How very sweet

As a woodwind teacher I have found myself occupying a unique position in the lives of some of my younger students. I am that rare thing: an adult they come to know well who is neither a family member nor a school teacher. ( Although I teach in schools it quickly becomes clear to them that I am not gunning enthusiastically for the establishment.) Perhaps if I taught something else - guitar or literacy perhaps - the same relationship would arise. But reed instruments require an embouchure and an embouchure requires practice. Kids who don't practise can't play solidly for a full lesson so I have learned to break up the playing in various ways. I have also learned that children come to their lessons for reasons other than music. Some really need to talk to a neutral adult without incurring the stigma, and parental worry, that asking for counselling would entail.

So I can talk knowledgably about nail varnish, ties and trainers along with the barriers they present to learning. And other things. It may not be necessary to build a friendly relationship with a student in order to impart knowledge but that's my style.

Today a boy came in wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Normally he would be wearing a uniform. I asked him if it was a non-uniform day.
"Yes. I just had to bring in a bag of sugar."
"A bag of sugar?" I repeated.
"Yeah. It's for the homeless in London or something."

I quipped that next year he'd have to bring in a tube of toothpaste but it did make me wonder. It also reminded me of eating white bread, margarine and white sugar sandwiches at school because it was all I could get my hands on. I can still remember the satisfying crunch that made me feel I was eating something substantial and sustaining. My teeth have been full of metal ever since. So what is the sugar for? Will it really be fed to the homeless or is it to be exchanged for something else, like the milk-bottle tops we used to collect for the blind? How can I possibly teach while I'm worrying about this? Would I have made more money in dentistry? Well, obviously.

Next time I might just keep my keep my curiosity in check. After all, my students talk about all sorts of things but never my attire. So why should I mention theirs?

Half-holing

Half-holing is a technique familiar to recorder players. In order to move some notes up or down by a semitone it is necessary to partially cover a hole, allowing some air to escape through it. In fact to play in the upper register at all it is necessary to jam the tip of the thumb into the hole in order to force the instrument to overblow by an octave.

This is not a problem faced by players of the orchestral flute which has a system of keywork that makes it fully chromatic. But the recorder is relatively sophisticated in comparison to the humble bamboo flute. The tone of a good bamboo flute is both stronger and richer than that of a recorder but playing one with other instruments can present a problem. A recorder is, at least in theory, fully chromatic. Not so the bamboo flute. My favourite is pitched in Ab - not a great key for spontaneous jams around the camp fire.

The other day I was playing a studio session for a maker of library music. We had used the orchestral flute almost exclusively but thought we try something more 'ethnic' for a change. I have one in C which is close enough to the key of F, the key of the piece in question. But it meant half-holing the top hole in order to make a Bb.

This was not a problem until I had to execute a fast descending run. To ensure accuracy of pitch I partially covered the hole with masking tape. As you can see in the picture, half-holing is a misnomer - nearly all the hole is covered.

If you a are a flute (or recorder) player reading this I should explain that although the flute in question is pitched in C it feels like I'm playing a D scale. This makes it a transposing instrument, a fact that became clear when we abandoned the bamboo and went back to orchestral flute. I then had the sensation of reading everything a tone down. Flutes and whistles in D are very popular because they make the notes any flute or recorder player would expect. D is also a key that most guitarists can manage without too much trouble.


It is possible to cover holes lower down the instrument to facilitate playing in other keys. I part covered the second hole as well (pictured) to give me C Dorian. Always cover the side of the hole nearest the wrist of the playing hand - this allows glissandi and other effects that make these instruments so wonderful.

Teaching - the hardest gig? Part Two

Last week, after a delay brought about by the half term break and a Government inspection, I presented the last of a series of woodwind demonstrations. Aimed at the 11yr old intake at a local high school the sessions were designed to educate the children about instruments they would only otherwise see on TV. There was also a hope that some children might take up the flute, clarinet or saxophone themselves.

