Saxface? Uke? Any other wind instrumentalists out there?
In the opening phrase of “Rhapsody in Blue” a clarinet starts with a tremolo in a low register and then glides up to a high pitch and introduces the theme for the piece.
My question(s):
How do they do that? The glide part, I mean. I thought the clarinet and its relatives were fixed note instruments – you open the valves and it plays a certain note, unlike a trombone or a violin where you can position the slide, etc. over a continuous range. It sounds to me like the glide starts out as a rapid sequence of discrete notes but then it definitely goes into a glide (glissando?) of continuous tones.
Listening carefully to the opening I think there may be a trumpet that comes in during that glide – the timbre of the music certainly changes. If so then the trumpet is covering the discrete run of the clarinet BUT now I’ve got the same question about trumpets. Aren’t they discrete note instruments?
Is it really a clarinet that opens the piece? At least tell me I got that part right.
For that matter are there general techniques for getting off-pitch notes from most instruments? On a guitar, for example, you can bend the string or even (shudder) push and pull on the neck to change the tension. Or you can use a slide. Are there similar techniques for reeds and brass, etc?
Please forgive me if I’ve mangled the music terminology. I’m sure there are technical terms for “discrete note instruments” and for sliding up the scale. But I don’t know them.
Clarinet is correct. The term for this is portamento rather than glissando. In a glissando, the individual pitches can still be distinct; you can play a glissando on a piano. In portamento, the pitch changes without breaks. Voices, violins, and trombones can do this easily. Players of reed instruments, such as clarinets and saxes, can do this to some degree by adjusting their embouchure, or shape of their mouth as they play. Flutist and trumpeters can do it less easily, and fixed pitch instruments, like piano, can’t at all.
I can answer a little bit (seven years band, middle school and high schoo - bass clarinet).
Yes, it’s a clarinet you hear at the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue. Yes, normally a clarinet has “defined” notes determined by the fingering used. And yes, the clarinet does a glissando.
Change in tone for reed instruments is accomplished either by using the keys (fingering) or changing the embouchure. The whassis, you ask?
Embouchure, the way the muscles of the mouth and tongue work the reed and mouthpiece of an instrument. Please visualize for me, putting your lower lip over your lower incisors, to cushion the reed against your mouth. Now, tighten the corners of your mouth to hold the very tip of your mouthpiece between your lower lip and upper teeth. The tip of your tongue is used to stop and start notes by halting the vibration of the reed.
By changing the way your mouth muscles hold the mouthpiece, you can alter the tone of your instrument. It’s easier for brass, and a bitch for woodwinds, but it can be done. (French horns probably do it the most.) One particular piece I remember from junior year varsity concert band, the director asked our clarinets to bring the bell of their instruments up, requiring them to crane their necks a bit. It altered the tone of the instruments and made a very noticable affect in the piece.
All of this is, of course, subject to verification by Saxface and Uke.
There is no trumpet in the opening cadenza. If there is a trumpet in the recording you heard/performance you saw, then that would be cheating. And cheating is wrong. (Actually, I don’t know if it would be cheating, really, but it would definitely be wrong.)
The pitch on a trumpet (and other brass instruments) can be altered by changing the embouchure. When playing trumpet, I can alter the pitch of any given note by at least a quarter-tone (probably more) by adjusting embouchure alone. On trumpet, there are also slides on the first and third valves that allow further adjustment of pitch. Now, if we’re talking about vibrato, that’s normally done by wedging the right thumb against the lead pipe between the first and second valves and shaking the hand back and forth (not too hard). Some of the better players can create vibrato through their own breathing - similar to the way singers do it - creating an oscillation in the airspeed.
There’s only a half step difference between the penultimate note in the RIB cadenza and its resolution. I would “glide” between the two through a combination of slowly releasing the middle valve (probably) and adjusting my embouchure. It would probably sound slightly pinched for a brief moment between the two pitches, but IIRC that’s how the clarinet cadenza sounds too.
As others mentioned, you can change pitch by adjusting your embouchure. Generally, if you lower the pressure on the reed, the tone will flatten. If you increase pressure, the tone will go sharp.
It’s considered a measure of a great sax player if he can play ‘smoothly’. This means no breaks between notes as your fingering changes, but also manipulating the embouchere to bend notes as you change them, much as blues guitarists do.
If you want to hear a smooth sax player in the pop music world, listen to John Anthony Halliwell from Supertramp. His sax glides all over the place, and you often can’t hear any transition at all from one fingering to another - it just all blends together.
IIRC, Gershwin originally wrote that clarinet opening entirely as a glissando (playing each note separately). A clarinetist told him the portamento was an option in the last part of that phrase, and Gershwin made the change.
I like your notion of “discrete note” instruments. I’ve never thought of it that way.
Playing a brass instrument is 99% embouchure. Think about it: the horn has only 3 or 4 valves (Drum Corps horns usually have only 2!). Yet we hear lots of notes from them.
The sound of a brass instrument is created by the players lips buzzing inside a mouthpiece. If you take the horn away, a good player can play all of his notes only on the mouthpiece. The horn itself merely makes the sound louder.
Valves on a brass instrument are used to open different lengths of tubing (2nd valve is shortest, 1st valve is medium, 3rd valve is longest). In this way, the player manipulates the length of air he will set vibrating. Any particular valve combination will allow the player to perform at least five notes (or more). For example, 1st valve on trumpet is Bb (below middle C), Bb, D, F, Bb (above TC staff). It’s called the overtone series.
As far as Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the clarinetist adjusts his/her embouchure to achieve the portamento. Traditionally, a clarinet player will hold his embouchure fairly steady throughout the range of the instrument, but some effects require adjustment.
