- Hi.
In this film, we're going to have a little think
about the oboe.
And here is the range of the oboe.
If you're watching these films in sequence,
you'll have noticed that
when we were talking about the flutes,
we were talking about middle C being the bottom note.
Well, here's the oboe.
It's a tone lower at the bottom
than is the case with the flute.
And really, the most important things
when you're trying to remember the ranges of instruments,
is to be sure about the bottom notes,
because it's very easy to slip off the bottom
of the range if you're not careful.
But B-flat is your bottom note for the oboe.
It can go all the way up here.
Whether it's advisable to write for the oboe right
at the top of the range is a bit questionable.
If you've got a really accomplished player who's good
at the top, that's great,
but some players will just struggle to keep complete control
of the instrument, of the tone,
of the intonation at the top of the range.
And so in many cases it's probably best not
to go right up to the top there.
We'll say a little bit more about that in a moment.
The oboe is a non-transposing instrument,
you'll be pleased to hear,
so you can write for it at the pitch
that you want it to sound.
So no complications there.
It has this very distinctive sound
that's fairly close to the bassoon,
and that's really because these are
both double reed instruments.
So the flutes we've been thinking about
don't have a reed at all,
the clarinets have got a single reed,
there's just a vibrating at the top there,
and in the case of the oboe
and of the bassoon we have a double reed.
So two pieces of reed that are tightly bound together
that can just do this
and the two pieces of reed can vibrate against each other.
It actually takes a huge amount of pressure
for the player to produce a sound on the oboe.
So it's really a very physical instrument to play.
Where the oboe really, perhaps,
comes into its own is in this context.
Being able to produce these lovely, gentle lyrical melodies.
And often this is at its best sort of
in the middle of the range.
So you get sounds like this.
And you hear that lovely, warm tone.
And again, in the hands of a good player working nicely
with the vibrato to increase the warmth of that sound,
this is where the oboe can sound very beautiful.
It's also a pretty agile instrument,
so there are times when the oboe
can kind of fly around quite happily.
So you can not be afraid of writing
those rather quicker passages that are moving
around the range of the instrument if you want to,
and again, it has a very distinctive sound
that has a certain clarity when you're doing that.
Obviously, it can play legato,
which is what we're doing at the moment.
And it's also very effective
when we have staccato articulation like this.
We can also have some very effective sounds
when the oboe is trilling, like this.
So you're perfectly at liberty to include trills
in an oboe part and they sound very effective.
One thing important to remember about the oboe
is that it can't do double and triple tonguing.
So whereas with the flute,
we were talking about the ability to do double
and triple tonguings so you can do very fast,
repeated notes, that's something that you can't do
with the oboe.
Now it can repeat notes pretty quickly,
but only to the extent that you can do that
as a piece of single tonguing.
So that's just something to bear in mind.
If you want to write extremely fast repeated notes,
probably not best on the oboe.
Just a couple of observations about what we're saying
about the range.
We've referred to this thing
that maybe the tone is a little bit thin at the top
of the range, so just use the top of the range advisably,
and perhaps the best sounds are below this B.
That's why I've just put this B in brackets there.
This is where the sound really comes
into its own when we get down there.
You can sort of hear right at the top.
It can be just a little bit piercing.
Once it comes down here, the sound warms.
And you'll also notice that the heavier sound, if you like,
comes in the bottom fifth of the instrument.
So if you get down here.
It's still a lovely tone, isn't it?
But it's just a slightly more thinner sound
in the middle of the range.
Slightly fatter sound, if you like, bolder sound,
in the bottom fifth.
So worth bearing in mind, that slight change of colour.
So if you want a really kind of heavy sound at the bottom,
that's great down here.
Once you get out of the bottom fifth,
then you hear the slightly more lyrical sound.
So there's a kind of integration of tone
across the range of the instrument,
but the character of that tone just changes a little bit.
And that's something to be aware of
when you're writing for the oboe,
depending on the kind of sound that you want to produce.
But it's a lovely instrument and well worth writing for.
So there we are.
There's the oboe.
Here we are in three languages.
It's pretty obvious what it is in Italian.
It's pretty obvious what it is in German,
you've just got these two possible words for it.
The French is a little less obvious, the hautbois,
but there it is.
That's the term for oboe in French.