The sessions open with a question to the audience: 'What is a woodwind instrument?" As someone who didn't know what a flute looked like until first presented with one at age 13 or 14, I should not have been surprised by some of the answers. Drums, guitar and 'cello were obviously way off the mark. Trumpet a little closer. One completely unexpected suggestion was didgeridoo. From that session onwards I brought in a 5ft (1.5m) cardboard tube to use as my first instrument and followed this up with a genuine Australian didge (pictured).

I keep the didge playing to a minimum. The embouchure doesn't sit easily with playing reed instruments so I don't practise it much. Then comes bamboo flute; children are always surprised that so much music can come from something so simple. This I contrast with the orchestral flute on which I play 'Greensleeves' accompanied by the class teacher on piano. Greensleeves is an English folk tune attributed, at least by some, to King Henry VIII although it is unlikely to have been written before he died in 1547. Perhaps as many as half the children recognised this but none could name it.

Questions about the flute, and for the other instruments, include "How much do they cost?" and "How many buttons has it got?" I can never remember how many keys so have to count them all each time. The sax has so many I don't bother.

The clarinet comes next and I play them a klezmer tune called Mazel Tov, (Yiddish for Good Luck!). I don't know many klezmer tunes in major keys but this is one and it's a hit. I mention the instruments uses in jazz and classical music before playing something from Carmen by Bizet, again with a piano accompaniment. I make a mental note to find out exactly what a character in SpongeBob plays on the instrument.

And then come the saxophones. I have brought in an alto and a tenor as this is what the school has available for study. The teacher and I play The Pink Panther theme by Henry Mancini. instantly recognised by one and all. I then play a few bars of The Simpsons on the tenor. We contrast size and weight of the instruments and the teacher tells the children about forms to take home if they are interested in learning an instrument.

And now there is time for a final question or two. "Do you teach guitar?"

Seeds on stony ground?

I did two more woodwind demonstrations this week which passed without a hitch. The Pink Panther theme always goes down well, as does The Simpsons music. I hold up 8-year old Lisa as an example of someone who's done a lot of practice to reach such a high standard. (I suspect, in his time, Bleeding Gums Murphy has done a lot of something too but I don't go there.) The clarinet brought some surprising responses because a character in Sponge Bob apparently plays it. Note to self: watch more TV.

One year 7 class remains. I couldn't fit it into my schedule. When I asked about it I was told it was the special needs class: ten students, three helpers. I would be unlikely to get any takers but they would probably enjoy the experience.

Straight after that I found myself chatting with the guitar tutor about a student he had who was making little or no progress and seemed ill-equipped to grasp even the basics. What to do? So I told him of my time in a special school where for some kids even assembling a saxophone with the crook (curvy bit) pointing the right way took some weeks to crack. There were no future Galways, Charlie Parkers or Naftule Brandweins among them but there were improvements in their co-ordination, behaviour and appreciation of music. On top of that they were getting one-to-one with an adult who was neither parent nor class teacher and needy kids just love attention.
So now the guitar teacher is determined to enjoy his student on the child's own level and I'm ready to perform for kids in the bottom set and broaden their horizons in any way I can. But first it's the half term holiday and hooray for that.

The significance of the title? My memory of the Bible is poor: it was compulsory to attend church on Sundays at my old school and there were various assemblies led my well-meaning hypocrites. This 'Christianity as a tool of the Establishment' was guaranteed to foster rebellion against organised religion in all its forms. However I do remember something about the waste of scattering seeds on stony ground. That may be true for gardeners but when it comes to people no ground is so hard that you can't plant something.

Teaching - the hardest gig? Part One

Performing for adults, although not always a breeze, is very different from entertaining children. For a start, adults have chosen to be there and are generally predisposed to having a good time. Kids, in school anyway, are there under sufferance and are not usually allowed to start chatting amongst themselves or drift off to the bar.

As a classroom teacher there is time in which to get to know a group and build a relationship. As a freelancer it's often a completely new class each time: new kids and new teacher in charge. There is usually, even within the same school, a completely different culture: ground rules and acceptable standards of behaviour are never the same twice. Yet every teacher seems surprised that there may be other ways of doing things.

