![\"Doubing\"](\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/02\/ultimate-swiss-army-knife.jpg\")
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Sometimes the most fun you can have watching a musical performance is when some poor soul has to switch instruments halfway through a piece really quickly.\u00a0Usually they have a decent amount of time to do it, but it\u2019s still always impressive to see someone perform flawlessly on one instrument only to pick up a completely different one and continue nailing it.\u00a0 Doubling on a second instrument is undoubtedly cool and can make you a more versatile player, but how useful is it really?<\/p>\n
Doubling is usually defined as playing a second instrument in the same family, for example two woodwinds or two brass instruments. Technically if you play a woodwind and brass you\u2019re still doubling but it\u2019s not nearly as common or useful.\u00a0 Some exceptions exist; tuba and bass used to be fairly common, and could still have some benefits today.<\/p>\n
The potential for more work is the most obvious benefit of doubling.\u00a0 While it\u2019s less common to get work solely on a second instrument, fewer people are great doublers, so competition is decreased.\u00a0 As Bret Pimentel, a woodwind doubler who has done some writing on the topic<\/a>, points out, \u201cConsider this: if the gig is 95% saxophone and 5% bassoon, you don\u2019t have to be the best of all the saxophonists in town to get hired\u2014you just have to be the best among the few saxophone\/bassoon doublers. Even better, if the gig is saxophone, bassoon, E\u266d clarinet, and bamboo flute, and you\u2019re the only musician in town who can play that combination\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Another advantage of doubling is an increased fee. Doubling fees vary by union and by employer, but in some cases they can be as much as an extra 50% for the first doubled instrument with additional fees for third and fourth instruments.\u00a0 The one caveat about these extra fees is that some instruments don\u2019t count as a double (for example, two different kinds of trumpets or certain combinations of percussion instruments).\u00a0 Regardless, the extra fee can be a great incentive to get good at doubling and actually saves the employer money because they can hire one musician instead of two.\u00a0 An opinion column<\/a> in the Denver Post raised the hackles of many musicians when it included doubling fees in a list of what were deemed unreasonable demands from the union.\u00a0 This perspective ignores many of the challenges of doubling that warrant an extra fee.<\/p>\n For all the benefits of doubling, it has downsides too.\u00a0 In addition to the expense of owning more top-of-the-line instruments, achieving a high level of performance on a second instrument involves a great investment of time.\u00a0 If it takes years of practice to master one instrument, mastering a second can be a daunting task, especially if it means reducing the amount of time spent maintaining skills on the first instrument.<\/p>\n Furthermore, myths frequently circulate about how learning a second instrument (particularly in the wind family) can adversely affect your first.\u00a0 Because you spend so much time developing a consistent embouchure needed for one instrument, the idea that developing the muscles for a different embouchure could set you back is not a pleasant one.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine that the detrimental effect would be noticeable unless one spent an inordinate amount of time on an instrument with truly opposing technique, but few people are eager to find out.<\/p>\n The usefulness of doubling really depends on what kind of music you\u2019re out to make.\u00a0 While doubling is very common in musical theatre pits and jazz, it is less so in classical and orchestral music. In an industry where many people are combining a number of different jobs to create the equivalent of full-time work, it poses a lot of advantages. That is not to say that many musicians can\u2019t achieve that without doubling. In the end it comes down to musicians wearing a lot of different hats, it\u2019s up to each person to decide which kinds of hats (and how many) they want to wear.<\/p>\n #LUDWIGVAN<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Want more updates on Toronto-centric classical music news and review\u00a0before anyone else finds out? Get our exclusive newsletter\u00a0<\/em>here<\/a><\/em><\/span>\u00a0and follow us on\u00a0<\/em>Facebook<\/a><\/span> for all the latest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Doubling on a second instrument is undoubtedly cool and can make you a more versatile player, but how useful is it really?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":33846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5723,5867,4967,31],"tags":[5866],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/02\/ultimate-swiss-army-knife.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s9bakr-33844","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33844"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33844"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33864,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33844\/revisions\/33864"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33844"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}