Sam Newsome asks the question, “Can You Double And Still Be A Great Soprano Saxophonist?”
As I see it, if you play the soprano using a set-up that’s comparable to a much larger horn, you’re not dealing with the soprano on it’s own terms. It’s being treated as an extension of a much larger horn, and not as a separate entity.
I’ve been having a great time directing the university jazz band this year (alas, a temporary assignment). The group performed recently for some talented high school musicians from around the state, the kind of students I would like to recruit. After the performance, I was approached by no less than three of them, each expressing an interest in playing in the group in the future. None of them play instruments typical of jazz big band arrangements.
I’ve had this happen with private students, too. I once met with a very young and enthusiastic clarinetist and her mother. They explained to me that the young clarinetist was being excluded from her middle school jazz band because she didn’t play a “jazz” instrument. Their plan was for her to study clarinet with me, and to get so good that the jazz band director would “just have to” accept her into the group.
The clarinet, of course, does have a noble history in jazz music (even big bands), as does the flute, and, less frequently, the double reeds. And don’t get me wrong here—I love playing and listening to jazz on all those instruments, and would love to see every young woodwind player, regardless of instrument, get the chance to participate. But there are some practical barriers. Read More “Jazz opportunities for woodwind players: learn the saxophone”
I’ve posted a few times over the past year about making double reeds (cf. here, here, and here), and I maintain that this is the truest way to abiding oboe/bassoon satisfaction. If you consider those instruments to be serious parts of what you do as a musician, you need to learn to make—or at least skillfully adjust—reeds.
But, frankly, not everyone is up to the challenge.
The basic reedmaking process can be learned within a few lessons, but developing the skills well enough to make good reeds consistently can take years, and most reedmakers will continue to develop and modify their approach over a lifetime.
Reedmaking is expensive, too. A set of the most basic tools for making reeds from preprocessed (gouged, shaped, and, for bassoon, profiled) cane costs as much as several boxes of clarinet or saxophone reeds, and the cane doesn’t come cheap, either. If you want the control of doing your own gouging, shaping, and so forth, the additional equipment may cost you nearly as much as a pro-line clarinet.
And, of course, reedmaking takes time. I’ve heard the “rule of thumb” that an oboist, for example, should spend an hour making reeds for every hour he or she spends practicing. I don’t know that I agree entirely, but you get the idea of what kind of commitment is involved.
So, if I’ve now talked you out of making your own reeds, what are your options?
Read More “Not making your own double reeds”
As I’ve discussed here previously, when trying to solve woodwind-playing problems there’s a useful distinction between problem-specific solutions and simply shoring up fundamental technique.
Here are some examples of problem-specific solutions:
Notice that all of these suggestions give you a sort of localized task to perform—make some change to your tone-production technique whenever you play a certain note. This is an exhausting way to play: trying to remember and execute a handful of directives for each note that goes by; discovering that a constantly-changing tone-production technique makes tone, pitch, and response unstable; adding another layer of fixes to try to counteract the instability. It can quickly become too much to process, and higher-order things like musical expression get sacrificed.
Sometimes these localized fixes are necessary, usually as a workaround to some flaw or compromise in the equipment’s design or manufacture. But much more often the “fix” should be an improvement to fundamental technique:
My guess is that by making these fixes part of your fundamental technique, instead of applying them here and there like bandages, you would discover:
Examine your problem-specific fixes carefully, and try making them your default approaches rather than special-occasion ones.
When dealing with problem spots in your music, it’s okay to remind yourself of relevant and helpful fundamental techniques, but the ultimate goal should be to remove as much as possible of the mental overhead and physical gymnastics from your playing. Develop good basic technique that lets the instrument more or less play itself, so you can focus on the creative aspects.
In general, I’m not that concerned about keeping fingers close to instrument keys. A lot of woodwind players and teachers seem to believe that “close” fingers mean more speed, which I haven’t found necessarily to be the case. To me, a much larger factor is tension: if my fingers are tense (because, for example, I’m trying really hard to keep them close to the keys), they move more slowly.
But when I work with beginning clarinetists (whether first-time instrumentalists or doublers), many of them seem to have a great deal of trouble with squeaks and with notes responding sluggishly—problems that I think in most cases can be traced to fingers not completely covering toneholes, or not covering them in a synchronized way. And one of the major reasons that this happens is that the fingers are too detached from from the keys. It’s not a question of distance, per se, but one of awareness.
One reason this is such an issue for clarinetists in particular is that so many fingers have multiple jobs. The left thumb operates a tonehole/ring and a key, which must sometimes be pressed individually and sometimes together. The left index finger has a tonehole/ring and two keys. The right index finger has a tonehole/ring and four “side” keys. And the pinky fingers have responsibilities exceeded only by the bassoonist’s thumbs. Throw in a couple of sliver keys, and you’ve got a lot of fingers constantly in transit from one key to another. Read More “Staying connected to the clarinet”
A lot of the questions people have about woodwind playing center on tone: how can I get a better tone? a darker tone? a tone like _____’s? There’s not a lot of clarity on this, for a few reasons:
Let’s look at the physical factors that influence tone:
So, how do you ever develop a tone that is characteristic, personal, and beautiful?
Here’s why tone concept is so crucial:
All those subtleties of woodwind technique that affect tone, the ones that are so hard to understand and communicate? You can find them with patient and dedicated practice, if you know what you are listening for. As you have already discovered, your tone tends to change from day to day. This inconsistency can be a problem, but can also be a way of stumbling, even subconsciously, onto something positive. (When it’s a conscious process, your thought might be, “when I hold my embouchure this way, I get a sound that is more _____.”) Additionally, a clear tone concept may aid you in intuitively pursuing it; you already use the muscles of breathing, voicing, and embouchure to intuitively produce a huge and subtly-differentiated set of speech sounds, and for most of those you would be hard-pressed to explain how you make them. If you get comfortable and familiar enough with your instrument through years of practice, you can begin to tap into that intuitive control, but again: only if you know what sound you want to make.
An ideal tone is a lifelong pursuit—invest in yours by listening and practicing daily.
Teaching a beginning or intermediate clarinet section? Here are some things to consider:
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It all depends on your goals/opportunities. If you want to be among the top 5 in the world on any 1 of the saxes or clarinets or flutes, then you had better make that your #1 instrument ALMOST to the exclusion of any other.
In orchestras, you see piccolo specialists, bass clarinet specialists, english horn specialists. You do not see the principals doubling.
Coltrane was a tenor player. Oh sure, he played/recorded some soprano but it never came close to his tenor playing. Sonny Rollins plays tenor ALMOST exclusively.
Then there are those of us who enjoy the multi-woodwind experience and are “good enough” on all of them to get theatre and other gigs. Having said that there have been times that I have almost sold all of them except for 1 (and if I did that it would be my tenor) and focus strictly on it. But then I remember the opportunities I have had and that I would have missed and then it’s back to trying to find some practice time balance between 3 saxes, clarinet, flute and piccolo.
Thanks, Bret, for including links like this.
Great points. Doubling is a good path for some players, but it isn’t for everybody. There are very talented people who choose doubling, and very talented people that don’t.