This week in airline travel with musical instruments

ByBret Pimentel
Photo, caruba

A couple of blog posts related to airline travel with musical instruments have caught my eye so far this week:

Saxophonist Greg Vail had a bad experience checking his horn. Yes, he did check it—sent it to be stowed in the airplane’s cargo hold rather than carrying it on himself. But it wasn’t the baggage handlers who caused a problem. It was security inspectors who opened the strong custom flight case, damaged the key clamps, broke some reeds, and couldn’t get everything packed up properly again.

I know I need to carry this case because they have done this before, but the real question is why?? I feel like these goofballs would riffle thru my medicine cabinet given the chance just because they are noisy and idiots, but I digress.


Matthew Amster-Burton, a Mint.com blogger (and not, to my knowledge, a musician), opined that fees for carry-on bags are a good idea. Nobody wants to pay extra fees, but I have to admit it might be worth it to me to guarantee a spot in the overhead bins for my instruments.

When I wheel my suitcase onto a plane, I’ve learned to take the first overhead spot I see that is anywhere near my seat. The last thing I want is to be holding the bag when the announcement goes out that the overhead bins are full and we’re going to have to check any remaining bags if you want this flight to leave today. In other words, price controls—for example, offering discounted or free items or services—cause shortages.
…
Economically speaking, this is nuts. The right way to allocate overhead bin space is the same way we allocate most things: put a price on it.

Check out my previous posts on airline travel with musical instruments, and travel safe.

Similar Posts

  • Why I don’t list my equipment

    ByBret Pimentel

    Many musicians are eager to tell you what equipment they use. They list their equipment on their websites, in the signature lines of their forum postings, and so on. I don’t.

    I’m rarely impressed with what I see on fellow woodwind players’ lists. Ownership of impressive equipment (assuming the gear is, in fact, paid for?) does not make a fine player. Ownership of unimpressive equipment seems, well, like it’s not worth boasting about.

    Some musicians seem to see their equipment listing as a service to the musical community, as though others will benefit from knowing what instruments they play. Buying instruments, mouthpieces, reeds, and so forth just because another player uses them—even a truly fine player—is much like buying the same shoes your favorite basketball player wears. No doubt they are fine shoes, but they might not suit your feet, your ability level, your playing surface, or your personal sense of style. Equipment listings are especially hazardous to younger beginners, who may be easily convinced that owning certain equipment will solve their problems, or who may ill-advisedly buy equipment that isn’t a good fit for them. Read More “Why I don’t list my equipment”

  • Jazz swing notation

    ByBret Pimentel

    Sometimes a well-meaning composer or arranger will try to approximate a jazz swing style notationally in this way:

    dotted-eighth, sixteenth rhythmThis is wrong.

    Sometimes he or she will take this approach:

    12/8 rhythmAlso wrong. So is this one:

    eighth notes with indication to tripletizeThe idea of “tripletizing” eighth-note rhythms is especially pervasive, and misleading if taught without nuance. Composers are sometimes guilty of this; so are conductors, arrangers, and educators.

    The issue with each of these bad notational approaches is that they try to approximate characteristic jazz rhythms with symbols that are rooted in the rather different rhythms of classical music. But real jazz swing rhythms aren’t necessarily dotted or 12/8 or triplets. This leads to problems both for composers and performers.

    For composers, using a 12/8 time signature or eighth-note triplets in 4/4 too easily drags the work into a compound-meter feel. And jazz swing is decidedly not in a compound meter: the rhythms are very much duple in nature. Authentic swing almost always has an underlying feel of two notes per beat, even though those notes are not equal in length. Extended or frequent passages with a compound-meter feel (three notes per beat) are dead giveaways of a failure to really absorb swing style.

    For jazz-untrained performers, seeing dotted or compound-type rhythms on a page simply doesn’t provide fine enough information to accurately reproduce authentic swing style. It’s perhaps a bit like baking a cake from a recipe with each ingredient rounded off to the nearest tablespoon; the result will approximate a cake but likely won’t be especially successful. And even for the jazz-trained performer, sometimes the dotted or triplety notation can obscure the intended sound, something like typing a sentence into Google Translate, translating it into some other language, and then translating it back into English. (The result definitely loses fidelity.) Or, the poor notation can simply dull or distract from the jazz musician’s more authentic approach.