I am presently in the middle of a series of sessions in which I am trying to revive interest in learning woodwind at a local high school. The place had just built a new library and created a sixth form when the old head retired. He was replaced by a man who was the perfect embodiment of the Peter Principle (by which members of an organisation rise to their level of incompetence). Within two years he had turned the school around, nosediving it into a failed inspection and a 'special measures' regime. Parents capable of exercising choice sent their kids anywhere but this school and music, including woodwind, went through the floor.

So in attempt to garner students I have been taking in a variety of instruments to demonstrate to Year 7 classes. I am about half way through the series and will report next week when it's all over. To date the highlight has to be the student who was evicted from the room for failing to give an appropriate answer during the roll call. Presumably to maximise the attention he was getting he decided to sprint to the door, failing as he did so to notice the music stand I had set up. The stand went down with the child on top. Fortunately neither suffered any real damage.

In all this episode must have wasted ten or fifteen minutes of teaching time as we waited for a senior teacher to come and hear both sides of the story in the corridor outside.

Excuses excuses

I've been teaching woodwind for a little over twenty years now and though it hasn't put me in the Howard Hughes league it hasn't been a bad life. Perhaps my only regret is that I didn't write down all the excuses I've been given over the years by students who haven't practised. Well, better late than never and I intend to make a list of them for the revamped Adventures in Sound website.

I heard a couple of goodies last week. When asked what an eleven-year-old had done over the weekend the reply came: "Nothing. Just lay about." (I hope I was slightly more forthcoming at that age but I probably wasn't.) "Did you play your flute at all this week?" I asked. "No. I didn't have time." I find that kind of logic-defying answer hard to dispute.

Better than that was the girl who announced at the start of the lesson that she hadn't had time to practise because she'd had to go to the shop and buy some lasagne for her mum. "Was that the only time you had all week?" "Yes. I'm not allowed to practise until I've tidied my room and I didn't finish that until last night and then I had to go and buy the lasagne. And then we watched Dirty Dancing." It transpired that her saxophone was way down on her list of priorities, below other homework, tidying her room, buying strips of pasta and the movies on TV she described in greater detail later in the lesson.

So, in addition to the new free music games page on the site there will soon be a list of the best excuses. Feel free to contribute and be name-checked (if you like). Perhaps you remember one you gave yourself.

Five Rhythms

I have just returned from a week-long camp held annually as a celebration of the midsummer solstice. It takes place in a beautiful meadow full of clover, buttercups and a variety of grasses as well as some wonderful mature trees including oak, beech, hawthorn and pine. There is also a tall conifer I am told is a Wellingtonia.

There were about seventy people in total and we camped in three circles, each with a fire pit in the middle for communal cooking and social focus. It was a closed camp (no visitors) increasing the sense of a shared experience. The beautiful setting and perfect weather made for an idyllic few days.

A prominent feature of the camp is Five Rhythms dancing. This is a new age dance form devised by Gabrielle Roth. Imagine good old fashioned 'freaking out' (for those of us who danced to prog rock in the 70s) combined with little bits of Chinese five element theory and a smattering of other ideas. Some describe it as a spiritual journey, others as a dance form for people who can't dance.

Playing music for it is surprisingly demanding. Each of the five movements can last fifteen minutes or longer, depending on the whim of the teacher. Our ensemble comprised three musicians playing, between them, djembes, balafon, assorted percussion and guitar. I dabbled in most of these, except the guitar, and added clarinet, alto saxophone and both bamboo and orchestral flute.

The music was entirely improvised but we agreed on keys and time signatures before hand. Although the dances took place in a marquee, our rehearsals were held in a mud structure based on an iron age round house which had a wonderfully warm acoustic. Each movement presents its own challenges. The first movement, Flowing, is usually played in 5:4 or 7:4 and this can take some getting used to when playing a melody instrument. The third movement, Chaos, is far more ordered than its name suggests and needs to build to a crescendo. however, building to this over several minutes requires both concentration and strong communication between the musicians.

