Pitch bending is a technique where the player changes the pitch of a note by changing their embouchure, rather than the fingering of the note. It possible to change the pitch of a note by multiple tones if you have enough control over your embouchure and diaphragm. It’s a difficult technique, but I’ve been looking into how to do it well and how different it is between different instruments and pitches.
Pitch bending is easier on high pitches, as the wavelength is shorter, so the same amount of embouchure change corresponds to a bigger change in pitch. Pitch bending is all about changing the shape of your mouth. In effect, if you change your mouth shape, you change the cavity size that the air is resonating in and therefore you change the note pitch.
If you’re thinking about learning how to bend the pitch of notes on a single reed instrument, it’s important to know what is actually going on inside your mouth and the instrument mouthpiece when you play. The first and most vital thing you need to be able to do before you start thinking about pitch bending is to be able to play consistently in tune across the range of the instrument. I have written about how you can play in tune better in this article: https://www.woodwindgeek.com/how-can-i-get-better-at-playing-in-tune/.
Let’s assume that you are able to play your instrument consistently in tune. In learning to do this, you have learnt a particular embouchure for each pitch that makes it fit. It’s likely, however, that you’ve done this by trial and error, rather than thinking about how the shape of your mouth and the position on the mouthpiece actually affects the sound. I’ll talk more about this now.
What is happening physically when you change the pitch of a note?
When you change the pitch of a note with your mouth, rather than your fingers, you are changing the shape of the cavity that the air resonates in. Your mouth is an extension of the instrument, in terms of the cavity created. You are sending the air from your mouth into the mouthpiece at an angle that you can control. If the air enters the cavity at a different angle, it will have a different impedance (the acoustic response of the instrument for all of its possible frequencies).
If you change the position of your tongue, you change the amount of pressure on the reed. This also has an effect on the air flow. The flexibility of the reed has an effect on the sound quality (I talk about this in more detail in my other post here: https://www.woodwindgeek.com/can-i-play-classical-music-on-a-metal-mouthpiece/).
In addition to this, you can change the shape of the inside of your mouth to some extent. You can make it more open of closed by changing your jaw position. This then affects the cavity size and shape. Changing the size of the cavity again changes the impedance, which in turn affects the pitch of the note. Learning how changing the shape of your mouth changes the pitch of the instrument is a vital aspect of pitch bending.
How can I learn to pitch bend?
There are some exercises you can do on your instrument to learn how to pitch bend. The first, I already touched on when I said how important tuning was. Learning to play notes in tune is done mostly by long note and interval practice with a tuner. This should remain part of your practice regime even when you think you have mastered it, because there’s always room for improvement.
Once you have control over your tuning, you can start thinking about pitch bending. On a single reed instrument, it’s almost impossible to bend a pitch upward from the note you are fingering. However, you can bend the pitch down from that note. It you want to bend a pitch upwards, you should start the note bent so that it is flattened below pitch and bend up to its correct pitch.
Learning to pitch bend is very similar to learning to play in tune. You can practice with a tuner, adjusting your mouth and seeing how it affects the pitch. Try to keep your mouth in as comfortable a position as possible, or you will struggle to play like this regularly. You’ll notice that you can adjust your mouth, tongue and the mouthpiece position in different ways and achieve the same pitch change, so try to work out how to do it in the most comfortable way for you.
You’ll need to learn to pitch bend gradually. You won’t be able to bend the note very far at first – it takes practice. Start by trying to bend down by a semitone. A way you can do this is to first play the note you’re aiming to bend down to with the correct fingering, i.e. if you’re aiming to pitch bend down to an F# from a G, finger the F# first and play that. Then remove the necessary fingers so that you’re fingering a G, but try to keep the pitch of the F#, using a tuner. Repeat this as an exercise until it’s comfortable, then start to increase the interval.
Another tip for learning to pitch bend more easily is to start on higher notes. You’ll find that these more easily slip down to lower pitches than low notes do. This is because the wavelength of higher pitches is shorter, so when you change the wavelength with your embouchure, it makes a more significant difference percentage-wise to the pitch of the note. If you go up to really high notes, however, it usually becomes more difficult again, as you might fall onto a lower harmonic, giving a step change in pitch rather than a bend.
Bending upwards requires more control than bending downwards, as you have to hear the note you want to start on and find your embouchure position before you start to play. It’s therefore also a good practice technique to start on a bent note and increase the pitch to the original pitch of the note, as well as starting on the original pitch and bending down. A combination of both of these in your practice regime will be the most effective.
Summary
To sum up this post, learning to pitch bend on a single reed instrument relies on the player being able to control their tuning with their embouchure. If you can learn to play a note perfectly in tune, you can learn to play it at a flattened pitch. There are several exercises you can do that will improve your long note ability, which involve playing notes at flattened pitches with a tuner. It’s also easier to pitch bend on higher notes, so you should start at high pitches and work your way down.