Most saxophone players also know how to play flute in clarinet. This is what's known as doubling and most scorewriters

will just assume that the saxophone player can also play flute and clarinet and they'll

write in transitions to those instruments in the middle of parts. One thing they don't always take into account

is how long it takes to switch from, say, a saxophone to a flute, which can lead to some logistical challenges and some interesting choreography on the bandstand. it. And the Welcome to Strong Songs, a Podcasts, a Podcasts, about Music. I'm your host Kirk Hamilton and as always I'm so glad

that you've joined me to talk about music where the saxophone players play flute,

music where the flute players play pickalow, and sometimes music where there's just a

bass clarinet player and that's the only instrument they play so you

better deal with it.

We've got a bunch of your questions to answer on this Q&A episode and I'm excited to get into it so

find a comfortable place to sit, turn up the volume, and enjoy the show.

That choreography is no joke.

I've played saxophone in a lot of different bands where I needed to switch to, usually

flute, but sometimes clarinet very quickly quickly and you'd have to kind of

write into your part okay this is gonna be a fast change you know you'd write to

flute but you'd have to write it eight bars earlier than the flute part

was notated in the music because otherwise you wouldn't remember to start

getting your flute out really quickly and then when the flute started you wouldn't have your

flute ready and the music would kind of start passing you by.

You can notate this kind of thing with a V.S which stands for Volte Sebito and to me always

just meant very speedy.

I actually never knew what it meant I would just see it in parts, you know, turn page

V.S. and it just means very speedy you're going to have to do it fast because there's only like, you know, half of a bar of rest on the next page, so you've got to turn the page very quickly.

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