The magic flute

Tonight we played at an old-folks home. We set up in what must usually be the cafeteria area, because there was a drink island right where the woodwinds should've been. It was a very ringy room, with cathedral-like dimensions, and all hard surfaces, from the polished industrial flooring to the five stories of windows. The Haydn we played has a couple parts where he writes a complete bar of tutti rest. In this hall, these just rung, with the room filling the space with a memory of the note we'd just played. I thought it was cool, but chatting with the conductor afterward, he called it wet, and made a face. Probably thought it made everything muddy, which no doubt was also true.

My kids were there, since my wife is out of town. Rather than hang out with the geriatric residents, they selected seats near the back of the orchestra, a few feet from me, more or less in the horn section. They had a good time. On the way home, my daughter sang something, and asked if we'd played it. I didn't recognize it, but when we got home, we played the Magic Flute on her iPod. We'd performed the overture, which she didn't recognize as the Magic Flute since, well, there wasn't any singing or talking. She had a version with kids chattering, play within a play, nicely done... and she'd been singing some aria or something. I offered her her flute, in case she wanted to make some noise to charm the dragon too, but no luck, she wasn't going to be tricked into practicing. We ended up listening to a lot of Mozart, while doing the dishes. Including the Overture to the Magic Flute, just a little faster and a little better.

Scoring

Before the tube is formed, I score the cane with a single-edge razor, held by hand, with the cane supported by an easel. I go from the first wire to the butt, about half-way through. The idea is to allow the cane to bend in a controlled manner, without cracking (and especially without cracks extending into the blade). It's my least-favorite step, in all of reedmaking. It's difficult to hold the blade, and make straight cuts. The blade goes too deep half the time (though many say that the score should go all the way through near the butt). There are gizmos, such attaching several blades together (eg Vigder's), or the Bonazza machine sold by Miller Marketing.


I did have a thought, though, suggested by Robin Howell's reed page, where he calls it kerfing. Now kerfing is a standard woodworking method of creating large bends, where you remove material with cuts from the inside of the curve, not the outside. If you did this with a bassoon reed, you could leave the bark intact, for a perfect natural seal, with the strain relieved by cuts in the interior. I tried this with a scrap, using the edge of a file to try and make the cuts. It didn't work very well, with not much material removed, just compressing ruts into the cane. When I made a tube, I got several cracks, as if I'd done no scoring at all. Maybe it could be done better, or maybe the bark itself is inflexible enough that it needs to be cut.

The bevel

When I first learned reedmaking, from John Campbell, I learned a fairly elaborate beveling process. It was started before the tube was formed, done largely with a file, canted to an angle constantly varying along the length, adjusted to the expected eventual angle at which each half of the cane would meet the other to form the tube. After the tube was formed, the reed would be opened up, and more beveling could be done, both sides at once, with the file flat across the half-tube. John said that he wanted the tube to seal without any additional gimmicks (thread, cement, etc), so the ideal was a flat butt-end joint all the way along the tube. Sounds very rational, but I always had a hard time knowing how much to do, and worried about exactly what the angles were.

Much has been written about the bevel, of course. Betsy S describes her blank making, including the bevel, and Paula Brusky (whose site I discovered only today) describes here bevelling here The Herzberg bevel, for instance, has a carefully engineered lack of flatness, so that, when compressed, the tendency to fill the gap embeds a tip-opening tendency to the reed. Matt, who I took a couple reed-lessons from, does only a single sliver with the reed knife. He figures the cane mushes everywhere anyway, but avoiding sharp edges helps to form the tube without the sides slipping. This is a simple, straightforward attitude that I can appreciate as well. Some people don't bevel at all. I suspect these people usually crush the cane more when forming the tube, to help push the cane from where it is to where it should be.

These days, I'm using nail polish on the tube, mostly to help dimensional stability (ie minimize tube shrinkage), so leakage through the sides of the tube isn't a problem. (Actually, this is a problem I've never had.) The reeds I'm playing on (G3, G4) don't have a perfect bevel -- there's a triangular gap on the inside. (Actually, I am getting some leakage here.) So I'm guessing too much bevel, at too low an angle. If I compressed the tube by further tightening the wires, I think I could make it go away, but at the cost of having to ream, or not fitting onto the bocal. My first reeds this year vanished in a cycle of loose wires, tightening, reaming, and further shrinking, so I'm trying to stay away from this. I formed tubes on three reeds this evening, so, as an experiment, I tried not beveling at all before forming the tube. (Maybe I'll do some before wiring.) I figure if I really need to, I'd figure out why. The first couple seemed to go fine. The third slipped a bit, so I unwound it, used a file to flatten the part near the throat, and tried again. So yeah, I guess a little bit of beveling can help.

