Take your instruments apart

ByBret Pimentel

I highly recommend taking your instruments apart.

Here’s why:

  • There’s no better way to understand the workings of a mechanical device like a woodwind instrument than to take it apart and put it back together again. They’re your tools. You should understand how they work.
  • Take ownership of your instrument’s maintenance. Discover problems that need a repair tech’s attention BEFORE they affect your playing at an inopportune time. Or, even better, use your newfound confidence with a screwdriver to fix minor problems yourself, and consider learning how to change a pad, or at least a cork.
  • Keep your instrument sparkling. With your horn in pieces, you can easily get into the nooks and crannies to remove dust and gunk. Your instrument will shine like new, your mechanisms will move smoothly and quietly, and you’ll feel good about treating your precious horn with such loving care.


Here are some tips:

  • Arrange your workspace. A large, clean workbench is ideal, but I’ve done this many times by spreading an old bedsheet on the floor. That way, when (not if, but when) I drop a tiny pivot screw or something, I know it can’t have gone far. Plus I have plenty of space to…
  • Lay out the parts in the order you remove them. Put them back on in reverse order.
  • Take your time. If you’re like me, you’ll find that sometimes you put a part back on, and then have to remove it again to get another part in place. Be patient. Don’t rush it.
  • Use the right tools. You need screwdrivers that are a good fit for the screws. Using the wrong size increases the chance of scratching something, damaging a screw, or even accidental stabbing. For a few dollars, you can get a little set of screwdrivers at most any hardware store. There are usually six of them in a little plastic case. You won’t need the Phillips head screwdrivers, but the flat-head screwdrivers will meet most of your instrument-disassembly needs. Note: I’ve seen similar screwdriver sets at dollar stores, and they aren’t as good. The metal is soft and the heads are sometimes misshapen. Go for the better set at the hardware store.
  • The trickiest thing to deal with are springs. They can stab you, catch on your clothes, or even break off if you get too violent. Be cautious and everything will be fine. A small crochet hook is handy for getting springs into (or out of) place. I used a Dremel rotary tool’s cutting wheel to put a notch in the other end of the crochet hook, so now I can either push or pull on springs with it.
  • While you’ve got the instrument taken apart, clean and lubricate everything. Use Q-Tips or pipe cleaners (but be careful of the inner wires) to get the crud out of the keys and instrument body. Use a soft, damp rag to wipe the stickiness off the toneholes. If you’re comfortable with it, you can also clean the pads. I like a slightly-moistened Q-Tip for this. Some people recommend lighter fluid or other solvents; I just use water, but that’s up to you.
  • Run a pipe cleaner carefully through the tubes of the keywork, and wipe off the inner rods. That black stuff is old lubricant mixed with very fine metal dust from the gradual wear on your mechanisms. Clean it off and apply fresh oil to keep your mechanism quiet and slow down the wear and tear. Use your favorite key oil—there are lots of conflicting recommendations out there for which product to use. Personally I like to use automotive gear oil, since it gives a nice smooth feel and you can buy a lifetime supply for a few bucks. Sometimes knowledgeable people warn about the dangers of various lubricants, but those doomsday scenarios all seem to involve leaving the lubricant alone for a very long time so that it can gum up or whatever. I clean and lube my instruments minimum once a year, so I figure I’m okay.
  • Saxophone and bassoon rollers tend to be noisy, and they fit loosely enough that key oil just drips out. Try cork grease instead to keep these quiet. I like the gooey red liquid stuff from Selmer (USA?) for this. Try not to get it on your hands, because it takes forever to wash off.
  • Don’t forget to do a quick playtest when you put the instrument back together. I often miss re-engaging a spring or two. Easily remedied.
  • If you’re nervous about doing it, start with your clarinet, especially the upper joint. It has few parts and they go back together easily. (If you’re REALLY nervous, buy a junker clarinet on eBay for a few bucks and experiment on it.) I think oboes are the most complicated.

Have fun!

Similar Posts

  • Why do I need to use alternate fingerings?

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    Woodwind instruments including the flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone all have more than one fingering for some notes. Why is that, and do you need to learn them all? Instead, could you just learn the one main fingering for every note and get really good at using it?

