Woodwind instruments

Flutes

Single reeds

Double reeds

There are 3 sub families within the Woodwind Family.

Can you name them?

Woodwind instruments are tubes that are made from wood, plastic, or metal. Players blow their "wind," or breath, into them to make sounds.

Some woodwinds are conical, or cone-shaped—the tube starts small and gets bigger along the way to the end.

Other woodwinds are cylindrical, or cylinder-shaped—the size of the tube stays about the same from one end to the other, like a paper-towel tube.

The shape of the bore (cone or cylinder) affects the tone of the instrument and the overtones that it produces. The “octave key” on woodwinds is really a device that allows the column of vibrating air to move into the higher ranges of the overtone series for that instrument, commonly referred to as “overblowing” the instrument or “playing in the altissimo” range.

The length of a woodwind instrument’s tube is related to the pitch produced. If a tube has a hole halfway up, the length of resonating column of air is only as long as the tube down to the hole. Cover the hole, and the pitch lowers—the longer length of tube resonates. In this way the player can change pitches by changing the length of the resonating part of the tube of the instrument.

The Flutes

• There are many types of woodwinds that don’t use a reed. These instruments are called the Flutes. How many do you know?

• Flutes (of course)• Recorders• Ocarinas• Flageolettes – transverse flutes• Panpipes• Tin whistles

The Flute• People have enjoyed playing the flute

for at least 5,000 years. Most modern flutes are made of metal because metal helps them to sound louder in today’s big concert halls.

• Flutes come in four sizes. The smallest flute is the piccolo.

• The flute is next in size and is the most popular member of its family.

• The alto flute is bigger than the flute, so it is lower in pitch. It has a deep, mysterious sound and takes more air when played.

• The bass flute is very long. The part into which the player blows has to be bent into a U shape so that the player can hold it.

The Recorder• The recorder is a kind of fipple flute, an

end-blown flute that is found in folk music of many different cultures all over the world. The top end is stopped with a block (fipple) except for a small, flat opening for blowing, and there is a notch in the top side of the pipe near the blowing end.

• We know for sure that recorders have been played in Europe since the 1300s. They were at their most popular in the 1600s and early 1700s.

• Composers often wrote pieces for a consort of recorders—a group of recorders in all different sizes, ranging from soprano to bass.

• Recorders played an important part in the music of baroque composers, including Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, Purcell, and Telemann.

The Ocarina

• Ocarinas are globular flutes that can be traced back to ancient China, ancient Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas. The Incas used ocarinas to relay messages in the Andes. The instruments have 4-12 holes, the pitch being determined by how many holes are covered with the fingers. The same fingering can produce 2 to 3 notes, depending on the way air is blown into the ocarina. The larger the vessel, the lower the tone. These instruments are made of clay, wood, gourds, and today’s synthetic materials.

The Flagolettes or Transverse Flutes/Fifes

• Transverse Flutes are first seen in Chinese art in the 9th century BC.

• Transverse flutes in the Renaissance had six holes producing a range of two octaves or more. They were commonly seen in three or four sizes and fingered like recorders except that they were pitched one note higher, not having the bottom little-finger hole. The tone of the upper register was not refined and cross-fingerings were necessary for chromatic tones.

• The fife was an enormously popular instrument in the United States during the period from the 1750s until shortly after the end of the Civil War. Because of the prominent role of fifes and long drums during the Revolutionary War and the early years of the republic, these instruments have become traditional symbols of our nation.

The Panpipes• The Greeks and

Romans had several kinds of flutes. The panpipes, an older style, were made of several tubes of staggered length. Legend says, they were invented by the God Pan. They have become associated with a pastoral lifestyle.

The Tin Whistle

• No other whistle can match its clear, flute-like tone quality. Many famous musicians made their start in music with these instruments. In fact, James Galway, the world renowned flautist, first learned to play on a Pennywhistle.

• The tin whistle is a simple metal tube, with six holes and a mouthpiece like a recorder, and a range of about two octaves.

The Single reedsClarinets and Saxophones

• Single Reed instruments use a reed-- a thinly sliced piece of cane wood, (or less frequently, plastic) -- that is held against the aperture of the mouthpiece with a ligature. When air is forced between the reed and the mouthpiece, the resulting vibration of the reed creates the resonant wave inside the tube.

Clarinets• The clarinet's predecessor was the chalumeau--the first true single reed instrument. It appeared

in the late 1600's and wasn't very flexible and had a range of about 1.5 octaves. • Johann Christoph Denner and his son, Jacob are attributed to innovating the speaker key which

gave the clarinet a larger register. The clarinet overblows at the 12th, the other woodwind instruments overblow at the octave. So, when you play with the thumb and first three fingers of the left hand without the speaker key, you sound the note C. When you add the speaker key, you do not get a C an octave higher, you sound a G, which is the interval of a twelfth. Because of his improvements of the chalumeau, J C Denner is said to be the inventor of the clarinet.

• The clarinet has a cylindrical bore--it doesn't flare, even though the bell of the clarinet gives that impression. This is why the clarinet overblows at the twelfth and is so laden with overtones, which contributes to its unique sound.

