F is for Flow (air flow, that is)

By guest blogger, oboist Linda Ashworth.

After reading the blog on bowing, I knew this one had to be written, but probably not by our regular blogger. This story from David illustrates why:

“I'm the youngest of 3, and growing up my brother played horn and sister clarinet. They were always talking about and working on their embouchures. I didn't really know what that was, just that it had to do with the position of the instrument relative to your body. So when I started playing viola, I proudly stood in front of them and said, "How's my embouchure?"

Sorry David. I imagine you know what an embouchure is by now, if only by osmosis, but someone else better write this column. So with the foreknowledge that you are now reading a column written by a geneticist instead of a college English professor, here we go.....

Airflow. Without it, my instrument is mute. Wind instruments like the ones I play (English horn and it’s little sister the oboe) create sound by producing vibrations “out of thin air”. No plucking or bowing of strings to get vibration, no striking a mallet against some kind of surface. Air. Coming out of my lungs.

As a general rule, the larger the instrument, the more air is needed to produce sound. Think tuba: large mouthpiece, large diameter tubing, lots of air needed. At the other end of the spectrum is the oboe. With the smallest opening for the air to pass through of any wind instrument, oboists actually use very little air to produce their sound. The exception to this rule is flutes & piccolos, falling in a category all their own. To make sound, a flutist blows air across a hole – similar to making sound on an empty Coke bottle – and only a portion goes into the instrument. Our piccolo player Martha Uhey tells me they need more air than any other wind player. I’ve tried playing flute a couple of times and I believe her! How a flutist plays a phrase longer than 2 bars, I will never know.

In the same way that air is used to vibrate your vocal chords when you speak or sing, a second element is needed to create sound besides just that airstream. Different wind instruments offer different types of “tools” to be vibrated by that stream of air. For brass players, their lips vibrate in the mouthpiece. For single reed and double reed players (clarinets, saxophones, oboes, bassoons) there is a carefully carved bamboo reed (made from Arundo donax; see photo) that does the vibrating. And flutes – well, the best I can understand is something about the air bouncing off the interior back wall inside the flute ‘mouthhole’ that sets up vibrations in the air column. For any more than that, you’ll have to consult your local acoustician or physicist.

Ideally, a player prepares to play a musical phrase by taking a breath, and begins sound production at the exact moment defined by the music. Ideally that single breath will be enough to get through the entire phrase. Ideally, at the end of the phrase the player has time to take another breath and prepare for the next note or phrase. If only it were always that easy. In reality, planning where and how to breath can be as important for wind players as planning bowings is for string players. Maybe more. Getting caught at the end of a phrase without enough air to finish is simply not kosher.

So what do we do when the phrase is just too long for a single breath? There are lots of tricks, depending on the situation. First, if possible, you exhale deeply before inhaling in order to clear CO2 out of the lungs. Maybe more than once. That alone will allow you to extend a phrase just a bit. If the problem occurs in a tutti passage, you can plan your breathing with others, so that no one breathes in the same place, effectively hiding breaks in the phrase. In a long solo line, a wind player may need to find somewhere logical mid-phrase to sneak a quick breath, hopefully without disturbing the line of the music. This is probably the most commonly used solution. There is also something called circular breathing that some players use. It involves filling your cheeks with air while you are playing. Next this stored air is expelled from the cheeks to continue sound production while you inhale through your nose. It’s kind of a parlor trick, but can occasionally be used to good end. (If you want to try it, get a glass of water and a straw and shoot for continuous bubbles.)

Sometimes an understanding composer solves the problem of a “too-long” phrase for you. In the opening oboe solo in the Adagio of Bizet’s First Symphony, the solo is passed to the second oboist (seamlessly hopefully) so that the first oboist gets a break. Then the first comes back in to finishes the solo. Take a listen to the two oboists of the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra (of Ankara, Turkey) performing the Bizet solo – about one minute in to the movement.

Okay, here comes the hard stuff...how to make this vibration sound GOOD. The place where your instrument meets your airstream is called the embouchure (pronounced ahm-boo-sure). The embouchure is all-important for stable pitch and great tone quality for all wind instruments. What part of your lip touches the mouthpiece/reed, how much of the lip, and how firmly all matter. The reason many people think a young oboist quacks like a duck is for lack of a mature embouchure. (Okay, so some of you still think we quack like ducks.) The good news is that the muscles that form any embouchure can be trained and strengthened. Practicing keeps those muscles in good shape. Lay off playing for a week or two, and it is your embouchure that suffers the most.

In addition to the embouchure, there are several other parameters about airflow that affect the quality of the sound produced. Without going into lots of details, here’s a laundry list:

• How is the airstream started?

• How is the airstream supported?

• Is the throat open?

• Where is your jaw placed?

• Where is the tongue in the mouth?

• How fast is the air moving?

• What direction is the air moving?

• How focused is the airstream?

• What are your lips doing?

• How do you stop the airstream?

You get the idea…..there are A LOT of elements involved in controlling airflow, and the quality of the sound produced is affected by them all. Not only that, they interact. Here’s an example: In order to play a crescendo, wind musicians will make the airstream move faster. However, this also increases the pitch of the note produced. Uh oh. So how do I play a crescendo without raising the pitch of the sound? I subtly change the shape of my oral cavity as increase the airflow, which allows the volume to go up while staying in tune. Okay, okay, most of the time.

Another important element involving the airstream is also how to separate notes. We call it tonguing. Slurred notes require no tonguing, but to create any kind of note separation, wind players use their tongue to interrupt the airflow. Think “ta-ta-ta” or “da-da-da”. And for really fast notes, some players can double tongue and even triple tongue. Think “ka-ta-ka-ta” or “ta-ka-ta-ta-ka-ta”. Of course players of each instrument approach tonguing differently. There is a big difference between tonguing for brass players, whose mouthpiece sits OUTSIDE their lips, and reed players, who have something INSIDE their mouths. There could be an entire blog on this: “T is for tonguing”. Maybe a trumpeter would volunteer to write it. They are always the ones to play those fanfares with lots of tongued notes in rapid succession.

The practicalities of tonguing can sometimes run up against the dictates of fashion; for example the trend among youth today for body modification. The following quote from the web is was written in response to a sax player considering tongue piercing:

“I play the clarinet and during my senior year I got my tongue pierced. I always left it in while playing and it didn’t make a difference. I also was 1st chair and the band director never questioned me. Of course there are some contradictions as far as placement. I have a longer tongue so it was never in the way. If you have a shorter tongue, it’s possible it may be a problem, but when you “tongue” while playing it’s w/ the tip and the tip of the tongue is usually not pierced. I would recommend going to see a body piercer to see what you’re placement options are. If the piercing is placed close to the tip, there will also be a higher risk for damaging your teeth. I played after having the piercing for 3 days; there was minimal swelling left, but I was able to still play well.”

Ick. I just can’t imagine that.

Finally, just the fewest of words about airflow and vibrato. Not all wind players use vibrato. But technically speaking they could. There have been thousands of words written about how to play vibrato on oboe alone. And no, we don’t wiggle our finger like a violinist. So how do we mimic a lovely string vibrato? We have to vary speed the air travels through the instrument. It is somewhat similar to a series of swift crescendo/diminuendos. And it starts clear down in the abdomen. For those who might be interested, oboe professor Martin Shuring (Arizona State) has written a brief description of vibrato production:

http://www.public.asu.edu/~schuring/Oboe/vibrato.html.

If you’re still reading this, thank you. That’s probably enough hot air on the subject of airflow. Except for an obligatory oboe joke:

Q. How do you get an oboe to play A flat?

A. Take the batteries out of the tuner.

LKA