Dancing and singing and drumming and bass playing in the rain: Part I
[NOTE: This post and a planned Part II (on dancing while singing) were sparked by a fairly lengthy discussion with Rufus T. Firefly and several others in the “walk and chew gum” thread, about the difficulty of singing and playing the drums simultaneously.]
The idea that it’s hard to sing and play drums at the same time – harder than to sing and play another instrument – isn’t something I just came up with on my own. In fact, being neither a musician nor a singer, I don’t feel personally qualified to say. I find it all rather difficult.
But it’s something I’ve read about quite a bit. There’s a lot of discussion about it among people who play music, a kind of accepted wisdom, although that “wisdom” is also often challenged (as it was in our own discussion).
So, is it really so very hard? And what exactly is meant by “at the same time”?
Obviously, one can’t play a wind instrument while singing, although someone like Louis Armstrong would alternate the two and did a great job of it. The main instruments we’re talking about would be the piano (or other keyboards), the guitar, and the drums, and it’s rock and pop music in particular that we’ve been talking about.
It’s not that it’s impossible to do any of this simultaneously. Obviously it isn’t at all impossible, because there are people who successfully sing and play said instrument or instruments. It appears to me, however, that there’s a continuum, and the continuum involves – for whatever reason – a progression, easiest to hardest, from rhythm guitar as easiest for singing, to keyboards, to lead guitar, to bass guitar, and then to drums. With drums I’ve read that there’s the extra difficulty of it often being a seemingly more aerobic activity, which can bring problems of breath control when singing is introduced. Watch that video of Queen’s Roger Taylor singing and drumming “I’m in Love With My Car” (featured on my previous post) if you doubt how especially strenuous drum playing can be.
Some people simply can’t sing as they play at all, so they stick to singing without playing (even though they might actually be able to play an instrument when not singing). Some people can do both when both activities are kept quite simple. Some can do it when at least one of the activities is at a more complex level, and some (rarer still) when both activities are moderately complicated. But I don’t think anyone plays his or her most complex instrumental music while simultaneously singing his or her most complex singing, although that certainly would be something to see if it could be done.
It also depends what is meant by the words “at the same time.” Most complicated playing I’ve seen that is done by singing musicians – whether it be on guitar or drums – is done during the solo instrumental sections when no one at all is singing, or is done by someone who isn’t singing at all (or just chiming in on the chorus, perhaps) while the lead singer sings. But with a person who sings lead and plays lead guitar simultaneously (such as Mark Knopfler, for example) at a high level (although some hate his singing, I happen to love it, particularly his tone and phrasing), there are usually short phrases of singing accompanied by somewhat simpler playing, and then for a moment (probably when the singer is taking a breath or resting very briefly at the end of a phrase), there’s a little riff on the instrument. Then the singing resumes, and the two modes alternate that way.
However, I must add that Knopfler’s guitar skills are such that nothing he does on the guitar sounds simple to me, because his tone is so spectacularly beautiful and idiosyncratic, so very musical and melodic and emotional, that even a single note seems complex.
If you want to see some discussions of the phenomenon of singing while playing an instrument, see this or this. There are a ton of other sites where people discuss the difficulties involved. The commonalities between bass guitar and drums and the difficulties they each present to singers apparently include the need to keep up a rhythm that doesn’t completely parallel the melody line, so it’s much easier to do if the drumming or the bass lines are very simple. Rhythm guitar apparently doesn’t present the same issues involving singing. I’ve also heard some people say that singing really well while playing piano – although much easier than singing while playing bass or the drums – is not something everyone can do, even if the person is otherwise quite musical.
Here’s a fairly tongue-in-cheek discussion from Dave Grohl:
Some other discussions you might want to look at: this one on rhythm versus lead guitar, as well as this, this, and this.
And in this video, singing teacher Ken Tamplin features the best 10 singer-drummers. So of course they exist. He professes to be able to teach people how to do it:
Also, regarding singing and dancing: it’s rare. But that’s for Part II.
I did practice marching band while playing a brass instrument once in junior high. Didn’t like it. I think the main objective there is to not suck. Not actually play well. Then I switched schools for high school and thankfully they didn’t mess with marching.
The thing that strikes me about playing a trap set (I’ve never played), is that you are sitting on a tiny stool that is designed to leave your legs free to move so that you can operate the foot pedals on the kick drum and the hi-hat. And when you are really operating those pedals, your torso is going to bounce and that will affect your diaphragm. That’s my theory anyway.
I also think the rhythm thing is probably huge. You’ve heard of an Oom-pah band? One of the two brass instruments I played is the one that plays the “pah” note when playing marching music. Oom is on the beat, and pah is an off-beat note. The way I payed the off-beat is with the diaphragm actually playing both on-beat and off-beat, but you choke off the on-beat note with your tongue.
So to sing on-beat and play anything off-beat or more rhythmically complex would be tough.
Here is a Chick Corea and Gary Burton piece that I hadn’t heard until recently, that is terrific.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Uok_WpjCTc
It’s got rhythmic complexity and is interesting for at least a couple reasons. The video is good enough that you can see how Chick is keeping time and in synch by using his mouth, or tongue, or something. It’s possible he is actually counting, but I think he is mouthing the beat or one of the themes he’s not playing. Or something. Check out times, 2:15 and 3:55. There are several other subsequent examples.
The other amazing thing is the bottom end of that piano. It’s a Bosendorfer and it’s got another octave below most other pianos. They say those extra low wires color the sound of the lower notes even when the bottom octave is never played. I think you can hear some of that around 6:30.
Something I never knew until Chick died is that while piano was his first instument (age 4), drums were his second instrument at age 8. That explains so much about his keyboard playing.
TommyJay:
Wow! That old Chick/Gary “Crystal Silence” album is evergreen on my computer. To see them live years later and playing my favorite cut off “Return to Forever.” Well, too much.
Corea as a drummer. Makes sense. I claim no expertise, but his piano work is beautiful and I’ve always sensed the diamond precision of his timing–more so than any other keyboard player.
He is doing something non-random with his mouth.
I had missed the last third of the original “walk and chew gum” post.
Yes, Rufus did mention Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull, singing or humming into his flute.
Then this from Rufus,
I promise you, many brass and reed players are “singing” in their minds while they play and would easily do both if they didn’t have an instrument in their mouths. Even symphonic players. After a certain, basic level of mastery it just starts happening.
I’d add: Piano players too.
The old post also had a little discussion of the band Cream and the animosities between Jack Bruce, the bass player and Ginger Baker, the drummer. I did not know that Baker and Bruce had issues before joining up together, but …
I did see a documentary filmed when the band members were past middle age and they were interviewed. It seems that initially, no one really wanted to spend time trying to write lyrics. But Jack Bruce had a little interest or experience with poetry and perhaps lyrics, so the job fell to him, and the other two were relieved.
However, when it came time to copyright the songs only Jack Bruce’s name appears. After the breakup, all the royalties went to Jack. (The pen is mightier than the guitar?)
As David Bowie said in his second pop music incarnation, “I came at it as a knowledgeable businessman first and a songwriter or artist second.” (paraphrasing)
@TommyJay:
That’s a brilliant track. Makes all the right neurons + some extra ones fire. Thanks!
And now for something completely different since Tiki Torches are making a comeback:
Martin Denny, Lotus Land Vol 3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HMQ1iMYV0I
Hong Kong Blues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vp5zChETC08
TommyJay:
Jack Bruce had a poet, Peter Brown, writing most of the lyrics. I’m not sure how the music chores were assigned. “Sunshine of Your Love” was based on a bass riff Bruce wrote after hearing a Hendrix concert.
However, another great Cream song, “Badge” was written by Clapton and George Harrison. The title has nothing to do with the song, which baffled me when I was 17. The word actually was “bridge,” for a linking section between two passages, in Harrison’s hard to read handwriting.
There’s some bad blood out there when rock musicians get around to cutting the copyright pie. Robbie Robertson of “The Band” hoovered up all the royalties. True, he wrote the lyrics and the basics of the music, but the band had some great talent and the songs wouldn’t have been the same without their contributions. Robbie and the other members are mostly not speaking to each other.
I was pleased that Matthew Fisher, organist for Procol Harum, successfully sued to be co-writer of “Whiter Shade of Pale.”
huxley,
Virtually every U2 song is credited to ‘Paul Hewson/Dave Evans/ Adam Clayton/Larry Mullen’ and they are still together after 40 years.
Coincidence? Maybe, but that is one less thing to argue about.
Griffin:
I would have thought Bono and the Edge would be pissed…
(Joke.) I don’t think I ever knew their real names.
Or as Bill Graham once said, “It’s not the money. It’s the money!”
Seems to me (a non-drummer) that if you are proficient on the drums, i.e., can independently use hands and feet at the same time, singing would be an extension of that.
Here’s bluegrass/newgrass flat picker Molly Tuttle singing and playing White Freightliner Blues. She has amazingly fast right hand technique, all while singing like a bird. There’s a camera mounted on the neck of her guitar so you can study her right hand. Watch how she uses the heel of her palm to selectively dampen strings to bring out the melody. A lesson in muscle memory.
https://youtu.be/egRzWf-d1UI
I love her little giggle at the end.
there is one wind instrument I know of that one can play while singing. Uillean Pipes (often called Irish Bag Pipes) are played by pumping the bag up with a bellows under the elbow. Troy Donockley of Nightwish, Auri, and some other projects, plays them and has joked it is the one wind instrument you can play while chatting up a lady. He also says it helps to be mad (insane) to play the things.
Singing lead and drumming, brings to mind Fred LeBlanc of Cowboy Mouth. I lived in New Orleans for 20 years, and Cowboy Mouth concerts are legendary. Joke was it was inexplicable that the Rock-n-Bowl was still standing after the CBM shows. A Dallas DJ who was a fan said someone told her “A good band on a good night will blow the roof off, but Cowboy Mouth on a good night will save your soul.”
I’m guessing whoever said that was at a NOLA area show when they saw them. WCKW would play a live version of “Love Of My Life” that was amazing with the wild crowd acting as backup singers.
I confess I’ve lost track of the stakes here.
It seems neo says that singing while drumming is harder than singing while playing other instruments, while Rufus, I think, is saying it’s not harder or not that much harder?
I say that degrees of difference arguments are hard.
Not everyone can be Karen Carpenter
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECEBexCwGwM
..and you’ll notice that she’s not just keeping time or even sustaining a background rhythm – she’s playing a lead rhythm that she’s singing to and also soloing in parts.
She’d always considered herself a drummer that sang.
Tryo’s Karen Carpenter video is quite illustrative.
The Carpenter’s do their own arrangements of songs I think. So they could arrange their way around some of the obvious problems with singing and playing drums. Which I think has been said before on this topic.
Watch how still her head is while she is singing. Extremely little movement, except a little bit of shoulder rolling or swinging.
You can see her left foot operating the hi-hat pedal. She clicks her heel down on the beat and gently steps on the pedal on the off-beat. I thought she would keep her heel down all the time so as to keep her body still, but she’s keeping the beat with the heel plant. I think the pedal is mostly controlling the cymbal sustain so she is not smacking it.
There is only one point where I see and hear 2 or 3 solid kick drum notes, and she is throwing her body into them moderately; and she is not singing.
How does a drummer like Phil Collins sing well? He hires another drummer. Heh.
I did see a video of him singing and drumming. But the singing was rather shouty.
Isn’t youtube amazing. Apropos of nothing I found a live version of Rush’s La Villa Strangiato. Mmmm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoTxTM6kBuU
Fascinating. I play the guitar – mostly rhythm – and sing along while I play. Not with every song. There are some songs that are more complex in terms of the chord progression (Rain King by Counting Crows) that I find easy to play and sing. Then there are others that are simple to play on the guitar, but which I find impossible to sing along to (Southern Cross by CSNY).
There’s no singing here, but lots of wind and music. Drumming too. And movement. There’s already been a marching band reference, but some folks get really good at it and do this every summer. It is its own subculture, as much as the opera or the ballet, just in suburban America. Hard to believe it grew out of Scout troops, CYOs, and VFWs more than half a century ago. I’m just going to drop in this link.
