Microtonal Inflection/Fingering on reed instruments

Single and double reeds. I have a clarinet (Boehm Bb), planning to get a sax and tarogato eventually.

How much can you personally bend?

What might be considered a "standard" plus/minus bend amount at the mouthpiece?

Are there mouthpieces conducive to funky lipping?

I use a number 1 reed :-P and would use a ".5" if there were such a thing, any tips there?

Apparently there are AFMM charts of many, many alternate fingerings?

I find this:

http://userpages.umbc.edu/~emrich/clarinet21.html

very useful and am working on fingerings specific to my own music (13-limit Just and Golden Cut intervals based off "Ab" at 208 Hz, the reference pitch for all my music). Found a bunch, suprisingly accurate. It's easy to tell if they're right on using drone/pedal electronic backing tracks, because they do the proper (not)beating and difference tones things. Speed is another matter....

Cross-posted at Xeno's pad

Hi Cameron,

You asked about playing microtones on wind instruments, and yes, there were
a number of different charts produced in PITCH I:4, along with a list of
previously published charts constituting a "fingerography."

Retuning on bassoon is my best expertise. 26 keys and 5 tone holes make
for lots of shading with fingers, much better than changing embouchure for
each note! Scotch tape can either shorten a tone hole, or further
"depress" a key so that it hovers closer to a tone hole, and is therefore flatter
than usual.

Flutes have the most opportunity to change pitch by embouchure, and they
are more limited in terms of keys. Oboes work well with scotch tape to
preposition the instrument into an intonational plan. Unique fingerings seem
always preferable to shifts in embourchure, if only because normal musical
speed makes mouth shifts unmanageable.

The clarinet players use mainly fingerings, and they can be very exact.
My favorite taragoto player plays wild style. It has not been sufficiently
mapped, as compared with other woodwinds. The contrabassoon is all keys,
severely handicapping the use of shading. However, the tape technique
worked great when I played the contra (and bassoon) parts in the Charles Ives
"Universe Symphony."

Recorders (flute a bec) are great for the use of scotch tape to set
temperaments. I'm using it now to sing Vicentino. Bagpipes also work well with
tape changes to the changer. (beats the use of bees wax!)

best, Johnny Reinhard (AFMM)

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--- In MakeMicroMusic@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:
>
> Hi Cameron,
>
> You asked about playing microtones on wind instruments, and yes, >there were
> a number of different charts produced in PITCH I:4, along with a >list of
> previously published charts constituting a "fingerography."

Great- where can I get this "PITCH I:4"? I'll draw up my own findings some time as well.

>
> Flutes have the most opportunity to change pitch by embouchure, and >they
> are more limited in terms of keys. Oboes work well with scotch >tape to
> preposition the instrument into an intonational plan. Unique >fingerings seem
> always preferable to shifts in embourchure, if only because normal >musical
> speed makes mouth shifts unmanageable.
>
> The clarinet players use mainly fingerings, and they can be very exact.
> My favorite taragoto player plays wild style. It has not been >sufficiently
> mapped, as compared with other woodwinds.

The taragoto might be more flexible than western instruments? I can do more with the embouhure on a sax than a clarinet, I think that's generally true of saxophones compared to clarinets and the tarogoto seems more sax-like.

> Recorders (flute a bec) are great for the use of scotch tape to >set
> temperaments.
>I'm using it now to sing Vicentino. Bagpipes also >work well with
> tape changes to the changer. (beats the use of bees wax!)

Thanks for the scotch tape idea, have to try that. Ever thought of
drilling extra holes in say a clarinet? I can't spare the dough
even for a spare e-bay junker instrument so it's probably not going to happen here anytime soon.

But it seems like a plausible approach. Hm, maybe an inexpensive bamboo flute.

By sheer coincidence (really- it's just chance that I've been concentrating on clarinet microtones recently) Ferus Mustafov, famous Macedonian Gypsy sax and clarinet player, is practicing 10 feet from me, he has a concert at our art institution tomorrow. He does that liquid Balkan thing, you know which kind I mean. He's superb of course but I'm interested things like Greek enharmonic tetrachords played slow and sustained. So finding fingerings it is.

Hm, sustained unisons over the drone, two octaves up but concretely flat, sounds like one comma. heh, he did it again. well that's another thread.

PITCH I:4 can be sent to you for a download for $20. US I'll have info
added to the AFMM web site.

As for poking holes in a clarinet, it's probably the worst of the winds to
experiment with because of the overblow at the fifths. And using a junker
will likely deliver a junker. Again, try the tape idea first. It's free.
You should be able to combine it with all sorts of fingerings to get just
about anything you can imagine.

Fantastic working with people that can do what you imagine, no? Giving
your clarinetist a repeatable location for a finding a single microtonal
pitch, always relative, is the true gateway to a rich music, filled with new
meanings and other tangibles.

best, Johnny

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