    Here are some things to think about:

    • There’s not always one “main” fingering. For example, the clarinet has its “pinky finger” notes that have left-hand or right-hand options, and you need to know both equally well to play above the beginner level. The flute has “1 and 1” and “thumb” fingerings for B-flat that are both common and standard. The oboe has two or three standard fingerings for F. The bassoon’s thumb and pinky options for F-sharp and A-flat and the saxophone’s “side” and “bis” B-flats are also arguably equally important.
    • Using an alternate fingering can sometimes help avoid awkward movements. One example is flip-flopping (one finger lifting up while another presses down) with F to F-sharp on saxophone or in the clarinet’s middle register. Another is sliding (moving a finger from one key to another) like going from D on the oboe to F with the right-hand F key. Sometimes these awkward movements are unavoidable, but good woodwind players avoid them whenever possible.
    • Alternate fingerings don’t always sound or respond the same. Some do, such as the clarinet’s pinky finger notes, because the pinky keys open and close the same holes. But some alternate fingerings might be a little louder or softer, sharper or flatter, more or less resistant, or brighter or darker in tone. Excellent woodwind players use these differences in artistic ways.

    So alternate fingerings are important and useful. But do you need all of them?

    There can be a lot of alternate fingerings. Advanced bassoonists sometimes refer to a book of fingerings that is over 300 pages long! (There are books for other instruments, too.) Sometimes there can be dozens of fingerings for a single note.

    If you’re currently learning an instrument and using a method book (individual or band method) that has a fingering chart, you could check to see which notes have more than one fingering. It might be a worthwhile challenge to learn all those fingerings, and see if the book gives any hints about when to use which ones.

    If you’re a more advanced student, the music you’re working on might present challenges when fingering patterns get awkward. Take on the challenge of researching lesser-known alternate fingerings that might help. (Sometimes a fingering has both advantages and disadvantages that you have to weigh carefully.) Start collecting useful fingering charts, or compile your own.

    If you have my sights set on playing professionally, then you will need to know lots of alternate fingerings, have good resources to consult when you need more options, and know exactly how each fingering sounds, responds, and tunes on your instrument.

    Good luck!

  • How to make a bad fingering chart

    ByBret Pimentel

    The fingering diagrams I’ve provided in the Fingering diagram builder came into existence gradually over the last several years. As part of the process of developing them, I’ve looked at a great many fingering charts.

    I’d like to share a few of the most horrifying examples, and tell you why I’ve tried to make mine the opposite of these. I’m not naming names on the sources, but many of them are well-known and recognizable. Many come from players and pedagogues who I deeply respect for reasons other than their fingering-chart-making skill. (Please don’t identify them in the comments. I’ll edit you if you do.)

    Case study no. 1

    Here’s a partial saxophone fingering chart from my collection:

    Commentary: Read More “How to make a bad fingering chart”

  • Practice technique: anchoring

    ByBret Pimentel

    This is a technique I recommend often to students who are struggling with notey passages. I can’t remember where I picked it up, or whether “anchoring” is my own name for it or someone else’s. No doubt credit for this belongs to somebody smarter than I.

    The problem that I sometimes see with my students (and, okay, occasionally with myself) is that fast passages are uneven and panicky. The student sees a long string of notes and frantically dives in, to the detriment of meter and tempo, and with notes accidentally omitted or added.

    Let’s consider this excerpt:

    from Debussy Première rhapsodie
    from Debussy Première rhapsodie (clarinet)

    It’s a challenging passage—shifting harmony, intervallic motion, awkward fingerings. This is a recipe for frustration using the old standby method of playing slowly with the metronome and gradually increasing the tempo. Instead, let’s set the metronome aside for a few minutes, and play the passage in an intentionally uneven way:

    with added tenuto-accent-fermata
    with added tenuto-accent-fermatas

    Put lots of weight on the metric pulses (the “anchor” notes): play them long, loud, and with emphasis. Hold each fermata long enough to scope out the next four notes, then move through them as quickly as you accurately can, coming to rest again on the next fermata. Repeat the passage in this way as many times as you can stand.

