Recital videos, August 2026
I’m pleased to share videos from my recent faculty recital at Mississippi State University.
Here’s the program and video playlist:
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Introducing the Random note picker
Here’s a little web app that I put together for quizzing my university students on their scales. (The music majors all have to pass a scale exam, playing randomly-selected major and minor scales.) I hope it’s useful to somebody out there:- Quiz students (or yourself) on scales, arpeggios, fingerings, key signatures, ii-V7-I patterns, chord voicings, or whatever. Click “Show options” to pick which notes you want to include.
- Set “How many?” to 12, and generate 12-tone rows.
- Set “How many?” to three or four, and generate chromatic or diatonic motives for inspiration for your compositions or improvisation practice.
- Or whatever.
As always, feel free to contact me with bug reports, feature requests, or mockery of my humble coding skills.
Note Image Generator, version 0.2
I’m pleased to announce a new release of the Note Image Generator, my web app for quickly creating images of notes on staves (such as you might use for fingering charts, note identification flash cards, etc.).
I’ve added some new features for all users, but also some special features for those kind enough to donate to the Note Image Generator (there’s a PayPal link near the bottom of the page).
New features include:
- More bar line options.
- A new handwriting-type “jazz” notation font.
Plus a bunch more new fonts for donors!
- Parentheses around accidentals.
- Enharmonic note spellings for donors.
- More precise image sizing options for donors.
- Various bug fixes and speed/stability/usability improvements.
- More bar line options.
Fingering diagram builder, version 0.2
Two months ago I introduced the Fingering diagram builder, something that I hoped people would find useful for quickly and easily creating fingering diagrams for woodwind instruments. Since then, something over 1,000 fingering diagrams have been downloaded, which I think is a nice start.Many of those have been saxophone fingerings, and I attribute this to some kind mentions among the saxophone-blogger community (thanks Doron, Eric, David, Neal, Alistair, and Anton!).
Now I’m pleased to announce the new-and-of-course-improved version 0.2. Go take it for a spin, or read on about the new goodies:
Open rehearsal of Divertissement
L-R: Dr. Kumiko Shimizu, Dr. Bret Pimentel, Dr. Sy Brandon I was pleased to have Dr. Sy Brandon, composer of the new work Divertissement for multiple woodwinds and piano, on campus at Delta State this week for a brief guest composer residency and an open rehearsal of the new piece.
As you can see from the photo, I decided to play sitting down. The reason for this is a very quick switch from flute to piccolo—1.67 seconds at the marked tempo—that necessitated a lap to drop the flute into.
The official premiere will take place sometime this fall.
Discount on book and new t-shirts
I’ll keep this short: there are new bretpimentel.com t-shirts available, and everything in the store (shirts and the PDF of my book, Woodwind Basics) is priced at 1/3 off through Christmas Eve 2018 if you use coupon code reeds2018. Your purchases help pay for hosting and other site costs, and otherwise support what I’m doing on the site.
Happy holidays!
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