Bluecoats Victory Run at DCI 2016 Finals
Cream’s Badge~gorgeous
Well, I told you that the light goes up and down, Do you notice how the wheels go ’round?
Loved Spoonful too, got to see Willie Dixon live at a Redondo Beach bar. Epic
Copperdawg:
Still around at the Satellite Cafe in Abq. Hope to see you sometime.
I’m enjoying a Cream/Jack Bruce festival tonight.
Kaki King is a guitar player who’s well known for playing percussion on her guitar. She calls it finger tapping.
Here’s a link (https://youtu.be/s0cBPS2PzI0) to a video of her playing “Doing the Wrong Thing,” a song with some finger tapping. After she’s done, she talks a bit about unusual guitar tunings, and about playing percussion on her guitar.
The video doesn’t answer any questions about drumming and singing at the same time, but it’s somewhat related, and I like the music. Since the comments here have recently veered a bit off target, I don’t feel too guilty about suggesting that this might be worth a listen.
In my comment above, the link I copied will take you to a different version of the same song.
Here’s the link I meant to provide:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irCstf6Rn6k
Apologies for the error.
Singing while playing an instrument is another dimension of independence, ie the ability to do two things at once. This is baked into the cake for drummers and keyboard players who may have to sustain two different rhythms with their hands, or even more with their feet. So maybe a singing drummer should not be quite that astounding.
I have been playing bass and singing in bands for many years, especially after I joined a band where we played a lot of 50s vocal group music so I was singing backgrounds and sometimes lead on almost every song. At first there were songs I had to break down, ie play very slowly to figure out how to interleave the bass and vocals. Eventually it came more naturally.
Mike D’Amico sang lead on Ooh Child. (in studio) I believe Nicky Wonder RIP and Darian Sahanaja handled the vocals in most live performances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdqEwj4swzE
Andy Sturmer was the frontman and drummer for Jellyfish/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQTj_2mMfSA
Check this out. He’s talking, not singing, but pretty cool in any case.
https://youtu.be/2gyxeXW_2T8?t=57
Sorry, I have been out of pocket the past few days and only now saw this post. I don’t think I have anything to add that I didn’t state on the previous post, however, if I see neo’s Part II on this in a timely enough fashion I will do my best to restate my opinion.
To FOAF’s point, and I stated this on the other thread, like Neo, I found folks online stating drumming while singing is particularly hard (as well as drummers stating it is not), but most all those folks were also stating singing while playing bass is also very difficult. However, I ran off a decent list of famous singing bassists, and it seems to be the most common choice in trios without a pianist. (And pretty much always electric bass, not upright.)
My three best pieces of evidence:
Most important: Singing pianists. Piano is an honest to goodness percussion instrument. Ten often independent fingers (at the very least right and left hands that are almost always independent, even playing different rhythms) percussing any of 88 keys, and one foot percussing one of three pedals. Drums has a maximum of four body parts percussing 6 options in a typical kit (Add bells, gongs… Neil Peart level set-up and you get a much bigger array.) Many, many great singing pianists, organists and keyboard players. (In churches it’s very common to see an organist playing a two or three keyboard organ with an octave or more of foot pedals and dozens of stops to change the sound while simultaneously singing the lead on all the hymns.) I cannot comprehend how keeping track of all one does when playing keyboards (which also very much has to be in rhythm) and singing is easier than playing drums and singing. Also, it’s not unusual that some of the fingers, if not an entire hand, are literally playing different rhythms; like triplets, or off tempo notes. And, as a side note, most all those singing guitarists you see (whether bass, rhythm or lead) are often doing lost of stuff with various foot pedals and affects dials on their instrument and amps. Some even blow random, atonal notes into a harmonica while strumming and singing (I’m not a Bob Dylan fan. Seems like a nice guy. I just find most of his music annoying.) We humans are very clever monkeys.
Two: There are drummers who do it (see TommyJay’s comment about Karen Carpenter). In the Levon Helm interview neo featured on her first post he broke down how he does it, and it’s the same as what guitarist and keyboard players do.