    Here’s what this accomplishes:

    • It makes you think about logical groups of notes, rather than trying either to process each note individually or to deal with the whole phrase as an overwhelming sea of notes. It’s the sweet spot between too much mental chatter and too little focus.
    • It encourages effective phrasing by treating the notes as leading toward downbeats.
    • It trains your ears to hear the notes in fours (at least in this 2/4 passage—try threes instead if the situation calls for it). Now as you return to playing the passage evenly, you are more likely to notice if you are omitting or adding notes.

    To transition from this technique into a more performable approach, gradually decrease the duration of the fermatas and the weight of the accents, while continuing to mentally emphasize the anchor notes and place them carefully in tempo (time to get the metronome back out). Also try spacing the anchors farther apart as an intermediate step—one at the beginning of each measure, for example, or every few measures as appropriate.

    Practice smart!

  • |

    Anatomy of a bad bamboo flute

    ByBret Pimentel

    Bamboo flutes and other “world”-type woodwinds of true musician quality can be difficult to find, and if you’re not experienced with them it can be nearly impossible to tell if an online seller’s wares are genuinely playable or more like souvenir items. I’m going to share an experience of mine in which I gambled and got burned, in case it is instructive to anyone out there.

    Recently I needed a bamboo flute in a specific and unusual key (high B-flat) on very short notice for a gig (a performance of the Duke Ellington Nutcracker Suite). My favorite trusted flutemakers don’t currently make flutes in that key, so I placed an order with a flutemaker that I hadn’t bought from before. (I won’t identify the flutemaker here, but I will say that he and his staff were very nice to me. When there was a totally-understandable wrinkle in getting the flute shipped on time, they even overnighted it plus threw in a very nice flute bag at no extra charge.)

    Ability to ship quickly was certainly a factor in my choice of vendors, but I was also reassured by the fact that the maker sells flutes in three grades: student, intermediate, and professional. I ponied up the money for a professional flute, and expressed to the flutemaker my need for excellent intonation and a strong high register.

    Here is what I received:

    cute, right?
    cute, right?

    Now, the proof of a flute is in the playing, and there’s no way to know for sure if it’s any good without giving it a try. But here are some immediate visual warning signs:

    • Uh-oh
      uh-oh

      The embouchure hole is strangely shaped. I don’t know for sure what the flutemaker intended, but round-ish is pretty standard. Since bamboo is an irregular material, a certain amount of air noise (vibrational inefficiency) is to be expected, but this flute is very airy, and I suspect the oddly-shaped and roughly-finished embouchure hole is a contributor to this.

    • This is an extremely wide-bored flute. Often for flute-like instruments we see a length-to-diameter ratio of something around 30:1, but this one is closer to 15:1. To oversimplify the ramifications of this a bit, a wider-bore flute (a smaller ratio) will generally tend to be stronger in the low register and weaker in the high register. For this gig, I needed a flute that could play just to the second octave above the fundamental note—not an unreasonable demand for any common variety of bamboo transverse flute. I couldn’t get this flute to do it. A smaller-diameter bamboo would improve this flute’s upper range.
    • The finger holes are fairly large, and about the same size. Generally, similarly-sized holes leads to more even tone across the instrument’s scale, but also means that the right hand index and middle finger holes are placed very close together for a simple-system major-scale flute, and on this one the holes are uncomfortably close for me. Larger holes decrease the likelihood of finding usable cross-fingerings; I needed one good cross-fingering for this gig, and couldn’t find one that worked—couldn’t even “lip” the chromatic note into tune. A well-designed flute strikes a balance between large and small holes, and similarly- and differently-sized holes.
    • The second octave is quite noticeably flat. This is a common problem of bamboo flutes (or any cylindrical-bore flutes), but this one is particularly difficult to wrangle into tune. Really excellent bamboo flutes are sometimes made from bamboo carefully selected to have just a bit of taper in the embouchure-hole end, like a concert flute’s headjoint, or have some bore work done to create an internal taper; this helps to bring the upper register into tune with the lower.

