Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup crazy_music Recorder playing with adaptively tuned CPE Bach

Hi there,

I've been practicing the second movement of
C.P.E.Bach Sonata in C major for flute and
obbligato keyboard.

as adaptively retuned by JdL.

Here finally is a take that I'm not too embarassed by:
http://www.geocities.com/robert_inventor5/index.htm

So what is it like to play?

First thing one notices are the very wide minor thirds,
- on recorder, any cents deviation over 10 cents requires
quite determined pitch bending! Sometimes I use finger
shading to help.

Then, one notices many gentle fluctuations of pitch of
the melody. It is wonderful the way these fit in with
the flow of the tune, for instance, pitch tends to go
up at the climax of a phrase if it is conclusive
(including end of the movement) while down if
it is leading into something else. Not sure why that
is but it works very nicely.

Then when it really comes together, what one notices is
the way all three parts work together harmonically, rather
than each going its separate way somewhat. When you hear
the harpsichord pitch changing to fit in with your
tune, it almost feels like there is a live player there
playing with you. As much of such a feeling as one gets
from rhythmic responsiveness (of which there is none
in this as I sequenced the original midi clip in
NWC with a steady tempo of crotchet=79).

This is in John's version targetting 9/10 for the dom7th
except when the fifth of the chord is missing when it targets
the 8/9.

This is of course an amateur recording of the piece, but I hope my
enthusiasm and evident enjoyment of playing with the
adaptively tuned keyboard makes it worth listening to.
It was perhaps originally written for amateurs to perform
as it is very easy.

(After practicing a bit more I'll maybe try another
take).

Played on tenor recorder.

The baroque flute had a narrower range than the modern flute,
and many pieces for flute up to just short of J.S. Bach,
(and the Bach flute sonatas too, if you can manage the occasional
rather high notes) are playable on recorder.

This movement has a high C# in it which is a tricky note on recorder
- I use the fingering
0 1 ï¿½ 3 4 ï¿½ 6 7, which works on most recorders. It's in the first
high phrase the recorder plays.

As for timbre, I think perhaps the recorder is a reasonable stand
in for baroque flute, - if you can play it on modern flute, then
why not on recorder?

It is a great pleasure to play the recorder with adaptively tuned
harpsichord in this piece, and though quarter comma meantone is
also nice (possibly original intention to judge by how nice it
sounds), the adaptive tuning of these pieces is so incomparably
much nicer to play with. You really can relax and enjoy the
music as you play!

Sorry about the false start - haven't quite mastered knack of
starting playback just as I begin to play the recorder.

I just do it by playing the keyboard part in MediaPlayer and recording
while I play along on the recorder - no editing!

Robert

🔗nanom3@...

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Paul Erlich <paul@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

Hi Paul,

My recorder technique book "Recorder Technique" by A.Rowland Jones
says this about the great bass, which one occasionally hears in recorder
consorts (it's the one that is as tall as a seated player):

"Its low notes are as profound as could be desired (although
sometimes slow in 'speaking') and it is a shock to
be reminded that it goes no lower than a viola. In this
instrument the common quality of a recorder note of
appearing to sound an octave below its actual pitch
(through the absence of prominent upper harmonics) is at its
most evident."
(chapter III, kinds of recorders: choosing an instrument)

Try playing violin, flute, and recorder in that order on your soundcard.

Try say, the G, lowest note of violin. You may find it
sounds lowest on recorder.

It is a matter of how one listens, and the context
in which it plays, and I think the Bass recorder in recorder
consort sounds as if it goes a lot lower than a violin,
rather than just one note lower.

I think also soprano recorder does sound rather as though
its lowest note is middle c somehow, though one can also
hear it as the note an octave above. In fact, I think
it sounds rather as if it has a three octaves + range somehow
- the second register (on my one anyway), has much more
prominent second partials than the first register, and
sounds more in pitch, while first register sounds more
below the measured pitch..

But why? Well you're our principal theorist on
these sorts of matters!

My thoughts about it are, that maybe the first partial
is interpreted as a second partial, with a weak missing
first partial below it, so weak that one can't hear it
at all.

I'd be interested to know if harp has same effect - on
my soundcard anyway, it has a very prominent first harmonic,
as does steel drums and marimba.

There is an even larger size of recorder than the great Bass,
the contrabass.

