Bassoonist vs Bach

Googling about the Cello Suites, I found a delightful passage, in a book written solely about those suites.
The young Bach, 18 years old, at his first job, got into a scuffle with a bassoon student by the name of Johann Heinrich Geyersbach. Bach apparently called him a "Zippel Fagottist", the exact translation of which seems to be in dispute, but certainly seems to be a slur. Geyersbach took exception, weapons were drawn (each side claimed the other drew first), and they scuffled until separated by other students. The town council reprimanded him, telling him that "Men must live among the imperfecta". He later got into trouble for taking extended leaves, playing weird notes, playing too long (and then too short!) in church, and sneaking a "strange maiden" into the organ loft. Huh. Regardless of Zippel Fagottist, the Suites work pretty well on bassoon. I should try them, one of these days.

Modding an ultrasonic cleaner

Here's the new button on my ultrasonic cleaner, mostly installed by my son. The old one failed, as I mentioned earlier. The new one is working fine, so far, and it should be more reliable than the original, since the connection doesn't go through the hinge. However, the cleaner was out of commission for a couple of weeks while we got around to doing it. This gave me a chance to see if the cleaner is actually doing any good, or if zapping reeds in this thing is just another waste of time. And, well, I guess I expected my reed to start getting cruddy eventually, but I had no idea how fast. Within a couple of days, a layer of slime had started to build up on the back of the reed. Gross! Is this what the rest of the world is putting up with? Me, I started to try and scrub my reed under fast hot water after every use, and I'm glad to get my cleaner back online.

The microphone doesn't lie

A couple of funny things happened recently. I'm hoping they'll lead to improvements, in the end, but it sure doesn't feel like that in the moment. One was getting spanked about intonation in the university orchestra. It caused me to spend a fair bit of practice time, with a loud drone from my ipod, doing slow bends above and below the note, listening for beats and learning to tune perfect intervals. I'd kind of thought that I already knew how to play more or less in tune, but apparently not. The interesting part is that I started listening a little more critically in my usual orchestra. What I discovered is that, yes, I was often pretty badly out of tune there too. I'm not the only offender, and yeah, sometimes it was hard to find a pitch centre because of disagreements in the group, but most of the time, there was a pitch and I wasn't on it. Painful for the self-esteem, but recognizing that I have a problem, even if I'm not able to fix it instantly, is the first step on the path to improvement. Hence the tuning practice. It's kind of funny, how different the pitch adjustments can be for even very close notes. I like Betsy's admonition that this is training the bassoon to play in tune, rather than the player; this is much easier on the ego.

The other funny thing came from doing some recordings. I'm getting tired of hearing the same thing at my lessons constantly: go across the bar line, crescendo the last sixteenth, make it sound like a pickup, that kind of thing. It's the kind of thing that Once I had the first couple of bars of a study ready, really doing that kind of phrasing, I recorded it on my ipod, so I could enjoy the pleasure of listening to how wonderfully I was doing it. Didn't work out that way. It was terrible! I wasn't doing it at all. Apparently my teacher has been going on about the same thing for years, like a broken record, because I've been consistently making the same mistakes, like a broken record. So that's kind of interesting. It's also interesting how much of this phrasing you can see in the sound contour on the recorder. The note that's smaller than the rest is actually  quieter, and breaks the phrase. If you want the downbeat to sound like a downbeat, it has to be louder than the pickup, which means the wave has to be bigger. With much struggle, and many recordings, on extremely simple music (I'm working on the first movement of the Telemann sonata), I've been able to make a bit of progress. Sometimes it's really hard: it's like there's something wrong with my brain, and it's afraid of playing certain notes. And I've discovered that some notes are much louder or softer than even very close notes, so in order to make the wave look pretty, I've got to blast out certain notes in what feels like a very unnatural manner. But the recording doesn't lie, and I had to admit, when I got it right, it sounded better. So again, just recognizing that I have a problem is hard. I can't hear it when I'm playing, I've got to be told. Or listen to a recording.

Here's Telemann, my first attempt to overdub to do the bassline too. Sorry about the metronome, but it seemed like the easiest way to sync on a one-track recorder. And of course, I was so distracted by dealing with the technology, that I wasn't able to do any of the things I'd been practicing. Ah well.
  telemann by TFox17

21st century music

I started a thread on Reddit,  asking for suggestions for 21st century classical music to listen to. It's not that I've listened to, and become bored of, everything that's been written in the 20th century, or any other century, rather it's just an excuse to find some new music. Many people responded, and I collected the ideas, found links to samples where needed, and put them all in alphabetical order. (I'm like that.) I haven't had a chance to listen to much yet, but I will.

