| If you play a few musical instruments rather badly, then there are three ways to go: give up, improve, or play more (badly). For a long time I tried option one, but it never quite worked out; option two is of course out of the question; so that leaves option three....
The trouble is that woodwind instruments, which are all that I know, are rotten with different fingerings and other peculiarities. If the ramblings on this page have a focus, it is my effort to expand the scope of my bad woodwind playing without facing up to any more of these problems than are absolutely unavoidable. In particular it is about sticking to two fingerings (the C and F fingerings corresponding to the descant and treble recorders), and avoiding transposing instruments and 'authentic' (i.e. A≠440) pitches. | ||||||||||
| Recorder | I reckon I've been playing the recorder for around 45 years. Coo.
Although recorders were originally made in various keys and local pitches, all this was essentially ironed out by the Dolmetsch revival. Okay, recorders can be had at the artificial 'baroque' pitch of A=415, and you can get oddities such as voice-flutes (tenor recorders in D): but avoid these and recorders are arguably among the most logically organized woodwind instruments around. Because its bore is a contracting cone, instead of the expanding cone of the oboe and bassoon, or the cylinder of the Boehm flute and clarinet, the recorder has excellent cross-fingerings — meaning that you don't need keys (on the smaller sizes) to play in tune, and so it can be played very fast. (The manic speed of Irish flute music relies on a similar arrangement.) Its minimalist design also allows recorders to be moulded in vast quantities, making it the primary-school blower of choice, and contributing to its rather dodgy reputation. A more insidious problem, in my view, is the history and practice of playing recorders in consorts, an activity into which recorder players inevitably gravitate. Sure, there are flute bands, saxophone quartets, double-reed ensembles, and the rest; but they are not seen as the main vehicles for these instruments. It doesn't need to be like that: the renaissance 'mixed consort' is well known, and there are quite a few baroque compositions in which recorders fit in with other instruments and voices. The incisive 'chiff' of a recorder adds citrus overtones to the complex musical perfume of a mixed ensemble that no other instrument — and certainly not the flute — can replicate: listen to Bach's second Brandenberg or Schutz Christmas Story. But unfortunately a lot of citrus notes are a formula for air freshener rather than perfume. One factor that militates against the use of recorders in mixed ensembles today is that standard instruments don't really make enough noise, especially at the bottom end of their compass. This is now being addressed by manufacturers, who are producing 'modern recorders', which are longer and have wider bores. These modifications have to be paid for by the provision of a couple of keys to allow the player to reach the lowest holes, even on a descant. But overall I think it's well worth it. Mollenhauer seem to have the widest range of 'modern' recorders, some of which have a bassoon-like 'whisper key' to improve the dynamics. I tried a couple of the less elaborate ones a while back, but ended up with a Moeck 'Ehlert' descant. It's a bit tricky to keep the windway clear, and there is the odd change to fingerings that use the lowest holes; but it allows a much punchier rendition of pieces like those in Van Eyck's Fluiten-Lusthof than you can manage — meaning, than I can manage — on a standard instrument. You really have to wonder why no one thought of this when they were phasing out the recorder around 1750, when plenty of other instruments had or were acquiring keys. Oh well. | |||||||||
| Flute & piccolo | The flute is usually seen as the obvious progression for the recorder player, and years ago I acquired a Moeck renaissance flute, although long after I'd learned the clarinet. That old flute isn't in bad condition today, considering that it's made of soft pearwood and never had a case (a defect that I just remedied). I also had a baroque flute for a while, but couldn't get on with it; and it was pricey, so I sold it.