It still wouldn't quite get down to the
lowest note of the 'cello - lowest note F rather than C.

Even lower recorders have been built. I've seen a picture of one
in C from a museum (same lowest note as 'cello) - you could
only reach the mouthpiece of this particular model by
standing on something.

Seems they've started making them again:
http://www.contrabass.com/pages/big-recorders.html
- folded air passage I think from the picture. I'm not
clear about the scale from this picture.

I've just discovered that Dolmetsch are making a new range
of contra bass recorders:

http://www.be-blood.demon.co.uk/millennium.htm

Right down to a recorder _two octaves_ lower than
the Bass recorder - can't iimagine how they'll make
that one a playable size!

Robert

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

🔗Paul Erlich <paul@...>

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

Hi Paul,

> That's not exactly what I said . . . but when the cochlea is exposed
> to more than one frequency at once, the pitches are
> subjectively "stretched apart" compared to how they sound as isolated
> sine waves. For a timbre without a second partial, the first partial
> won't be affected as much by this "stretching". So I would expect
> that a timbre without a second partial would sound a little higher
> (maybe a few cents, subjectively rather than physically speaking)
> than a timbre with a second partial.

Thanks, that's really interesting.

> I understand the quality of "highness" or "lowness" that you're
> mentioning, but I think that's a different animal from "pitch" per
> se, pitch being a question of "which specific note is heard".

where "which specific note is heard" needs to be expanded too,
as if one means "which note of the violin does this bass recorder
note sound like?" one is likely to place it an octave lower than
the measured pitch of the first partial would suggest.

But if one asks, "which of the violin partials is
this bass recorder partial the same pitch as", one would expect
to get the correct answer, for sure.

So I think, yes, it is a different animal from pitch per se.

Robert

🔗John A. deLaubenfels <jdl@...>

[Robert Walker wrote:]
>I've been practicing the second movement of
>C.P.E.Bach Sonata in C major for flute and
>obbligato keyboard.

>as adaptively retuned by JdL.

>Here finally is a take that I'm not too embarassed by:
>http://www.geocities.com/robert_inventor5/index.htm

Thanks for sharing this, Robert! Glad you enjoy the tuning. Wow,
the piece is harder than I realized just listening to the MIDI notes
go by. I actually learned to play the recorder years ago; still have
a soprano and alto somewhere (C and F respectively, right?). How much
total range did you say this piece has again? Much more than I could
play, much less tune on the fly, I'm sure!

>Sorry about the false start - haven't quite mastered knack of
>starting playback just as I begin to play the recorder.

>I just do it by playing the keyboard part in MediaPlayer and recording
>while I play along on the recorder - no editing!

Hey, you really should get CoolEdit 2000 with the Studio plug-in, about
$100 total and gives you GREAT editing of up to four stereo tracks
(more, of course, if you mix some down, then add others, etc.). When
you're layering the recorder over the harpsichord, for example, you'd
_see_ the first note coming on screen.

I'd love to hear the last movement of that J.C. Bach flute sonata too;
it's really sweet.

JdL

🔗Robert Walker <robertwalker@...>

Hi John,

> Thanks for sharing this, Robert! Glad you enjoy the tuning. Wow,
> the piece is harder than I realized just listening to the MIDI notes
> go by. I actually learned to play the recorder years ago; still have
> a soprano and alto somewhere (C and F respectively, right?). How much
> total range did you say this piece has again? Much more than I could
> play, much less tune on the fly, I'm sure!

In this movement it's two octaves plus a whole tone: c - d''.
The notes in this movement are straightforward to play, even the c#'',
though that one often gets left out of the fingering charts. It is sweet and easy
speaking, but involves a fair number of finger movements to get to it
from some notes, especially with the thumb hole needing to be covered
as well.

The c# with the fingering I use has a tendency to be just a little sharp unless
very quiet - it is basically a d'' flattened as much as one can towards the c'',
and some recorders can go further down more easily than others, or have other
alternate fingerings for it.

In my recorder technique book he says

"This is the bugbear of recorder players. F'' sharp is obtainable by a number of
methods, but none of them is entirely satisfactory".
(F'' # because he is writing for treble).

Just after explaining the leaking finger technique for F''# which is the one I use
usually, and here, he says:

"A third method of getting F''# is to use the flattened G'' just described
and flatten it still further by shading the hole in the foot of the recorder
against the knee. Carefully done, this is effective, but a little odd".

