Oboe Innovations – Appearance and Sound

You know the old joke?

A conductor is in love with two women; one is ravishingly beautiful but hates music, the other is a wonderful coloratura that looks like a blowfish. Being a deeply artistic musician, he decides to marry the soprano. But on the morning after the wedding, he wakes up to see his new bride “in the light of day”. In a fit of panic, he shakes her violently saying : “For God’s sake, SING!”

It is very easy to say that what matters in an instrument is the sound, not the way it looks. In fact, for generations, nearly all oboes essentially looked like high-school band instruments! In a picture, an oboe by any maker could be passed off as any other maker.

NOTE: this post does not intend to compare the quality or merit of instrument brands. My purpose here is to show some of the more noteworthy innovations in the art and science of making oboes and how the manufacturers are aiming to recapture sound and qualities that might have been lost with standardization and industrialization.

[1] Dupin Imperial [2] violin [3] past Fossati

[4] Th. Orlowski (oboe) [5] Gebr. Mönning (d’Amore)

I can understand that the very complex keywork requires an even body to facilitate the mechanism, but how very bland compared to instruments from the classical or baroque eras. Even the Viennese oboe has retained a sense of woodwork. But this blog post intends to explore the opposite possibility: manufacturers who are passionate about giving their instrument a true personality might very much want to reflect that in the appearance as well as the sound.

Besides, it is very likely that the measurements of the wood in different parts of the instrument might well influence the sound: that is why great violins are not made of plywood! So “decorating” the instrument with different looking crowns or bells must certainly affect the sound.

Heinz Holliger, naturally, was my first oboe hero and he remains my standard for ornamenting Handel and dynamic expression. But when I heard Louise Pèllerin (Marigaux) my jaw dropped and my sense of sound aesthetic changed forever. Although Pèllerin remains a benchmark for me, Albrecht Mayer keeps turning my head when I hear him. At first, it was on the radio and I thought he played baroque oboe with a mediocre sound…. when I learned he played modern instruments, this was a revolution!

Top: Marigaux M2
Left to right: Gebr. Mönning Platinum (Albr. Mayer),
Ludwig Frank, Marigaux 2001 Altuglass,
Fossati 20th An. Soliste, Josef 2th An., Dupin Impérial.

A.Mayer: Mön. Plat.

Google-searching Mayer is how I discovered the work of Ludwig Frank (here ) and how his instruments look different, inside and outside. At the insistence of Albrecht Mayer, Ludwig Frank developed a conical bell for his Oboe d’Amore and English Horn (branded as Mönning Platinum).

Gregor Witt: L. Frank

Although actual Ludwig Frank oboes already had a unique looking “traditional German” bell, similar to those made by Thomas Orlowski (tan and brown bells above ) Mayer also influenced the Mönning Platinum oboe that is more French in design, but still looks and sounds most distinctly. Although Mayer made the Gebrüder Mönning (here ) Platinum better known around the world, I have heard excellent oboists playing the real Ludwig Frank with a really special sound: “full-body velvet”! That is, as warm and smooth as one can imagine, yet capable of every dynamic and articulation: a real work of art!

François Leleux: M2

Marigaux is probably the instrument played most by international soloists and orchestras of all levels in Europe. has gained much attention with their “Altuglass” oboe (here ), and more recently with their M2 (here ) instrument has a particular design: the top joint has only the octave keys and the middle joint has all the finger keys! You typically buy a wooden head joint and a synthetic one to prevent cracks due to weather. The head joints also come in 3 lengths to help tuning for different orchestras.

J-L Fillon: 2001 Altuglass

The Altuglass need not fear cracking as it is fully synthetic: but the sound remains easily as beautiful as any wood instrument, ebony, rosewood or cocobolo. The M2 is becoming a favourite of soloists in Europe: the sound leaves no question as to why!

Tomoharu Yoshida: Fossati

Fossati (here ) decided to give a fully contemporary look to their instruments by removing almost all decoration. They produced a German-looking bell for a short while on special request. This bell gave a darker richer tone. It also served as the basis for their newest Soliste 20^th Anniversary line: although the bell looks very plain, it is supposed to exaggerate the warmth and fullness of the tone. Perhaps Fossati’s most noteworthy innovations are a the trill keys that use only one hole and the metal alloys they use on the keys. The single hole trills help prevent cracks whereas the metal alloy apparently resists wear and tear from sweat and rubbing much better than silver, chrome or gold.

Simon Emes: Josef

Japan is one surprize after another: you can find there a whole society devoted to the Viennese oboe, a soloist (Oboe, Ob. d’Amore and English Horn) who is a fervent expert on Dupin oboes (below) and a maker of innovative modern instrument with the vision of creating the perfect oboe with a Japanese personality. Josef (here ) is this instrument maker and one of the means to get a Japanese personality is to change the decoration of the crown and the bell. The one pictured here is only one of several very different looking models.

