Basic

Extended instrumental techniques to understand:

1. How to notate
2. What they sound like
3. How to do them [generally speaking]

General:
• Glissando
• Pitch bend
• Microtones
o Fingered
o Embouchure-bent
o Scordatura [de-tuned]

Winds

Flute:
• Key-clicks
• Variations of breathiness
o All breath, no pitch à Ordinary, pitch-y sound
• Tongue rams
• “Pizzicato”
• Harmonics / Timbre trills
• Multiphonics
o Sing-and-play
o Fingered
• Fluttertongue

Oboe
• Slap tongue [Very difficult]
• Multiphonics
• Fluttertongue
• Harmonics / Timbre trills
• Key-clicks [not super effective]
•

Clarinet
• Slap tongue [easier on clarinet]
• Niente attacks
• Multiphonics
• Variations of breathiness
• Harmonics / Timbre trills
• Key-clicks [on covered-hole instruments, and on Bass clarinet]
• Smorzando
• Fluttertongue
• Teeth-on-reed

Bassoon
• Slap tongue [difficult, easier than on the oboe though]
• Multiphonics
• Fluttertongue
• Harmonics / Timbre trills
• Key clicks
Brass:

Horn
• Breath only
• Harmonics / Timbre trills
• Horn rip [rapid upward harmonics glissando]
• Stopped horn [hand muting]
• Mouthpiece pops [can do damage to the mouthpiece!]
• Fluttertongue
• Pedal tones
• Mutliphonics [sung / played]

Trumpet
• Breath sounds
• Falls
• Rips
• Shakes
• Vibrato variations
• Wa-wa mute trills
• Fluttertongue
• Pedal tones
• Mutliphonics [sung / played]

Trombone
• Breath sounds
• Falls
• Rips
• Shakes
• Vibrato variations
• Wa-wa mute trills
• Pedal tones
• Glissandi [limited to tritone]
• Fluttertongue
• Mutliphonics [sung / played]
•

Tuba
• Can’t do mute trills!
• Can do most of the other things…














Strings:

Most basic extended techniques on strings are uniform throughout the ensemble:

Bowing techniques:
• Jeté
• Col legno batutto
• Col legno tratto
• Bowing behind the bridge
• Variations in bow placement:
o Flautando à Estremente sul ponticello
• Variations in bow pressure:
o Underpressure bowing à Overpressure bowing

Pizzicato techniques:
• Snap pizzicato
• Fingernail pizzicato
• Pizzicato behind the bridge
• “Pizzicato fluido” [Lachenmann]
• Pizzicato harmonics
• Left-hand pizzicato

Fingering techniques
• Harmonics
o Bariolage
o Harmonic glissandos
§ Natural
§ Artificial
o Non-nodal “harmonics”
• Variations in vibrato
o Non-vibrato à Maximally exaggerated vibrato
• “Whip glissando”
• Highest note possible

Other:
• Scordatura
• Striking / knocking on the body of the instrument


Fundamental approaches to extended instrumental techniques:

1. Ex Tex as ornamental / special effects
2. Ex Tex as a new vocabulary
a. As new colors to be integrated in with all the older sounds and techniques, but in the
service of traditional models of motivic / thematic design / harmonic thinking, etc.
b. As new abstract materials themselves in a context in which sound and timbre
(rather than motives and harmonies) are the locus of compositional narrative.
3. Ex Tex as means of distorting historically received material
4. Ex Tex as the byproducts of “action notation” – sounds that are contingent on the actions
that produce them in a pointed way, often involving “decoupling.”