Helen Bledsoe

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  • Extended techniques: Do We Need a Pan-Woodwind View?

    Since the 1967 publication of Bruno Bartolozzi’s New Sounds for Woodwind, there have been many books published for new sounds, or extended techniques, for the individual woodwind instruments. (Read here about some thoughts about the term “extended techniques”.) However, to my knowledge, since then, there has been no book that addresses the emerging uses of extended sounds for the woodwinds as a whole. This has become a problem for composers whose main focus is orchestral and ensemble writing.

    I do not intend to disparage the hard work that has gone into the existing books for single instrumental techniques (for example, the Bärenreiter series). However, reading each individual book is not entirely helpful (or cheap) for a composer who wants to write an orchestral score with these techniques – a score that graphically reflects the Geist of the sounds (open note heads for air sounds, for example) and is consistent in its notation throughout the staves. These aspects are very important for juries, funding committees, conductors, and other people whose job it is to peruse scores. Then there are the players, for whom the score also needs to give clear information as to what to play and how to play it.

    Take air (aeolian) sounds, for example. It’s a very different production technique for flute, single reed, or double reed, and they produce different sound results. However, a composer will want a unified notation and a conductor will expect a balanced sound from this notation (which usually doesn’t result!). A similar situation with percussive techniques. Different methods of production are even reflected in our terminology (slap tongue for reeds, pizzicato for flutes). And unpitched material? Ideally a composer might want to reflect it by a clef change (using a precussion clef), but for winds, often our “unpitchted” material needs a fingering, therefore five lines and a treble or bass clef (think tongue ram or jet whistle).

    In spite of my love for continuing the flute traditions of notation, and my pedantic writings on “Lumping and Splitting” notations, I do agree that some things could be improved by re-thinking the notational traditions that came out of solo works that flourished in the 1980’s and 1990’s in order to make a more comprehensive, woodwind-wide system that makes a composer’s life easier. Any thoughts?

  • Flute Microtonality for Composers

    Please understand that for all winds, we have to use special fingerings or lip adjustments for microtonal playing. This can make fast passages tricky, and not just twice as tricky, but I would even say to a factor between 5 and 10 times as hard. My first advice is to avoid fast passages, but there are ways under which quick microtonal passages can work, so here are some guidelines:

    In short, if you have to go fast:

    • avoid notes that need to be lipped, or need to have the flutist roll the flute in or out (i.e. notes that have no fingerings): G-1/4 flat (F-3/4 sharp) and all the notes below our low Eb (anything produced by the foot joint, where there are no open holes), unless all notes in the passage can be lipped in the same direction (all 1/4 or 3/4 sharps, for example).
    • if you are considering such a lipped passage, don’t mix 12ET (chromatic) and microtones together. If we have to lip, it’s nice if we can keep our lips in the same direction for an ergonomic length of time and not have to “reset” to normal for a single note in a fast passage. 
    • whether lipped or fingered, keep the motion scalar, larger intervals can be trickier esp. over a break
    • keep the passage short or discontinuous

    These remarks are for standard, open-hole systems, but those of us with a Kingma system will also be grateful if you follow these guidelines. Be aware that closed-hole systems (and this includes most piccolos, alto- and bass flutes) have even more limitations when it comes to playing fast.

    As usual, my remarks are geared heavily towards ensemble works, which are often delivered late and may not have enough rehearsal time. In writing a solo piece, whatever two consenting adults agree on is ok.

    What do I consider fast for microtones? Subjectively, 16ths above quarter note = 100, or any speed where rolling in and out (another term for lipping) quickly is not feasible. Often fingerings work, but sometimes notes need to be lipped (like that pesky G-1/4 flat). There is also the question of how long a microtonal passage is – if faster but short with a few microtones, that can be ok.

    What about Xi by Stockhausen? Why does this work, for a closed-hole flute no less? First of all, the motion is scalar, which makes it easier. Second of all, he had an awesome flutist collaborator to guide him: Kathinka Pasveer. Another aspect is this is a solo piece, it is understood that hours of preparation are going to be invested.