The baroque flute, with its recorder-like conical bore, was developed through the 19th century, the mechanics evolving gradually, until Boehm introduced the 3-octave-plus metal object that twinkles away when you watch a symphony orchestra on TV — and which has the same cylindrical bore as the renaissance flute: that's circularity for you. The conical-bore instruments remaining in the oxbow lake left behind by flute development were, and still are, used by folk and Celtic musicians, and are often called Irish flutes. These flutes are usually described as being 'in D', which is their lowest note, and the instrument favours playing in D and related keys, where a great deal of traditional music is to be found. Irish flutes typically have 0 to 6 keys; but they can have what is called a 'C foot', which takes the lowest note down to C, which is the same as most modern Boehm flutes. This is all rather confusing, but both modern flutes 'in C' and 'Irish' flutes 'in D' — with or without a C foot — actually use variants of the standard descant recorder fingering. I have a couple of these 'Irish' flutes (one in D, one in C), but neither is exactly in playable condition at the moment. I also picked up one of the many, many six-key piccolos that are to be found on eBay. This one cost 40 quid and I had it repadded for a similar sum. It's not bad for the money, although it's a lot more difficult to get high notes than on the flute. However, a while ago I discovered Peter Worrell, who makes a delectable range of small flutes for blood-and-thunder and other wind bands. These fellows seem to play in funny keys and even sharp pitch (that's Ulster for you). But I have been persuading Mr Worrell to make a six-key piccolo at concert pitch. I have tried a prototype, and so has this chap, who actually knows what he is doing. I am avidly awaiting a production model. | |||||||||
| Clarinet | I have never really heard a satisfactory explanation why orchestral clarinets are in Bb. (However, once you accept that you are stuck with a clarinet in Bb, is plain as a pikestaff why you need another in A.) The explanation usually touted is that the Bb clarinet was considered to sound better. But pitches were high during the 19th century, when a lot of the clarinet repertoire was being composed; so, if the exact length of a clarinet is a big deal, you'd need a B clarinet to give an authentic sound for, say, a Puccini opera. Wouldn't you? But does anyone suggest this? Not that I've noticed. I think it is more plausible to recollect that the pitches and keys of instruments, and indeed their design in general, were much more varied when the clarinet was being invented and improved, and the dice just came down on Bb. Whereas recorders went into disuse and could reinvented in a logical set of keys, clarinets never did; so we get what to keep what Schubert et al. had to hand. (If anyone can point me at any really good reason for the usual clarinet being in Bb, I would be very interested.)
The key of Bb is great for military bands. (But why are they in Bb too, eh?) However, it is appalling for traditional music of a flutey variety, which is often in sharp keys as I have already remarked. And the easiest key for the guitar is E, which lands a Bb clarinet in, er, um, F#. Yikes! Arguably, D would be the best key for a traditional-music clarinet, and the Denners, who invented the instrument, did indeed produce clarinets in D. But you would still have a transposing instrument. Simply making a clarinet in C avoids transpsition, and makes sharp keys a lot easier. And, despite what you might think, there are plenty of clarinets in C out there — and I don't mean the 100-quid children's efforts (which will presumably 'do' for the clarinet in the same way that the plastic descant has 'done' for the recorder). In my yoof I was taught clarinet on a Bb Boehm like everyone else. Later, I bought a reproduction of a Denner in C, made by Brian Ackerman; but it is not too practical. The problem right at the centre of the clarinet (but also a source of its versatility) is the interval of a twelfth between the chalumeau and clarino registers, caused by the cylindrical bore. To negotiate this relatively large interval requires five keys: but the baroque clarinet only has two of them. In the late 18th and early early 19th century, a 'minimum feasible' five-key configuration became standardised; and many, many boxwood clarinets with five — or maybe a few more — keys were produced in England (largely in London) and elsewhere, implying widespread amateur use in town and church bands. You can tell that there were loads because there are still a lot around, two centuries later. The other bizarre piece of good fortune for the today's wannabe early clarinet player is that the prevailing pitch in England at that point happened to be somewhere around A=440. I bought a six-key clarinet a while ago from Pamela's Music for somewhat over £200. This is, admittedly, rather at the low end of the price range for authentic Georgian clarinets; but this is a composite instrument, with joints from at least three different manufacturers (Messrs Bilton, Clementi, and Gerock — making it a sort of clarinet-history kebab). Boxwood is naturally prone to cracks, and it was apparently standard practice to discard the hopelessly cracked joints of several instruments and assemble the remainder. Thus the joints of my machine can be assumed to have been well tried: and indeed after 200 years and my own ministrations they show no sign of any cracking whatsoever — touch wood! This Bilton-Clementi-Gerock has six keys: the five essential ones, plus a trill key, which I find useful in various cheats to get over the problems that still surround 'getting over the break' on these early instruments. (And I am prepared to bet that my predecessors found them useful for the same purpose, although no information about cheap-and-dirty clarinet technique seems to be available.) A sixth trill key is common on English clarinets of the period, whereas the Continentals fitted a