Woodwind Geek

Pitch bending is a technique where the player changes the pitch of a note by changing their embouchure, rather than the fingering of the note. It possible to change the pitch of a note by multiple tones if you have enough control over your embouchure and diaphragm. It’s a difficult technique, but I’ve been looking into how to do it well and how different it is between different instruments and pitches.

Playing an instrument doesn’t seem like a particularly common skill as an adult. As children, a lot of us will have played an instrument at some point at school, but many of those give this up as they get older. So what percentage of people in the UK actually play an instrument and which of them are the most commonly played?

One of the most important aspects of playing an instrument is the tuning. If you can’t play in tune, no matter how good you get technically, you’ll never produce a really nice sound, particularly if you’re playing with other people. Playing in tune can be difficult, particularly on certain notes or over big intervals. So how can you improve your tuning? I’ve put together some tips that you can work on here.

All woodwind instruments have a finite set of fingerings. Within a given note range, the fingering for each note will be different. However, when you get to the point where you’re learning to play a second octave, you’ll find that a lot of the notes have the same fingering. So what’s actually going on physically when you change the pitch of the note without changing your fingering?