Most of them cost a lot of money. Replacing any of them would be expensive, possibly even prohibitively so. (If you haven’t already, get a good insurance policy from a company that specializes in musical instruments!)
I worked hard at choosing them. When I bought my oboe, I went to the IDRS conference and tried over 50, maybe 100 of them. Finding a replacement oboe that I’m really happy with could mean trying another 50 or 100. Even if you’ve got the time, opportunities to do something like that are rare.
I have invested a lot of time developing personal relationships with my instruments—getting to know their intonation and response tendencies, getting comfortable with the feel of the keywork, finding out how to coax “my” sound from them. Even replacing one with another of the same make and model means starting fresh with a stranger.
For today’s Stupid Microsoft Office Trick, we will be teaching Excel how to sort musical instruments into score order. This has lots of uses for musicians and music educators:
Inventories of instruments, sheet music, CD’s, you name it
Rosters of students, orchestra members, sub lists, and so forth
For example, suppose I have a list of sheet music for various woodwind instruments:
If I sort alphabetically by column C, I’ll get bassoon pieces first, then clarinet, flute, oboe, and saxophone. But as a musician I rarely have reason to sort things that way. I would rather have the flute pieces on the top, followed by oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone—a typical score ordering.
I’ll show you three easy steps to make this happen. I’m using Excel 2007 and Windows Vista, but I believe this feature exists in earlier versions of Excel as well. You are on your own for the exact details, unless someone cares to share in the comments section. Read More “MS Excel music hack: Sort musical instruments by score order”
Sometimes my beginner students will play something for me, then ask, “Was that right?” What they generally seem to mean is something like, “Did I use the correct fingerings in the correct order?” A student who is slightly more advanced might ask the same question, but also wonder whether the rhythms were “correct.” A student farther along than that might take into consideration things like accurate observance of marked articulations and dynamics.
Setting aside creative concerns and looking only at technical matters, when is a student’s playing “right?”
I try to impress upon my advancing students that execution of musical passages isn’t really about “right” or “wrong,” but rather about degrees of rightness. To borrow an idea from manufacturing or engineering, we might think in terms of tolerances.
In other words, for a beginner, a half-note rhythm might be “right” if the half notes are roughly twice the length of quarter notes, and a pitch of “D” might be “right” if it is closer to D than it is to D-flat or D-sharp. For a somewhat more advanced student, it might not be “right” until the rhythms can be played without wandering too far afield of a metronome and the pitches trigger the “in tune” light on a cheap electric tuner. For an even more advanced student, those tolerances wouldn’t be fine enough—we might expect the rhythmic ratios to be accurate to within a few percent, and the pitches to be accurate within so many cents.
At the highest levels of musical technique, we question what tolerances are accurate enough for our audiences, or for someone with even more finely-tuned ears—a conductor, perhaps, or an audition panel, or collaborating musicians, or a record producer. Are my rhythms “right” when they are within a tolerance of a hundredth of a second? A thousandth? A ten-thousandth? Who will hear the difference if my pitches are within a tolerance of ten cents? Five cents? The more I think about it, the more I’m certain I can never really be satisfied, because as my execution gets more accurate, my ears get less tolerant.
If your ears are currently “tolerating” your level of accuracy when you play, it may be time to listen more closely and critically. Don’t be satisfied with “right”—go for more right.
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People are outraged over an airline’s announcement that its cheapest fares will no longer cover carry-on baggage. (This isn’t the first time that airlines have charged fees for carry-on bags.)
My experience flying with musical instruments as carry-ons has been stressful at best. This passage from an economics textbook rings true to me:
The battle begins in the gate where air travelers elbow their way to the front of the line to board the aircraft as soon as possible in order to grab an overhead bin. Once on the aircraft, the real fight begins. Some passengers with seats in the rear of the plane toss their bags into the front compartments to be sure they get a spot. People with oversized bags cram them into the narrow bins, pushing the bags, coats, and hats of passengers with correctly sized luggage into the corners. People ask for help from the flight attendants but their pleas are ignored. The flight attendants say they are too short staffed to handle passenger disagreements concerning bags. Losers are left standing with their “homeless” bags. …
Are people just selfish and rude? Most economists say no, they are just responding to the absence of market incentives. The overhead bins are a commons. It’s Dodge City. Nobody “owns” the space in the overhead bins. People can’t trust strangers to act with cooperation or courtesy. The result is “warfare.”