Three: Drums are only rhythm. They don’t play chords. They don’t play melody*. Often in a band someone will suggest a song, or start playing a song and one of the other musicians will yell out, “What key?!” Even if they know the song and the melody and chord progressions, there are 11 options based on what key the group plays it in. I’ve never, ever heard a drummer ask that question. 🙂 And even single note instrumentalists, like sax or trumpet, need to know the chords to solo. So, drummers don’t have to think about those elements of songs if they don’t want to. Good drummers do. They’ll even change technique, style and sometimes rhythm based on the meaning of the words in the lyrics being sung on certain beats. But the fact is, one can play drums, and play well, and not have to develop some of the skills other members of a group do. Necessity is the mother of invention. I promise you, when I started studying each instrument I play beyond the level of toying around there were very frustrating initial phases. Many things were not “natural,” including singing without playing, just singing. Singing is hard; lyrics, volume, breath, tempo, facial expression, posture… One gets good at things one works on, and things begin to feel natural after a certain level of practice. Don’t practice them, they don’t develop. A lot of drummers don’t work on singing.
A fourth thing. I’m not much of a string instrument player, but from what I know of guitar I don’t see why it’s easy to play and sing guitar, although there are many singing guitarists. However, electric bass, rhythm and lead guitar (as well as just one person doing a bit of all three like we see all the time with street musicians, dudes in dorm stairwells, https://youtu.be/8V_hCqO6UQs , small stages in bars and eateries…) makes it convenient to sing, just as a piano does. As someone mentioned on another thread, violin, because of its chin rest, does not. Upright bass does not. Trumpet does not. Trombone does not. Saxophone does not. I don’t think it has anything to do with complexity. If the instrument lends itself to simultaneous singing, or economics require simultaneous singing, instrumentalists sing. For example, Louis Prima became a name folks would pay to see, so he continued to sing lead and play trumpet. I can’t think of any common instrument that is more complicated, has more stuff going on, than a typical organ, yet, as I mentioned, it’s extremely common to see church organists play and sing. Why? The church has an organ and they can only afford to pay one musician. If an organist wants the gig, he or she better learn how to sing. There are no one man band drummers. Very few duos with a drummer. Drummers almost always have the benefit of sharing the stage with two or more musicians and drums are typically the hardest to mic. A gal with an acoustic guitar or piano doesn’t even need a mic if the room is quaint enough. Try singing unmic’ed while playing “acoustic” drums.
*This is basically true, although drums are “tuned” to specific notes. Think of that slow, off beat run Phil Collins does at the climax of, “In the Air Tonight.” Do-do–do-doo-dodo-dodo-dahDAH! Think. You can hear it… It’s running down from higher to lower** notes.
**This video gives you a great visual, including the musical notes in the middle, left of the screen. That’s how the drummer knows which drum to hit when. https://willsdrumlessons.com/downloads/transcriptions/phil-collins-in-the-air-tonight-drum-score It opens with that little high to low run.)
steve walsh,
That video was good, and a good example of someone being able to keep track of multiple, different musical things at once. After that video this one played: https://youtu.be/KkJTmwHdOjo
Dude’s playing guitar, harmonica and percussion. But not just any percussion. His percussion is juggling different “tuned” balls with beans inside making a percussive sound!
As I wrote above, we humans are very clever monkeys.
In conjunction with my fourth point, above, it is unfortunate, but people typically find drum and bass playing lead boring. Same with trombone and baritone saxophone. You can feature each of those instruments in a few songs, maybe one a set, but any more than that and the audience checks out*.
So you almost never see a drummer busking, playing drums and singing in the street. When you do they are usually on a minimal kit and very good and/or entertaining singers. You also often see one or two drummers on visually interesting drums, like plastic pails, in the street busking for change, but they rarely sing; maybe some fun hoots and howls, but rarely melodies. They focus on elaborate rhythms and routines.
*I should add that fellow instrumentalists typically appreciate solos on those instruments. The bands I’ve been in get a kick out of the bassist or drummer or bari sax player doing a great solo.