    Here are some examples from Grisey and Aperghis:

    The above example works because of the scalar motion, and the dreaded F 3/4 sharp is a long note that can be lipped.

    The above example here breaks some of my guidelines, but is doable, and as long as the passage is short it’s fine for me. However, unless you are already a famous composer, I would still advise you to think more closely about a passage like this and perhaps make some ergonomic adjustments, especially if it’s not a solo work and the passage becomes extended.

    Should you write in the fingerings for the flutist? Nowadays (2025), most professional players will know the standard quarter-tone fingerings, or they have access to charts. However, if you want a shaded microtone with a special sound associated with a special fingering, yes, please provide it.

    As a general rule, it’s nice for the player to know what role microtones play in your work. Do you use quarter-tones as a part of 24 note equal temperament? Are they sometimes meant to represent smaller, perhaps spectral intervals? Do they reflect the inflections of speech or some other acoustic phenomenon?

    Here are some general remarks on notating microtones, taken from Ensemble Musikfabrik’s Style Guide. Accidentals: For equal tempered quarter tones:

    Smaller intervals may be indicated with arrows or other symbols, but must be clearly labeled in the performance instructions. Spectral and just intonation: we recommend the additional use of ratios, partial numbers or cent indications. Apply quarter-tone accidentals only for the 11th partial.

    Want more information about composing for flute? Here is a handy presentation.

  • A Pierre….

    A Pierre….

    With two performances behind me, I thought I would jot down a few notes on A Pierre. Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum by Luigi Nono. This is a “notes to self” for my future performances, but I hope they shed some light on some questions for other performers as well. These comments pertain primarily to the flute part.

    I won’t go into the background of the piece, instead, I will direct you to Daniel Agi’s helpful article and table of multiphonics for performing this work on a C bass flute. Here is a share version of the full article. I also recommend reading the “Notes on the text” by André Richard and Marco Mazzolini found in the score. Another interesting read is an article by Laura Zattra et al “Studying Luigi Nono’s A Pierre“.

    Nono portrait concert with Musikfabrik Sept. 2024

    The part of the score that elicits the most questions for flutists is the indication for whistling (fischio). Roberto Fabricciani, Nono’s flutist collaborator in this work, whistles through his teeth; this is the method that can best combine whistle sounds and the resonance of the flute. I would prefer whistling this way if I could. Despite my efforts, I can’t reliably control the pitch with this way. Since the score indicates exact pitches (although the octaves can be adjusted to your whistle range), I whistle through the lips.

    It’s important to know that the notation can be misleading in that it shows long, held sounds. However, the “Notes on the text”, found in the score, make it clear that every note should actually be in flux: multiphonics need not be entirely stable, fischio sections should fluctuate between the flute sound and the whistles (except where specifically noted that the whistle should be held out). This is also confirmed by a conversation with clarinetist Ernesto Molinari, who appears on the SWR recording with Fabricciani. The transitions from flute sound to whistling are very important. This is in no way reflected in the notation, but it is very important. Do not think that you need to learn a special technique of playing and whistling at the same time. It’s nice if you can keep the resonance of the flute while whistling, but it is the the transitions, the in- between sounds, that are most important.

    If you know Nono’s Das Atmende Klarsein, you will be familiar with the technique of whistling and playing with the resonance of the flute. In my opinion, this is a different use of the effect from what Nono wants in A Pierre. In Das Atmende Klarsein, there are melodic and harmonic considerations that argue for the whistling and the flute resonance to be as steady and balanced as possible, whereas in A Pierre, they should be elegantly unsteady.

    It has now become quite common to play A Pierre on a bass flute in C. There is no published score for this instrumentation; one has to take the original and make the transposition. At some point though, I want to try this piece on the instrument for which it was conceived, a narrow-bored contrabass flute in G. (There are very few of them in existence. See Daniel Agi’s article linked above). My suspicion is that this instrument produces fewer higher partials than modern bass flutes in C, which often have embouchure holes with high walls and a sharp blowing edge so that they can project in ensemble situations. These high partials are taken up by the electronics, especially the band-pass filters, and amplified. I don’t think this sounds terrible, but I wonder if Nono had used these modern instruments in his experiments, he might have chosen different parameters for the filter’s cut-off frequencies and different transpositions for the harmonizers?

