The Oboe BBoard

The Oboe BBoard The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Re: Glissandi exercises for oboe

Author: cjwright
Date: 2007-03-12 06:57

Oh boy... Here we go.

Okay: first let me say, that I might offend some people, which my comments usually do, for which I'm sorry. I'm just noting my observations.

I've always noticed that it seems to be a trend that students particularly of the Mack school (but not all) seem to play note-to-note-to-note. Even mentioning this to Martin Hebert, the principal of the Oregon Symphony and long-time student of Mack, he knew exactly what I was talking about and called it "chewing the notes". What this means is as you go from note to note, rather than it sounding as one note and changing, it instead sounds as if they're slightly separated. Sometimes this is due to the fingers, such as slapping them down really hard. Other times it's the air, that an oboist unconsciously changes their air (in a negative manner) from note to note. But usually, it's caused from Mack students having to use their "lip pressure" (i.e. biting a bit) to cover/kill unwanted overtones in the reed as they move from note to note, and thus interupts the legato. I REALLY hear it in the Douvas clip of the Hindesmith on the oboe gallery site as she goes from the Bb-C-Eb-F and then again as she goes down from the A-G#-F# etc.

(Some might say it was meant to sound separated, but she does it all the time, and I think she likes it that way since that is what Mack did, always.)

When I went to David Weber, I said, "I don't want to sound like that, and I don't want to connect my legato like that. I want to connect my legato like de Lancie does in his Strauss 2nd mvt Cadenza." (see the 32nd note runs for reference. He makes them so smooth and sound as if they are one long note, but the pitch is changing, as a singer would sound.) To which Mr. Weber said, "Okay, I'll teach you." and so he did.

He made me play from G to Ab glissando over and over and over.

First he made me play it slow enough so it you couldn't hear a when my finger began to push down the Ab key, and when it was fully compressed. It had to be absolutely perfect. Needless to say, this took me a solid day of practice these two damn notes some hundreds of times (and many hours.) Actually Mr. Weber was impressed, and said that it takes some people a week or longer to get it.

Then, as I began to get enough finger control, he brought in the air.

Think of a fishhook guys. Think as if your air is going along the long part where the string connects to the hook, and as your air begins to enter the curve, the air exponentially increases in speed. (Not VOLUME. SPEED ONLY. The difference is demonstrated in the Tabuteau exercise of putting a candle five or six feet away from you and telling you to blow it out. Blowing lots of air disperses and won't blow out, but blowing quick focused air will reach it.) Back to the hook idea; right as the curve reaches it's pinnacle, just as it begins to curve back... you change notes. This... creates a perfect legato. It's extremely hard, takes perfect finger control, air speed control, responsive vibrant reeds, and an oboe which is near-perfect adjustment to be able to make these connections, but it's possible. As I noted, some people simply can't do it, because of the way they might blow, or the way they might control the opening of their reed by biting, or simply having a reed which isn't responsive enough to the wind. But it's possible.

Now, all this is about going UPWARD with the inflection. Going downward is a different story, but this is certainly a good place to start.

After I heard this from Mr. Weber, I realized that I had heard this a long time ago. When I studied with Jan Eberle, a former de Lancie student/Curtis Grad who later went to Mr. Mack and become Mackified, I went to her and asked the same question. "How do I connect notes like Mr. de Lancie?" And she looked at me as though she knew what I was talking about, but she asked me in more or less words, "Do you really want to become that kind of player?" Relunctantly, she introduced the same glissando technique as Mr. Weber did. I suppose she was reluctant because at the time, Mr. Mack was alive, and she considered herself a Mack student, and her introducing this to one of her students might have gotten herself in trouble with Mr. Mack.

Concepts to think about while you're doing these exercises. How much shorter or further does the air need to travel when you play an A compared to a G? How much further does the air need to travel while playing an Ab compared to an A natural? the size of the fishhook will probably depend on the distance of how far the air has to travel. Remember, the fishhook is not volume dynamic, but speed of the air. You can blow very quickly, and still be playing a pianissimo.

Mack always used to say "Put the notes on the air." to which I know what I think when I hear these words; make a perfect legato by drawing an overarching dynamic curve, and be able to play your notes perfectly connected on that curve (from pp to FF and back to pp). I have no idea what Mack meant by it.

Lifschey's big saying was "Play between the notes." Many people have taken this and said it means a lot of different things, but again, I think this saying has to do with the same concept, since he did it very well.

Finally, I think one simple test of this concept to see whether you do do this or not is to play the Brahms Symphony 1 1st movement solo (G-Ab-G-B-G-C-G-Eb-G-high G-D-high D- etc...) Does each note sound like a different note, or a continuation of the previous? Do you sing off of each low G, from the G up to the Ab, from the G up to the B, from the G up to the C, etc... or do the notes just sound like "note. note. note. note. note. note." etc.? (I know this might not make any sense to most people but it's making perfect sense to me in my demented brain.)

One final interesting note; I recently bought the recording of Ferillo playing the Mozart Quartet, and it's gorgeous. His sound seems to be very much a Mack sound, but he DOESN'T chew his notes. In fact, listening to the cut-time part in the 3rd movement with the fast, nasty 16th notes, that's just about as smooth as I've heard it. That's the kind of connection between the notes that I want to have.

I hope this makes sense to you all. If you have more questions feel free to ask me and maybe I can recommend some more sound clips which demonstrate these ideas.

Reply To Message | Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics