Extended technique - Definition and Overview

Extended technique is a term used to describe unconventional, unorthodox or "improper" techniques of playing musical instruments.

Examples include:

• added electronics or MIDI control
• unusual bowing technique: double stops and multiple stops, sul ponticello, sul tasto, Col legno
• breath technique or articulation: multiphonics, tonguing or flutter tonguing, continuous breathing or circular breathing, trumpet half-valve playing, humming while blowing, blowing a disengaged mouthpiece or reed, unusual mutes
• Sprechstimme (speech-singing)
• prepared piano
• Unusual harmonics, including multiphonics
• glissandi
• String microtones (vertical and linear)
• exaggerated tremolo
• exaggerated brass head-shakes
• activating keys or valves without blowing
• tapping or rubbing the soundboard of stringed instruments
• alternate fingerings

Well known performers and composers who use a notable amount of extended techniques include:

• composer Sofia Gubaidulina
• vocalist Joan La Barbara
• vocalist Shelley Hirsch
• vocalist and composer Meredith Monk
• composer and multireedist Joseph Celli
• pianist and composer David Tudor in his own work and in the prepared piano techniques of Cage and the New York School
• cellist and improviser Frances-Marie Uitti
• rock flautist Ian Anderson
• composer Robert Erickson
• trombonist Stuart Dempster
• bassist Bertram Turetzky

See also

• Advanced mallet techniques
• List of pieces which use extended techniques

Reading

• Stuart Dempster's The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms, ASIN 0520032527.
• Patricia and Allen Strange's The Contemporary Violin, ISBN 0520224094, and other books in The New Instrumentation series.
• Bertram Turetzky's The Contemporary Contrabass ASIN 0520063813.

External link

• Woodwind Fingering charts (http://www.wfg.woodwind.org/fing.html)
• New Sounds for Flute (http://www.sforzando.se/flutetech/index.htm) by Mats Möller
• The Orchestra: A User's Manual (http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~ahugill/manual/) by Andrew Hugill with The Philharmonia Orchestra. Includes definitions, descriptions and video interviews of extended techniques for most all common orchestral instruments.