Woodwind doubling gigs: seven basic tips

ByBret Pimentel

Here are seven simple things you can do to make a woodwind doubling gig go more smoothly.

  1. Mistrust the pre-gig info. I had a smart doubler tell me once that I should always bring my flute and my clarinet on a big band saxophone gig. Mostly, I have taken that advice. Twice I have ignored it, and guess what? Regretted it both times. In both cases the contractor told me I would need saxophone only. Both times the contractor was mistaken. Never again. If you’re playing oboe, bring your English horn no matter what. Flute gig? Don’t leave home without your piccolo.
  2. Bring your tuner. If it’s the kind of gig where a tuning note will be given, don’t expect to have time to tune a half-dozen instruments. Arrive early enough to check each instrument ahead of time, according to the pitch level you anticipate (probably A=440 in the US). Then tune with the group on the first instrument you will be playing. If the group tunes a little flatter or sharper than you expected, at least you will know what to expect as you pick up each horn.
  3. Warm up thoroughly on each instrument. I find that once I’m well warmed up on an instrument, I’m pretty comfortable with that instrument for the rest of the day (or at least until the end of the gig), even if I play other instruments in between. For me, this is especially important on flute and piccolo—those embouchures take some good warming up even if you’re not playing any reeds.
  4. Have the right stands. Especially if you are making quick switches, having a reliable stand for each instrument makes everything go more smoothly. Setting an instrument on the ground, on its case, or across your lap takes longer, is riskier to the instrument’s well-being, and is more likely to cause an embarassing distraction. A music stand shelf is a must if you will be dealing with double reeds that need soaking, etc.
  5. Know what accessories to keep nearby. If you’re playing a lot of instruments, you will probably have to stash your cases somewhere backstage. I always grab a case full of reeds for each instrument, a mouthpiece cap for each mouthpiece, and cigarette papers if I’m playing oboe or clarinet (for removing water from toneholes). I also make sure my trusty Swiss Army penknife is in my pocket, in case I need to deal with adjustment screws or other minor mechanical issues. All this gets piled discreetly under my chair, and hopefully goes back into the cases untouched after the gig.
  6. Keep reeds and instruments wet and warm. Keep mouthpiece caps on mouthpieces where practical, and put them in a consistent place when you take them off, so you can find them again quickly. Some doublers use sponges inside mouthpiece caps for extra moisture, or use plastic sandwich bags instead. I usually just use plain mouthpiece caps, but do something to keep those reeds from drying out or getting chipped during a frantic trumpet mute change. Keep instruments warm, too, if you can, so they won’t play flat when your big solo comes up. Even a few seconds with both hands wrapped around the clarinet barrel can make the difference  getting the first note of the big solo up to pitch.
  7. Rehearse your choreography. Especially with musical theater gigs, where I’m playing a bunch of instruments with lots of quick switches and few pauses, I try to have a clear plan for getting the right instrument to my face at the right time. Arrange your instruments on stands around you, and keep that configuration from show to show. Don’t be afraid to mark your part liberally in rehearsal, especially with marks like “clip tenor on neckstrap, hold flute, and be ready to grab clarinet quickly,” which can help you under pressure to get the instruments where they need to be and prepare you mentally for what’s coming up. I might also mark something like “soak oboe reed” during a rest so it will be ready to play halfway through the next tune when I need it.

Also, try to play good.

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

    The pennywhistle (or “tinwhistle” or “Irish” whistle) is common in Irish traditional music, and has found a home in some other styles such as southern African kwela music. They appear famously in movie soundtracks such as the Lord of the Rings movies and Titanic.

    Here are some important things to know:

    • There are high-quality pennywhistles with good intonation, clear, pure tone, and nice even response. (The Burke whistles are among my favorites.) But some high-profile players of traditional Irish music prefer the chirpier, raspier, less-perfect sounds of inexpensive, mass-produced ones (such as Generation whistles). Those players might try many inexpensive whistles to find the most playable ones.
    • There are also some in-between options. The very consistent but relatively inexpensive plastic whistles from Susato have the advantages of high volume, excellent tuning, and availability in lots of keys. (They also have a reedy tone that some people find too recorder-like.) Or, there are “tweaked” whistles like those made by Jerry Freeman, inexpensive whistles with some adjustments made for better playability.
    • Pennywhistles are available in various sizes, but the way they are named doesn’t match with the conventions of orchestral wind instruments. The most common and traditional whistle is the high D whistle. These are usually notated with the instrument’s six-fingers-down note, D, appearing as D on the staff and sounding one octave higher. (By the terminology used for, say, clarinets and saxophones, this would be considered a “C” whistle.) Other whistles are named by their 6-finger note as well.
    • For non-D whistles, there aren’t firmly-established notation practices. Some notation treats them as transposing instruments, with music written so that a notated D at the bottom of the treble staff is always played as the six-finger note. In other cases, music may be written at the intended sounding pitch (or, often, one octave below, like piccolo transposition), and it is left to the whistle player to select an appropriate instrument.
    • Whistles use a simple-system fingering scheme, and are best used in mostly-diatonic contexts. Some chromatic fingerings are possible but cross-fingerings tend to be weak and half-holed fingerings are awkward in technical passages. To play in multiple keys, most whistle players keep whistles in a variety of sizes on hand. For chromatic passages, something like a soprano or sopranino recorder might be more suitable.
    • Like most fipple flutes, pennywhistles have relatively low breath requirements. The upper octaves are achieved almost entirely by overblowing, so they tend to be louder and brighter. (Some more expensive whistles are designed to “improve” on this traditional characteristic.)
    • Pennywhistles respond best to a low, open voicing.
    • Pennywhistle playing in Irish traditional music uses a sophisticated system of ornamentation and inflection inherited from bagpiping traditions. Since pipers don’t stop to breathe, whistle players use a system of placing breaths that is also somewhat unfamiliar to orchestral woodwind players, leaving out selected notes to breathe rather than trying to insert breaths between notes. For slower tunes whistle players may use a flattement-style finger vibrato. By far my favorite resource for learning these techniques is Grey Larsen’s book.