different key that favoured improved tone rather than fingerwork So there I was, clutching five cylinders of boxwood, brass, and well-and-truly CITES-exempt ivory. What chance, I wondered, of getting this antique to play at all, let alone in tune? Nevertheless, I decided to restore it myself: there are only six keys, after all, and the pads (like those on the earliest clarinets) are rectangular, which makes it a doddle to cut bits of leather to fit. The only real difficulty turned out to be that some twerp had replaced one of the brass pivot wires with steel, which had rusted, making it impossible to get it out without doing some damage. But that was rectified, the instrument oiled and assembled. Original mouthpieces are very rare on these instruments, but I was told that an Eb clarinet mouthpiece would work fine, so an entry-level Eb clarinet mouthpiece was duly purchased. And, reader, I played it: pretty much first time, and pretty much at modern concert pitch. Whoo-hoo! (However, the tuning of the cross-fingerings is highly questionable: being a composite instrument cannot help.) If you listen to a recording of early clarinet music played by professional specializing in original instruments, you might wonder why Herr Boehm bothered. But the limitations of these early clarinets become forcibly apparent to lesser mortals. So after a bit I decided to look for a reasonable simple-system clarinet in C, which would allow me to play slightly more complex music rather more easily while using similar fingerings to the Georgian instrument. I now have a Conn from the 1960s, which is made of ebonite, thus eliminating the possibility of cracks — unless you drop it, of course. I'm getting the hang of it; and it's pleasant to slide around the low-profile keywork — with rollers 'n' all — after the awkward sticky-uppy brass levers of the Bilton-Clementi-Gerock, bless it. The main problem with the simple-system design seems to be a slightly awkward fingering for f, so the user-friendliest keys are G and D. This makes it excellent for folk tunes, in stark contrast to the Bb instrument. | |||||||||
| Saxophone | The saxophone is — more or less — a metal clarinet with a conical bore, and therefore it overblows at the octave. (I say 'therefore', but the acoustic equations are not exactly intuitive. Obviously, the sax has a markedly conical bore; what I want to know is, what happens if you made a sax with a slightly conical bore? Could you construct an instrument that might overblow at the octave or the twelfth? Or would it fail to overblow altogether? Who knows? You do? Then e-mail me, please.)
Whatever its physics, Sax's design was a winner, although he wasn't always so successful: many of the other instruments he invented have sunk without trace, and apparently he went bankrupt twice. Of course, the initial success of the saxophone wasn't built on the lippy noise it contributes to jazz, of which the 1840s were blissfully innocent. No. Saxophones were intended to introduce a string tone into military and other outdoor bands, for which real string instruments are not suitable. You may be surprised to hear that this unlikely goal was realized, and apparently the French army adopted them almost immediately. That is why modern saxophones are in the 'military-band' keys of Bb and Eb. Sax also designed a second family of instruments in C and F, for orchestral use, but these were largely stillborn (although some early examples do exist, and some 19th-century composers did write orchestral pieces requiring a sax). Despite the saxophone becoming perhaps the pre-eminent jazz instrument, saxes were (and are still) used in military bands. Allegedly, Uncle Sam required so many saxophones to fight World War I that the major US manufacturers such as Conn and Buescher were worried that the subsequent disposal of government inventory would depress prices. At least, this is one theory for the belated production of saxophones in C (but not in F) in the Roaring Twenties. With prohibition in force, these instruments were apparently intended for 'home use' round the piano, rather than evoking the dubious world of the speakeasy. (Memo to self: what is a speakeasy?) The C version of the tenor sax is known as the C-melody or C-mel, and the C version of the soprano is called, er, the C-soprano. In general, they have the reputation of having a 'stuffy' tone, but this seems largely to be associated with the type of mouthpieces that were supplied with them, which have small chambers inside and provide a very small gap under the reed. By all accounts, this design was intended for amateur players; but the period mouthpieces I have tried are anything but easy to play. There's a PhD waiting for someone who can explain the design and original use of these saxophones and their mouthpieces. Anyway, a couple of years ago I acquired a 20s Holton C-sop and a Conn C-mel in fair condition, both from the US, and had them fixed up by a wizard, a.k.a. Chris McNeilly. Holton saxes generally have a poor reputation, although the C-sop is usually cited as an exception. This didn't stop Chris pointing at various examples of misaligned keywork and describing my Holton as the worst-manufactured sax he had ever seen. Nevertheless, he got it going and admitted it has a good tone. I have been getting to grips with it ever since. Whereas many C-sops are only keyed up to eb'' this one goes all the way to f'', which is one of the reasons I bought it. However, this mythical f'' has so far been of no use to me whatever as I can only play it with a very hard reed and a lot of luck. I have tried a total of six mouthpieces so far, the best being a Babbitt and a Pillinger. But I still struggle to find reeds that will allow me get the palm-key notes and the lowest notes at the same time. C-mels are meant to be much more readily responsive; and it didn't take nearly as long to get the Conn to parp and mew its way from top to bottom in a fairly plausible manner (again using a Babbitt mouthpiece — sponsorship invited). But string tone? Not yet.