I am pleased to say that we played for a total of five waves (each dance through the five rhythms is called a wave) and played something different each time, even when the teacher sprang a second one on us in the last session. Our three part singing on one rendition of Lyrical (the fourth movement) went down particularly well.

Afterwards the wonderful sauna on the field, built in the shape of an icosahedron, beckoned.

Air clarinet

I have often 'ghosted' through pieces prior to an audible run through. This involves holding the flute, clarinet, saxophone (or whatever) and just moving the fingers. It saves tiring the lip unnecessarily as well as the ears of anyone in range. In a group situation it also prevents the sonic chaos that ensues when everyone is trying to practise their part at the same time.

As a reed and pipe player this method has a few shortcomings, one being the accurate pitching of the note, especially on the flute where a controlled overblowing is required to determine the register in which one is playing along with subtle changes in the embouchure to adjust the timbre and tuning.

Imagine my delight when a student arrived the other day and told me he had discovered air clarinet and this enabled him to practise at night without disturbing the neighbours. I assumed he meant either what I call ghosting or else imagining holding the instrument and moving the fingers as required. The latter, especially when applied to scales or other patterns of notes, I find a sure fire cure for insomnia.

What my student meant, in fact, was the removal of the reed and then playing as normal. He assured me he could hear the notes and that it gave him a sense of how much air would be required to play the piece. When I put this to the test I found that I could hear the notes fairly accurately in the chalumeau (bottom) register but that they were unsurprisingly absent above that. And while it may be satisfying on some level to blow into the instrument it is of little use in determining the breath control that will be required when playing 'for real'. Unlike saxophones and flutes, which have conical bores, the clarinet is a cylinder and it requires far less breath to make it speak. I do run short of breath on occasions but more often I find the problem is finding the time to expel unused air from the lungs where it has gone stale.

Still, 'air clarinet' gives the instrument the kind of cool cache it probably hasn't enjoyed since Artie Shaw was at his peak. It's definitely a term I will coin.

Teaching disturbed children

Some years ago I taught woodwind to students aged 11 to 18 in a special school for children who were being given one last chance. If this didn't work out for them their next home would be secure accommodation of one sort or another. Some had been traumatised by severe abuse at home, some were from good homes but were chronic offenders and others had mental health issues that gave rise to antisocial behaviour. In short, they were challenging.

Enter me. At the time I was teaching woodwind in a number of private and state schools, as well as privately in a desirable part of town. My expectations of my students, and of myself, were high. Success meant achieving good marks for my pupils in their Associated Board exams. If one of them had an issue with an aspect of their technique, or made a mistake in a piece, I would point it out and together we would address the problem.

What I wasn't used to was students who would assemble their saxophone with the crook (the top part) pointing the wrong way week after week, students who wouldn't accept they'd made a mistake in a piece of music and would fly into a rage if I even suggested it, students with attention spans shorter than a chocolate commercial, students who storm out of the lesson shouting and swearing and students who weren't in the mood that day so decided not to come.

I spent the first few weeks wondering how best to explain to my employers that these kids were unlikely to pass their grade one exams any time soon. When I finally plucked up the courage I discovered that they didn't care. They were interested in giving their students a new experience. They wanted to add value to these kids of a kind that a pass or fail at grade one couldn't measure.

And so I began to see things differently too. I learned to tell when a very angry fifteen year old was in a receptive mood and when to forget the clarinet and listen to her rail against the world instead. I learned to savour moments such as the first time a boy whose body, the visible parts anyway, was covered in burn scars, put the crook on his saxophone the right way round without prompting. I learned to appreciate the gradual increases in his co-ordination skills.

It won't surprise you to know that my attitude to teaching 'normal' students changed as a result of working at that school. People learn for all sorts of reasons that are not goal-oriented and to assume they all aspire to greatness is a mistake. My students in the special school were extreme examples but the principle is the same: strive to find out what it is they need and add value where you can. For most of your students that really is the best thing you can offer them.