On a related subject, I have been forming tubes with the Fox forming mandrel, then putting them on standard taper tips to dry and relax. I only have two tips, though, so the third I'm leaving on the Fox mandrel. It is much longer, going through the throat and into the blade, and has a steeper taper. We'll see if I notice any differences later.

The sound of a laser

An acoustic laser? Well yeah, they exist, they're called a SASER. They emit in the MHz to THz, so they are acoustic, but far out of the audio range. Thinking about it, though, the standard means of sound generation is pretty much the same as a laser. A laser is a kinda nifty device. The fundamental part is something which can emit light, but doesn't really want to. This is typically a population of atoms in an excited energy state, where the transition to emit light rarely happens spontaneously, kept there by "pumping" with another frequency. The trick comes when attached to a tuned cavity. Then the light coming from the tuned cavity can exite the source, allowing it to release the pent-up energy, by emitting more photons at exactly the same frequency as the light from the cavity. This sets up a feedback loop, and you get light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (one of the best acronyms in the history of science), resulting in very narrowband emission (a single tuned precise frequency) and coherence. The acoustic saser folks have figured out materials allowing similar effects to happen with high-frequency sound.

Actually, though, I think every musical instrument is a saser. Consider a violin. The bow, moving across the string, builds up energy as it stretches the string, attached to it with rosin. At some point it will slip, releasing the energy, and a pulse of sound into the string. Without tuning, a scratchy, high frequency squeak results. But coupled to the tuned instrument, the timing of the next slip is fixed by the returning pulse down the string. Stimulated emission. A highly tuned strong sound is emitted, with fixed phase relationships between the harmonics (coherence?). I'm no acoustics expert (though I have skimmed some acoustics literature), but this seems like a saser to me. Wind instruments are similar, with the vibration of the reed (whether cane, for reed woodwinds, or lips, for brass) being controlled by the return wave from the tuned resonator. (Flutes have a vortex shedder rather than a reed, but I think it's pretty much the same deal.)

New sound

Not very often do I hear what I would actually characterize as a new sound. 20th century atonal, electronic bleeps and blurps, I've heard (and enjoyed) something about each of these. To actually sound new, I think there needs to be enough familiar about it, to get your brain to categorize it with other music rather than just another noise, but with enough changed to make it sound really different, somehow. Here's a clip which, to me, sounds different from anything I've heard before: microtonal blues.

Added: turns out this is from an album released in 1968, before I was born. New to me, anyhow.

Violin in Afghanistan

And this is what music is for...

G10 and G11

Wired and numbered a couple of reeds. They've been annealing on the forming mandrels for some weeks, so they are well past due to get moved. G11 suffered some sort of accident during shaping, I think, it's a little narrow at the butt end, and after wiring, doesn't want to drop onto the mandrel even as far as the mark, even though I wire at about 4 mm beyond the mark.

Had a rehearsal this evening, and a show at an old age home next week. On the program is the Magic Flute overture, which the group hadn't run until tonight since they'd done it just a few months ago, before I showed up. I'd forgotten to practice, and hmm, even though I'm playing second, it was still interesting. I better take a look before next week.

On the Mildes, I was supposed to be done with #4 on Saturday, but I haven't even recorded the pre-week "before" run-through, much less practiced it for a week. I'll get to it, not sure when.

An anemic rehearsal

Played a rehearsal this evening, mostly working the fourth movement of Beethoven 5. Not hard, but lots of midrange stuff, D's and E's above the staff, the flattest notes in my current setup, requiring a lot of effort to get close to in-tune. The dynamics are forte and fortissimo, trying to compete with the brass, so it's hard work. Today was extra-exciting, since I'd just given blood a couple hours before, so I had less hemoglobin to carry oxygen around. There were definite times I had a pounding, elevated heart rate, as my body compensated for the anemia with increased blood flow. That's certainly not usual. And once or twice I felt a touch faint, and spots in my vision. I felt glad every time a few bars rest came along. I think I played fine though, or at least, no worse than usual.

Mahler 1

Betsy has a nice post on playing Mahler recently. I've always really liked listening to Mahler, though I don't think I've ever performed any. And indeed, the bassoon solo at the beginning of the third movement is one of the more familiar tunes in the repertoire. I have it on my iPod, so I played it a couple times. And I realized something that I'd missed before: it's a round. Same melody, different instruments, starting at different times to overlap and generate the harmonies. Not sure how I could have missed that, but it seems obvious to me now.

Milde 3

Not a great week, but if I'm going to do this, I need to keep doing it. Here's Milde 3, after a week of occasional work.



And here's where it was a week ago.



One thing is different: this week I recorded on my iPod (Thumbtack mic into iPod Touch running Voice Memo app), instead of my fancy mic/interface/audio software. Listening to them both, I think the serious setup sounds better, but is a lot more work, and you can still hear every wrong note clearly with the iPod recording.