Things could be different. Creating an overhead bin market would bring out the best of people. Here is how. Most of today’s airlines charge people extra to check a bag and offer the overhead bins for “free.” It should be just the reverse.
Nobody likes paying more. But a carry-on fee is a small percentage of an airline ticket. And for most musicians it’s a small price to pay for better access (maybe even guaranteed access!) to the overhead storage. Is it worth the price of a box of reeds or two to know my saxophone will arrive in one piece? Or the price of a pound or two of cane to ensure that my bassoon reaches its destination? I think so.
What I wrote was about university music students—students who, generally, have at least a half-dozen years of playing experience behind them, and who are planning to pursue a career in music. But I think it’s also worth considering the musical beginner (child or adult). Students who get a good start with their instrument have a better chance at success, no matter their goals.
Here are some habits that are characteristic of successful beginners, plus a bonus tip for woodwind doublers:
Get a teacher. This is the best money you can spend or your (or your child’s) new musical pursuits. And the sooner the better—don’t assume that you need to struggle on your own for a while before a teacher will take you on as a student. A good teacher can guide you through purchasing or renting your instrument, teach you good playing and practicing habits, troubleshoot problems, and model excellent playing. And you may be able to get good instruction cheaper than you think. Contact a teacher of reputation in your area and find out what they charge, and, if it’s more than you can spend, ask if they can recommend one of their top students as a beginning teacher. I’m a university music professor, and I charge more than some beginners would be willing or able to pay, but I’m pleased to recommend my advanced students who are anxious for some teaching experience, who work cheap, and who will teach you the same things I’m teaching them.
Get good advice on equipment purchases. See habit #1 for the best solution to this. Be extremely wary of advice from mail-order catalogs, internet message boards, eBay sellers, and commissioned music store salespeople who don’t play your instrument. My beginning woodwind students who start with inferior or poorly-adjusted gear often develop poor playing habits in an attempt to compensate for the instrument’s/mouthpiece’s/reeds’ shortcomings, and are far more likely to get frustrated and quit. You don’t need a fancy car to learn how to drive, but you do need working brakes, steering, and signal lights. Read More “Seven habits of highly effective beginners”
I know that my students (or I) are practicing badly when their sheet music remains in mint condition week after week. A good practice session involves lots of small successes and breakthroughs, many or most of which will be forgotten by the next practice session. Using a pencil is the obvious but somehow frequently-overlooked way to make sure tomorrow’s practicing builds on today’s successes, instead of repeating or rehashing.
It’s a mistake to think that pencil marks are amateurish or a crutch. Musicians in professional situations often have to learn music with little lead time or rehearsal, and a pencil is a professional-grade tool for making music with accuracy and poise. The most effective pencil usage depends on a couple of prerequisites:
Have one. It’s embarrassing, unprofessional, and time-wasting to be caught without a pencil. Buy yourself a bulk package of cheap mechanical pencils, and stash them everywhere: Pockets, purse, instrument case, sheet music folder, gig bag, desk, reedmaking table, teaching studio. Tie one to the music stand in your practice space. Every so often, restock each space, since, if you’re like me, pencils seem to have a way of wandering off to be discovered later in the laundry.
Read. If you’re the kind of player that tends to ignore markings printed in the part, then you probably won’t pay much attention to pencil marks either. Become a meticulous follower of written instructions. (If you don’t like the printed instructions, use your pencil and your well-informed artistic judgment to change them, then obey your pencil marks.)