Christoph Hartman and Renato Bizotto, Dupin Imperial.

Did I save the best for last? A true innovator while at the same time conserving the age-honoured craft of making oboes completely by hand, Rolland Dupin (here ) and his son Christophe have a solid reputation for making the most dependable modern oboes. They also make baroque oboes, which might explain how they imagined the Imperial oboe which has not only a very stylised bell, but also a decorated head-joint: not quite Viennese, but similar to baroque.The Imperial (made famous by Christoph Hartman) is capable of a variety of tone colours from the clear and virtuosic to warm and expressive. Dupin oboes are highly prized in Northern-Europe and many other places around the world. My absolute favourite style of orchestral playing is Scandinavian: when any instrument plays a solo, you don’t need to guess – you hear the flute solo, clarinets freely sound their beauty and oboes don’t sound as if they were ashamed of their tone. The oboes have remarkable qualities, rustic yet sophisticated, bold yet sensitive: truly my favourite style of playing. Perhaps the preference for Dupin instruments there might have something to do with it.

Big Reed, Big Sound – À la taille de l’anche, l’ampleur du son!

Happy Canada Day! – Bonne Fête du Canada!

The real O Canada pour vrai!	We miss you Roger tu nous manque!
Those of us who are old enough to remember Roger Doucet and Hockey Night in Canada can never like any other version of the national anthem more. This is it!	Ceux d’entre nous qui sommes assez vieux pour se souvenir de Roger Doucet à la Soirée du Hockey ne pourrons jamais aimer une autre version de l’hymne nationale!
Reed/Recording Surprize! I think I discovered the secret to Albrecht Mayer’s amazingly big and playful sound…. HIS REEDS! Of course, the instrument does play a huge role, but here is why I think his reeds might have even more to do with it.	Surprise sur prise avec les anches! Je crois avoir découvert le secret de la sonorité merveilleusement ample et joviale d’Albrecht Mayer… SES ANCHES! Bien sûr, l’instrument y joue un énorme rôle, mais voici pourquoi je pense que les anches y sont pour encore plus.
I was actually preparing some quick web-cam demonstrations of knife sharpening (fixing up the videos is longer than I expected), when I came upon this reed experiment completely by surprise. I took out a big reed that I decided to shorten a bit because I really hated the sound that came out of it: super-buzz! I couldn’t figure out why it was so buzzy even after backing-up the heart and chopping the tip 1.5 mm (resulting in a thicker tip). Surprize: when recording it, the playback was nowhere near as buzzy as what I heard when playing – even when placing the microphone in the worst possible position (in front and under the bell). The only thing I didn’t try was to reproduce the setup for my 1st recording in the dining-room.	J’étais en train de préparer des petits vidéos avec ma web-cam sur l’affûtage des couteaux (les préparer prend plus de temps que je ne l’aurais cru), quand je suis tombé sur une expérience avec cette anche qui m’a carrément bouleversée. J’ai décidé de raccourcir cette anche parce que sa sonorité ultra nasillarde me rendait fou! Même reculer le coeur et enlever 1.5 mm (ce qui donne un bout plus épais) n’a pas aidé. Surprise: en enregistrant, l’écoute n’approchait nullement le buzz que j’entend en jouant; même en plaçant le micro à la pire des positions, devant et sous le pavillon. Seule position qui reste: dans la salle à dîner comme pour le 1er enregistrement.

Buuuzzzzzzz: what I hear

Mic in normal “best” position.

Really good crow.

Another thing, as I played more on it, the sound in the recording would get even better. It still sounds buzzy to my ears, though deeper and darker, but still buzzy. The crow is just plain fantastic! Almost perfect stability, I don’t need to use any compensatory fingerings at all on my Lorée.	Une autre chose, plus je la joue, plus le son s’adoucit. Ça reste nasillard, mais plus rond et riche. Quand je fait crier l’anche, elle paraît simplement formidable! Stabilité presque parfaite, je n’ai besoin d’aucun doigté de compensation du tout sur mon Lorée.
The video on the left has the microphone in the worst place to show what I hear from the reed. The middle one has the microphone in the normal “best” place (on the table beside the instrument) and the one on the right is just a long crow.	La vidéo de gauche met le micro au pire endroit pour montrer ce que j’entend de l’anche. Celle du milieu met le micro à la meilleure place (sur la table à côté de l’instrument) ce qui donne normalement le son le plus fiable. La vidéo de droite montre comment l’anche crie.
Projection Test One thing noticed by some participants at the IDRS 2011 convention was that what the oboist hears locally can be radically different from “50 feet away” (at the back of the concert hall). I have no way to test this in my row-house. Maybe if I put the recording device in my front entrance and play in the basement TV room (very open stair case and dining area all the way). Such an experiment might yield interesting results…	Vérifier la projection sonore. Une chose notée par quelques participants à la convention de l’IDRS 2011 est que ce que le hautboïste entend sur place peut être fort différent de ce que l’on entend “à 20m” (en arrière de la salle). Je ne sais pas comment vérifier cela dans ma maison-rangée. Peut-être si je mets l’enregistreuse à l’entrée et que je joue dans la salle de télé. au sous-sol (aire ouverte tout le long). Une telle expérience devrait se montrer révélatrice…