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| French bassoon | As every fule kno, the bassoon derives from the renaissance curtal or dulcian. Like other woodwind instruments, it gradually sprouted keys. In the 19th-century the French kept adding more of these, while the Germans redesigned the instrument completely. At the beginning of the 20th century there was, therefore, a VHS vs. Betamax struggle going on in the bassoon world. To cut a long story short, the more powerful German bassoon (or Faggott) came out on top, and the possibly more refined French bassoon (or basson) started to disappear from orchestras. Vorschprung dürch Technik! In the UK the change was precipitated by a 1930 visit by the New York Phil, who had already adopted the German bassoon. Soon every UK orchestra wanted players of the German instrument, and some had to change over rather quickly. The French bassoon is now rare, even in France.
Nominally, the bassoon is in F, with the same fingering as a treble recorder: or, more accurately a contrabass recorder in F, which is a rocket-like object that you sometimes spot at recorder players' conventions. Anyway, this standard fingering gets you going, but there is a great deal of weird stuff to press on a bassoon, whichever flavour you opt for. The great advantage of the French bassoon to the dabbler is that no one else wants them now: instruments by well-regarded manufacturers come up regularly on eBay and elsewhere, at the price of a low-end washing-machine rather than a small car. My current instrument is a student-model Buffet Crampon, and most of the joints are made of maple rather than rosewood. This at least saves on weight. It came from a school and hard a hard life: there are several repairs, including a couple of new tenons grafted on, and there is an ineradicable smell of Jeyes fluid in the bore, no doubt dating from a historic struggle with some biohazard, which I don't like to think about too much. Nevertheless, it blows well. Just finding a fingering chart for the French bassoon isn't easy. There is a somewhat simplified one in Anthony Baines' Woodwind Instruments and their History, and a more detailed chart is attached to an article by Gerald Corey called "How to make the French bassoon work" (J. Int. Double Reed Soc., May, 1973). The latter was at one time available on the Web, but the IDRS journal seems to have disappeared behind a paywall. However, the same information is still available on the IDRS site, if in a rather inconvenient form. The Baines and Corey fingerings are far from identical, and it is generally agreed that the French-bassoonist needs to find out what works on their own instrument; then they need to remember it. To facilitate this, I have constructed an HTML fingering chart on which to record the fingerings that 'work' on my Buffet. I plan to make it available here in due course. However, although its high notes are meant to be one of the glories of the French bassoon, I fear they fail my cost-effectiveness test, and you will find my chart somewhat truncated at the upper end. | |||||||||
| Oboe & musette | I have always reckoned the oboe to be the most Third Programme of the woodwind instruments, which is silly really as it is descended from the medieval shawn — which was a boisterous device, and probably not very soothing to hear played outside your front door if you had the plague or whatever. It has many relatives in non-Western music today, making it, in fact, rather more of a World Service instrument.