  • Clarinet pinky fingerings

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    Recently I discussed the topic of clarinet “pinky” (little finger) fingerings with my woodwind methods class. With all that school band directors have on their plates, it’s not surprising that this topic doesn’t always get taught thoroughly to beginners. It can be a bit of a puzzle to a non-clarinetist, but the important concepts can be mastered with a minimum of effort if they are taught clearly.

    This is an important thing for woodwind doublers to understand, too, since they may be bringing with them some fingering habits that worked well on their other instrument(s), but which may not apply to clarinet in the same way.

    The following notes on the clarinet require use of a pinky key:

    These notes require left hand pinky These notes require right hand pinky
    left hand pinky notes right hand pinky notes
    These notes use EITHER left or right hand pinky
    fingerings using either pinky

    Pinky keys are also used in the altissimo register, in resonance fingerings, and so forth, but for today we’ll focus on the notes in the chart. If you’re unfamiliar with the fingerings, check them out at the Woodwind Fingering Guide.

    The crucial decision-making deals with the notes in the last row of the chart, which each have two fingering possibilities—one using the left pinky, and one using the right pinky. If your clarinet is in proper adjustment, there shouldn’t be a difference in tone or intonation between the two fingerings, as they open or close the same toneholes. (With a poorly-adjusted clarinet, it’s possible for, say, one fingering to open a certain pad wider than another pad, perhaps affecting pitch and tone.) So our only criterion will be ease and precision of fingering.

    Consider this passage, and we will walk through a systematic thought process for selecting fingerings:
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  • Handout from Mid-South Flute 2010 lecture: Folk, ethnic, and period flutes for fun and profit

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    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.

  • Misconceptions about saxophone-to-clarinet doubling

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    I saw a blog post recently by a saxophonist who had been called upon to play some clarinet for a big band jazz gig. The post was full of common frustrations that saxophonists who are casual clarinet doublers face in that situation. I want to respond to some of the ideas in that post, but since it’s not my object to embarrass anyone I’m not going to name the saxophonist or link to the blog post. Also, the “quotes” I’m using here are actually paraphrases, but I believe they capture the saxophonist’s intended meaning.

    The clarinet is evil! And it sounds like a dying animal.

    I understand this is said in jest, but fear and/or contempt are not good starting points for approaching woodwind doubles. Either focus your energies on instruments you are motivated to play, or have an open mind. As with most things, you probably hate and fear the clarinet because you haven’t taken the time and effort to get to know it.

    photo, APMus
    photo, APMus

    I’m actually pretty good at the bass clarinet, though.

    I doubt it! There are plenty of saxophonists who claim they can play the bass clarinet but not the B-flat clarinet. In many, many of those cases, what the saxophonists mean is that they can use a very saxophoney approach to playing the bass clarinet—a too-low voicing, a too-horizontal mouthpiece angle, etc.—and make some kind of sound, whereas the smaller B-flat simply won’t cooperate at all with these bad techniques. Truly good bass clarinetists, however, produce a more characteristic sound because they play the instrument like what it is: a member of the clarinet family.

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    Saxophonists are spoiled by the instrument’s relatively small “standard” range and relatively simplistic fingering scheme. But I think a reasonable argument could be made that the clarinet’s system of alternate “pinky” fingerings is tidier and more flexible than the saxophone’s clunky rollers. Break out the Klosé book and learn to do it right. Read More “Misconceptions about saxophone-to-clarinet doubling”

  • Flexible EWI fingerings

    ByBret Pimentel

    With traditional woodwind instruments, the fingers work together to change the effective length of the instrument’s body tube by opening and closing toneholes. Woodwind fingerings at their most basic use the fingers in sequence. For example, a certain note might be produced with an “open” fingering (all toneholes open). When the “first” finger (the one closest to the mouthpiece) closes a hole, the pitch drops, perhaps by a whole step. Adding the next farther finger drops the pitch again, and so on toward the bell end of the instrument.