Maybe I should give it a go! However generally I hold the recorder horizontally
(all except the bass recorder), much like a flute, as it is more relaxing
for the fingers I find, so could be a bit awkward.

Here I just played it a little sharp (compared with prev. played note in harpsichord
part), but I think it works like that as a kind of leading tone to the high d'', and
one prob. doesn't notice unless one has it pointed out.

High c'' in 3rd octave is the note that usually breaks
most easily. Trick there is to learn the breath pressure and the width
of gap for the thumb hole. If one gets those right then it is
straightforward at normal volume (not easy to play quietly).

Get the thumb hole gap right (narrower than for any of the notes
of the second octave and can vary dep. on the recorder),
and the breath pressure a little stronger than for the 2nd octave
notes, and you will get a decent note every time
you play it. Then one can learn to find the "sweet spot" where it
sounds nicest.

So this movement is basically pretty straightforward, if you don't
mind a slightly sharp c''#, or maybe if you are able to try the knee
shading technique (??). (and if you play simple ornaments).

The other movements both use the high E of 3rd octave which is outside the range of
many of the recorder fingering charts. It has tendency to be
flat and need to be sharpened. However, does very good service as
a 5/4 above the C just as it is, and is only a little harder to play
than the C (needs _far more_ breath pressure, and can be played
reasonably softly with care).

The J.S. Bach flute sonatas and the wonderful J.S. Bach sonata for solo flute
have higher notes such as g'', and I've practiced those as well in the
past and they are also fairly accessible on recorder as regards range
(of course I play the fast movements slower - they are virtuoso
flute pieces but they work pretty well a bit slower than they are normally
played).

The g'' doesn't sound too bad in these as it is usually in a suitable
place for a strongly accented note which is the way it comes out on the
recorder naturally. Teleman actually notatated this note for treble recorder
in one of his recorder sonatas, used in exactly this way - I think the
notes said that it is thought to be the highest note ever
written for recorder before the C20.

There's a CPE Bach solo flute sonata too, in A minor, and it is
pretty straightforward too, though meant to be much faster than I could possibly
play it, but it is so high for so long that it is quite demanding on recorder.

>Sorry about the false start - haven't quite mastered knack of
>starting playback just as I begin to play the recorder.

>I just do it by playing the keyboard part in MediaPlayer and recording
>while I play along on the recorder - no editing!

> Hey, you really should get CoolEdit 2000 with the Studio plug-in, about
> $100 total and gives you GREAT editing of up to four stereo tracks
> (more, of course, if you mix some down, then add others, etc.). When
> you're layering the recorder over the harpsichord, for example, you'd
> _see_ the first note coming on screen.

That does sound good. I could imagine using all of them, e.g. for a recorder
consort playing all the parts, which could be fun to try, especially if in some
xenharmonic scale. I want to get more into microtonal recorder playing.

Seeing the note in advance as you come to it would be great.

I'll have to think about this. I actually have the CoolEdit demo
at present which I mainly used for checking FFT type things, and
hasn't yet expired as I use it so rarely. I now do FFT mostly in
FTS. Hadn't realised it's audio capablilities. I use Goldwave, and
I've registered that program, which I enjoy using, but sound sas though
CoolEdit has capabilities it doesn't have.

> I'd love to hear the last movement of that J.C. Bach flute sonata too;
> it's really sweet.

Okay, better get practicing :-). Takes me a while to memorise the
movement - that was the key to getting it reasonably presentable,
as until I did that, wasn't to give pitch my proper attention while
playing, only afterwards.

I can still hear many wild notes, so I' msure the keen eared readers
of this group can too, but they don't seem too out of place somehow.

I'm so glad you like it, and I think one can hear how much I
enjoy playing with adaptively tuned keyboard!

One nice little touch I noticed while learning it - C.P.E. Bach
puts one unison note for recorder and harpsichord in this piece.
It is pretty much exactly half way at bar 22 out of 56, and also
half way through the longest section of continuous playing for
the recorder. Accompaniment consists of C at octaves at that
point.

Just the exact place where it is great to have a
kind of steadying re-assurance from the keyboard part. I wonder if
it is there to help steady potentially nervous or forgetful amateurs?

It's nice anyway.

Robert