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Reed Evaluation, Adjustment, and Scraping

by Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

EVALUATION

Things you must know about a reed before working on it:

1. How’s the tip opening? Do you want to close it, open it, or leave it as it is?

2. How’s the intonation? Do you want to make it sharper, flatter, or leave it as it is?

3. How’s the response? Do you want to make it more responsive, or leave it as it is?

4. How’s the strength? Do you want to make it stronger, weaker, or leave it as it is?

5. How’s the resistance in extreme registers? Do you want to make it more resistant, less resistant, or leave it as it is?

ADJUSTMENT & SCRAPING

Things you can do to a reed to improve its playing abilities based on your evaluation:

• Rounding the first wire (opens the tip, strengthens structure, sharpens pitch)

• Flattening the first wire (closes the tip, weakens structure, flattens pitch)

• Rounding the second wire (closes the tip, strengthens structure, sharpens pitch)

• Flattening the second wire (opens the tip, weakens structure, flattens pitch)

• Tightening the second wire (strengthens structure, sharpens pitch)

• Scraping the tip (improves response, flattens pitch)

• Scraping the channels (weakens structure, flattens pitch)

• Scraping the spine (weakens structure (more), flattens pitch)

• Scraping the rails (adds resistance (high register), strengthens structure)

• Scraping the back third (lessens resistance (low register), flattens pitch)

• Clipping the tip back (strengthens structure, sharpens pitch)

Chamber Music Communication Rules

Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

1. Always use respectful communication and cultivate a friendly environment. Using disrespectful language, raising your voice, refusing to speak, or not allowing someone to speak is never beneficial for anyone.

2. The nature of our work is to give and receive feedback. People will say things that you already know or that you disagree with. It is best not to take it personally and approach each comment objectively. 

3. You will have to work with both people that you connect with personally and others that you do not. You should find ways to deal with the lack of chemistry in a healthy way, allowing great music-making to happen despite it.

4. There is no one leader in the decision-making process of a chamber setting. A diplomatic conversation with a democratic process is the best way to navigate group choices. If no choice has a clear majority support, a simple vote is ideal.  

5. There are many subjective aspects of music. It is the nature of our work to have different opinions about these aspects. Your opinion may be chosen or not, so it is important to be professional and commit to the group decision.

6. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, and some things are harder or easier for others. Always be aware that your concept of musicianship and commitment may sound different than others. 

7. Cultivate an environment that fosters growth and enables people to thrive. Uplift each other, be complimentary of the things you like, and provide feedback on the things you do not like with kindness.

Four Main Body Parts for Bassoon Playing

by Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

Many of the challenges in learning the bassoon can be overcome by enhancing your use of the four main body parts that are essential in playing the instrument. These are air, fingers, lips, and tongue. Most of the feedback given to students represents issues in these four, for which the goal becomes improving their playing by adjusting one, some, or all of these parts. For efficient practicing and learning, students need to clearly understand which body part is impeding them from reaching their best music-making and what adjustments are needed. Bassoon teachers should offer concise feedback to help students identify their body playing issues and their necessary adjustments.

Air/Respiratory System

It includes both breathing and blowing through the instrument. There is a minimum amount of airspeed required to play each note, but also a maximum amount of airspeed at which the tone doesn’t improve after that. The type and size of a breath greatly influence your playing.

Common Playing Issues:

• Flatness and sharpness

• Note cracks or unresponsiveness

• Unrefined attacks and tapers

• Undesired volume

• Undesired vibrato

• Lack of legato

• Uneven tone

Questions to Ponder:

• Am I breathing healthily?

• Am I breathing too much or too little?

• Am I using enough airspeed?

• Am I using too much airspeed?

• Is my airspeed consistent?

Fingers/Technique

It includes the ten fingers that are involved in pressing numerous keys and covering some holes to produce different pitches. Technical cleanliness greatly relies on the accuracy of your fingers, which should operate in a way that you play the right notes at the right time. 