I just watched the Dave Grohl on Jimmy Fallon video. The only comment I heard him say, regarding difficulty, was the same point made by the sound engineer on the prior thread: it’s difficult to mic. So Grohl switched to guitar to do vocals.
Rather than a rebuttal to my case I see that as agreement. As the jury foreman I declare Rufus T. Firefly the winner of this debate.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Are we debating? Could have fooled me. I thought we were exploring a topic.
My conclusion: drumming and singing is generally considered hardest, then bass, then lead, and then rhythm guitar and singing and piano and singing the easiest. Some people are really good at the most difficult combos, and some aren’t, but some can improve with practice and dedication. And there are certainly examples of people who drum and sing very well and those who play bass and sing very well. The people whose videos I put up on the earlier thread who drum and sing VERY well, Roger Taylor and Don Henley, are considered among the finest practitioners of what most seem to consider a difficult art.
neo,
We will have to agree to disagree. Some of the most famous rock vocalists are bass players. I see no correlation regarding bass.
I think it boils down to necessity. Practice makes perfect.
I know different people have different abilities, but I found piano the most difficult instrument to learn*. Strings are my least “natural” instrument, yet you could hand me a guitar and give me a week and I could play rhythm on quite a few rock songs, especially if they are in the same key. Same with bass**. Same with drums. I played in a rock band that formed to do one, special gig. We couldn’t find a drummer so two of us other instrumentalists took turns playing drums based on who was most expendable for a certain song. I’d never played drums before. I played extremely basic rhythms, but the audience never noticed. Piano? Forget about it! It took me months. A Year? To play very simple songs with my hands moving independently.
Yet, there are gobs of singing pianists, organists, keyboardists. Why? A piano player is stationary. A piano player’s mouth is free of obstruction. A human voice can be heard above a piano. Same with acoustic guitar.
*Instruments that have a technique component, like woodwinds, reeds and brass have a huge learning curve to get the unusual mouth technique down, so that’s a thing unto itself. As I wrote on the prior thread, every instrument finds the same level of difficulty. If it’s hard to control, like an oboe, the music tends to be less challenging. Or tuba, that requires a lot of wind. Or trombone, that requires long arm movements. Trumpet players often have much faster music than tuba and trombone. Flutes have faster music than oboes.
One addendum to my comment that is likely very important:
Piano, organ, keyboard and guitar, especially acoustic guitar, are all a band unto themselves. A pianist can play lead, rhythm and accompaniment, as can a guitarist. If you are a solo instrumentalist who learns to sing while playing you can “do it all.” You don’t need a group. You can play with a group, but you don’t have to. Drums, bass, trumpet… you’re really not entertaining on your own.
I don’t think it has to do with difficulty. I think it has to do with logistics, convenience.
Addendum to my addendum:
I’m not using hyperbole when I write of convenience and cost. Those things really matter. I think non-musicians focus on difficulty; it must be difficult to learn to play an instrument… It certainly can be. For me it was. But when you get to a point where you are playing well enough to perform for the public convenience and cost are huge factors. The point I made in a prior post: if a drummer doesn’t have understanding parents he will likely not get in a band because it’s a lot easier to form a band if you can practice at the drummer’s house. And expensive boom mics, are not the first, or second, or third thing a semi-working band wants to purchase.
The number of folks in a band matters because that’s the denominator in the equation of how much money you make playing (and most musicians do not make much money playing). So if the band doesn’t need a lead singer that’s one less recipient in the denominator. As I wrote on a prior post, in the first band I was in the drummer was the only one with singing experience, but we only had one mic. My parts tended to have the least going on and I could stand in front of the mic so I was asked to learn to sing. I was awful at it at first, but that was barely a concern.
If you are a guitarist who learns to sing you can make more money. If you are a keyboardist who learns to sing you can make more money. Either the band your in needs one less member, or you can go out on your own. This is a big reason why you so often see one or two musicians playing and singing live in coffee shops, bars, restaurants… Those places have a limited budget for music and it’s not worth it to a five piece band that has to share the take five ways. It’s 100% or 50% vs. 20%.
