.
Consider circular breathing. It’s a challenge but not impossible for someone playing at a reasonably advanced level. But be careful: don’t use it an excuse to avoid the issue of phrasing. Plus, it’s not very comfortable to circular-breathe for extended periods, for you or your audience. (Audiences often breathe with you!) Use this as a last resort or when specifically requested by the composer.
Much has been made of “the break” on clarinet—the point at which the chalumeau register and throat tones cross over to the clarion register—but all modern woodwind instruments have at least one break in their “standard” ranges. The saxophone has exactly one (ignoring the altissimo range), between the second C-sharp and the second D.
From an acoustical perspective, that point is the division between the fundamental pitches and the first overtone. When playing a lower-register note, the air column’s vibration is at its simplest. The pitch is determined by the effective length of the saxophone, which depends on which toneholes the player opens or closes. In the upper register, the air column is manipulated into vibrating twice as fast (by changing the airstream and/or opening a register vent), and a sound an octave higher is produced.
This means that there is, technically, some overlap between the registers shown above, which really are based on one specific set of “standard” fingerings. The fingerings for low B-flat, B, C, and C-sharp can be used to produce sounds in the second overtone, and the fingerings for high D through F-sharp can likewise produce sounds at the fundamental. In theory, this should mean an overlap of over a fifth:
If you’ve experimented with those fingerings, you know that they don’t work quite as expected in practice. The low B-flat fingering with the octave key added, for example doesn’t sound great, and neither does the high F-sharp fingering with no octave key. But with some experimentation, a few usable alternative fingerings can be found within this range. Read More “Crossing the break (or not) on saxophone”
I often see poor hand position among developing saxophonists. It’s not as much of a problem for oboists, clarinetists, or bassoonists, since those instruments’ finger holes demand a higher degree of finger-placement precision in order to close them properly; an open-holed flute also requires a little more care. But the saxophone’s toneholes are all covered by pads affixed to relatively large keys, so even with a casual approach to hand position getting the holes covered isn’t a serious problem.
But there are a number of advantages to more careful hand positioning, and on a well-designed instrument it’s also really easy: just put the tips of the three middle fingers of each hand on the corresponding key touchpieces. (Not the tippy-tips, like a violinist, with the fingers perpendicular to the key surface, but the fleshy pad or “pulp” of the finger, just to the palm side of the tippy-tip.)
Let’s look at the left hand first. I have superimposed (poorly) the key touches over my fingers to show their locations.
Good hand positionPoor hand position
Here are the problems that the poor hand position causes:
In order to fully depress the keys, the fingers may lock straight or even collapse backwards a bit. This makes the fingers’ motion more complicated and tense, and less efficient.
The fingers may contact the keys farther down the finger pad, perhaps even at or below the first knuckle crease. This decreases control over the keys. And/or…
The pads of the fingers contact the keys somewhere beyond the key touchpieces, giving the fingers less leverage and requiring more effort to depress the keys.
The pinky finger is shifted to a position where it is more difficult to reach the low C-sharp key, and where more effort is required to fully depress it.
Although not pictured here, the thumb should also be situated to that its pad contacts the octave key in a strong position with good leverage.
Now the right hand.
Good hand positionPoor hand position
If poor right hand position is used:
As with the left hand, the fingers lose their neutral curve and become unnecessarily straightened.
As with the left hand, the contact points between the fingers and keys are less than optimal.
The pinky finger is shifted into a position where either the finger must be contorted to contact the E-flat key properly, or a less-optimal part of the finger contacts the key.
The ring finger must bend uncomfortably to reach the side F-sharp key, or that key must be pressed by stiffening the finger and contacting the key near the base of the finger, which is imprecise and awkward.
Sometimes poor right-hand position results from allowing the crook of the thumb and index finger to sit in the thumb hook. In these cases, good hand position will require repositioning the thumb so that the thumb’s distal joint is in the thumb hook.
Some of my students, when asked to shift their hand position, have initially objected, insisting that their poor hand position is required due to their individual anatomy or the configuration of their individual saxophones. I have yet to see this prove true. I suppose I can’t eliminate the possibility that very rare situations exist that might call for a slight adjustment to the finger-pads-on-the-touchpieces positioning, but I haven’t encountered a significant case of this yet. Even with my larger-than-average hands (you may be able to spot my custom extra-high green palm key touchpieces in the photos), putting my fingertips on the touchpieces immediately creates an open, relaxed, and efficient hand position, with fast finger movement and a light touch on the keys. If your saxophone has badly-positioned touchpieces, you might consider visiting a good repair technician to have them relocated (or consider it a warning sign of a poorly-made instrument that should be replaced).