Reed log

I think it's time to work on reeds a bit again. I clipped wires and put nail polish on G6, G7, G8, and G9. G8 and G9 are the really big ones, though G6 and G7 both fit on the mandrel ~4 mm beyond the mark. These have all been sitting wired at least six weeks. Scrape tomorrow. And put four more pieces of cane in to soak.

Still practicing Mildes, but looking for something easier, I looked over my books of studies. I actually went back to early Weissenborn, stuff written for the player who only knew about ten notes. I could pretty much sight read these, and had lots of neurons left over to try and play them really musically -- not just perfect notes and intonation, but also exaggerated dynamics and phrasing. Should try recording something like that, to see if the result comes through.

Milde 2

It's not good, but better than my recording a week ago:



And here's a competent rendition:

Audition repertoire

I've been goofing off, googling audition requirements, trying to suss out how much I suck on some kind of absolute metric. They bear much in common. Here are a few for undergrads:

Curtis:
Mozart, Weber Op 75, or Hummel, first two movements, from memory
major and minor scales and arpeggios
etude of choice
two contrasting orchestral excerpts

Julliard:
Complete sonata or concerto of choice
Two contrasting etudes or another solo work
Three or more excerpts

Oberlin:
Two or three selections, including a Milde Concert Study

Eastman:
Standard concerto (i.e., Mozart, Weber)
One or two etudes such as are found in Milde Concert Studies, Vol. I
Two contrasting orchestral excerpts

San Francisco:
Major, minor, and chromatic scales
Telemann Sonata in F minor
Milde Scale Studies or Weissenborn Advanced Studies, or other works of equivalent difficulty.
For grad work, they ask for three works chosen from Mozart, Vivaldi, or Hummel Concertos, Bach cello suites, Saint-Saëns Sonata, or other works of equivalent difficulty; plus orchestral excerpts.

Berklee (contemporary, not classical)
Prepared piece
Improvisation, incl over a blues progression
Reading
Ear training: call and response, interval ID and chord quality

I've played works at that level, so if quality doesn't matter, I guess I'm there, about as good as a serious seventeen-year old. Makes sense, that's about how old I was when I stopped practicing. Interesting to see scales on there, and so few of them. When I practice scales, I tend to do lots more kinds, copying off of my wife's jazz studies, since they teach not just technique, but new kinds of harmony. Also this list makes me happy that I'm practicing the Mildes.

I did play one audition this year, back in September, for one of the community orchestras that has pretensions to seriousness. I lied, and said that I'd only taken bassoon up again for a couple of weeks, when in fact I think I'd been playing for at least a month. I tried to play Saint-Saëns, figuring that it wasn't too hard, and I'd played it before, though when I tried working it up there was stuff which was basically impossible. I was really nervous, and didn't start very well, but the technical stuff comes late. I got stopped after about five bars, and asked if I had anything else to play, which I didn't, not really, except for some French etude which sounded a lot like the Saint-Saëns. I then got asked if I played contra, which I didn't. Then he said a lot of things, but mostly, they already had two bassoons, and didn't really need more, except for maybe a contra. I thought I'd failed, and failed so badly I'd been stopped quickly to avoid wasting his time. Still, I got called when their other bassoonist left, so maybe I passed.

Now, I see the same piece on a graduate audition repertoire list. That doesn't mean I'm any good, anyone can play anything, if quality of performance doesn't matter. Auditions are about how well you can play the piece, no credit just for stumbling through something.

My thumbs hurt

I guess that's the downside of practicing technique: you risk repetitive stress injury. I've dealt with RSI at various points in my life, generally during periods of high stress and excessive typing. The solution, if you catch it early, is straightforward: stop! And, just as important, get more sleep. I think it's partially immune related, so stress can be a bugger. I started getting some twinges a week ago, then last night my left thumb began hurting. I don't need to practice eight hours a day, so it was easy to decide to just stop immediately, and try and get some sleep. It'd also be helpful to try and get the mechanics sorted out, so that the fingers are always in natural positions, and not moving long distances, but for the left thumb, I find that hard. To access the low keys, D through Bb, I usually pivot at the base of my thumb, and have it bent backwards. Maybe I can do something different, or maybe my muscles and joints can get used to it.

I also found the Health and Wellness forum on the IDRS site. Musicians have a lot of medical problems. In the States, it's particularly bad, since many pros work gig to gig, and have no insurance coverage, in addition to losing their source of income due to the disease. One oboist, practicing for job auditions, seemed to have worked herself into a variety of mechanical problems. And also, to me it seemed, maybe a bit of target panic/focal dystonia, terrifying disorder which seems to be caused by wearing out the mental circuits for a task through overuse. It can be permanent, resolvable only by retraining to do the task in a completely different manner (eg switching from left-handed to right-handed), or giving up on the task entirely. Overtraining can be devastating in many ways, something to think about before practicing all night.