Woodwinds: The Underused Gems of the

Orchestra scorecastonline.com by Stellita Loukas October 15, 2012

Welcome back to our orchestration series! I hope that you found the strings

articles helpful and informative. This time I would like to present to you the

underused gems of the orchestra; woodwinds! Following the same structure as

for previous articles, I will first look at their ranges, registers, characteristics

and capabilities and then I will discuss different ways in which you can use

woodwinds to orchestrate your melody and harmony. So, following our

tradition, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and lets get down to business!

I. INTRODUCTION

Woodwinds are probably the most underused instruments within new

composers circles yet they can add a huge variety of interesting colors, timbres,

flourishes and extra layers to an orchestration. While they can serve as excellent

fillers (providing wonderful runs, trills, rips and all sorts of interesting effects

playing behind or between melodies), they are also capable of a vast range of

expression when given solo melodic lines and can work wonders in adding

attack and poignancy to your harmonic material.

What are woodwind instruments?

Sounds like a rather silly question but bear with me for a second. When I was a

little girl, if asked what kind of instruments are saxophones I would exclaim

BRASS without any hesitation. Why? Because I thought that wind instruments

were classified into wooden and brass according to the material from which they

are constructed. However, I later found out that the distinguishing factor

according to which winds are classified is the material from which their

mouthpieces are constructed. Brass instruments have brass mouthpieces and

woodwinds have wooden mouthpieces.

Woodwinds are further classified according to how many reeds their mouthpiece

consists of.

Single Reed : clarinets and saxophones

Double Reed : oboe, cor anglais and bassoons

No Reed : flutes. While flutes do not have a wooden mouthpiece, they

are considered woodwind instruments because they used to be constructed

from wood. Some piccolos are still made of wood.

The most common woodwinds used today

If we were to explore the entire range of woodwind instruments we would need a

few articles just for that! The clarinet family alone has 7 instruments!!!

Therefore, we are only going to look at the woodwinds used most commonly in

modern music;

FLUTES : Flute in C, Piccolo flute in C and Alto flute in G

CLARINETS : Clarinet in Bb and Bass Clarinet in Bb

OBOES : Oboe in C and English Horn (Cor Anglais) in F

BASSOONS : Bassoon in C and Contra Bassoon in C

While the saxophones also belong in the woodwind family, they deserve an

article of their own and will be covered in the near future!

II. SOUND CREATION AND BREATHING

Woodwind instruments produce sound as air is blown into their tubes through

their mouthpieces. Different pitches are possible through the alteration of the

tube length with the opening and closing of the different holes.

The first and foremost point you should remember when writing for woodwinds

is that woodwind players are humans and not robots. While a note sustaining for

5 bars is feasible in strings or even virtual woodwinds, a real woodwind player

will have a LOT to say about that! So when writing for woodwinds keep in mind

that players need time to breath! If you cannot sing a phrase in one breath,

chances are a player wont be able to play it in one breath eitherunless they are

using an iron lung!

Another point I would like to bring to your attention is the relation between

instrument size and the air required for it to produce sound; the larger the

instrument the more air the player needs in order to produce sound. While a

passage may be easy on the clarinet, a bass clarinetist might need much more

time to breath in order to execute the same passage. When writing for

woodwinds, try to put yourself into the players role and provide ample time for

breathing and preparation.

Finally, the louder the dynamic, the more air is required and the quicker the air

is consumed. Therefore, be extra careful when asking your players to play forte

passages.

III. TIMBRE, DYNAMICS AND FLEXIBILITY

Woodwinds are not like strings; their timbre and color changes as they move

from the lower to the higher end of their range. In fact, many scholars and

orchestration books suggest that one should look at each woodwind as three

different instruments : low, middle and high. This is because a flute, for example,

sounds completely different when playing at its low register than playing at its

middle or high register. We will look at these differences in more detail in the

next section. For now, what you should keep in mind is that :

the middle register of each instrument is the easiest for a player to

control (both in terms of pitch and dynamics);

the high register lends itself for loud dynamics and more intense

passages, and;

the low register is more suitable for soft dynamics and more subtle

passages.

In other words, woodwind players can do pretty much everything on the middle

register but have difficulties executing loud passages in low registers and soft

passages in high registers.

IV. INSTRUMENTATION NOTES

Below you will find information regarding range, registers and characteristics for

each individual woodwind, presented in a table format for easier

comprehension.

V. TECHNIQUES AND SPECIAL EFFECTS

Woodwinds are probably the most agile and flexible instruments of the

orchestra. They are capable of extremely fast runs, trills and rips, expressive

legato passages and very pronounced and aggressive staccato chords. Below, you

will find a table with some of the most common techniques that are

characteristic to woodwind instruments. Bear in mind that it is always best to

restrict any special techniques to the middle register of the instruments because

special effects are much harder to execute and control in the extreme registers.