I am planning to get the hang of the oboe — if only for completeness — but my efforts so far have been limited to the acquisition of an instrument by a well-known maker (namely, 'Foreign') at a bargain price from a local charity shop. This construction is not quite as bad as it sounds, but requires some metal-bending to set it in order. I also have a little musette, which is a 'pastoral' oboe in F. It is yet another six-key instrument, but the arrangement is somewhat different to either the six-keyed flute or clarinet. An interesting feature is that the right-hand little finger closes what would be half-hole on a recorder, so that the musette's lowest note is F# and not the F you would expect. This is obviously designed to cope with folk tunes in D and, especially, A and G: there are a surprising number of these that don't go below F# and can be played without transposition. The sound of the musette is pure shepherds' half-holiday, and it's not difficult to make a reasonable noise. There are a few about and I don't know why it isn't more widely played.
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| Cornett | Just one cornetto....
In the 70s, I indeed possessed just one of the late lamented Christopher Monk's early resin cornetts. One was enough. In fact, most people seemed to think that one was too many. Firstly, in retrospect, the metal mouthpiece that came with it cannot have been ideal; secondly the right-hand holes were too far apart for my fingers; and thirdly, like all 'standard' cornetts, it plays a scale that it one tone above that of standard F woodwind instruments. But, for some reason which has never been explained to my entire satisfaction, the cornett is not considered to be a transposing instrument, and you are expected to play the notes as written. This is no pareticular disadvantage to players learning from scratch or, more likely, coming from a brass instrument, who know no better (although I gather that brass players have their own troubles with the tiny mouthpiece); and I suppose it would be if fine you could transpose with the facility of a good organist. But keeping this G fingering and the standard F fingering in my head simultaneously has always defeated me. And since none of my friends and relations seemed overwhelmingly keen for me to retain the Monk cornett, I sold it. Fast forward, as they say, to 2004, when I decided to re-enter the fray with one of John MCann's cornettinos (or possibily cornettini), authentically constructed from boxwood covered in leather. It has to be said that the cornettino goes no higher than the ordinary cornett, and thus its range is much less; but this seems a small price to pay for an instrument with holes that fit my fingers. A cornettino mouthpiece is teeny-weeny, and the main drawback of this instrument turns out to be the low rate at which it uses air. Despite what you might imagine, this is not a good thing: one has to find enough spaces in the music to breathe out as well as in, which is by no means easy. (Oboists have the same problem: but they're used to it.) And now, I'm afraid, one cornetto is not enough: I have another. It came to me a while back that it should be possible to obtain a cornett with a standard F fingering, i.e. a tone lower than usual, which would nevertheless be perfectly playable by me if the holes were in the right places. Further, by adding one more hole, with a key, it would actually go down to F, instead of the current arrangement by which cornett players are expected to 'lip down' a tone to the alleged lowest note of their instrument. (Thus the lowest note of the standard cornett is always quoted as G, although closing the lowest hole in the ordinary way gives A. And the holes on the cornettino take it down to d. I can sometimes fudge a c# on mine, with execrable tone. The bottom c remains a figment of the fingering chart.) The answer turned out to be an alto cornett from Andrew Hallock in the S-shape of a lysard (that's another name for a tenor cornett in C). This design locates the right-hand holes on an inside curve, bringing them well within the pathetic span of my tiny (if not frozen) hand. Also, it's very much easier to blow than the cornettino; and the extra hole, plus key, makes G#/Ab much more reliable than shading a hole. | |||||||||
| Bonus (well, more) tracks featuring multiple instruments | I never owned one of the original cassette-based multi-track recorders, and have entered directly into the wonderful world of budget digital multi-trackers: which are a lot of fun, but whether someone like me should be allowed out with one is another matter. For the unintiated, the idea is that you record one instrument after another, while the machine plays back what you've already done (plus a very useful metronome signal) through headphones. The geek might wish to know that I am using one of the internal mics on a Zoom R16, in an over-upholstered room with a very flat acoustic that does duty as a recording studio. The tracks are mixed using Audacity, and a little bit of reverb is added. That's about all I've worked out how to do so far.
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The first verse of a patrio-comic song at Spanish expense. A nice bouncy vocal line, accompanied by C-soprano sax and French bassoon, playing parts interpolated from the piano accompaniment in British Minstrelsie (1899). Goes increasingly pear-shaped towards the end.
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