Untitled Document
     
Advertisement Click to advertise with us!
     

Growling on Oboe

I'm not an Oboe player, which is why I'm very curious as to whether or not it's possible to sax growl on the oboe. Technically you're not supposed to be able to growl on the clarinet but that works just fine. Would any of you oboists be willing to try it and tell me how it sounds, or even upload a video/audio clip?
Thanks!
 
You mean as in: producing a vocal noise while blowing through a double reed?
If so, then yes.

In fact, (maybe its just me) but I find it more difficult to produce a vocal noise while blowing through a single reed mouthpiece.
But, The *real* fun comes when learning how to sing while playing the bagpipes !!

The *pinnacle* of vocalizing with a wind, IMHO, belongs to trombonist Bill Watrous: whom I have seen live-and-in-person, onstage to a full house, perform three part moving counterpoint with his trombone and voice. DO NOT ask me how!!! no idea! Seroiulsy, I'm not lying. :)
 
The *pinnacle* of vocalizing with a wind, IMHO, belongs to trombonist Bill Watrous: whom I have seen live-and-in-person, onstage to a full house, perform three part moving counterpoint with his trombone and voice. DO NOT ask me how!!! no idea! Seroiulsy, I'm not lying. :)

Maybe white man plays with "forked tongue". When I was a band teacher I sometimes growled AT oboe players. Does that count?
 
Bill Watrous played a two pitch multiphonic and then hummed the third pitch.

I knew a bass bone player that did the same thing, and he explained it to me.
 
Bill Watrous played a two pitch multiphonic and then hummed the third pitch.

I knew a bass bone player that did the same thing, and he explained it to me.

That would account for three part harmony. "Three part moving counterpoint" is something else entirely. I get humming and playing two different melodic lines at the same time, but a third???
 
That would account for three part harmony. "Three part moving counterpoint" is something else entirely. I get humming and playing two different melodic lines at the same time, but a third???
maybe: "hit one multi/ sing a line below..hit another multi, sing a connecting line in between the tones...hit a third, sing line above" type of approach; two tones always move simultaneously, while the vocal weaves between them or holds a tone... Whatever he did, it was certainly clever.
 
There's a piece by Peter Schickele called "Pentangle." It's for French horn. One of the movements has the horn player playing "chords" by "humming" a note and fingering a different one, as CHasR mentions.

On bari, I used to play a bunch of cello transcripts and you can play more than one note at a time on cello. I tried, with varying success, to do the hum/finger thing to reproduce the effect. I generally ended up with a very cello-like fuzzy/growley tone that did sound fairly convincing. I also found it easier to do that if I didn't use the octave key and just changed my embochure.
 
Back
Top Bottom