    When I realized that the flute wasn’t going to be usable, I packed my piccolo and a B-flat pennywhistle as possible alternatives. As it turned out, we didn’t end up playing the movement in question, so I was off the hook.

    Shop smart!

  • The woodwind section in Mozart’s late symphonies

    ByBret Pimentel

    Introduction

    The woodwind section of the symphony orchestra has long held a place of preeminence. Woodwind historian Anthony Baines gushes: “…the woodwind [section] is a small cluster of musicians in whom the greatest virtuosity in the symphony or opera orchestra is concentrated. It is the orchestra’s principal solo section… They are stars because composers for over two hundred years have made them so…”1 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart certainly made stars of the woodwinds—in fact, he may have been the most important link between the string-heavy ensembles of the early symphonies and the lush, varied sounds of the post-Beethoven orchestra.

    Nathan Broder points out that Haydn and a multitude of lesser figures made contributions during this same period. However, when comparing Haydn and Mozart:

    Of the two, Mozart was the more progressive. Younger, more impressionable, more sensitive to contemporary music, and possessed of a wider knowledge of it because of his travels, it was he who, after having learned much from the symphonies of Haydn, took the lead and reached the pinnacle of pre-Beethoven instrumentation. It was he in whose work were combined all the progressive tendencies of the various outstanding composers of the time, and whose symphonies present a summing-up of orchestral advancement in the latter half of the eighteenth century.2

    Read More “The woodwind section in Mozart’s late symphonies”

  • Out-of-tune accents

    ByBret Pimentel

    Young woodwind players often have trouble playing elegant, well-controlled accents. Accented notes are too often thumpy and out of tune. The most common manifestations are accented notes that are too flat, or that scoop up to pitch.

    This is usually a side effect of the mistaken idea that accented notes should be tongued “harder.” The underlying misconception here is that the tongue “strikes” the reed in some way to kickstart its vibration. But the tongue merely releases the air that does the real work of starting the note, and releasing the air… harder?… doesn’t make a lot of sense.

    In a misguided attempt to tongue harder, less-experienced players end up moving more of the tongue than is necessary. In good woodwind playing, the tongue serves at least two separate functions: the tip of the tongue releases the reed/air for articulation effects, and the back of the tongue controls the space in the oral cavity for voicing. Tonguing “harder” often involves the back of the tongue in the articulation process, which means the voicing changes, and thus the pitch changes.

    Solve this problem by teaching a correct conception of articulation. Treat accents as note shapes, a dynamic effect.

6 Comments

  1. Hi Bret,

    I’m a retired NYC teacher and amateur jazz musician, studying with a New York pro who just told me to get Jean Jean’s “Vade Mecum.” I stumbled onto your great website and your piece. “Take Your Instrument Apart.” I’m scared to try that on my Buffet clarinet. However, the NYC school down the street threw out 2 Bundy saxes – 1 tenor and one bary- that I’d like to get in shape, the bary especially. Local sax technicians want $$$$ to overhaul it and I’ve been thinking of just buying a new one. Would it be worth tackling the bary as a starter project? I’ve got a workbench for the job.

    I’m eager to hear your opinion!

    Thanks,

    Brad Baker
    bakermusic2@yahoo.com

    Reply

  2. Hi Brad,

    A discarded saxophone would be a great first instrument to take apart, clean and lube, and reassemble!

    However, if it’s in rough enough shape that a school actually threw it away, it likely needs more than just cleaning and oil. A professional overhaul would probably include all new pads, corks, felts, and a number of other repairs and adjustments.

    So, it may be worth it to you to get a little hands-on experience with this horn, but it may still need some professional attention before it plays well (or at all!).

    Good luck!

    Reply

  3. Hi Bret !

    Following your wise advice I just took the upper joint of my clarinet apart.

    I used some white spirit for the extra grease. I think I could use some kind of silver special cleaner to make it shiny but I’ve got no time to go to the store as I need my clarinet for this evening…

    I guess that next time I’ll have all the tools ready before I start taking it apart.

    I’ll also have to buy new Q-tips. I just left two to clean my ears for this evening’s rehearsal ;)

    All the Best,

    Pierre

    Reply
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