a musician's experience

Now that things have calmed down a bit on the list, a more left-brain,
scientific/math approach is being trumpeted. My experiences through the
American Festival of Microtonal Music have been a different path.

When I first explored tuning on the bassoon, I could use a Korg tuner that
would literally "sing out" pitches that I calculated by a knob on the
machine. Since that time (late '70s), that Korg machine was discontinued.
Later Korg models did not "sing" out pitches, which is terribly unfortunate
for the up and coming musicians (especially woodwind players, who need to
document there fingerings for each specific pitch in each octave). Yes, there
are other possible methods to learn pitches in other tuning system, but
NYC musicians were visibly beholden to the Korg tuner. The principle oboist
of the NY Philharmonic, Joe Robinson, regularly tuned the orchestra up with
this very same Korg tuner (model WT-12).

Now, in a new era, many different tunings have internalized in my mind and
on the bassoon. There is really no interval that cannot be achieved with
certainty on the instrument. Of course, this has always been true on
fretless strings, but it is also true on woodwinds, and brass.

So, I'm now playing a 32-tone scale that stems from the 6th octave of the
harmonic series. Without any outside help, I can now adjudicate any
interval, and have now begun exercises to gain great fluidity in the playing. I
am sounding "fresh" again, exploring new terrain, traipsing on new worlds.

My sense is that these pitches are part of a harmony that are audio
pressure points on the sensitive human being receptor. New piece is coming
together as a result.

AND most important, this is no gimmick in making the bassoon SOUND more
beautiful in its richness. The ideas I want to express below were first
written down by me 35 years ago. Originally, more of an intuition, time only
anchored these ideas for a raison-d'etre for working so hard to accomplish
microtonal music on the bassoon:

1. New fingerings make for virtuosic technique. Better than etudes,
working between different fingerings permits (through the complex dance of
fingering combinations) any music in conventional tuning to be recognizeably
easy to play.

2. Tone richness blooms! Learning myriads of timbral possibility
transforms the entire instrument. Dark to bright range increases are added to
whole new dimensions of timbre colorings. There are differences in attack,
differences in dynamic, differences in otherworldliness. The whole
instrument is on a higher plane relating to tone color ability.

3. Pitch acuity on levels previously unimaginable result. Now that I've
been adding tuning upon tuning to my repertoire, I compose
polymicrotonally. And I can serve as the "tuner" (however non-electronic) for the other
musicians.

And of course, all I said about the bassoon is by extension true for every
other instrument (within degrees).

Johnny Reinhard