Video transcript
@The Arts Unit Art Bites – Oboe – 02. High register, low register and airflow

[Theme music]

JONATHAN RYAN: Hi. My name's Jono Ryan. I'm a freelance oboist and tutor at The Arts Unit, Sydney, NSW. Today, I'm here to talk to you about improving our high register and our low register. And, also talking about our airflow, keeping it constant in our practice and our playing. Another aspect of technique we want to hone in on are our high register notes and our low register notes.

One thing we want to try and work on with our high register is matching the sound that we make on our more comfortable notes. So, let's take, for example, one of my favourite notes to play on the oboe, which is a B flat.

[Playing]

Handy note, because a note that we would tune with in our Symphonic Winds. And, then maybe a less comfortable note, which would be high B flat, which, if we want to try and match the sound, we play a low B flat.

[Playing]

What we tend to find normally, especially when we're first learning this note, is a far more narrow, and a sound with biting on the reed, which we referred to earlier. And, so, we get something like this.

[Playing]

And, a much more narrow and not as nice sound. We can play these lower notes and try and match the sound.

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One thing we find, when we're first learning these high notes, is that we just continue blowing with our normal airspeed. And, I'll show you what that would mean normally. So, if I just play a B flat major scale, we play in our comfortable air support speed of our lower notes.

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Et cetera. If we're going up, we play like this, when we're first learning.

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And, you can hear that the sound is too flat. Now, a way for us to address this is that we need a faster airspeed for the higher notes.

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Now, what's some ways that we can get to this faster airspeed? If you take the reed away from your oboe, and if you try and pitch roughly a C on the reed, this is probably the most comfortable airspeed that would cover roughly from the lowest note of our instrument - or certainly from about low C - to about first octave F. Again, a C.

[Playing]

Think of that pitch in my head.

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That would be comfortable for that register. However, once we get beyond F ...

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... there is not enough airspeed. So, how do we get to that level of airspeed? Get to the piano, or your tuner, to make sure you're playing a C sharp. But, it probably won't come at the beginning. This will take time. But, what we want to think of is our air travelling at a faster speed. If you think of a snake, it's slithering along and it's going ...

[Hissing sound]

... and that will increase our airspeed. So, we played C.

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And, now we increase that speed.

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At faster airspeed. So, I'll do that again.

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And, if we think of that C sharp on the reed, we have more active air, a faster airspeed, and our high notes are now, hopefully, a bit more in tune.

[Playing]

Just another note on the reed exercises. Again, this requires constant practice. And, one thing to help you is to hold the reed by the cork. Because it's very hard to hold these notes on the reed for a long period of time, when we're first starting up. So we might get ...

[Playing]

... unstable. If you can work at getting that as stable as possible, even if it's just for a couple of beats, that's really great progress. So, let's just try getting the C.

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And, the C sharp.

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One last point about our high register. I hear - very often with D major, I hear something like this ...

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... that we're very unsure about, what the high note fingerings are. Yes, they are tricky. But, I think what we need to think about with our high, particularly the last four notes of D major, is really learning these fingerings, so they're much more automatic. How can we achieve this? Well, it's best to really start practising these notes at the beginning.

Rather than practising what we can play ad nauseam, what we should do is really start practising the things that really are tricky, that we've been discussing. So, decide on a high note fingering. But, assuming we're using Gillet fingering, we want high C sharp. We have A, G, F sharp, and C. And D, we have half hole A, G, C.

[Playing]

And, really go as slowly as you can. You actually don't need the reed for this. You can just really go slowly, and then add the other notes. Why do we add the other notes? Because we need the transition from A, B, C sharp, and D.

[Playing]

And, you can make a little game of it by choosing notes at random at that register. So, you could play ...

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Our other extreme register, being our low register, what we find often is that we really force our low notes on the oboe, because we are a bit worried that they're not going to speak. More often than not, it's - I know many non-oboists will smirk at this comment - but, more often than not, it's probably the reed being too hard, or the instrument being a bit out of adjustment.

So, rather than really dreading these low notes, and worrying about them, and forcing them with a lot of tension, we want to just breathe down. Bring the air down and lean into it. So, if we had G to C, we'd sometimes hear this.

[Playing]

Sometimes they go up high, and they're just very pressed in sound. Let the notes speak.

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Another way you can practise this would be a B flat major arpeggio descending. So, rather than ...

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... really pressed, we want to relax and bring the air column down.

[Singing]

Letting it speak naturally.

[Playing]

Another thing we can think about with our low register - if we think of an 'aw' vowel.

[Vocalising]

[Playing]

This will give nice resonance to our lower register. One last point about all our registers, and which will help us when we're back to our reed exercises. If we think roughly from low B flat to that half-hole D or so, with that 'aw' vowel ...

[Playing]

... and then we gradually move into a more narrow vowel, maybe an 'oo.'

[Playing]

And, then we can move to a more narrow vowel again, an 'ee,' so ...

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... if I demonstrate that on the reed. If we think of 'aw,' we're probably around that high B natural to a C.

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Move to the 'oo.'

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Then to an 'ee.'

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And, if I just demonstrate 3 notes, an 'ee' vowel ...

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... 'oo' ...

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... and 'aw.'

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The last technical aspect that I'd like to discuss with you all today is our airflow, and keeping a constant airflow while we play. If you see this example here, from the Vaughan Williams 'Folk Song Suite,' the slow movement, the andantino. So, what we want to think about is keeping our airflow constant. What we might hear occasionally is not enough airflow, not enough connection. Something like this.

[Playing]

There's no question it's very good. But, what can we do to improve it? Well, we want to think about - and the term here, also - cantabile. We want to think about it singing. So, what we want to think about is keeping our air flowing through all the notes. Now, one thing that's going to be very difficult is flowing from low F, the last note of the second bar, to the first note of the third bar. We have this interval.

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What we might do occasionally is reach for that high note.

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Like this. Reaching. But, we want to fill that space from low F to high F.

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We think about our snake. We think about [hissing] connecting that. So, if we think about connecting the air, we have really nice legato.

[Playing]

Another way to think of constant airflow is to break this down a little bit, and to not have the quavers involved so much. Play longer notes. So, if we think of just the first note of each bar - and thinking of really long notes. So ...

[Playing]

Another thing we want to think about is not practising this too softly. Yes, it is marked 'piano', but we'll be practising in a small room at home. And, then we'll be playing it in a much larger space. And, this is the important part. This is our soli or solo. So, we want to think of generous dynamic. At least a 'mezzo piano.'

Just really to give our air a nice bed, a nice foundation. Another thing we can think of is when we're getting tired, which is very possible, particularly towards the end of the excerpt - so, if I play the second half from bar upbeat to bar 10 - rather than getting too tired, we want to think about our air going an extra, perhaps an extra quaver.

If we think that in our head, then we play a trick on our mind to just get that phrase going a bit longer. I'll play it first as if we don't do that.

[Playing]

But, if we add that extra quaver in our mind, we think, well, it's not finished yet.

[Playing]

If you just think about adding that extra quaver to this long line, then actually, when you're playing it in context, it will be a quaver shorter than you've practised. And, you won't feel as tired. So, just to recap what we've talked about today, we've talked about our high register notes, matching them with the lower notes on our instrument and more comfortable notes. Keeping them singing.

Our low register notes, not forcing them too much and just allowing them, getting the air down, and just letting them speak. And lastly, about our airflow, finding the link between long notes. And, in our shorter notes, not disconnecting the air, but keeping the airflow constant in our legato playing. So, there are just some things to think about to make these tricky aspects to our playing a little easier.

Hope you have fun practising.