Woodwinds: The Underused Gems of the

Orchestra
scorecastonline.com by Stellita Loukas October 15, 2012

Welcome back to our orchestration series! I hope that you found the strings
articles helpful and informative. This time I would like to present to you the
underused gems of the orchestra; woodwinds! Following the same structure as
for previous articles, I will first look at their ranges, registers, characteristics
and capabilities and then I will discuss different ways in which you can use
woodwinds to orchestrate your melody and harmony. So, following our
tradition, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and lets get down to business!

I. INTRODUCTION
Woodwinds are probably the most underused instruments within new
composers circles yet they can add a huge variety of interesting colors, timbres,
flourishes and extra layers to an orchestration. While they can serve as excellent
fillers (providing wonderful runs, trills, rips and all sorts of interesting effects
playing behind or between melodies), they are also capable of a vast range of

expression when given solo melodic lines and can work wonders in adding
attack and poignancy to your harmonic material.

What are woodwind instruments?

Sounds like a rather silly question but bear with me for a second. When I was a
little girl, if asked what kind of instruments are saxophones I would exclaim
BRASS without any hesitation. Why? Because I thought that wind instruments
were classified into wooden and brass according to the material from which they
are constructed. However, I later found out that the distinguishing factor
according to which winds are classified is the material from which their
mouthpieces are constructed. Brass instruments have brass mouthpieces and
woodwinds have wooden mouthpieces.
Woodwinds are further classified according to how many reeds their mouthpiece
consists of.

Single Reed : clarinets and saxophones

Double Reed : oboe, cor anglais and bassoons

No Reed : flutes. While flutes do not have a wooden mouthpiece, they

are considered woodwind instruments because they used to be constructed
from wood. Some piccolos are still made of wood.

The most common woodwinds used today

If we were to explore the entire range of woodwind instruments we would need a
few articles just for that! The clarinet family alone has 7 instruments!!!
Therefore, we are only going to look at the woodwinds used most commonly in
modern music;

FLUTES : Flute in C, Piccolo flute in C and Alto flute in G

CLARINETS : Clarinet in Bb and Bass Clarinet in Bb

OBOES : Oboe in C and English Horn (Cor Anglais) in F

BASSOONS : Bassoon in C and Contra Bassoon in C

While the saxophones also belong in the woodwind family, they deserve an
article of their own and will be covered in the near future!

II. SOUND CREATION AND BREATHING

Woodwind instruments produce sound as air is blown into their tubes through
their mouthpieces. Different pitches are possible through the alteration of the
tube length with the opening and closing of the different holes.
The first and foremost point you should remember when writing for woodwinds
is that woodwind players are humans and not robots. While a note sustaining for
5 bars is feasible in strings or even virtual woodwinds, a real woodwind player
will have a LOT to say about that! So when writing for woodwinds keep in mind
that players need time to breath! If you cannot sing a phrase in one breath,
chances are a player wont be able to play it in one breath eitherunless they are
using an iron lung!
Another point I would like to bring to your attention is the relation between
instrument size and the air required for it to produce sound; the larger the
instrument the more air the player needs in order to produce sound. While a
passage may be easy on the clarinet, a bass clarinetist might need much more
time to breath in order to execute the same passage. When writing for
woodwinds, try to put yourself into the players role and provide ample time for
breathing and preparation.
Finally, the louder the dynamic, the more air is required and the quicker the air
is consumed. Therefore, be extra careful when asking your players to play forte
passages.

III. TIMBRE, DYNAMICS AND FLEXIBILITY

Woodwinds are not like strings; their timbre and color changes as they move
from the lower to the higher end of their range. In fact, many scholars and
orchestration books suggest that one should look at each woodwind as three
different instruments : low, middle and high. This is because a flute, for example,

sounds completely different when playing at its low register than playing at its
middle or high register. We will look at these differences in more detail in the
next section. For now, what you should keep in mind is that :

the middle register of each instrument is the easiest for a player to

control (both in terms of pitch and dynamics);

the high register lends itself for loud dynamics and more intense
passages, and;

the low register is more suitable for soft dynamics and more subtle
passages.

In other words, woodwind players can do pretty much everything on the middle
register but have difficulties executing loud passages in low registers and soft
passages in high registers.

IV. INSTRUMENTATION NOTES

Below you will find information regarding range, registers and characteristics for
each individual woodwind, presented in a table format for easier
comprehension.

V. TECHNIQUES AND SPECIAL EFFECTS

Woodwinds are probably the most agile and flexible instruments of the
orchestra. They are capable of extremely fast runs, trills and rips, expressive
legato passages and very pronounced and aggressive staccato chords. Below, you
will find a table with some of the most common techniques that are
characteristic to woodwind instruments. Bear in mind that it is always best to
restrict any special techniques to the middle register of the instruments because
special effects are much harder to execute and control in the extreme registers.