Good hand position is a prerequisite to smooth, effortless saxophone technique. Check yours carefully, and set yourself up for success.
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”
Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.
Be sure to check out my recent interview with Trent Jacobs, the inventor of the Little-Jake bassoon/woodwind pickup.
During the past year I got myself a Little-Jake to experiment with some electrified bassoon playing. I didn’t know much about using electronics in this way, and it took some research and trial-and-error to figure out exactly what I needed to use the Little-Jake with my bassoon. I thought others might find it useful to see that information all in one place. Here’s a kind of minimum setup:
A bocal that you’re willing to have altered. I had an old one that I liked but wasn’t using much.
The bocal needs a small hole drilled in it and an adapter soldered to it. A skilled instrument technician can probably make you an adapter from scratch, or you can buy one pre-made. Forrests Music has one, and so does Midwest Musical Imports. I bought Forrests’s (cheaper) version, plus the threaded plug in case I want to use the bocal without the Little-Jake. I shipped my bocal to Forrests and they installed the adapter for a very reasonable fee.
Brass adapter visible just above whisper key pip
Adapter with plug
The Little-Jake pickup. It’s a thin cable with a 1/4″ plug on one end, and a little threaded connector on the other. The threaded end connects to the adapter on your bocal.
A preamp. The 1/4″ end of the Little-Jake connects to the preamp’s input jack. The preamp works some electrical magic to get the electronic “signal” ready for amplification. You can buy an inexpensive one made from an Altoids tin, or this L. R. Baggs one that Trent recommends, or there are other options if you know what you’re doing. The L. R. Baggs is handy because it clips to your belt and provides a volume control.
An audio cable, like the ones used for electric guitars. One end plugs into your preamp’s output jack.
An amplifier. The other end of the audio cable plugs into an input jack on the amplifier. There are many options at many price points. I use a small Mackie PA system for practicing or small venues, or a keyboard amplifier if I need more volume. Keyboard amps and PA systems are usually designed for a relatively “clean,” unaltered sound, whereas guitar amps tend to add their own character. This is a personal choice depending on what you want to sound like, but for me the keyboard/PA-type amp seemed to make sense as a starting point.
Assembled system: bocal → Little-Jake → preamp → audio cable → amplifier (in this case, a small PA system)
That’s enough to start making some fun sounds, but refer to Trent’s interview and an article on his website for some thoughts on adding effects pedals, which really make things interesting.
My current pedalboard setup
The Little-Jake can be used for some other instruments, as well, with the same setup (except the adapter must be attached to a saxophone or bass clarinet neck, clarinet barrel, etc.).
I recently renewed a few memberships in some of the woodwind-related professional organizations. I like to stay current with as many of these as I can, because I enjoy receiving their publications and attending their conferences whenever possible. Most offer some other benefits like score and book lending libraries, eligibility for a group instrument insurance plan, member directories, and exclusive website content.
Membership is especially useful for woodwind folks in academia—students and professors alike—who are hoping to build their vitae. There are opportunities to publish articles, interviews, reviews, and such in the organizations’ publications, and to perform, present lectures and demonstrations, and participate in competitions and masterclasses at the conferences. Students can usually join the organizations and attend the conferences at significant discounts.
The groups I’m listing below are the major ones that North American woodwind players ought to seriously consider joining. There are others, mainly regional groups, of which I list as many as I’m aware elsewhere on this site (see flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone organizations). Read More “Woodwind organizations”
Agreed. I took a brief hiatus from flute to really work up my saxophone and clarinet chops, and now my post-reed playing flute tone has actually improved because I use less tension on reeds and am less fatigued.
Since I moved to the lovely and historic 
Whistle tones on flute are a huge solution to this. Lips together-teeth apart always.
Agreed. I took a brief hiatus from flute to really work up my saxophone and clarinet chops, and now my post-reed playing flute tone has actually improved because I use less tension on reeds and am less fatigued.