And I promise you, I’ve met a lot of guitarists who are awful vocalists. Many are incredibly shy about singing. There’s nothing magical about learning guitar that makes one a decent singer. Look at Eric Clapton, for goodness sakes! He’s been doing it long enough now he at least has some confidence, but he started doing it out of necessity and frustration.
}}} Obviously, one can’t play a wind instrument while singing, although someone like Louis Armstrong would alternate the two and did a great job of it.
As has been noted, another more recent example is Ian Anderson, of Jethro Tull, who played the flute as well as acoustic guitar (among other things).
Here’s Locomotive Breath, Live, 1982, with an excellent performance by Anderson. There’s only a certain amount of flute playing but it’s what a live JT performance was like.
}}} *Instruments that have a technique component, like woodwinds, reeds and brass have a huge learning curve to get the unusual mouth technique down, so that’s a thing unto itself.
Rufus, you may have mentioned it previously, but those things also require considerable investment in breathing techniques, as well. You have to learn how to blow “efficiently” while still taking in air as needed and as the musical timing allows. Running out of air to blow while you are in the middle of that long long note in the middle of your solo part is double-plus-ungood
OBloody Hell,
The unseen part of brass, reeds and woodwinds is the oral technique. This is called “embouchure” and here’s a decent explanation regarding trumpet: https://hellomusictheory.com/learn/trumpet-embouchure/ . Most of us are aware there is something to it, as we’ve picked up a friend’s flute, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet or trombone and tried to make sound come out. But when we watch those instruments being played we focus on fingers pressing valves or keys, or the hand moving a slide up and down. I think most folks assume, “Oh, once you figure out how to get sound out of the back end of the trumpet by blowing in the front end ( https://youtu.be/KOmK7W5RhLQ ) the trick is learning what valve to press, when.” In other words, there is one trick per instrument (brass, woodwind or reed) to learning how to turn breath into sound and when you learn that single trick the rest is learning what to do with your fingers or hands.
No. Pressing the right valve or key or moving a slide to the right place (there are actually slide “trumpets” too, as well as flutes) is part of the trick, but the mouth part is harder. I know some saxophone players who have played for decades and are just mastering some of the altissimo notes. Oboe is supposedly impossible. As far as brass, this chart for trombone: http://moosicblob.blogspot.com/2011/02/conductors-knowledge.html is a good, visual image of what’s going on. Other brass work the same, but trombone is easier for explanation as rather than three valves that combine for various tube lengths the trombone slide moves to approximate those same divisions. There are seven, standard slide positions, but a decent brass musician should be able to cover 2 1/2 octaves (good to great brass artists can cover 3 – 5). That’s 30, unique, individual notes. So how do you get 30 notes out of 7 different tube lengths? You do different things with your mouth.
For the most part it’s speed of lip vibration, but there are little, subtle differences at each step that matter greatly. You’ll notice that chart shows six notes in each position. The lower the note, the slower the lip vibration. The higher the note, the faster. However, the instrumentalist may also be altering the amount of lip within the mouthpiece, the angle of the mouthpiece, the pressure of the instrument against the lips, the position of the tongue and facial muscles along with the force of air.
There are similar challenges for the woodwinds and reeds.
neo:
We are, and, by Jove! I believe this exploration has stumbled onto the answer!
The Rufus T. Firefly Hypothesis for Singing Instrumentalists:
If my hypothesis is correct (and it is):
We would see few singing flautists, upright bass players, drummers, saxophonists, trumpet/cornet/trombone/tuba/flugle hornists, violinists/fiddlists due to the low MF value of those instruments.
We would also see few singing drummers, bass players, tubaists (is that a word?), trombonists, baritone sax players, rhythm guitar players due to their typical role as non-lead accompanists.
The two common, rock band (seems to be neo’s focus on these posts) instruments that overlap with both, negative inputs to Rufus’ brilliant, soon to be Noble prize winning equation: bass and drums. And we see electric, non-upright bass more commonly than drums (Paul McCartney, Sting…) due to it’s greater MF value. And, because of their immense MF values and P values we most commonly see singing pianists and guitarists.
Nice work, neo! We’ve found the answer!!