Common Playing Issues:

• Wrong notes

• Flatness and sharpness

• Note cracks of unresponsiveness

• Lack of legato

• Poor rhythm

Questions to Ponder:

• Am I playing the right fingering at the right time?

• Are my fingers moving accurately and simultaneously in note transitions?

• Are my arms and hands using unnecessary tension?

• Are my fingers moving smoothly and with the minimum amount of motion?

• Am I using the best fingerings to enhance my music-making?

Lips/Embouchure

It involves positioning your lips around the reed to seal it, allowing all of your air to go inside the instrument. It is essential to recognize that there are many lip sizes and shapes, and players can look different even when using the same embouchure concepts.

Common Playing Issues:

• Flatness and sharpness

• Note cracks or unresponsiveness

• Unrefined attacks and tapers

• Undesired volume

• Undesired vibrato

• Lack of legato

• Uneven tone

Questions to Ponder:

• Am I using an overbite or not?

• How much reed do I have in my mouth?

• Is the reed centered in my mouth?

• How much horizontal tension am I using?

• How much vertical tension am I using?

• Are my lips outward, inward, or normal?

• Am I leaking air?

Playing Facts:

• Less reed in your mouth helps the low register

• More reed in your mouth helps the high register

• Upper lip downward pressure helps with soft playing and the low register

• Lower lip upward pressure helps the high register

• Outward lips help with double-tonguing and the low register

• Inward lips help with the high register

Tongue/Oral Cavity

It involves the tongue touching the reed to articulate notes and its positioning within the oral cavity to vary the space inside the mouth. Your tongue positioning and the amount of space inside your mouth greatly influence intonation and volume. This is often referred to as voicing.

Common Playing Issues:

• Flatness and sharpness

• Note cracks or unresponsiveness

• Unrefined attacks and tapers

• Undesired volume

• Poor articulation

• Poor rhythm

Questions to Ponder:

• Am I using my tongue to start a note?

• Am I tonguing strongly or weakly?

• What is my tongue doing when I double tongue?

• Which part of the reed is my tongue touching?

• How big or small is my oral cavity?

• What is the positioning of my tongue?

Playing Facts:

• A stronger articulation helps the low register

• An ‘EE’ vowel sharpens the pitch

• An ‘OH’ vowel flattens the pitch

• Less space inside your mouth helps the high register and soft playing

• More space inside your mouth helps the low register and loud playing

Excellent Lesson Instruction for Bassoonists of Different Levels and Aspirations

by Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

Most bassoon teachers will work with students within a wide range of levels and aspirations. Some students may be incredibly committed to the instrument and aspire to become full-time professional bassoonists, others may only want bassoon in their lives as a hobby, and everything in between. A great bassoon teacher requires extraordinary adaptability to provide excellent instrumental education to different types of students. You can maximize the amount of progress achieved with each student during their bassoon education if you understand how to approach each unique set of levels and aspirations. Each student has a maximum amount of progress they can achieve during their time as your pupil, and you should adapt your teaching to get closer to that maximum. This will allow you to meet your students where they are at and effectively support them in becoming the best bassoonists they can and want to be, helping them actualize their personal goals with the instrument.

What dictates each student’s unique set of characteristics?

• Their current bassoon playing level

• Their current reed-making knowledge

• Their current musical knowledge

• Their past instruction

• Their age and maturity 

• Their personal skills

• Their instrument and setup 

• The role of the bassoon in their life

• The amount of time they practice

• Their financial situation

What does a bassoon teacher need to adapt?

• The expectations placed on the student

• The repertoire assigned to the student

• The pace of your teaching and work together

• The practice strategies your student should use

• The measurement for progress or lack of it

Understanding these characteristics and adapting your teaching accordingly is essential in motivating students to put in the quantity and quality of work necessary to reach their best possible bassoon playing. Your lesson instruction should support them in understanding three important things about themselves: their strengths and weaknesses as bassoonists, their aspirations and goals with the bassoon, and what kind and amount of work they need to do to navigate that learning journey effectively. All this information should be a constant topic of conversation during lessons to ensure the student knows where they are at, where they want to go, and how to get there.

