As woodwind players we are often taught that articulation requires the use of the tip of the tongue and no more—to use more than the tip would just be wrong!
For reed instruments, I think this is essentially true, but I don’t think it works that way on the flute. Try this:
Using a reed instrument mouthpiece, or substituting a (clean) finger, simulate “tip of the tongue” articulation. Find the very tip of the tongue and touch it lightly to the tip of the reed (real or imaginary). With the tongue frozen in this position, apply some air pressure. If you allow the lips to “unseal” from around the mouthpiece at this point, air escapes.
Now try it with nothing inside your mouth, in the manner of a flutist. Touch just the very tip of the tongue to your favorite articulation spot (palate, teeth, or maybe lip, depending on your pedagogical pedigree) as though about to tongue a note, and apply air pressure. Notice all the air leaking out? Me neither.
Are you really holding back all that air with just the very tip of your tongue? While I think “tip of the tongue” is still a useful fiction for flute playing, it seems to me that I must actually use a surprising amount of tongue to seal off the air from escaping—the sides of my tongue contact my molars to help contain the air until I am ready to release it.
(The tip of the tongue is effective for reed instruments because it is only necessary to prevent the reed from vibrating as the air pressure is applied—a very small amount of tongue is quite effective for this.)
The “tip of the tongue” is a good concept for helping flutists to keep their articulation light, crisp, and relaxed, and I don’t particularly recommend teaching the sides-of-the-tongue thing to students as it can easily be misunderstood or taken too far. But I do think a clearer understanding of the invisible parts of woodwind playing can help advanced students and their teachers diagnose and solve subtler problems.
MarkCC recently acquired a new flute of the type used in Irish traditional music, the kind that are most often made of wood. But MarkCC’s is made of polymer, and it sounds like MarkCC has wrestled a little with the issue of whether a plastic flute can really measure up to a wooden one.
But… Plastic?
I’ve seen several acoustic studies that claim that the material the instrument is made of isn’t that important. In a wooden flute, the physics show that the head joint is the only part of the flute that really has a significant influence on its sound. But the head joint of a wooden flute is actually lined with metal. So the wood isn’t really having too much influence on the sound.
As it turns out, MarkCC is something of a doubler, and also plays the clarinet.
Most people (including me) play on mouthpieces made of hard rubber or plastic – so the primary sound-producing piece of the instrument is plastic. The barrel of a wooden clarinet is (obviously) wood, so according to the physics/acoustics, that’s the only piece of wood that actually has any measurable acoustic effect. And the physics of this isn’t sloppy stuff put together by an instrument company trying to sell their plastic clarinets: to the limits of my ability to understand it, it’s good, solid stuff.
And yet, I’ve played a whole lot of clarinets, and by god, there’s nothing like a grenadilla wood clarinet. Even the best clarinet makers, even when I put my wooden barrel on a polymer body, it doesn’t sound the same. Of course, that’s subjective, and we humans are notorious for hearing what we want to hear in a subjective situation. And, by god, I’m a math geek. I’ve seen the math, and it’s correct.
One of the most-linked articles on my blog makes the same point about our expectations about materials coloring our playing experience. It’s worth pointing out, too, that a different barrel made from the same material will also affect the instrument’s sound.
I do think it’s a grey area to refer to a mouthpiece or barrel (or flute headjoint) as “sound-producing.” The instrument’s parts don’t produce any audible musical sound (unless you hit them with drumsticks)—it’s the column of air contained within them that vibrates in a musically useful way.
I fear that to many woodwind players (or wind players in general, and maybe singers too) breath support is something mysterious. I have often had teachers stress to me the importance of breath support, but I can’t remember ever having one explain clearly what it is. Read More “Breath support”
I worked on reeds today (both single and double). My favorite reed tip: don’t adjust your best one. Adjust some others until one of them is the best, and then go back and work on the first one if you like.
Adjusting reeds can be a little risky, so gamble on a reed that you won’t miss too much if it doesn’t survive. And don’t put all your eggs in one basket, concentrating all your efforts trying to perfect one reed—try to bring several up to a playable level.
Here is the handout from today’s presentation at the Mid-South Flute Festival at the University of Memphis campus. The audience was small but enthusiastic, asked good questions, and some of them stayed extra long to try out some instruments from my collection.
I’ve been practicing the Telemann recorder suite this summer, and I had been meaning to write a recorder-related post. I thought I might mention this video of Masato Honda, a Japanese woodwind doubler and fusion/smooth jazz artist, but Gandalfe at The Bis Key Chronicles beat me to the punch today with this post featuring another video, of Mr. Honda’s really nice saxophone playing. Read More “Masato Honda plays recorder”
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I’ve been having fun with woodwinds enhanced with pickups or microphones. (If you’re interested in natively-electronic instruments like wind controllers, I’ve written about those elsewhere.)
