Why my college band chair placements ended up not mattering a bit

ByBret Pimentel

Over 20 years ago, I was a brand-new music performance major. This is a story about that first year of college that I’ve told many times to my own college students.

I arrived at college with the confidence granted me by a freshly-minted high school diploma and a track record of first-chair saxophone school band placements. I eagerly auditioned for the university concert bands and jazz bands, and was gutted to find myself placed not only in the lowest groups (the #3 band in both cases), but doubling up parts with other players. Devastatingly, a fellow freshman saxophonist landed spots in both the #1 groups.

It was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I hit the practice rooms hard, gradually worked my way up, and in my senior year finally got spots in both top bands. By that time I had gotten serious about woodwind doubling, and earned a fun and important spot in the top concert band outside the saxophone section. And I got the lead alto chair in the top jazz band (and couldn’t help but enjoy a little that the classmate I had envied so much was sitting second).

Had I gotten the seats I wanted right away, maybe I would have coasted through college. And it’s possible I never would have developed an interest woodwind doubling, which now is central to the career that I enjoy so much. Looking back now, having those particular chairs in those particular semesters seems very unimportant, but my growth during those years laid the groundwork for two graduate degrees and a life in playing and teaching music.

Whatever your current stage in your musical development, there are bigger and better things to come. How you measure up to others matters much less than what you’re doing to get to your own next level.

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  • Five little things that will make a difference in your next performance, audition, or competition

    ByBret Pimentel

    When I listen to young and advancing woodwind players at the high school level (masterclass participants, scholarship or honor band auditionees, competition participants), I often think that there are some small fixes that would make a big difference in their success. There’s no substitute for lessons with a qualified teacher, but these improvements are easy and set you apart from the rest:

    • Slow down a little. Speed is only impressive if your playing is clean, even, and precise. If taking a slightly slower tempo gives you better accuracy and control, do it.
    • Breathe intentionally. Where you breathe in the music makes a huge difference in your phrasing. Never just play until you run out of air. Find places to breathe that sound natural. If you’re not sure, listen to a recording of a good player and copy their breaths, or record yourself and notice what sounds right or wrong. Mark the breaths in (all of them!) and practice them carefully until they are a habit.
    • Do bigger dynamics. Even if you think you are already following the dynamic markings, make your softs softer and your louds louder.
    • Choose reeds wisely. I hear lots of ambitious young players using reeds that are much too hard. If a little softer reed allows you to play with ease and comfort, you will probably sound better. And a performance isn’t the time to use a brand-new one, or one that is past its prime. A week or two ahead, break in some new reeds and pick the best 2-3 to have on hand.
    • Relax. Tension is the biggest thing that tanks even well-prepared performances. Practice releasing the tension in your body. As you feel tension creep back in, release it again. Take advantage of rests or other pauses in the music to release once more. Try a pre-performance ritual like box breathing to reduce your adrenaline response, focus and calm your mind, and steady your hands.

    Sometimes the smallest adjustments make the biggest difference. If you are an advancing player, which of these do you think would help you the most? If you’re a teacher, what small fixes do you recommend most?

  • |

    Persistence

    ByBret Pimentel

    A famous big-shot clarinet professor told me once that I would never really be a clarinetist.

    He was quite possibly correct.

    But for now I’m still at it.

  • Sharp, flat, and natural symbols on Android and iOS devices

    ByBret Pimentel

    There are lots of ways to handle music symbols like sharps (♯), flats (♭), and naturals (♮) on iPhone/iPad and Android devices:

    • Not recommended: Use a pound/hash/number sign for sharp, and a lower-case b for flat. It’s ugly and unprofessional, and in some cases unclear, plus there’s not an obvious solution for natural.
    • Spell it out. Use forms like F-sharp, B-flat, or C-natural. Use a capital letter for the note name, then a hyphen (no spaces), then the name of the accidental in lowercase. For appropriate situations, this version is easy, clear, professional, and doesn’t require any special tools or setup.
    • Copy and paste. You can copy and paste symbols from a place you know them to exist, like a web page or your favorite notes app, using your device’s copy/paste method.
    • Use the built-in clipboard. My Android phone has a clipboard history, so if I have cut/copied/pasted the symbols recently, I can use them again. (Not all Android devices have this feature.) I tap and hold where I want the symbol to appear, and then choose the Clipboard popup. Then I can scroll through recent clipboard items and find the symbol I want. I can tap the symbol to paste it, or tap and hold to get the option of locking it to the clipboard so it will always be there.
      As far as I can tell iOS does not currently have this feature.
    • Use a clipboard app. For example, Clipper – Clipboard Manager on Android will let me create “snippets” that I can access from a persistent notification, and copy to my clipboard for pasting into text. Copied on iOS also provides ways of saving clipboard items for future use [update: app appears to have been removed from App Store].
    • Use autocorrect. On my Android phone, I can add words to the “personal dictionary” to incorporate them into the autocorrect feature. (On my device it’s in Settings → General management → Language and input → Personal dictionary, but on yours it might be different.) My preferred method is to add -sharp or -flat or -natural as the shortcut, and paste in the symbol as the “word.” Then, when I type A -flat, my phone offers the symbol as a correction. Notice there’s a space after the A. That’s because my phone won’t offer an autocorrection for a partial “word,” like the -flat in A-flat, so I have to trick it by putting in a space, which I can delete after accepting the autocorrect. I could get around this by adding a separate personal dictionary entry for each note, like A-flat, B-flat, C-flat, and so on.
      On iOS, use Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement, and tap + to add -sharp etc. as the shortcut and the symbol as the phrase. As with Android, this requires typing the note name and then a space before the -sharp.
    • Use a text replacement app. On Android I like Texpand. I can create a phrase with, for example, -flat as the abbreviation, and ♭ as the phrase (paste it in), then enable that phrase’s “Expands immediately” and “Expands within words” options. Then typing E-flat immediately corrects to E♭ in any phone app. (This is my current favorite Android solution.)
      On iOS TextExpander + Keyboard offers similar functionality but requires using a special keyboard and does not appear to have an “Expands within words” option, so you must type the note name, then a space, then -sharp.
    • Use a special characters app. Something like Character Pad – Symbols works well on Android. Use the search function to find the symbol you want, then tap the heart to add it to your favorites, or tap COPY and it will automatically be added to your “Recents.”
      iOS has similar apps available, such as Unicode Map and Code Table. Use its search function to find the symbol you want, and it is automatically added to your “Frequently Used” list.
    • Use a custom keyboard. Some keyboard apps (such as CustomKey Keyboard on Android) will let you customize the key layout, so you can add any special characters you want.
      On iOS, Keyboard Characters & Symbols provides access to lots of symbols, including musical ones, and it’s easy to switch between it and your other favorite keyboards. (This is my current favorite iOS solution.)