Good pencil markings are clear, concise, efficient, and preferably easily understood by someone else at a glance. I find circles, stars, and highlighting to be so vague as to be pointless; don’t bother making a mark unless it’s adding information to the page. Most common woodwind fingerings can be readily identified with a letter or two (such as “S” for a side fingering or “L” for a left-hand fingering). Develop a vocabulary of markings and use them consistently, so that ultimately you can read them as quickly and accurately as you can read notes. If your sheet music is looking a little too pristine, ask yourself if your playing might benefit from having any of the following information right there on the page: Read More “Using a pencil like a pro”
When you practice scales (or arpeggios or, really, any other technical material) it’s not really about the scales. Nobody wants to buy tickets to hear you play scales.
Scale and technical practice develop the fundamental technique you need for doing more interesting things. You don’t learn multiplication tables or French verb conjugations so you can recite multiplication tables or French verb conjugations. You learn them so you can file your taxes or build a Mars rover, or order pastries or read Proust.
The habits you develop when practicing scales—the building blocks of your technique—will be with you in everything you play. So take them very seriously:
Go slowly, and be as precise and controlled as you can. You will work on scales for your whole life as a musician, so there’s no rush to get them up to a certain tempo. Don’t waste time playing them sloppily.
Listen deeply to the sound of each note. Scales are a great chance to understand and map the tone, pitch, and response nuances of your instrument. Get in the habit of playing with your most beautiful sound even on technical material.
Solidify your best practices. Choose the perfect fingering for each and every note (don’t just fall back on what is already comfortable). Program your fingers to move in the most efficient and precise ways. Stabilize your breath support, voicing, and embouchure.
Be expressive. No need to go overboard—just give a subtle crescendo as you ascend and diminuendo as you descend. Add a little vibrato to warm things up. Make it automatic to find and express phrases.
Whatever habits you solidify in your scale practice will be infused into everything else you play. A little carelessness with your multiplication tables or verb conjugations can result in a severe fault with your Mars rover’s circuits or a profound misunderstanding of French literature. Get the little things right.
Yup. A pro horn is an investment. A lifetime investment. So, take your time and try a bunch out. And don’t be swayed by “brand names”. If you are looking for an Oboe, don’t assume you are going to get a Loree, try ALL them out.
Value is highly subjective. Here is an example: I learned saxophone on a 2933 Selmer Super Saxophone tenor, which I bought from the original owner in 1958. In about 1994, I had a chance to buy a Mid 1960’s Selmer Mark VI alto, to replace a 1920 “stencil” Martin I had bought in a pawn shop. I paid $4000.00 for the Mark Vi, and it was a great instrument. BUT, in five years of playing on it, I never did get used to the left hand pinky finger plateau system. Whenever I went for any note requiring the left hand pinky, I was never sure what key I was going to press. In 2005, I had a chance to trade it to someone for a 1932 Selmer “cigar cutter” alto. Normally, that instrument would only be considered to be worth about $1500.00, because it has been relacquered. But to me, because I can play on it, it is worth more than the Mark VI.
Yup. A pro horn is an investment. A lifetime investment. So, take your time and try a bunch out. And don’t be swayed by “brand names”. If you are looking for an Oboe, don’t assume you are going to get a Loree, try ALL them out.
Value is highly subjective. Here is an example: I learned saxophone on a 2933 Selmer Super Saxophone tenor, which I bought from the original owner in 1958. In about 1994, I had a chance to buy a Mid 1960’s Selmer Mark VI alto, to replace a 1920 “stencil” Martin I had bought in a pawn shop. I paid $4000.00 for the Mark Vi, and it was a great instrument. BUT, in five years of playing on it, I never did get used to the left hand pinky finger plateau system. Whenever I went for any note requiring the left hand pinky, I was never sure what key I was going to press. In 2005, I had a chance to trade it to someone for a 1932 Selmer “cigar cutter” alto. Normally, that instrument would only be considered to be worth about $1500.00, because it has been relacquered. But to me, because I can play on it, it is worth more than the Mark VI.