Recital videos, August 2023
I’m pleased to share videos from my recent Delta State University faculty recital.
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Favorite blog posts, July 2023
- Kessler & Sons Music (David Kessler): A Selmer C* is a C* is a C* – or is it? [saxophone mouthpieces]
- DoctorFlute (Angela McBrearty): Experiment with Your Tone
- oboealli (Alli Gessner): Do you know how to use the half-hole on the oboe?
- The Vintage Clarinet Doctor – Blog (Jeremy Soule): Why Buy Vintage Clarinets?
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Favorite blog posts, May 2023
- International Clarinet Association (Di Xiaoyan and Zhai Xingxing): International Spotlight: How to Play “Pitch Bending Tones” on the Clarinet (English Version)
- Jennet Ingle | Oboist: Adding Punctuation
- The Flute Examiner (Jessica Dunnavant): Tune In, Tune Out
- Rachel Taylor Geier (flute): Earning Your Keep – 100 Ways to Make Money as a Flutist
- The Flute View (Morgan Pappas): The Importance of Having an Electronic Press Kit
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Favorite blog posts, April 2023
- DoctorFlute (Angela McBrearty): You Can’t Have a Good High Register Without Having a Really Good Low Register
- oboealli (Alli Gessner): A new perspective on teaching oboists to play softly
- The Flute Examiner (Keith Hanlon): Getting in Shape When You’re Out of Shape
- Meerenai Shim (flute): How to choose a good recording engineer/studio
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Favorite blog posts, March 2023
- International Clarinet Association (Elsa Ludewig-Verdehr and Jean Raines): Reprints from the Early Years: Music for Clarinet by Women
- HeaneyMusings – Joshua Heaney (saxophone): More than a Rough Draft: Debussy’s Rapsodie Pour Orchestre et Saxophone
- The Babel Flute (Lea Pearson): Myth-Conceptions about Breathing
- Nadina Mackie (bassoon): Talent Drills for Orchestral Excerpts
- Julie A. Linder (clarinet): Clarinet basics: pinkies
- The Flute View (Lindsey McChord): Making a Headjoint – A Fusion of Science and Art
- oboealli (Alli Gessner): Do you know the 3 elements of fast articulation?
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Experiments with electric woodwinds
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). -
Favorite blog posts, December 2022
- International Clarinet Association: Clarinet Chronicles: Repertoire as Representation (Hailey Cornell, Eric Schultz); Reprints from Early Years of The Clarinet: Bass Clarinet (Edward S. Palanker, Josef Horák, Norman Heim, Harry Sparnaay, et al)
- DoctorFlute (Angela McBrearty): Evening Out Your Registers
- Khara Wolf: Getting back in shape on the oboe; Synthetic Oboe Reed Review
- Best. Saxophone. Website. Ever. (Doron Orenstein): How to Use Breath Support to Fatten Your Sound and Fix Intonation
- Cornelius Boots – Bamboo Shakuhachi Master & Composer – Zen, New Music and Bold Creativity.: Grandmaster Boots: Shakuhachi Renegade or Champion? Dai Shihan Certification
- Joffe Woodwinds (Ed Joffe): Tribute to Gene Cipriano
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): Clarinetists’ New Year Refresh
- The Bis Key Chronicles (Jim Glass): Wood or Metal Clarinet Prediction – 1920
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Favorite blog posts, November 2022
- DoctorFlute (Angela McBrearty): How to NOT Go Flat at the End of Notes
- Jenny Maclay (clarinet): Repertoire Recommendations Based on Standard Repertoire
- oboeinsight (Patty Mitchell): Advice from an Old Musician
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Favorite blog posts, October 2022
- DoctorFlute (Angela McBrearty): Bending Pitch to Work on Intonation
- Khara Wolf (oboe/flute): Is an embouchure injury possible?
- Meerenai Shim (flute): 3rd octave contrabass flute fingering ideas
- Hodge Products, Inc.: Latest News (oboe/bassoon, Tim Hodge): Are Synthetic Reeds Better than Cane? [disclaimer: could be construed as a commercially-motivated post, but contains good information]
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