    All of this, of course, begs the question of what precisely is the correct downbeat-upbeat length ratio for a true swing style, if not the 2:1 ratio of the triplety approach or the 3:1 ratio of the dotted approach. That question is larger in scope than I intend to fully tackle here, but I think it suffices to summarize with a few brief points:

    • Firstly, there’s no reason for it to be a mystery or a matter of “opinion;” using very simple technology we can measure exactly what jazz musicians are doing.
    • The ratios, if we measure them, are very, very far from consistent, even taken independently of factors like tempo. (There’s a popular but not-uniformly-supportable idea that the notes swing “harder” [greater ratio] at slower tempi and less hard [ratio nearer to 1:1] at faster tempi.) The precise ratios are an expressive, interpretive matter, and ultimately up to the performers.
    • The rhythms themselves are not the only factors that make swing sound like swing; articulation, phrasing, and other elements are also important, and also beyond the scope of my intended topic here.

    What, then, is the best way to notate swing rhythms? I sort of like this one, though it’s not the one I ultimately recommend:

    grace notesWhat I do like about the weird grace note approach is that it makes fairly clear the idea that the exact “downbeat” (quarter note) to “upbeat” (grace note) ratio is an interpretive matter. It also evokes what I find to be the most successful method of executing swing rhythms: think in quarter note pulses, and let the upbeats lead to the following downbeats. What I don’t like about this method is that it’s a hassle to write and to read.

    My best recommendation is this:

    eighth notes with "Swing" indicationNote the absence of the “two eighths equal triplet quarter-eighth” indication. This way is simple to read and write, reinforces the duple nature of swing rhythm, and doesn’t prescribe a specific ratio. One might hope that a jazz-untrained musician encountering this would seek out some good training or at least listen to some good swing recordings.

    Happy swinging.

  • Interpreting wind articulation markings

    ByBret Pimentel

    It’s easy to think of articulation markings as being black and white (and not just literally). But sometimes the instructions aren’t completely clear.

    For example, I think most people would see this marking…

    …and understand it to mean that the D gets some extra length, perhaps so much that there’s no silence between the D and the following C. And there’s an implication that the other notes shouldn’t be that way, so perhaps they should have a bit more space by comparison.

    But how about this? (I ran into this marking in a piece I am working on this week, by an experienced composer.)

    The slur seems to preclude any space between the notes, so how does the tenuto work? You can’t reduce the space if it’s already zero, right?

    I think most experienced musicians would say that in this case the tenuto gets some other kind of stress, like a little extra volume, or a slight stretching of the beat, or maybe more intensity in the vibrato. But those are substantially different from the first interpretation. And if I do interpret the tenuto as some kind of stress, how is it different from, say, this:

    To interpret the markings, you have to take them in context. Musical notation is an expressive language, not a set of precise instructions for note-playing robots.

    And sometimes the markings are bad. There might simply be mistakes, or maybe the composer or editor isn’t entirely familiar with how wind players interpret articulations. How about this one?

    Wind players tend to think in terms of slurred or not slurred, and map this directly to a technique. When the slurs are doubled up like this, it doesn’t quite compute—I’m already slurring, I can’t make it any more slurred.

    So often the go-to explanation is that the larger slur is some kind of phrase marking, to show that those notes belong together, and the smaller one is an actual slur. Or, I guess, maybe another smaller phrase marking? And why do I need a phrase marking anyway—shouldn’t I already be playing phrases? And, if I decide to take out the smaller slur, then does the larger one still remain a “phrase marking,” or does it transform back into a slur?

    Here are some things I try to keep in mind as I try to interpret articulation markings:

    • If the composer put it on the page, she or he wants to hear it. How can I make the marking audible? What is the composer’s likely intention?
    • Why did the composer pick that particular marking? If there is ambiguity, is it intentional, or at least knowing?
    • Do similar markings appear elsewhere in the piece, or even in the composer’s other works? Does that shed any light? For example, if the composer uses both tenuto marks under slurs and accents under slurs, the composer probably wants them to sound different from each other.
    • Is there a tradition surrounding this piece? Sometimes frequently-performed pieces begin to develop a sort of standard practice for how certain markings are interpreted. Sometimes these are reasonably reliable, such as if a recording was made with the composer’s input, but sometimes they are just popular guesses. If you have a better guess, you can use it, but it would be wise at least to know what the tradition suggests.