Overdoing it & Recording Practice Sessions

Stuff going on this weekend, so pictures of the sides of my reeds comparing “manual” alignment with the Cane Guide will have to wait ‘till next week.

It’s been about a year now since I started lunch-time practicing with my fixed-up (almost) 1921 Pan-American beginner model and sent my Lorée to get revoiced in NY. I suppose my next You-Tube video should commemorate that milestone. I got the Lorée back at the end of June or beginning of July, so I still have time to get in better shape.

Update on physical progress.

No treatment this week. The weather was pretty sunny all last week, this week is turning to rain again. When the weather gets sunny, I get sore, when it gets cloudy/rainy, I get tired. But I’m doing much better than expected: yesterday the software development team spent the afternoon merging source-code all gathered around someone else’s computer. The twists and contortions I had to do to read his very small fonts should have given me a monster headache, but no, I’m doing fine! In fact, not even any Saturday morning headache. So the IMS treatments are evidently working.

(Not) Waving for the Camera

Musical, not physical expression.

In a previous post, I discussed how swinging the body while playing might help or hinder the expressive qualities of playing. My conclusion was that too much is distracting and completely stiff is boring. I also opened the question that perhaps body motion aids in phrasing.

Well, consider this video, one of my favourite pop songs of all time. I have never seen a band with fewer stage stunts … but close your eyes and just listen: there’s no denying the power and depth of their musical presence!

Can “expressiveness” be overdone?

I consider two kinds of dynamic expression: short expressions and long phrasing. The long phrasing is what we spend most of our years perfecting, the short expressions are anywhere from one to maybe 6 notes long, but describe our personal style and our understanding of how the particular style (baroque, classical, tango etc.) speaks.

Swelling notes, but not too much.

I’ve been recording my practice sessions lately, and I wonder if I’m not going to far in my dynamics. The long phrasing is fine, but the short expressions will go from a true pp to a true ff in a matter of one beat. When I just write/say that, it might sound like a dream come true for the oboe, but when I record myself and play it back, I’m not so sure anymore. Then again, I need to play with the microphone and computer “gain” (sensitivity) settings and their positioning: this changes the way the recording ends-up sounding quite a lot!

When I listen to my hero Albrecht Mayer playing what could go berzerk with dynamics, I find his playing much more tame than I would expect, but full of energy and vigour nonetheless!

Computer Aided Practice Recording.

More and more, I’ve been using the computer to record my practice sessions. I’m finding it downright revealing!  Using the free and powerful software Audacity, I recorded the piano accompaniment on one track. Every time I press the record button, a new track is added while playing all the tracks already there so I can hear the piano while recording. Previous tracks of my own performances can be muted one at a time or all together. This way I can compare the different performances and verify the progress.

One REAL test for tuning is to play along with one of my previous tracks or have 2 of my tracks play together… OUCH! When playing this way, I am forced to adjust to the “other oboe”: nothing says that the “other oboe” is in tune , but there is an old saying in musical performance: “If the other guy is out of tune, it’s my fault!” [for not compensating]. This is much more difficult than playing with other instruments.

Getting the piano part is not too difficult, it requires a CD or any kind of computer file where the piano was recorded. A CD can be “ripped” with free programs such as WinLame and each tune or movement becomes a separate MP3 file. In all formats of recorded performance (actual sound file), just drag-and-drop the file onto Audacity and a new track is made for it. If you have a MIDI file, it can be converted into an actual sound file with other free software such as SUPER.

Amazing Unknown…

Well, she’s not really unknown because she did study under Heinz Holliger, she did a decent number of recordings including at least one with H.H. and I believe she is a teacher and orchestral oboist in Switzerland… but I don’t know where and Google is not very helpful in getting information on her.

Parenthesis:

I was planning to record another couple of impressionist tunes, but I’m running out of decent performance reeds and I kind of promised I’d do something for the Twitter group #BachChat (find me @RobinDesHautboi – no ‘s’ – and join the fun!). They are having a party on the 21st and people are already going wild with it! I’m getting a wisdom tooth pulled out a few days before that, so I thought I’d concentrate on one Bach recording before then, next week.

