Portals for Solo Oboe (available soon)

Portals for Solo Oboe is an unaccompanied work which uses multiphonics in a melodic way and harmonics for rhythmic interest.  Thanks to  Music Teachers Tools for creating an oboe font, I am now able to have this work printed using the Finale software and it will be available for purchase soon.  Fingerings for harmonics and multiphonics are included within the composition.   Here is a little preview of the work: 

Background information about Portals for Solo Oboe:
In my graduate days, when I was studying composition with Dr. Norman J. Nelson at West Texas State University (now WTAMU), Dr. Nelson gave me the assignment to come up with unconventional ways to play the oboe. That was a fun assignment. I would demonstrate all kinds of crazy things like the usual crowing on the reed but I also buzzed into the opening of the oboe like a trumpet, put cigarette paper under the open keys to make a vibrating sound when I blew into the oboe, harmonics, etc. The most fascinating technique was multiphonics.
A multiphonic is a 20th Century technique where a monophonic instrument (like the oboe that can only play one note at a time) can produce multiple sounds by using special fingerings.

One summer I spent many hours looking up multiphonic fingerings from various sources and tried to develop some of my own. I wrote each fingering on an index card and documented various characteristics about it such as "need to blow harder or softer" or "has mostly high or low sounds." I then selected several of the multiphonic fingerings and tried to put them in a quasi-chromatic order. My goal was to eventually be able to play a "melody" using multiphonics. I must admit the hours I spent on this project almost made me go crazy.

The result of this work was an unaccompanied oboe solo called "Portals for Solo Oboe". It used various "unconventional" techniques for the oboe such as:

• multiphonics
• melody played normally followed by the same melody in multiphonics
• multiphonic trills
• spreading of normal notes to a multiphonic and back
• alternating harmonic fingerings with normal fingerings
• plus the "conventional" playing.

Dr. Nelson said it was the first time he had seen the use of multiphonics used melodically. This was in the early 80s and since then there has been a lot of instrumentalists experimenting with multiphonics. I shared my piece with other oboists back at the John Mack Oboe Camp and they seemed very intrigued with it. I heard that one of the oboists performed it in Canada and Boston.