    We are used to thinking of music itself as an expressive thing, that hopefully causes our audience to respond in some way. But the art of music notation is also expressive—the composer/editor/copyist is trying to get some kind of response from the musician. (Which in turn gets the response from the audience.)

    If you have been reading articulations like a robot—or ignoring them—return to the score again and listen to what the composer is telling you.

  • Using sticky notes to focus my performance thinking

    ByBret Pimentel

    I might put in weeks or months preparing for a high-pressure performance. The groundwork is done—I have made the technical and interpretive decisions, drilled the difficult spots, and otherwise planned and prepared every aspect of my playing.

    But all of that can fall apart pretty quickly if my head isn’t in the right place. Nerves, stress, and distractions can make one small error snowball into an unfocused, sloppy performance.

    One of my favorite tricks to help avoid this is to plan my thinking. As I do the final preparations for my performance, I often pick out two or three things I would like to focus on as I begin each piece or movement. These might be important technical details (“make sure embouchure is stable before playing the first note”), more general advice (“keep breath support strong through the ends of phrases”), or interpretive thoughts (“light and playful”).

    I write these two or three things (no more) on a sticky note, and place it at the beginning of the piece or movement. If the reminders seem especially crucial, I might put the sticky note over the first few measures of music, so I can’t start playing until I have physically moved it out of the way.

    This small preparation helps ensure that as I begin to play, I’m thinking about the things that are most important to the success of the performance, rather than reacting to distractions.

  • How well do you know your major scales?

    ByBret Pimentel

    Can you play them…

    …in all twelve keys, smoothly and evenly, the full range of your instrument(s)?

    …with a beautiful sound on each and every note, and each note right in tune?

    …with poised, elegant phrasing? Read More “How well do you know your major scales?”

  • Make your musical lines sing and dance

    ByBret Pimentel

    In “classical” and related kinds of music, we are often asked to make our instrumental music sing or dance. In fact, most music of this type should do one or the other.

    Singing-type music may be labeled as such with markings like cantabile or vocal-ish titles like “Aria” or “Chanson.” Or it may be characterized by notational features like long, slurred lines. In any case, playing through the melody, you can probably intuit whether it is song-like (or dance-like).

    To give your musical line a singing quality, focus on making long, smooth, elegantly-shaped phrases. They should sync with the underlying pulse without drawing attention to it.

    Dancing music might have titles named after dances, like “Waltz” or “Bourée” or “Rumba.” Or they might include high-energy articulations like accents or staccato.

    To make your lines dance, bring out the meter, by creating a sense that the beats are not all equal. This might be indicated in the notation with accents (dynamic, agogic, tonic, etc.). Or it might require some brief research into the kind of dance: for example, a quick search will show you that a Sarabande is generally in a slow three, with stress on beat 2. Some dances have rhythmic characteristics like clave that puts stress on certain subdivisions of beats.

    If your music seems to have an unspecified dance-like quality, start by bringing out the typical hierarchy of beats: in 4/4, for example, beat 1 is the strongest, beat 3 the next-strongest, beats 2 and 4 less strong, and the “ands” weaker still.

    It’s common for a multi-movement piece to have both song-like and dance-like movements, and even for both approaches to appear within a single movement or short piece.

    Here’s just one excellent example of singing vs. dancing in instrumental music. Listen to ToniMarie Marchioni and Jacob Campbell play the beginning of the first movement (“Aria”) of the Dutilleux oboe sonata, and notice the smooth, shaped, singing oboe lines that overlay the pulse without emphasizing it:

    Now skip ahead to the beginning of the second movement (“Scherzo: Vif”) and notice how the oboe line is accented, bringing the pulse to the forefront in a dance-like way:

    The next time you pick up your instrument, ask yourself whether the music should sing or dance, and what you can do to make that happen.

One Comment

  1. Luckily I don’t fly to much. Not because I don’t want to, but because of the hassle it has been in the recent past. This is something I never have thought about, but makes complete sense. Most people I talk to that fly often want to avoid those extra fees for checking in a bag, and pack lighter so they can carry on for free. I would imagine that most people do this now causing this shortage. I am sure something is going to change very soon. Thank for the article.

    Reply

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