I still have a lot to learn about working with electronics. But here are a few observations in case anyone finds them helpful.
Which instrument(s) to use? I find lower-pitched instruments to be more fun, since they can provide convincing bass lines. Electronics can pitch a high instrument down, of course, but I haven’t had the success I would like making this sound good. So far I’ve installed pickups into a bassoon bocal, a bass clarinet neck, and an English horn bocal. I’ve used microphones for other instruments.
Which gadgets to use? I’m personally using the Little-Jake pickups, a looper, and a multi-effects unit. When I started getting into effects pedals, I found it alarmingly easy to accumulate quite a few. This was a good and inexpensive way to get started. But I quickly discovered that it was becoming unwieldy to try use use more than a few in performance (I literally had to walk back and forth across the stage to get to them all). A multi-effects unit turned out to be much more practical, with a few foot switches I can configure to operate a large number of effects. (I’m currently using one by Boss.) It takes a little more advance setup than individual pedals, but greatly simplifies the onstage footwork. And I was pretty easily able to sell off the individual pedals to fund the purchase.
Which effects to use? I think the best-known guitar-type effects are distortion, delay/echo, and reverb. Those are fun to play with, but I’ve become more interested in ones I can use to give my instruments new capabilities, rather than just give their sounds a little grittiness or echo. For example, smart harmonizers (which add harmony lines based on a selected key) and pitch shifters (which add harmony lines based on selected intervals) make my instruments polyphonic, a significant upgrade for a woodwind player. And a looper, or even a cleverly-used delay, can create counterpoint.
Here are a few examples of my experiments:
There are eight audio tracks here, but each one is performed “live.” I’m trying to somewhat replicate sounds from the original song: two vocal parts, two guitars, piano, electric piano, and electric bass, plus various synthesizer lines that I’ve consolidated into one. I’m using harmonizers and pitch shifters on the “guitars” and “keyboards” to perform chords in real time. I’m also pitch shifting the “bass” to let the English horn play much lower than its natural range.
I’m using a harmonizer here similarly to how I used it in the English horn video, but you can get a better view of what that involves footwork-wise. I’m using several carefully-programmed footswitches to change the harmonizer’s parameters as I go, in order to get the chromatic harmony that I want. On the A sections of the tune, I’m also using a pitch shifter to double the melody up an octave. The separate bass part that starts at about 0:28 uses pitch shift to drop the sound down an octave.
This is an example of using a looper (the red unit) to layer multiple lines, while using the multi-effects unit (black) to do real-time harmony and some other things. The “bass” part, shifted down two octaves, isn’t as convincing as I would like (you may have to use earphones to hear it).
Here’s a live-performance example using looper plus multi-effects unit.
Here I’m using the multi-effects unit to perform the melody “call” and harmonized “response” (unfortunately distorted and too soft), and using the looper to provide backing for an improvised solo.
Here’s an attempt to replicate one of Paul Hanson’s incredible electric bassoon “hocket” performances (I fell a bit short). The technique uses a delay to create a single well-timed echo, with the result being that I’m only playing every other note you hear; the in-between notes are echoes of previously-played ones. To get the full effect, check out Paul’s video.
This one you can actually buy sheet music for; the arranger, Melissa Keeling, provides parameters for using a harmonizer and a delay (which could be separate pedals or functions of a multi-effects unit).
Thank you. I had my beginning flute players recite “tip of the tongue behind the teeth.” I then told them. “Every time you said ‘t’ that’s where you tongue.” That seemed to work fairly well.
Brett,
your description makes sense. Noticed that I felt more confident this week at band rehearsal—a community band — usually now play 2nd flute.
You are correct that having a physically accurate description of what is happening is reassuring.
I try to be very careful in my descriptions; and be clear when using imagination to accomplish or reinforce an experience.
Hey Bret! I was wondering if you find this “fiction” to be true for clarinet also. I have never tongued with the tip of my tongue on the tip of my reed, and I find that when students do that they create a thin articulation.
Thank you. I had my beginning flute players recite “tip of the tongue behind the teeth.” I then told them. “Every time you said ‘t’ that’s where you tongue.” That seemed to work fairly well.
Brett,
your description makes sense. Noticed that I felt more confident this week at band rehearsal—a community band — usually now play 2nd flute.
You are correct that having a physically accurate description of what is happening is reassuring.
I try to be very careful in my descriptions; and be clear when using imagination to accomplish or reinforce an experience.
The ultimate test— Does it sound good.
Hey Bret! I was wondering if you find this “fiction” to be true for clarinet also. I have never tongued with the tip of my tongue on the tip of my reed, and I find that when students do that they create a thin articulation.
What do you think?
No, I believe this applies to flute only, and I recommend tip-of-tongue, tip-of-reed for clarinet.