    Ernesto Molinari also said that the original idea is to have the players seated, not standing. I seem to have a vague recollection of a photo from the original performance with the players seated on stools that looked like contrabass stools. He also said the work should not go on for too long, never more than 10 minutes. For me personally, I think feels correct: this work is a small puzzle of a present for Pierre Boulez, almost jewel-like, and not a zoned-out, meditative work, despite its trippy, hallucinogenic sound world.

    Also, keeping to the original timing (without being metronomically, robotically strict) does create a proper coinciding of the delay lines with the fermatas. According to Juan Parra, with whom we performed the electronics – theoretically, during the fermatas, Nono has calculated an event in the past that should be heard in the delay during the fermata. The fermatas are there not only as points of meeting for the players, but for the electronics to play out their parts as well. This is why they are given specific durations. The delay lines are also specifically chosen at 12 and 2 x 12 (24) seconds long for important psychoacoustic reasons. According to experiments Nono and his team did in the electronic studio, twenty-four seconds is approximately the time in which most people do not hear a musically repeated idea as a repetition, but as an independent idea.

    I hope this is helpful to anyone working on this piece, including my future self 🙂

  • Bisbigliando or Not?

    Let’s do some logic:

    I assume the answer is “no” – at tempo = 60 this is not really rapid.

    Again my guess is “no”, neither the notation nor the tempo would qualify this as a tremolo.

    Again the logical conclusion is “no”. It does not fit the criteria for a tremolo or a trill.

    So why do we sometimes encounter this notation shown above? Slow-moving harmonic changes are in no way a tremolo, trembling, or whispering, therefore, not bisbigliando. So I would genuinely love to know why this notation above persists; why is the term “bisbigliando” written sometimes over slow harmonic changes? Why does this continue to be taught, where does this tradition come from, and what kind of logic it is based on?

    Please, convince me!

    Here are some reasons why this notation is problematic. In essence, this is a term for harp players. A little appropriation among musical terms is fine, but I think this extrapolation meaning “any movement between harmonics regardless of context” is misleading. Sometimes a passage can be played with a change in harmonics AND bisbigliando/timbre trill, therefore it makes more sense to be specific. Do you want the slow change of harmonics? Do you want a timbral trill? Do you want both?

    So if you don’t really want a timbral trill, what would you write in the passage shown above? The good news is: nothing! You don’t need a descriptive word or any notational elaborations, because the notation speaks for itself. If you want a descriptive word, perhaps use “sotto voce”, “lontano”, “quasi niente” or something to that effect, if it is something atmospheric you are after.

  • Lumping and Splitting Part III

    Subtitle: the Great Jet Whistle Lump

    (for an introduction to the topic of Lumping and Splitting, read Part I)

    “Airy Sound” is an indication that I come across very often. Although I use it myself in my own pieces, I am aware that it’s a whole kettle of lumped-together fish!

    For flutists, the main distinction that has to be made is whether the air should go:

    1. across the flute in normal playing position (pitched air sounds), or
    2. into the flute with the mouth covering the embouchure hole (unpitched air sounds)

    I want to write about the second type, these “unpitched air” or “inside flute” sounds. They are interesting for several reasons:

    1. you can make filtered noise with sibilant sounds (“s” – “sshhh”)
    2. you can play with vowel sounds (“ooh” – “iii”)
    3. you can mess around with speech (if you like muffled effects – bear in mind, speech produced with the hole covered will neither carry nor be understood, unless amplified).
    4. you can buzz around like a trumpet (not great for your embouchure, I like to do this in improv for shorts bursts, though)
    5. you can play jet whistles

    OK, I have listed at 5 things you can do, and there are definitely more. But let’s not muddy the waters, let’s look at the ones that deal with just air, numbers 1, 2, and 5. These are all quite distinct techniques that sound very different.