    “Forked” fingerings, in which a lower tonehole is closed while one above it is open, often produce somewhat inferior results—notes that are mismatched in timbre and/or intonation. (Some modern woodwinds use special mechanisms to correct for this, such as the F resonance mechanism on a high-quality oboe.)

    An electronic woodwind-style instrument, such as the Akai EWI series, uses a fingering system that is designed to be similar to a traditional woodwind, so that a traditional woodwind player can easily adapt to it. But this is an arbitrary choice. Since the instrument’s tone production system uses electronic circuitry and software, rather than a vibrating air column, the fingering system don’t necessarily have to use the fingers in sequence, and forked fingerings don’t have any inherent problems. The fingerings can be invented completely from scratch, with no acoustical limitations.

    EWI fingerings are designed to draw upon the best of both worlds—the familiarity of traditional woodwind fingerings, and the flexibility of a non-acoustical fingering system.

    Note that the current-model EWI4000s, using version 2.4 of the operating system, includes several fingering modes. The mode I am considering here is the “EWI” mode, as the “flute,” “oboe,” and “saxophone” modes sacrifice some flexibility for the sake of increased familiarity to traditional woodwind players. You might consider this article to be subtitled, “Why you should be using the ‘EWI’ fingering mode.”

    The current manual (“revision D”) shows a mere 17 fingerings in its EWI mode fingering chart (11 chromatic pitches, with B-flat through D having fingerings in two octaves, and B-flat having one additional alternate fingering). But many, many more are possible.

    We can consider the individual EWI keys as having individual functions, rather than being inherently interdependent. For example, pressing none of the keys produces a C-sharp:

    C-sharp

    Adding any key will alter the C-sharp pitch by a given amount:

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    (in semitones)    		 exceptions
    LH 1 -2
    LH bis -1 If both LH 1 and LH 2 are pressed, LH bis has no effect
    LH 2 -2 If LH 1 is not pressed, LH2 produces -1 (this makes LH middle finger C possible)
    LH 3 -2
    LH pinky 1 +1
    LH pinky 2 -1
    RH side +1 No effect when used in combination with LH pinky 1
    RH 1 -2 If LH 3 is not pressed, RH1 produces -1 (this makes 1 + 1 B-flat possible)
    RH 2 -1
    RH 3 -2
    RH pinky 1 +1
    RH pinky 2 -1
    RH pinky 3 -2

    If I press LH 1, LH 2, and LH 3, the pitch is lowered from C-sharp by a total of 6 semitones, producing the G fingering familiar to saxophonists, oboists, flutists, and clarinetists.

    But that is only one possible combination. I could also produce a G with, for example, LH 1, LH 2, and RH 3. Or LH 3, LH pinky 2, RH 1, and RH pinky 2. These fingerings would be extremely unlikely to work on a traditional woodwind, but with the EWI the possibilities are wide open. As long as the total pitch change adds up to -6 (and accounting for any of the listed exceptions), you get a G.

    Standard G fingering.(LH 1 + LH 2 + LH 3) = (-2 + -2 + -2) = -6 = G One alternative G fingering.(LH 1 + LH 2 + RH 3) = (-2 + -2 + -2) = -6 = G Another alternative G.(LH 3 + LH pinky 2 + RH 1 + RH pinky 2) = (-2 + -1 + -2 + -1) = -6 = G

    These examples are illustrative but likely have few real-world applications. For a more practical example, consider trills, which among traditional woodwind players are a subject of endless discussion and books upon books of awkward, complicated fingerings. An ideal trill fingering involves moving only one finger, preferably one that can be moved in a rapid, controlled, non-awkward way. Continue reading for a musical example and sound clip →

  • Voicing: stable vs. flexible

    ByBret Pimentel

    I have discussed here previously the importance of proper voicing for woodwind instruments. In a nutshell, voicing is the configuration of the oral cavity, manipulated by moving the back of the tongue.

    There seems to be some debate about voicing: is it something static, or something that changes from note to note? I find that the answer is, sort of, both.

    photo, stonelucifer
    photo, stonelucifer

    For beginning woodwind players, tone, intonation, and response (virtually every aspect of tone production) can be improved by habituating a single, stable, “correct” voicing. When this is accomplished, an ideal woodwind instrument, which of course does not exist, would play perfectly in tune, with perfectly consistent tone from note to note, and with perfectly even and reliable response.

    An instrument that is merely good will do these things well, but imperfectly. A more advanced musician can use small and temporary voicing adjustments to improve individual notes by altering their pitch, tone, or responsiveness. Doing this requires a “stable” voicing as a stepping-off point, fine control of the mechanics of voicing, and an ear trained to hear notes that are out of tune, uncharacteristic in tone, or problematic response-wise.

    So, in general, when working with beginning students or others with significant tone production issues, the goal is to work toward a stable voicing that stays the same from note to note, but with more advanced students the goal is to learn to adjust the voicing ever so slightly to improve each note as needed.

One Comment

  1. Geesh, I should have read this last week. At least it was a practice only. Apparently the regular 4th tenor player doesn’t double. Oh well, fool me once.

    Reply

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