A woodwind doubler (or reed doubler) is a musician who can play two or more instruments from the six

woodwind Woodwind instruments are a family of musical instruments within the greater category of wind instruments. Common examples include flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and saxophone. There are two main types of woodwind instruments: flutes and Ree ...

families (

clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...

bassoon The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity ...

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

s and recorders) or other folk or ethnic woodwind instruments (e.g.

panflute A pan flute (also known as panpipes or syrinx) is a musical instrument based on the principle of the closed tube, consisting of multiple pipes of gradually increasing length (and occasionally girth). Multiple varieties of pan flutes have been ...

, irish flute)), and can play more than one instrument during a performance. A player who plays two instruments from the same family (e.g., oboe and

English horn The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn (mainly North America), is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially ...

, clarinet and

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common Soprano clarinet, soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays no ...

, flute and

piccolo The piccolo ( ; ) is a smaller version of the western concert flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" or piccolo flute, the modern piccolo has the same type of fingerings as the ...

) is also often considered a woodwind doubler, but is usually paid less than a player who plays instruments from different families.Memorandum of Agreement: Denver Musicians Association, Local 20-623, AFM/Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra (April 13, 2009)
Longtime

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

practice has expected the non-principal player in a section to double the common auxiliary instrument (e.g., 2nd flute and piccolo; 2nd oboe and English horn). In commercial work, including

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

film scores A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

and—most notably—

Broadway musicals Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), many of the extant or closed Broadway venues use or used the spelling ''Theatr ...

, the practice gradually evolved, with some specialists developing great expertise with multiple members of three, four, or even all five of the woodwind families noted above. In such commercial work, players are paid an additional (percentage) premium for each additional double—but hiring four or five proficient "reed doublers" is still more cost-effective to the production than hiring numerous additional players. Even before 1940, Broadway reed players were commonly expected to double three, four, or five instruments; one of the most notorious mid-century examples was the Reed III book for ''

West Side Story ''West Side Story'' is a Musical theatre, musical conceived by Jerome Robbins with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and a Book (musical theatre), book by Arthur Laurents. Inspired by William Shakespeare's play ''Romeo an ...

'' (1957), requiring flute, piccolo, oboe, English horn, clarinet, bass clarinet, and

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

and

baritone saxophone The baritone saxophone (sometimes abbreviated to "bari sax") is a member of the saxophone family of instruments, larger (and lower-pitched) than the tenor saxophone, but smaller (and higher-pitched) than the bass saxophone, bass. It is the lowe ...

s. The term "doubler" applies no matter how many instruments the musician plays. Someone who plays saxophone, flute, and clarinet is not a "tripler".

References

Musical terminology Music performance Woodwind instruments {{music stub