Taking your doubles to the next level

ByBret Pimentel

I think that as a doubler it’s easy to consider your ability level “good enough” on a secondary instrument. Check your doubles below, and ask yourself what you can do to raise the level of your playing. I’ve given just a few examples of “next level” techniques on each instrument.

  • Flute
    • Can I play up to the highest notes (4th octave C, C-sharp, and D, for example) with delicacy?
    • Can I play the lowest notes with power and confidence?
    • Can I double and triple tongue fluently and without having to think about it?
  • Oboe
    • Has my tone progressed past the “duck” phase? Is it rich, dark, and flexible? Even in the high register?
    • Am I thoroughly comfortable with the various F fingerings—right, left, and forked—and prepared to choose the right ones even while sightreading? How about E-flat fingerings?
    • Do I depend on others for reeds, or am I capable of making (or at least adjusting) my own?
  • Clarinet
    • Am I completely fluent in the pinky-finger notes? Can I make good choices about which pinky fingerings to use, and make them automatically?
    • Do I know and use good resonance fingerings for the throat tones?
    • Have I thoroughly habituated good practices for crossing the break (efficient hand position and finger motion, putting the right hand fingers down early when ascending, keeping the airstream supported and constant…)?
  • Bassoon
    • Can I make or at least adjust my own reeds?
    • How is my tenor clef reading? Okay, now how about the low notes in the tenor clef?
    • Do I not only know alternate fingerings, but know their characteristics (pitch, tone, response, slurability…)?
  • Saxophone
    • Can I successfully and smoothly navigate passages using the left hand pinky? How about the palm keys?
    • Am I fluent in the altissimo register?
    • Do I have a good grasp of jazz and “legit” styles (tone, articulation, inflection, equipment choices…)? Can I improvise convincingly in various styles (Ben Webster? Charlie Parker? John Coltrane? David Sanborn? Michael Brecker?)?
  • Folk/ethnic/period instruments
    • If called upon to do so, am I prepared to play, for example, recorder? Pennywhistle? Bamboo flute? Native American flute? Do I have at least a nodding acquaintance with the styles and performance practices associated with those instruments?

Back to the practice room for me.

Similar Posts

  • Playing in tune

    ByBret Pimentel

    I’ve been working on improving my pitch this summer. Why is it so difficult to play a woodwind instrument in tune? I believe there are three reasons:

    1. The instruments are, of necessity, built in a hopelessly compromised manner. A flute or bassoon or whatever that plays perfectly “in tune” doesn’t exist. (“In tune” is in quotation marks because of #3, below.)
    2. The human element is full of variables that affect pitch: a little change in embouchure, a little variation in breath support, and the intonation suffers.
    3. Woodwind players (like string players, vocalists, and others) have to meet the sometimes-confusing standard of just intonation, meaning that the “right” pitch for a given note depends very much on the context. This, of course, has to be tempered somewhat when playing with equal-tempered instruments such as the piano. We’ll call all of this intonation, referring to the precise pitch relationships of one note to another.

    To play in tune, I’m working on addressing each of these problems. Some notes-to-self: Read More “Playing in tune”

  • |

    Woodwind Doubler Census results, part 6: benefits

    ByBret Pimentel

    In this installment, we look at why woodwind doublers do what they do.

    Q. What is the greatest benefit of being a woodwind doubler?

    Here’s my own breakdown of the most common types of answers. Many answers fit into more than one category.

    • More gigs: Unsurprisingly, this was a factor for over half of the respondents. However, many if not most indicated some non-monetary motivation:
    • Variety
    • Fun/satisfaction
    • Artistic expression: A number of respondents mentioned the ability to access a variety of tone colors as a motivating factor.
    • Cross-training: Several respondents indicated that playing one instrument improves their skills at another.
    • Challenge

    Here is the complete list of responses, with only very minor editing, in random order.
    Read More “Woodwind Doubler Census results, part 6: benefits”

  • Woodwind dynamics and the embouchure

    ByBret Pimentel

    There’s a lot of confusion about how different dynamic levels are produced on woodwind instruments. How do you think it’s done?

    If you said something like “use more or less air,” you are on the right track, kind of. But how do you put more or less air into the instrument?

    If you said something like “blow harder or softer,” you are asking for trouble. Adjusting volume by increasing and decreasing breath support causes all kinds of nasty problems, especially sluggish response, unfocused tone, and saggy pitch at softer dynamic levels.

    dynamics

    So what method is left to adjust the volume of air entering the instrument, and the corresponding loudness or softness (weirdly, also called “volume”)? Surprise, it’s your embouchure. Take a look in the mirror at your flute aperture, or look at the opening in your oboe or bassoon reed, or the opening between the tip of your clarinet or saxophone reed and the tip of the mouthpiece. By manipulating the size of this opening, you can control the volume of air passing into the instrument, while keeping your breath support powerful and steady.

    The opening isn’t large to begin with, so bear in mind that the adjustments needed are incredibly small. But your lip muscles are well-suited to very small, subtle, expressive movements—certainly more so than your larger breath support muscles.

    If you are an advanced player, you are probably doing this already, maybe without realizing it. But if you are struggling with dynamics-related problems, like unstable pitch during crescendos and diminuendos, or the inability to maintain tone at pianissimo, you might want to reexamine your technique.

