Timbral Trills on the oboe, possible?

Just like the title says. Anybody know how plausible timbral trills are on the oboe? If so, then what registers work?

I should say so! Nice.

Look up Francis Routh's "Tragic interludes for solo oboe (Op43)" and/or Libby van Cleve's book, Oboe Unbound.

This may not work well on a fully-automatic oboe.

Notes from F (top line of treble stave) to C (two ledgers above) can be played as first or second harmonics and trilled between. Like you can trill G - G using the normal fingering (first octave key) and the alternate low-C fingering also with the first octave key. The second harmonic fingering is a fifth below the target note with the "next up" octave key. So for C-C#-D (octave above middle C) use the first octave key, D#-E-F use the second octave key.

There are many other possibilities to work outside that register; slight changes of fingering that barely affect intonation but give contrasting timbre.

Good luck

:dry:

Hmmm... Well let's keep the ball rolling here... How about notating said trills?

Would you just write it as a tremolo(Notes with the tremolo lines in between) on indentical notes?

Perhaps writing something to indicate you don't want something like octuple tonguing or something equally

ridiculous?

The problem is the lack of graphic facilities here. Composers tend to do things different ways and usually uniquely. Best to try to get a look at that book. It gives loads of examples along with multiphonics (at which the oboe is particularly good) quarter-tones, alternate fingerings and examples from compositions.

You might want to check out the Berio Sequenza for oboe and any of Silvestrini's works for oboe or EH to get ideas for notating timbral trills and other extended techniques.

It's always useful to work with an oboist, because whatever fingerings you decide to use, they WON'T work on every oboe. A new player would have to try them out and probably modify them to find new fingerings that have the effect that you want. Good luck. We oboists always want more music written for us!