I'm arranging a piece involving an oboe. It has a bit that goes A, Bb, A, G# four times in a row. This is the A one ledger line above the staff, the Bb a semitone above the A, and the G# a semitone below the A. All the notes are sixteenths at q=116, and all the notes are slurred together (one long slur with sixteen sixteenth notes under it). I noticed belatedly that moving from the G# to the A is crossing over a register (oops!). Is this reasonably playable or should I raise everything a semitone, giving the oboist A#, B, A#, Gx four times in a row, and keeping it all in the same register. (Raising the piece a semitone would make the highest note in the piece D#, two ledger lines above the staff.)

Note that I am not an oboist, and the piece is not for me to play.

Hello Scotch,

It's possible to distinguish 2 kinds of oboes, an 'automatique' and a 'conservatoire'. If you play on a conservatoire (like I do) you'll have to push an extra button when changing from G# to A. With an automatique this isn't necessary because it will go automatically and therefore that button doesn't exists on those oboes. I find the movement from G# to A on a conservatoire a little tricky but manageable. For someone which plays on an automatique this will be very easy.

Hope this helps.

And if someone wonders why people play on a conservatoire and not on an automatique, it sometimes costs around 700 euro's (almost 1000 dollars) extra. And because there are some extra mechanisms on an automatique it's more fragile than a conservatoire.

Well, thanks for replying.

Re:

If you play on a conservatoire (as I do)

If you mean me personally, I don't play any oboe. I'm not an oboist.

I find the movement from G# to A on a conservatoire a little tricky but manageable.

Let's hope it's possible to get from G# to A or oboe music would be remarkably restricted. I'm more concerned with whether the passage I've quoted above (moving immediately and repeatedly from Bb to A to G# to A and back again several times) is reasonably playable and whether transposing the entire passage up a half-step would make it significantly easier.

(But since you bring it up, let's assume the oboist uses the more common system.)

Whatever type of oboe the performer is using (and assuming that the oboist is intermediate/professional), the chromatic turnarounds will be manageable. Moving your arrangement up a half step would make the passage easier, but I don't believe this would be necessary. Also, this transposition could introduce new fingering dilemmas.

Hope this helped!

Yes, that does very much help. Thank you.

I'm still hoping for other opinions or for concurrences with the opinion above. Egretboy seems remarkably articulate for a thirteen-year-old, but I'd also like to hear from oboists more seasoned.

At that speed the G# should sound fine without changing octave keys.