 The Fingering Forum
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Author: Thatoboekid
Date: 2004-01-20 20:05
I would say I'm a failr advanced high school oboist, and I have discovered that I've been vibrating very inefficiently. Theres the whole stomach vs. throat thing, and my teacher says he feels it towards his upper chest/throat, and that his stomach is expanded while he plays. He also said that he compares vibrato to panting like a dog.
I have been using my stomach, to the point where I could actually see my stomach moving and it would sometimes cause my oboe to move along with my body, which I'm sure isn't right, no professionals look like they're shaking when they play. Plus, it's so much work to get the stomach going, there's no agility in it, I can't color quick accents with a quick flurry of vibratolike a violin, and it's very difficult and tiring to play long phrases where the notes move, to connect the vibrato.
My teacher at EMF said that at my age his vibrato slowly moved up into his throat, and got faster and more varied, but I don't see this happening. SHould I just continue on to use this stomach vibrato, and do excersises with it? Or try and learn to use the throat technique? Has anyone been in this position before? Thanks for any help!
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Author: d-oboe
Date: 2004-01-21 16:32
Vibrato is produced by the larynx, felt high in the chest. This is a nasty topic, and discussing it just seems to make it worse, but in any case: Vibrato is NOT essential to an oboe sound, it is there to add effect to the music, and if there isn't any tone for it to supported by then it shouldn't be there. So anything that would compromise tone (i.e. using your stomach) is highly discouraged. What I suggest is you work on having an absolutely perfect tone first, and then try listening to professional recordings of oboists, and try to mimmick them. It will almost always come naturally. If it doesn't you will have to discuss with a professional oboist (heavens to betsy not a band teacher) to figure out a way to get it going "artificially." Other than that, there's not much you can do. But good luck with it anyways.
D-oboe
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Author: Bryan
Date: 2004-01-22 00:54
Dr. Lamar, a professional oboe player (along w/ sax and clarinet) says vibratos are almost exactly the same...vibrating the jaw, which will change the sound, and makes it sound like a real vibrato (this is the beginning way to start off), then after doing that for a year...or two....it will become natural to start doing it at the back of the throat (larynx)
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Author: d-oboe
Date: 2004-01-22 05:30
:S On oboe, lip vibrato is definitely wrong! Our pitch is very dependent on our embouchure, and any change in embouchure will affect our pitch, and to get a decent vibrato from the lips, you'd have to move them quite a bit, thereby changing the pitch too much. Go see this site for some more help on oboe vibrato:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~schuring/Oboe/vibrato.html
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Author: Thatoboekid
Date: 2004-01-23 03:13
Umm...I know how to play with vibrato already, that's not the matter, and I 've been to that site before, I've read it back and forth. I do take lessons with a professional oboist/college professor. What I'm struggling with is (and I think I've felt the chest vibrato, but it seems very unpronounced compared to diaphragm vibrato) keeping the chest vibrato under complete control, flexible, and especially in upper ranges, where a lot of support is needed.
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2004-01-23 15:03
Good God man all vibrato is <i>not</i> the same on wind instruments. Sure you can use jaw vibrato on the oboe, if you think that an unstable pitch center, poor response, a limited range of tone color, and an overall bad tone sounds musical. Sorry for the asperity, but that is just a flat no-no. How can you expect to maintain a nice, stable embouchure with tight corners, a flattened chin, and appropriate lateral support on the reed if your jaw is moving up and down, up and down, up and down, etc.?
Anyway, as to the original question. Thatoboekid, your teacher is absolutely right about feeling the vibrato coming from the larynx and upper chest area, though that varies from person to person. I personally don't feel much coming from my upper chest when I play, but rather all my vibrato seems to come from my throat. At any rate, he is also correct in that you stomach should feel somewhat expanded as you play, and that your vibrato should probably not be originating in this location.
Now granted I've never seen you play, but if you say you can see your stomach moving, I would suspect that your problems with vibrato in fact stem from how you are supporting the air. Perhaps moreso that simply feeling expanded, your stomach (and by stomach I of course mean all your abdominal muscles) should be fully activated and thus feel tight in supporting the air stream. You should feel as if the air column is originating from at least the pit of your stomach, not the chest, and this should come from the feeling of the activation of these muscles. One concept I always use to help achieve this is the idea of building an "internal resistance" to your air stream. You should feel as though you are energizing the air in your abdomen, holding onto it as tightly as possible while only allowing the fastest, most intense air to escape. This air should then remain focused up through the chest, the throat, along the roof of your mouth, and it should feel as if you are aiming it like you were trying to force it out between your eyebrows.
When it comes to vibrato then, once your stomach is thus activated, the pulsations seem to move naturally upwards toward the upper chest and throat. Really if you think about it, how can you maintain enough intensity in your stomach while at the same time constantly increasing and decreasing the force exerted by those muscles? Your abdomen should be so energized that pulsation in that area is virtually impossible. The concept of "internal resistance" is so important for everything on the oboe, including tone, intonation, response, dynamic contrast, I can't imagine what it would do to my playing if I were to try and monkey around with it by varying the pressure coming from my stomach.
I think the best thing for you to do then would be to first, not worry so much about vibrato. Then, you should step back and re-evaluate how you are supporting the tone. Is your stomach appropriately activated? Then once you are confident you have a good sense of internal resistance, with appropriate focusing of the air stream as it leaves the body, try to vibrate the tone <i>without</i> altering this base of support. If you do not move your stomach (because theoretically this would be nearly impossible with all the muscle tension there), then you will find that with practice the vibrato will naturally come from higher areas.
Anyway, hope that helps. Good luck.
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Author: Thatoboekid
Date: 2004-01-23 19:57
Thank you very much for that helpful answer, Torus. I will practice keeping my abdomen engaged, and expanded. The biggest problem I've experienced so far is on the high register notes, where I want to tighten my stomach and press it in to maintain "support" and pitch. I guess I'll just have to get out of that habit. With practice of the chest vibrato on the high registers using pulses, will it get more controlled and have more endurance?
Also, something that I've struglling with it, when I get tired, my throat seems to close down and I can hear the air going through it, have you ever had that problem? Do I just have to keep constant awareness of the state of my throat when I get tired? Thanks
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