To offer excellent lesson instruction, you not only need substantial knowledge about the bassoon performance and music pedagogy, but also a set of personal skills that will help you adapt within numerous teaching scenarios. You need problem-solving skills to navigate a wide range of technical and musical challenges successfully. You need excellent time management to design and execute effective learning journeys. You need active listening to help you better understand your students’ unique characteristics. You need creativity to find new ways to motivate students of different personalities and learning styles. You need to have enthusiasm for teaching different sizes and types of success and progress. You need patience and empathy to maintain a positive and respectful learning environment. And finally, you need organizational skills to put all the required pieces together in optimizing each student’s bassoon journey. 

How to enhance your college auditions?

Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

1. Design and execute a practice plan with enough time before the audition, where both the quality and quantity of your work prepare you to your best. You want to feel like you did everything you could to succeed on the day of the audition.

2. Communicate with your prospective teacher before the audition and take as many sample lessons as possible. This will inform you about the teacher’s opinion on your playing and their approach to the repertoire, which should tailor your audition preparation.

3. Make sure you have a great reed for your audition day. It should allow you to play with ease, good intonation, both loud and soft, as well as high and low, and a desirable tone. You only need one! 

4. Choose repertoire that fits your level and allows you to be musical beyond the technique. Do not choose an “impressive” repertoire that puts in evidence your lack of technical cleanliness.

5. Choose tempi that allow you to play your best and with great confidence. Do not prioritize a faster tempo over technical cleanliness and good playing habits.

6. Everyone makes mistakes, so do not let them distract you from what is next and make more. Adopt a mindset where you deal with those after the audition and not during. There are no perfect auditions, but there are auditions that show hard work and potential.

7. If you are asked to do something differently during the audition, try your best to adjust immediately, even if you don’t agree with it. You are being evaluated on how well you react to feedback.

8. Prepare so that your body and mind are at their healthiest on the day of the audition. It is essential to sleep well, eat healthily, stay hydrated, and have happy thoughts.

9. Always behave with a professional attitude. This includes respectful and effective communication, punctuality, dressing appropriately, and having a great stage presence.

10. Smile and look happy to be there, even if you have to fake it. It makes a difference when a student seems happy to share their playing and musicianship.  

Ten Lifelong Practice Goals

Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

1. Practice as efficiently as you can, as much as you can.

2. Repeat things until they sound as good as possible.

3. Practice slowly enough to play at your highest standard.

4. Tailor your practice to allow maximum confidence and minimum hesitation.

5. Avoid practicing with bad playing and bad habits.

6. Practice the change you want to make an essential part of your playing.

7. Every note that you play counts, so always play with a great sound.

8. Prioritize playing with immaculate technique and passionate expression.

9. Prioritize playing with maximum accuracy of rhythm and intonation.

10. Play like music is the most wonderful thing ever because it is.

How to be a great student as a classical musician?

by Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

A great student does the quantity and quality of work necessary to achieve a high level of mastery on their instrument. The classical music field is incredibly competitive, with far more musicians than steady jobs available. For this reason, music students need to understand that only those who do extraordinary work are likely to make a living exclusively from their classical playing. Of course, any musician needs a quality instrument to perform at the highest level, but I will focus here on the person and what their body—but mainly their mind—needs to succeed.

You often hear people talking about how talented some musicians are in their physical facilities to play an instrument. Yet, you rarely hear people connect that talent to personal traits rather than physical ones. The physical skills needed to master an instrument are never really innate. They are rather the result of cultivating multiple small, good playing habits over a long period. In other words, it requires anyone to practice well and a lot for many years. The Oxford English Dictionary defines talent as “a special natural ability or aptitude,” for which I consider the mainstream belief that physical facilities are attributed to a musician’s talent to be inaccurate.

