Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2006-01-08 22:31
I attended a "Double Reed Day" yesterday sponsored by The Ohio State University music department. Robert Sorton, their oboe professor, was the oboe clinician. (The focus of this year's event was the bassoon, so the guest artist -- Arthur Weisberg -- was a bassoonist.)
Anyway, Professor Sorton talked about and demonstrated various sorts of oboe vibrato. He's a big fan of vibrato, by which he seems to mean what vboboe (above) has classified as "throat vibrato". With this sort of vibrato, the tone seems warmer, but still clear and "in tune".
He characterized the diaphragm vibrato as being too wide, too slow -- allowing a perception of change in pitch. Lip vibrato is more of a tone wobble.
He also demonstrated how to get the vibrato started, for those who haven't yet been able to get it going. He suggested actually saying a "ha" or "huh" repeatedly, as slowly as necessary, first without the oboe, then while blowing. Start it slowly, and gradually speed it up, and voila! it becomes a vibrato. He demonstrated this with a young lady who claimed not to be able to play vibrato -- she accomplished it within minutes of trying this exercise.
FWIW, I've been able to do a throat vibrato since my early excursions with the oboe -- it just seems to come naturally. Probably all those years of singing lessons . . .
He also had a way of teaching the initial attack of a tone which I found very helpful -- I will discuss that in a separate thread.
Susan
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