Take it from a middle school band director: clarinets most certainly CAN play “off pitch.” Of course, in my classes, we call it “out of tune!” My guys aren’t quite up to Gershwin, yet.
No wind instrument is so perfect that you can just finger notes and every single one will be perfectly in tune all the time. (At least, none that I’ve ever had the benefit of playing.) Luckily, you can adjust the pitch by adjusting your embouchure (and on a brass instrument, your slides). In addition, this allows for some pitch bending effects and such.
By the way, Drum God, most of the larger drum and bugle corps use 3 valve horns now. I’m in a Division I DCI corps, and all except our contras have 3 valves.
Wow! LOTSA musicians around here. I still say we should form a SDMB band.
Since the OP has pretty well been answered, I’ll just throw in the following Fun Fact: Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue specifically for bandleader Paul Whiteman’s 1924 “Experiment in Modern Music” concert at Aeolian Hall in NYC.
The presentation involved various aspects of jazz performed by various permutations of instruments, from a rendition of the early recorded hit “Livery Stable Blues” by a small New Orleans-style ensemble (cornet, clarinet, trombone, banjo, piano, brass bass, drums) to the full-blown, composed and orchestrated Rhapsody…“jazz” in spats and a bowtie.
Rhapsody isn’t real jazz, it’s a composed symphonic work involving no more improvisation than a Mozart piano concerto. But it includes a lot of the hallmarks of early jazz, like that opening clarinet swoop.
Also, the original orchestration was for Whiteman’s jazz band: heavy on the reeds and brass and rhythm, plus a small string section. If you’ve only heard the later orchestration for symphony orchestra (gobs o’ strings, very few winds), you owe it to yourself to get hold of a recording for piano and jazz ensemble, and hear how it was really supposed to sound.
Thanks one and all for your help. I learned a lot. I was in band in grade school and junior high but my instrument of choice (meaning the one I could get for free from my aunt) was the trombone. And whatever I knew about the trombone has long since fled my memory banks.
Listening to the recording again after reading your comments I can just detect the transition from note to note in the portamento. And the trumpet I thought I heard is the change in tone created by the change in embouchre, I think. Of course, like Mark Twain learning the river, something is gained and something is lost through analysis.
The recording I have is whatever happened to be on the collection CD I bought. It is by the Denver Symphony and, I was surprised to discover, the pianist is one George Gershwin. The clarinetist remains anonymous.
No one asked, but to be more specific (and parade my knowledge some more), the first valve tube lowers the pitch a whole step, the second valve tube lowers the pitch a half step, and the third valve tube lowers it 1 1/2 steps. The open valve overtone series, starting from middle-C (C below staff) and moving up is C, G, C, E, G, B-flat (difficult to tune, though. recommend using 1st valve), C, D, E (O.K. that’s high enough). You can do the math from there.
Neil:
Much to my dismay, I noticed that recently when I caught a DCI competition on PBS. When/why did they decide to switch? Too many G-sharps/A-flats on staff in recent music?
Eve:
A 78 RPM? Hey, I’ve seen those in my grandmother’s basement! ::ducks and runs:: Seriously, now that you mention it, I think I have a cataloging project for Linney in the near future.
It’s one of those large-size 78s, the size of a 33. I also have the Victor Light Orchestra playing hits from late-1910s shows, on those oversized records.
It’s a good, clean copy, too–hardly any scratches. Now, if I could just find someone to repair my three-speed record player . . .
It’s one of those large-size 78s, the size of a 33. I also have the Victor Light Orchestra playing hits from late-1910s shows, on those oversized records.
It’s a good, clean copy, too–hardly any scratches. Now, if I could just find someone to repair my three-speed record player . . .
It’s one of those large-size 78s, the size of a 33. I also have the Victor Light Orchestra playing hits from late-1910s shows, on those oversized records.
It’s a good, clean copy, too–hardly any scratches. Now, if I could just find someone to repair my three-speed record player . . .
{{Much to my dismay, I noticed that recently when I caught a DCI competition on PBS. When/why did they decide to switch? Too many G-sharps/A-flats on staff in recent music?}} Strainger
To the best of my knowledge, they decided to allow 3-valve bugles about 10 years ago. I don’t know how fast it took for them to become common, but I don’t think anyone even makes 2-valves anymore. As for why, probably just for additional range to hit those A-flats/low E-flats. Lets the music be played in the low and mid range more but still be chromatic. I like having 3 valves (I play euph, and my parts would probably suck without a third valve). Oh, and they’re also allowing horns in other keys that G now, too. (Started that only a year or two ago). I like my horn in G, though, so I’m glad my corps isn’t switching over at the moment. Hey, maybe you can all catch me on PBS at finals this year. Sorry for going completely off topic for anyone who doesn’t care about the number of valves on a bugle.
Don’t worry, thread hijacking is a favorite pasttime among the SDMB regs.
Thanks for answering my question about the 3-valve bugles. Which drum & bugle corp are you in, if you don’t mind me asking? It’s been years since I’ve been to any DCI competitions. I see there are a number of new (to me) corps in Division I.
–Strainger, who remembers when the “Cadets” were known as the “Garfield Cadets”
Neil: Thanks for setting me straight on the number of valves on DCI instruments. While I have been working with bands most of my life, I have very little experience with
DCI. By the time I became aware of DCI, I had already aged out. Good luck this summer.
Ah. Here’s the recording I was looking for. Sadly out of print, which is why I couldn’t locate it during the day and had to wait until I got home and could riffle through my CDs…
THE BIRTH OF RHAPSODY IN BLUE: Paul Whiteman’s Historic Aeolian Hall Concert of 1924. Reconstructed and conducted by Maurice Peress. MusicMasters Digital Disc 60113T. 1986.
Features TubaDiva’s low-brass pal Dave Bargeron on trombone and slide whistle.