    So why, WHY, do some composers lump all these techniques together and call them “Jet Whistle”? This is lumping on a grand scale.

    On Rogier de Pijper’s very useful webpage, he defines: “Jet whistle is a forceful and loud attack of air. It might be associated with the starting of a jet plane, that’s why they are called Jet whistle”. Exactly. Anything slower or softer is just an aeolian / airy sound with the embouchure hole covered, no jets involved.

    It’s valid to imagine how a jet whistle would sound slowed-down, and one can do it a bit slowed down, the way a flutist would blow into their flute to warm it up. This is still a fairly quick action that needs time for breathing and to change the embouchure position. It takes air to get those upper harmonics resonating. Longer effects would be better served by writing a covered-embouchure air sound with the vowels “ooh — iii — ooh”, where the dashes represent gradual changes.

    So why don’t I accept these longer effects as a “slowed-down” jet whistles? Because from the flute perspective, it’s very different on the technical production level, and because there are many other ways you can imagine this kind of slow, air/aeolian sound, with different combinations of shapes, vowels and sibilant sounds. This is where it pays to be specific, because there are so many different, wonderful, whooshing sounds possible on the flute! Why be generic?

    For tips on how to notate air sounds, see this blog entry or this video on pitched air sounds or this video on unpitched air sounds. For a more general video on consonant and vowel colorations for flute, see this tutorial here.

  • Lumping and Splitting Part II

    (Read Part I for an intro to this topic.) Here are my opinions (at this point) about notating techniques for the flute: which techniques for the flute one can lump together (generalize), and which ones benefit from more differentiation.

    Percussive sounds in Ensemble/orchestral situations

    There are several places to put your tongue inside your mouth and make popping noises that resonate lightly with the flute. Traditionally, these are called pizzicati preceded by its place of oral origin: lip pizz, palatal pizz, sometimes the generic tongue pizz. Some people borrow the term “slap tongue” or “slap tone” from reed playing. There is no reed involved in flute playing, and pizzicati are not produced by any kind of slapping motion. Pizzicato refers to a plucking motion, which is a better description of what happens in a flutist’s mouth. Therefore, the term pizzicato is correct. I see these terms “slap..” and pizzicato used interchangeably, which is puzzling, but at least I know more or less what to do.

    calling this a just a pizz or pizzicato is OK

    As far as differentiating the place of origin for a pizz, in an ensemble or orchestral situation, I think lumping is ok – it is not necessary to specify how or where it is produced. The difference between a lip pizz or a palatal pizz is very subtle, but can be effective under amplification or other acoustically welcoming conditions. So if you really want a good pizz, you might let the flutist decide where in the mouth they can do it most effectively.

    Speaking of effectiveness: please use the first octave only!

    Here is a short video showing the differences (or lack thereof) between a tongue pizz produced first on the palate, then on the lips, and then a pizz with just the lips, which could be referred to as a bilabial pizzicato is you want to get fancy, or you could just notate a normal pizzicato with the letter “P” below it. Actually, any unvoiced consonant can be used this way.

    More to come in Part III

  • Lumping Whistles and Splitting Pizzes (Part 1)

    In the realm of notation of extended techniques, the phenomenon of Lumpers and Splitters is alive and well. First, a short explanation of this phenomenon, then I will give you my take on how lumpers and lumping seems to be the dominant force behind recent notation trends. In Part 2 I will discuss where I think lumping makes sense, and where it doesn’t.

    The first known use of this term is attributed to Charles Darwin, and is defined by Wikipedia as “opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories.” Continuing with the Wikipedia definition, a “lumper” is a person who assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A “splitter” is one who makes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways.” I first came across this term while reading about the findings of hominin fossils in East Africa. Do the collections of fossils represent one species, or several? A lumper would say one species, a splitter would say many.

    In fields where there is only a very small sample size, or there is little objective, material criteria, such as (historical) linguistics, religion, software engineering, you will find these discussions. Among musicologists, there are lumpers and splitters who debate on the periodization of our (Western) musical history.

