Improving Articulation with Air Support

You might not have ever given much thought to your air while practicing articulations, but, as I like to emphasize, you should never forget about your air! Knowing how to use your air is the most important technique in playing the oboe and there are some ways to improve your air support. Here is how to use good air support specifically for improving articulation.

Tone: The Reed Must Vibrate

I find it to be pretty common that oboists are concentrating so much on notes and being staccato, legato, an avocado, or whatever the goal is that the notes stop sounding altogether. Or the sound becomes muffled or gargly and there is no clear pitch. The important thing to remember here is that you must keep your air moving properly first and foremost to play the oboe. Your tongue movements might be perfect, but if your air is insufficient, your tonguing is not going to be enough.

So first, if your notes have a tendency to not come out when you want them to, you need more air support. And, your air support needs to be the driving force behind your articulations. As with everything you play, your air and how your are manipulating it creates the music since the reed can’t vibrate without it and then just about nothing can happen. Your tongue, then, should never be getting in the way of your air but adding a little to your air, or working on top of it. But the foundation is the air.

Thinking about your tone is another way to put this. Without enough air support, you have a bad tone in which case it is not going to matter how quickly you can articulate. Your performance will still suffer greatly.

Legato

Playing different articulations, I believe, becomes much easier when you are putting less work into the tongue and more into your air support. If the reed is vibrating easily from your unwavering breath support and that is a habit for you, then your tongue movements can be very slight and easy.

To play legato, I use a little higher on my tongue than the tip. I find this softens the contact with the reed for a smoother sound and avoids an abrasive start to the notes. I also find that for legato playing it is especially crucial to picture each phrase on one steady air stream as though you were actually slurring the whole thing or holding a whole note. Then the tonguing is a sprinkle on top. Maybe picturing a heart monitor will help. The tonguing is like the up-pulses (is there a term for this? probably) but the line never stops moving forward, like your air. While the reed does technically stop vibrating when the tongue is touching it, just don’t think about this! The visual tends to create stops in your air, too, which is exactly what we want to avoid.

Staccato

Playing staccato is a little different depending on the context. I use the harsher tip of my tongue typically to achieve that crisp start to notes, but what you do with your air can change with the speed of the music.

First, lets talk about tone. As a quick reminder, staccato means space between notes and not short notes. So the speed of the music determines how long the notes are going to end up. Staccato quarter notes at 60 bpm are going to be longer than staccato notes at 120 bpm. But no matter how short your notes are, you want there to still be tone. This is easily forgotten. We might get caught up in playing short notes so much that we forget that they are still supposed to have pitch and not just be little squawks. So that is the first step in playing staccato notes: they are NOTES. With wavelengths. Not a stab in the dark with your tongue. And, of course, playing real notes requires air support.

Playing the slow staccato notes mentioned earlier at 60 bpm is going to be the most different from legato playing. With so much space between notes, your air is going to actually stop between them. But because we know proper air support and tone are crucial to every little sound, the tricky part with this is being ready with your embouchure, air, and tongue for each note. It’s like getting ready for the first note of a piece – setting your embouchure, getting a good breath, and concentrating on the very start of that first note – except over and over every second. It’s really a concentration problem to consistently “start” well with all everything in place so many times in a row. This is as opposed to playing legato or even long tones where you can start the air and note and then just maintain what you have going, which tends to be much easier.

Now, it is not exactly like starting a piece over again every time you play a staccato note because you should be keeping your embouchure and body generally frozen in place after getting set for the first time. Definitely do not release your embouchure between notes or even phrases necessarily (and this goes for any articulations). So there is less to think about there. Really the main thing to concentrate on is have your air support ready to hold up each note your play each time you go to play even the shortest of notes.

When playing staccato notes a little more quickly, say triplets at 60 bpm, your abdomen might feel similarly to the same little pulses that happen when using vibrato, just slower than any typical vibrato. This could even be something to practice doing to make sure the air support is there for every note.

Finally, playing very rapid staccato notes is going to be more like legato playing in that your air should not stop because it will not have time. Concentrate instead on the tip of your tongue and make the notes as crisp as possible amidst your unstoppable air stream. This will help distinguish from quick legato playing, but once you are playing so fast they are not really going to be distinguishable. Also, I don’t know if it really works this way, but it often feels to me like good air propels my tongue and allows me to tongue faster. Or maybe just taking the focus off my tongue and onto my abdomen relaxes me enough to move my tongue faster. Whatever the reason is, it might be something to think about when trying to increase your tonguing speed!

Practice!

Now try thinking about your air when practicing articulations and see what a difference it makes! When consistent air support becomes a habit in every oboe playing situation, you will see great improvements.

Also, if you are feeling curious about how an oboe reed works, read How an Oboe Reed and an Airplane Work the Same Way.

Happy articulating!