    Using the correct symbols is the right choice for clear, professional communication about music. Do you have another solution for using these symbols on mobile devices? If so, please share in the comments.

  • Basic tuplet math

    ByBret Pimentel

    A young music student with some basic competencies might be comfortable with these kinds of rhythms:
    tuplet-mathBut these are a little trickier to pull off well:

    tuplet-math-1 tuplet-math-2

    Divisions of the pulse into twos and threes is simple enough conceptually, but in most cases we really learn those kinds of rhythms better by ear—we just learn what eighth notes or triplet eighths sound like against a quarter note pulse. A division of the pulse into fourths, like sixteenth notes against a quarter note pulse, is something that could ostensibly be derived: you could start from a duple subdivision, then make the mental shift to hearing the subdivided pulse as the new pulse, then subdivide that. But the quadruple subdivision is common enough that I think most of us ultimately learn to play it by ear, too.

    The quarter- and half-note triplets in the first two bars of the example above are a little harder to place accurately, I think, because the “extra” pulses are hard to ignore. If I can somehow mentally block out the pulses (audible or implied) on beats two and four in the first measure, then I’m playing three notes per pulse again, and that’s really no different than, say, eighth-note triplets in 4/4. Same thing for the second bar: if I can tune out the pulses on beats two, three, and four, then I’m just playing that same triple subdivision.

    One approach to this problem is to simply learn the less-familiar subdivision by ear. Music notation software is the perfect tool for this; with a little skill you can usually enter rhythms as complex as you like, and hear them played back with the utmost precision against a pulse of your choice. But here are a couple of other useful tricks.

    Trick #1: Subdivide long-duration triplets

    To play triplets against a duple or quadruple pulse, you can derive them from triplets played against a single pulse. For example, this rhythm…

    tuplet-math-1

    …can be derived in this way:

    tuplet-math-3

    Trick #2: Approximate complex tuplets with duple/triple subdivisions

    “Tuplets” that are prime numbers greater than three can be difficult to audiate on the fly. But in many cases (not all cases) there is some room for complex tuplets to be somewhat less than perfectly even. For example, a composer might write a scalar “run” that contains a certain collection of pitches that doesn’t divide neatly into the number of beats allotted, and use a tuplet to make them fit into the score in a legible way. In such a case, it might be appropriate for the run to accelerate or decelerate a bit. If so, the tuplet can be reimagined as a series of duple, triple, or quadruple subdivisions.

    This, for instance…

    tuplet-math-2…could be approached like this (with a slight acceleration effect on each tuplet)…

    tuplet-math-4…or like this (with a slight deceleration effect on each triplet:

    tuplet-math-5Rewriting the rhythms into duple/triple/quadruple subdivisions of the pulse makes it easier to practice these rhythms methodically and consistently with a metronome, and allows for some anchoring which ran really solidify longer runs. Even if the intention is eventually to play the tuplet with more exact evenness, practicing them this way can help to shore up technique in the early stages.

  • Preventing accidents with pencil marks

    ByBret Pimentel

    After some recent windy weather I saw someone in my neighborhood cutting up some fallen tree branches with a chainsaw. He wore jeans and sneakers and handled the saw with something less than familiarity.

    Later, I saw a professional tree removal crew working at a similar task. They operated their chainsaws expertly and with confidence, and wore helmets, eye and ear protection, and heavy protective clothing.

    I thought the amateur might really be the one in need of safety gear. But the professionals showed up equipped to do the job right, do it promptly, and do it without mishaps. Read More “Preventing accidents with pencil marks”

  • Why I don’t loan out instruments

    ByBret Pimentel

    I am slowly building a good collection of high-quality instruments. It’s not easy to do that on a graduate student’s budget; I accomplish it by living frugally, saving carefully, shopping around, and generally putting a great deal of thought and planning into each purchase. I don’t buy instruments on credit. I protect my investments with conscientious care and maintenance, as well as an excellent insurance policy by a company that specializes in musical instrument coverage. (Incidentally, this policy quickly paid for itself, several times over, when there was an “incident” with my flute a couple of years ago. Seriously consider getting one if you don’t have one already!)

    Every now and then someone asks to borrow an instrument from me. Often it will be a saxophonist who needs a flute or clarinet for a gig they have already agreed to play. My policy, which I have upheld almost perfectly for several years now, is simple: I don’t loan instruments to anybody, for anything, period. Read More “Why I don’t loan out instruments”

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