    I am seeing a definite tendency towards lumping in the notation of extended techniques: using the term jet whistle to refer to diverse air/aeolian sounds, referring to multiphonics as split tones (no pun intended!), or all sorts of pizzicati referred to as slaps.

    As to why there is this trend, “splits can be lumped more easily than lumps can be split” is perhaps the simplest explanation. And we all know that the more information that is out there, the less overview there is, and fewer people will take the time to try to navigate it. Therefore, the lowest common denominator prevails.

    In my practice, I think it makes sense to lump some techniques, whereas other techniques could be more effective if they were subject to more differentiation.

    More about that in Part 2.

  • Right or Wrong? Extended or Not?

    Every community has its own lingo, subject to the winds of its own political climate. The community of Contemporary Western Art Music is no exception. Flutists and flutist/composers form a micro-climate within this community, and we certainly like to make our voices heard. There has been a call from our corner to scorn the term “extended techniques”. How did this come about?

    Well, the term implies exclusion, according to the flwoke (a word I just made up for the flute-playing woke). Calling a flute sound an “extended technique” implies it is “other”, not included in the corpus of sounds that the flute can make. You can’t extend something that is complete unto itself.

    I have to say, though, that the pioneer spirit in me is disappointed. The Western, Classical flute tradition does have a particular sound that is suited to the repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries (as the “early” flutes have theirs that fits the repertoire and acoustical environments of their eras). I like to imagine I live in a world that extends beyond that.

    Another aspect, though, is the knee-jerk reactions of some flutists to these sounds. There are some teachers alive today who insist there is a right way and a wrong way to play the flute (non-classical flute sounds being, by default, wrong). Instead of getting angry about this, I translate and paraphrase that: there are sounds that work for certain repertoire, instrumentation and acoustical environments. Soloists and orchestral musicians need an air-to-tone ratio that will project in traditional concert halls, a vocal-style vibrato that will carry the sound and doesn’t offend modern sensibilities, a harmonic structure that blends with other woodwinds, is in tune with itself, and an ear attuned to 12-ET (and the minor adjustments needed to play chords within a wind section).

    It is worth noting that the boundaries of what is considered “right” are in flux. Think of vibrato styles of past generations, or what was considered acceptably “in-tune” in early recordings. Although in flux, the methodology of teaching these “right” combinations is rather codified, although each generation produces its own pedagogical literature.

    My theory is that before amplification became a thing, this “right” way of playing was crucial to acoustical survival, it wasn’t only a question of taste, much less right or wrong. Flute sounds evolved according to the acoustic realities of the time. Any technique that made the flute sound more present was encouraged, be it a faster vibrato or more harmonics in the sound. Whatever helps the instrument to project in its environment is right. Instrument makers responded to these demands with larger, partially cylindrical bores, “better” scales, and larger tone holes.

    Techniques like harmonics, multiphonics, percussive effects, air sounds, and circular breathing have a history that goes back before the 20th century, but their presence on stage has proliferated since the mid 20th century. There are multiple reasons for this, but one aspect pertinent to my point is that these sounds are no longer under pressure to acoustically conform to man-made architecture* and can achieve presence through amplification. Thus they have not been subjected to such strict methodology and ideals of right and wrong.

    But are these techniques extended? I will leave the question open. The need for a catch-all term that grabs a search-engine’s hit does impose a level of conservatism. For me, the important point is that contemporary music is an emerging tradition – you could say that it is still being extended. Perhaps “extending” techniques would be a compromise? Using the term extended implies that it still has somewhere to go, that there are still sounds to be discovered and ways to approach known sounds that have yet to be discovered. This is what gives me motivation and hope. When students ask me, “how do I make that sound?”, or, “what is the fingering for that?”, I tend to get a fanatical gleam in my eye. The answer is often, there is no “right” way, because you are lucky to be participating in an emerging tradition. I do it this way, someone else approaches it differently, and if you can think of a better way, I will come to you for lessons!

    *Ignoring the fact that microphones and digital environments are man-made, at least until the robot revolution.