After teaching dozens of students for over a decade, I have found that the students who come to me and become the best players are not the ones who have the least number of technical problems, but the ones with natural personal skills that allow them to put in the work necessary and endure a long process of change and improvement. Playing an instrument at the highest level requires a rare level of multitasking that is only achieved through the creation of numerous, permanent playing habits. Creating these habits requires an extraordinary kind of commitment that only certain types of personalities can endure. For this reason, teaching often involves not only changing a student’s playing abilities but also the way they think and behave.

What personal skills are the real talent that ensures a student puts in the quantity and quality of work needed? You need motivation and discipline to practice daily for a long period. You need objectivity and positivity to judge your own playing properly. You need critical thinking and efficiency to set necessary goals and organize your study to achieve those goals. You need problem-solving skills and ambition to overcome the multiple technical challenges of a musical instrument. You need the consistency and adaptability to spend a lot of time making small improvements and teaching your body and mind the best ways to play an instrument. You need the inquisitiveness to find the right knowledge from the different sources available. And quite frankly, you need the intelligence to surround yourself with the right people and environments for success.

The goal is simple: what can you do as a student to reach the highest level of music-making with your instrument in the shortest amount of time? You need to work really hard and really smart. The competitiveness of our field requires this extraordinary work, which is only possible in the context of the previously mentioned personal skills. A greatly talented student adopts this growth mindset earlier on to reach their best playing soon enough and succeed in the field.

HAPPY PRACTICE! 

Vibrato Theory and Exercises

by Dr. Rick Barrantes Agüero

Vibrato is a pulsation in the airflow that results in fluctuations in pitch, volume, and/or sound color. You should experiment with all three fluctuations and adopt the ones that sound the best to you. 

Vibrato can have three main body sources: your abdomen, throat, and/or mouth. Mouth vibrato that uses the lips or jaw is not recommended as it makes the embouchure too unstable. You should experiment with both your abdomen and throat, and adopt the ones that sound the best to you. 

Vibrato is a musical device used to support musical intentions and, therefore, a personal choice based on your taste and knowledge of the musical context. There is a spectrum of vibratos we can use, and you should carefully choose them to affect sound and enhance your music-making. The absence of vibrato is also a musical device.

Things to avoid while vibrating:

• Distortion of intonation

• Distortion of sound

• Distortion of music-making

• Unnecessary tension

• Unwanted playing habits

Things to constantly evaluate in your vibrato:

• The width of the wave

• The speed of the wave

• The amount of pitch fluctuation

• The amount of volume fluctuation

• The amount of sound-color fluctuation

• The body source producing the vibrato

• The role of vibrato within the musical context

The following three exercises will deepen your understanding of how to produce vibrato and develop your control over the vibrato’s width and speed. The first two exercises are very rhythmic to cultivate good vibrato skills. The third exercise is no longer as rhythmic and measured, and it exercises how you should apply the vibrato in real music-making.

Exercise No. 1: Choose one note to do an eight-beat long tone at a comfortable dynamic. Set the metronome at 60 and play the first two beats without vibrato, the next four beats with vibrato, and the last two beats without vibrato again. The vibrato portion should be practiced with 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 waves per beat. This exercise will help you gain control over turning your vibrato on and off at various speeds. The width of your vibrato depends on your taste, but faster vibratos tend to need a narrower width.

Exercise No. 2: Choose one note to do two ten-beat long tones at a comfortable dynamic. Set the metronome at 60 and play with vibrato, alternating 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 waves per beat, with two beats per number. Then play the second long tone in decreasing order, with 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 waves per beat. This exercise will make you gain control over starting a note with vibrato immediately and at different speeds. It will also make you control a vibrato that both increases and decreases in speed.

Exercise No. 3: Choose any high note to start on and then descend chromatically. Play two slurred long notes of undetermined duration and add a beautiful vibrato to both notes that doesn’t have a specific rhythm against the beat. Make a brief pause after two notes and then continue to the next two notes below, and continue going down. The goal is to find your own default vibrato and achieve consistency in the vibrato from one note to the next. You should practice at different dynamic levels and learn how vibrato can influence volume. This exercise will help you bridge the gap between the previous exercises and finding a vibrato that can be applied to your repertoire music.