Favorite blog posts, June 2020
- How To Make Oboe Reeds (Tim Feil): Oboe Reed Diagrams
- heather roche (clarinet): Playing with some new ways to demo multiphonics…
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): The Vegan Clarinet
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Favorite blog posts, March 2020
- Practice Monster (David Pope, saxophone): Circular Breathing
- Sax ProShop: #WednesdayWisdom: Sanitizing Your Mouthpiece & Instrument
- Trent Jacobs, bassoonist: Bassoon fingering chart and On communicable diseases and buying reeds
- heather roche: “Ultra-Underblow Mutiphonics”: Part 2 of the recategorisation of Philip Rehfeldt’s chart
- Rachel Taylor Geier (flute): Imperfect Balance – Hand Position Correctors
- The Bassic Sax Blog » (Helen Kahlke): Is a vintage sax right for me?
- The Vintage Clarinet Doctor – Blog (Jeremy Soule): mouthpiece porn vs Mouthpiece Monogamy
- The Flute View (Lauren Monteiro): 4 Rules for Recording Your Practice
- International Clarinet Association (Wesley Ferreira): Master Class: Fantasiestücke (Fantasy Pieces), Op. 43 by Niels Gade
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): 31 Clarinet Compositions Written by Female Composers
- Music Major – Majoring in Music: Music School Decisions When You Can’t Visit
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Favorite blog posts, September 2018
- Heather Roche shares a list of easy/reliable clarinet multiphonics. Useful information here for composers and performers.
- Eric Schultz examines the history of multiple tonguing on single reed instruments.
- Jenny Maclay explores clarinet orchestral excerpts. (Also consider enlisting for the October Uhl Boot Camp.)
- Flutist Kelly Wilson explains the anatomy and function of the arms.
- Jennet Ingle discusses producing a resonant sound on the oboe.
- Oboist Nuria Cabezas demonstrates some stretches for musicians.
- Flutist Jessica Dunnavant deals with performance nerves.
- Ariel Detwiler shares thoughts on fitting into a band or orchestra bassoon section.
- Patty Mitchell spends some time away from her oboe.
- Hannah Haefele offers some suggestions for warming up on the flute on a tight schedule.
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Favorite blog posts, May 2017
- Flutist Terri Sánchez blogged like crazy this month, with many downloadable exercises and practice ideas. A few I liked included this one-minute warmup, these harmonics exercises, these 100 ideas for getting “unstuck,” and this advice on creating your own warmups.
- Heather Roche shares some clarinet works by female composers. (Check the comments section for more.)
- Flutist Jolene Harju does an interesting video experiment with expressive body movements.
- Clarinetist Jenny Maclay suggests practicing recovery from mistakes.
- Ed Joffe shares his experience with developing a multiple woodwinds graduate degree program.
- Flutist Andrée Martin discusses priority scheduling for practicing and for life.
- Barry Stees offers some tips and tricks for playing low, soft orchestral bassoon parts.
- Flutist Vanessa Breault Mulvey shares ideas on being observant of your own playing [update: link dead].
- Saxophonist Sam Newsome recommends slow progress. He also shares some interesting experiments in “prepared” soprano saxophone.
- Cate Hummel warns against some small but problematic flute habits.
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Favorite blog posts, February 2017
Another month dominated by flute bloggers. Leave me a comment if there are excellent blogs by reed players that I should be reading.
- Jolene Harju shares a calendar of flute practice ideas. (It’s for February, but easily adaptable to other months.)
- Heather Roche continues her massive and thorough project documenting extended clarinet techniques with a chart of quarter-tone tremolo fingerings for bass clarinet.
- Flutist Nicole Riner shares resources for commissioning new music.
- Flutist Tammy Evans Yonce requires her woodwind pedagogy students to teach private mini-lessons.
- Flutist Rachel Taylor Geier offers suggestions on making a recording for a job application or audition.
- Cate Hummel explains playing the flute softly.
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Favorite blog posts, August 2015
- Clarinetist Michael Dean examines some resources available for better-informed preparation of the Cyrille Rose “40” and “32” études.
- David Erato compiles some piccolo tips by some top working flutists and doublers (and also me).
- Saxophonist David Freeman shares some settings for the kinds of electronic filter sounds used by Michael Brecker and Jeff Coffin.
- Josh Johnson shares in exhaustive detail the flutes he tried out at the NFA conference. For gear junkies only.
- Heather Roche demonstrates some extended techniques specific to the “paperclip”-style contrabass clarinet.
- Saxophonist Bill Plake discusses some benefits of practicing with a drone.
- The unnamed mom at How About Oboe? gets her 10-year-old oboist to practice difficult things for just two minutes at a time.
- Cate Hummel brings things back to Earth about the flute and the so-called lip “teardrop.” (I also hinted at that topic in a recent post.)
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Favorite blog posts, August 2014
From the woodwind blogs in August:
- Reports on the International Clarinet Society’s 2014 “ClarinetFest” (held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA) by Josh Johnson and, of course, on the ClarinetFest blog. (My own brief general report is here, plus a report on my own presentation on woodwind doubling.)