    Try this: play a note in a comfortable range at an easy mezzo-forte, with powerful breath support. Without letting up on the breath support, apply just the slightest squeeze with your embouchure. (For me, the sensation is that my lips don’t really even move, they just firm up a little.) Gradually increase the squeeze—don’t forget to keep the support strong—and see what happens.

    Try it again, this time starting with the lips squeezing, and see what happens as you allow the embouchure to become more and more relaxed. This maxes out when the reed is almost completely free to vibrate at its widest amplitude, or when the flute aperture gets too large to maintain focus in the tone. (At this point you may be able to get more volume by straining harder with your breath support muscles, but notice what happens to your pitch and/or tone!)

    Like so much of woodwind playing, the real key here is breath support. If you remember to keep it steady, then creating dynamic changes from the embouchure is really quite intuitive and produces much better results.

    Incidentally, this is why recorders, pennywhistles, and other “fipple” flutes really have only one dynamic level; the opening can’t be manipulated effectively because it is rigid. Blowing harder or softer does change the volume but at unacceptable cost to intonation. (This is probably a major reason the transverse flute essentially replaced the recorder in Western music—it could play with dynamic contrast.)

  • Music practice and technical debt

    ByBret Pimentel

    In software development there’s a concept referred to as “technical debt.” The debt is created when software code is written in a less-than-optimal way. The computer program works, but has some bugs or inefficiencies that will need to be fixed or improved later. Like other kinds of debt, it can be a useful way to get something done now, but will cost more (time, effort, dollars) in the long run.

    The metaphor works well for practicing music, too. Suppose I am working on a passage where a certain alternate fingering would be the most efficient choice. But I don’t use that fingering very often and I’m not completely comfortable with it, so I fall back on a more familiar solution. That gets me playing the passage now with some degree of success, but it also solidifies my attachment to the familiar fingering. Or perhaps my articulation is a little too heavy and thumpy, and I cover that up by adding some slurs in crucial places. That makes the passage work, but means that if I ever want to play it right I’ll have to improve my tongue movement and unlearn the slurs.

    In a perfect world I would always tackle the issue head-on: invest whatever is necessary to habituate the alternate fingering or clean up my articulation technique. In reality sometimes a looming performance means plastering over the problem and promising myself I’ll fix it later, at a greater price.

    I have found it useful to keep a running list of things I want to improve in my playing, including technical debts that need to be paid off. Incorporating relevant exercises, a few at a time, into my warmups helps me make small daily payments, so that hopefully the next time I need those techniques I own them free and clear.

  • Saxophone low notes

    ByBret Pimentel

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

    The saxophone’s lowest notes can be notoriously unresponsive. This is partly due to the instrument’s acoustics, particularly its fairly extreme conical bore. (For technical details, see for example Acoustics of Musical Instruments by Chaigne and Kergomard, section 7.4.6.1.) The oboe and bassoon, whose bores are conical but not to such an extreme, have this problem to a lesser extent, and the tips that follow apply to those instruments as well.

    For the best chance at successful low notes you need:

    • A well-adjusted, high-quality instrument. Even a small leak anywhere on the saxophone makes the lowest notes more difficult. And the best-designed and most meticulously-made instruments help to minimize the difficulties of the low range.
    • A good mouthpiece and reed combination. This may involve tradeoffs: a mouthpiece/reed combination that really improves the low register may, for example, make the highest notes more difficult. Since mouthpieces and reeds vary in so many ways it’s hard to make reliable generalizations, but often I find that a wider tip opening with a softer reed tend to favor the low register more (and the high register less).
    • Good, stable fundamentals of saxophone technique. Breath support, voicing, articulation, and embouchure (let’s include jaw position in embouchure here) should be properly set, and shouldn’t change for the low register. If you find that you need to increase breath support, lower your voicing, change your embouchure or tonguing, or open your jaw to make the low notes succeed, then you should probably already be doing those things, in every register. Don’t make the low notes even harder by creating a moving target.

    To expand on that last point a little, if you find that your low notes need a little extra help, then a small alteration to your voicing is the right way to provide it. But know the tradeoffs: lowering your voicing as you approach the low register affects pitch and tone, besides creating instability in your tone production technique. Manage these concerns by aiming for the smallest possible change.

    Practice smart. No shortcuts!

  • “Problems” vs. solutions

    ByBret Pimentel

    I often see this kind of thing in woodwind pedagogical books, workshop handouts, and lecture notes:

    Common clarinet problems

    • embouchure too loose
    • chin not flat
    • fingers not curved enough

    This bothers me because it’s really not clear that these are “problems.” Would you have a student tighten a “too loose” embouchure if they sound great and play with ease and control? Would you insist on a flatter chin or more curved fingers if there weren’t some persuasive reason to do so?

    Real problems in woodwind playing generally have some audible result: notes that don’t respond well, or are out of tune, or have an uncharacteristic tone, or come too late because the fingers didn’t arrive in time. Alterations to embouchure, hand position, and so forth are solutions to specific issues, not commandments to be preached and enforced indiscriminately. Your doctor doesn’t give out a standard grab bag of medications to every patient—he or she (hopefully) finds out what your symptoms are and prescribes something appropriate (or tells you you don’t need any pills at all).

    Diagnose problems mostly with your ears, not with a checklist of questionable dicta, and not with a picture from a textbook of what good playing should look like. Then offer solutions that fit the problems.

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