Handel : Lascia Chio Pianga

Louise Pellerin:

(http://www.marigaux.com/en/musiciens/pellerin-louise)
So in the meantime, I really think this Canadian (born and trained) oboist is fantastic and she deserves to be better known…. or perhaps the music lovers everywhere deserve the pleasure of knowing her music better. Like I said, before discovering Albrecht Mayer, she was my favourite. So here are a couple more of her tunes recorded at the monastery Abbaye St-Benoit du lac (near Sherbrooke Québec Canada) with a treasure of an organist, the monk Dom André Laberge (Benedictine).

Handel : Flammende Rose, Zierde den Erde

Recording breakthrough:

In a few old posts (Recording Tricks, Microphone Tips #2), I mentioned that correctly positioning the microphone an lowering the recording level yielded a true sound. Well today I did that and plugged it into an old Aiwa boom-box: my wife was climbing the stairs and jumped startled when she saw me, she thought that was me in the other room playing!

Learning from the Masters… electronically!

I had the real pleasure of being “virtually” introduced to a bunch of amazing oboists that I would not have known otherwise. In this blog, I have made much ado of Albrecht Mayer… in fact, I would never have known about him if it weren’t for internet streaming radio and the CBC radio 2’s good habit of giving performance details of their playlists on their web-site.

 

We are living in a wonderful time where it has become so easy to hear so many performances, but finding these performances assumes you know what to look for… and where! Thanks to You-Tube, Facebook, personal blogs and Bill-Boards (discussion groups), I have met many fine people, young, experienced, students, amateurs and professional who have been able to share recordings they have found on the internet. Sometimes, just sharing a name was enough to launch a process of research and discovery.

Redefining Concepts

I can truly say that my concept of playing the oboe, musicianship in general, my concepts of sound and style have changed quite a lot in the past few months. For example, virtuosic (“athletic”) repertoire like Rossini or Pasculli normally leave me indifferent at best. However, the playing of Christoph Hartmann and Giovanni di Mauro are very impressive. Clear, crystalline oboe sounds usually rebuff me, but the playing of Malcom Messiter and Heinz Holliger are definitely worth careful study. Normally, there is a crisp separation between the baroque and modern oboes… in fact, in the 1990s and early 2000s it seemed politically incorrect to play baroque repertoire on modern instruments and romantic or impressionist repertoire on baroque or classical replicas were simply unheard of. Thankfully, some superstars are changing that (A.M. for the oboe, but also Nigel Kennedy on the Violin and many others on other instruments). Next time, I’ll put up a list of very odd ways different oboes are being played!

 

To open some eyes to what can be done with our instrument, take a look at the following:

--- oboe d'amore tango : excellent sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Jcv7YuTw0&NR=1

--- baroque oboe BAND
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFoysod39dk&feature=related

--- really good modern jazz oboe : Jean-Luc Fillon quintet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TIP8swMSi8&NR=1

--- Great 1960's jazz : “buzzaphone“ in the right place!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoAtTi_u2u8&feature=related

--- jazz sounds like a Romanian taragot
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb6Goh2lFgo&feature=related

--- bass oboe: saw 3 ships
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0YJxutxAv4&feature=related

--- ragtime oboe trio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmxt8qqo8v8&feature=related

--- not oboe, but REALLY funny (duet or duel?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbQwQetKm2g&feature=related

When I was a student, recordings were common place, but still expensive and there were simply fewer of them. It was also more difficult to make “discoveries” unless the record store imported on a regular basis. Nowadays, CD's have become much less expensive and public libraries have had time to amass a good collection. I have been going to the Ottawa Public library every week and discovering a wealth of performances, repertoire, ensembles and inspiration all around.

 

You-Tube doesn’t give the best sound quality, but it sure offers us the ability to hear and compare young and not so young musicians. I have had the pleasure of both sharing my experience to the benefit of others, some less advanced and others more advanced than myself while learning and gaining much from their own questions, answers and recommendations.

Helping me play:

All this wealth of exposure has definitely changed the way I perceive music and will hopefully improve performance. Right now, I’m just putting the final touches on the MIDI file that will accompany my 1st recording ever… and mark my return to public performance! Doing an arrangement on MIDI file is more work than I would have expected, but it will be well worth the effort considering the versatility in performance styles and orchestration abilities offered by computers.

 

I have an excellent digital piano that has fantastic orchestral sounds…. but my bleeping PC laptop doesn’t seem to want to communicate with it anymore! I can get the computer speakers to accompany me, but that is a bit of a shame considering. Oh well, I suppose that will just leave doors open for later!