- Reports on the International Double Reed Society conferences (New York City) by Jennet Ingle, Patty Mitchell, and Robin Tropper (parts one and two).
- A sort-of-report (sort-of-advertisement) on the National Flute Association conference on the Powell Flutes blog.
- “TFox” examines the issue of ivory bassoon bell rings.
- Oboist Jennet Ingle comments on the maturity that comes with experience. In, I think, a sort of related vein, she also discusses perfectionism and “mistakes.”
- Clarinetist Heather Roche gives some tips on double tonguing.
- Saxophonist Jeff Cunningham suggests some guidelines for determining the right reed strength for you. His site is geared toward less-experienced players, but in my opinion a number of “advanced” players could use a refresher on this.
- Saxophonist Sam Sadigursky explains an approach to help with mastering scales.
- Adam Berkowitz shares and comments on a very cool video of some bleeding-edge electronic bass clarinet playing and technology (most of the playing is by Matthias Müller).
- Saxophonist Jody Espina shares his “squeak-be-gone” exercise.
- Saxophonist Bill Plake compares routine and process in practicing.
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Favorite blog posts, July 2014
I am closing out July in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at ClarinetFest. Report forthcoming. For now, enjoy my best-of-the-woodwind-blogs for the past month.
- David Wells shares a useful, sortable table of Vivaldi’s 39 bassoon concerti, and discusses their complicated cataloguing.
- Heather Roche continues her project of documenting the clarinet’s extended technique possibilities with a chart of close-dyad multiphonics.
- Ed Joffe shares a 2006 interview with jazz saxophonist and flutist Lew Tabackin.
- John Witt explores some of the acoustical concepts related to oboe reeds.
- Jennifer Cluff addresses some questions about neck tension and the flute. (If you have pain, please consider blog posts to be supplementary information to that provided by qualified medical professionals.)
- Jennet Ingle exercises patience when returning to the oboe after a short hiatus.
- Saxophonist Bill Plake works on “microskill” projects.
- Trent Jacobs invents an improved bassoon A-flat/B-flat trill mechanism in the shower, and has one made for his own instrument. (As it turns out, someone else beat him to the idea, but it’s still cool.)
- Sam Newsome discusses the ongoing influence of soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, and shares a who’s-who of current jazz soprano players.
- Matt Stohrer comments on the potential viability of a 3D-printed saxophone.
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Favorite blog posts, April 2014
- Bassoonist Barry Stees continues his in-depth and insightful series on interpretation, with installments on motive and harmony.
- Flutist Cindy Ellis offers ten piccolo tips.
- Oboist Christa Garvey shares a breathing exercise for quieting performance nerves.
- Saxophonist Ben Britton experiments with some improved altissimo fingerings. And of course I would be remiss not to mention his very attractive saxophone fingering diagrams.
- Woodwind doubler Steve Moffet considers practicing instrument switches.
- Heather Roche catalogs extended clarinet articulation techniques.
- Bassonist David Pierce offers six words to inspire performers.
- Anna Norris explores some issues with beginners and the bassoon.
- Oboist Jill Cathey plays her scales backwards.
- Contraforte-ist Kristopher King shares his reed dimensions for this intriguing instrument.
- Oboist Patty Mitchell asks a question worth considering about music students and immunizations.
- Clarinetist Michael Dean addresses a surprising connection between posture and embouchure.
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Favorite blog posts, February 2014
Here are some of my picks for some excellent woodwind-related blog posts from last month.
- Bass clarinetist Michael Lowenstern gives excellent advice on some topics (such as “biting”) that I think are not often taught well.
- Mark Catoe gives a workshop on teaching beginning clarinetists to cross the break. (Those are some mighty handsome fingering diagrams.)
- Chris Dunning takes us on a historical video tour of the saxophone in jazz [update: link dead].
- Clarinetist Adam Berkowitz manages the logistical details of a performance. Also: two habits worth having.
- Jennet Ingle bemoans the oboe’s caprices. “It’s not that playing the oboe is physically more difficult than any other instrument, it’s that the oboe doesn’t want you to get it.”
- Bassoonist Betsy Sturdevant chases the elusive high F.
- Oboist Patty Mitchell explains what it means to “know” a piece of music.
- Trent Jacobs gives a primer on amplifiers for woodwind players interested in going electric.
- Over at Music Collective, flutist Jessica Dunnavant discovers life beyond the university-teaching-job search.
- Timothy Owen offers some observations and advice on playing multiple sizes of saxophone.
- Clarinetist Heather Roche gives composers some insights on glissandi and air sounds, with extensive audio clips.
- Vanessa Breault Mulvey of the “Flying Flutistas” avoids “muscling up” on the flute. Also on the trapeze. Really [update: link dead].
- Cooper Wright gives his oboe a good cleaning.
- Woodwind player Ted Nash tells the story of how he nearly got adopted by Quincy Jones. “Part II to follow,” he promises.
- Meri Dolevski-Lewis gives some good common-sense tips to those working with a pianist for the first time.
Enjoy!