Extended technique is a term used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox or "improper" techniques of singing, or 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, double buzz, blowing a disengaged mouthpiece or reed, unusual mutes
• Sprechstimme (speech-singing)
• ululation
• prepared piano and prepared guitar
• string piano
• keyboard technique involving the flat of hand, arm, or external device to create tone clusters
• unusual harmonics, including multiphonics
• glissandi, tuner glissando
• 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
• altered tunings (scordatura)
• tapping
• combination of a mouthpiece of one instrument with the main body of another. (Alto saxophone mouthpiece combined with a standard trombone is a particularly successful permutation.)
• turning the mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument upside-down and playing as normal.

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

• composer Henry Cowell
• composer John Cage
• composer Sofia Gubaidulina
• composer Helmut Lachenmann
• vocalist Joan La Barbara
• vocalist Shelley Hirsch
• vocalist and composer Meredith Monk
• vocalist and composer Maja Ratkje
• composer Krzysztof Penderecki
• 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, two bows and curved bows
• violinist, violist and improviser Ernesto Rodrigues, curved bow
• flautist Ian Anderson
• composer Robert Erickson
• trombonist Stuart Dempster
• bassist Bertram Turetzky
• composer Ben Gaunt
• rock guitarist Tom Morello
• rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen
• rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix
• guitarist Derek Bailey
• guitarist Fred Frith
• classical guitarist Štěpán Rak
• guitarist Enver Izmailov
• jazz saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk
• bassist Michael Manring
• guitarist Kenneth Johnston with Curable Interns
• lead singer and guitarist Jón Þór Birgisson of Sigur Rós who plays his guitar with a cello bow

See also

• List of pieces which use extended techniques

Reading

• Stuart Dempster's The Modern Trombone: A Definition of Its Idioms, ISBN 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 ISBN 0520063813.
• Michael Edward Edgerton's The 21st Century Voice, ISBN 0-8108-5354-X, and other books in The New Instrumentation series. Scarecrow Press, 2005.

External links

• Woodwind Fingering charts
• New Sounds for Flute by Mats Möller
• The Orchestra: A User's Manual by Andrew Hugill with The Philharmonia Orchestra. Includes definitions, descriptions and video interviews of extended techniques for most all common orchestral instruments.

Musical performance techniques

Extended technique | Techniques de jeu étendues