• In the late 1700's, many improvements were made to the clarinet--more keys were added and the tone holes were experimented with--different cuts and such.

• Ivan Muller may be considered the father of the modern clarinet. Muller’s 13 key system also allowed for extra openings, further improving tone and pitch. This provided a series of extra keys that could open and close in conjunction with the use of other keys and without the need for six extra fingers. The pads on a clarinet to this point had been made of felt. Muller’s pads were made of wool and covered with gut or leather. They did not fall off as easily and were more waterproof.

• Hyacinthe Klose and Auguste Buffet adapted the Theobold Boehm (flute) fingering system to the clarinet ca. 1839-1843. This system is the one most common today, although there are other fingering systems in use such as the Albert and Auler (mostly in Germany.)

• The basset horn is a type of clarinet usually pitched in F. This was the instrument which Mozart composed his Clarinet Concerto and Quintet. His friend, Anton Stadler was a virtuosic basset hornist and Mozart fell in love with the mellow, dark tone of the clarinet.

Types of Clarinets

The E flat

The B flat

AltoBass

Contra AltoContra Bass

There are 27 different types of clarinets throughout the years.

The Basset Horn

Saxophones

• Adolphe Sax, the Belgian inventor, patented the saxophone in 1846. His invention combined the single reed of the clarinet with the bore and fingering patterns of the oboe, producing unique tonal qualities.

• He dreamed of an instrument with the flexibility of the strings, the tonal variety of the woodwinds, and the power of the brasses.

• He also wanted his instrument to produce the octave when overblowing, not the clumsy 12th as the clarinet. So he needed a larger conical bore.

There are 7 types of saxophones.

The E flat Sopranino

The B flat Soprano

The E flat Alto

The B flat tenor

The E flat Baritone

The B flat Bass

And the E flat ContraBass

The Double ReedsOboe, Oboe d'amore, English horn, oboe da caccia Hecklephone,

Double Bassoon ( contrabassoon ), Bassoon, Crumhorn, Shawm ( bass ), Shawm ( tenor )

• A double reed is two reeds bound together with a slight separation between them so that air passing through them causes them to beat against one another.

• Resistance refers to how easy or difficult it is to blow air through the reed. In general, the more resistant the reed, the more cane is on the reed, the longer the reed must be broken in, and the more demanding it is on the embouchure (mouth position).

The Oboes, Oboe, Oboe d'amore,

English horn

The Oboe has a narrow conical bore. It was invented in the 17th century by the French musicians Jean Hotteterre and Michel Danican Philidor, who modified the louder shawm (the prevailing double-reed instrument) for indoor use. Their oboe, called hautbois (French for "high, or loud, wood"), had a narrower bore than the shawm's, a body in three sections instead of one, and a smaller reed.

Oboe d'amore is the alto or mezzosoprano member of the oboe family.The English Horn is the alto of the family, is pitched a fifth lower than the oboe. It has a pear-shaped bell, giving it a soft, melancholy tone.

The Bassoons also called Hecklephones

• The bassoons are the lowest and largest of the woodwinds. The bassoon itself first appeared about 1650, and by the end of the 1700’s, it had from 4 to 8 keys. During the 1800’s, many people experimented with improving the fingering of the bassoon. Most of the changes helped the fingering, but made the tone of the instrument suffer. The Heckel family of Germany managed to improve the fingering of the bassoon without damaging its tone.

• The reed fits onto the metal crook, or bocal, which is a curved metal tube about 13-1/2 inches long that fits into the bassoon.

• The double bassoon, or contrabassoon, sounds lower and is about two times longer

Other Double Reeds

Cornamuse

Shawms

Crumhorns

• The bagpipe is also a double reed instrument. It’s origin was probably in Mesopotamia from which it was carried east and west by Celtic migrations. It was used in ancient Greece and Rome and has been long known in India. Some form of bagpipe was later used in nearly every European country; it was particularly fashionable in 18th-century France, where it was called the musette. Its widest use and greatest development was in the British Isles, particularly Northumberland, Ireland, and Scotland. The Highland pipe of Scotland is the most well-known type, but at least six other types were once used in the British Isles. The basic construction of a bagpipe consists of a bag, usually leather, which is inflated either by mouth through a tube or by a bellows worked by the arm, melody pipes having finger holes and fitted usually with double reeds, and one or more drones, which produce one sustained tone each and usually have single reeds, though the musette drones have double reeds. Associated with folk and military music, it has been neglected by composers, possibly because of its short range.

The Harmonica - The reeds are set in a small, narrow case of wood or metal. For each reed there is a hole, through which the player draws or blows air with the mouth.

The Accordian - (or the reed-organ) descended from the Chinese SHENG, produces musical pitches by means of thin reeds, set vibrating by air under pressure or suction.

The Concertina - An improved small ACCORDION, but without the accordion keyboard, was patented in England in 1829. Its hexagonal end pieces are fitted with studs for selecting the various pitches from its reeds. Fully chromatic and capable of various tonal effects, it has been used in solo and chamber music. Tchaikovsky used four concertinas in his second orchestral suite. A popular instrument for informal occasions during the 19th century, the concertina is still widely used, especially in England.