21C

John Adams String Quartet, Son of Chamber Symphony to pick a couple post-millenial pieces
John Luther Adams Red Arc/Blue Veil
Thomas Ades Violin Concerto, Piano Quintet
Julian Anderson Book of Hours, Heaven is Shy of Earth
Gerald Barry La Plus Forte
Harrison Birtwistle Night's Black Bird, interview Three Settings of Celan, The Shadow of Night, Cry of Anubis, Mask of Orpheus, Angel Fighter
John Corigliano Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra
Nathan Davis
Brett Dean Viola Concerto Rehearsal clip
Nicholas Deyoe String quartet
Henri Dutilleux Still active, but no vids of recent work
Ludovico Einaudi Oltremare
Gabriela Lena Frank Crying Song
Beat Furrer Orpheus' Bücher
Osvaldo Golijov Lúa descolorida
Michael Gordon Timber
Anthony Green Refraction Aberrance A young guy
Jonny Greenwood Popcorn Superhet Receiver
Georg Friedrich Haas In Vain
John Harbison Symphony No. 4, Piano Sonata No. 2
Jonathan Harvey Speakings
Jennifer Higdon Violin Concerto No. 1 Won a Pulitzer
Joe Hisaishi One Summer's Day Incidental music for anime
Elena Kats-Chernin Elena's aria "Classical / Experimental / Pop" says her official MySpace
Phil Kline Zippo Songs Beats and poetry
Helmut Lachenmann Grido His third string quartet.
Bernhard Lang Differenz/Wiederholung 7 Orchestra + looper
Angel Lam Midnight Run
David Lang Little Match Girl Passion, Child | Sweet Air
Liza Lim Invisibility
Steve Mackey Micro-concerto
Bruno Mantovani Jazz Connotations
Nico Muhly Bright Mass with Canons, Clear Music, Skip Town, It goes without saying
Steve Reich WTC 9/11
Todd Reynolds Centrifuge Rehearsal clip
Philip Rothman Monument Fanfare
Ryuichi Sakamoto Energy Flow Reminds me of New Age
Esa-Pekka Salonen Piano Concerto My one non-YT link.
Simon Steen-Andersen Rerendered The composer's site has the score!
Frank Ticheli Vesuvius For concert band.
Erkki-Sven Tüür Architectonics III
Nobuo Uematsu Aerith's Theme
Julia Wolfe Cruel Sister
Eric Whitacre Lux Aurumque Popular for a reason.

20C

John Adams http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51wgChtHoDI
John Luther Adams Drums of Winter from Earth and the Great Weather
Luciano Berio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJqRvP6SU9c
Elliot Carter String Quartet No. 5
John Corigliano http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evsvru4KR4
Henri Dutilleux Tout un monde lointain His celebrated cello concerto
Osvaldo Golijov http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fE1o_tS8P8
Karel Husa http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw44PzSQAZg
Einojuhani Rautavaara 6th Symphony, String Quintet "Unknown Heavens"
Steve Reich Different Trains
Karlheinz Stockhausen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v7YYvPSYzw
Joan Tower http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZPBt-dsVm0
Charles Wunorinen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbXyPez_1ac

Christmas shows and sightreading

I have three shows in the next few days, I guess it must be Christmas. One is chamber music, a noon-hour fundraiser. Another is a senior's concert with my main orchestra, the first of our two Christmas shows. It'll be fine, my main concern is that I'm still looking for another bassoonist for the second show a week later. The third is tomorrow night, sitting in with one of the other community orchestras in town. I only got asked to do this on Tuesday, so I'll be doing the show on zero rehearsals. Even if the music is easy, and the standards are low (they must be, or they wouldn't ask me), I think I'd still prefer to have at least one rehearsal under my belt. I'm a decent sight reader, and some of the music I've seen before, but still, I never know what the tempos will be, is it in two or four, are those repeats good, where does that DS go back to. I'll be the only bassoonist, so there won't even be anyone else to lean on, but the multi-instrumentalist who asked me will be playing clarinet next to me, so hopefully she can keep me on the right page. I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself, though. Whoever I find for the second show next week will have to do the same thing.

Repairing an ultrasonic cleaner

I love my ultrasonic cleaner, and have been using it daily since I got it almost two years ago. Unfortunately, in the past few weeks it's started to get unreliable: press the button, nothing happens. Try a few times, and usually it'll work, especially with jiggling. Sounds like a wonky connection, but where? I had a couple of ideas: one, that leaving it full of water all the time, in defiance of the instructions to empty it after use, caused something to corrode somewhere. (I'd change the water/soap about once a week, or if I thought it was getting grody.) Or, noticing that the buttons were located on the hinged lid, maybe something having to do with the hinge. Tonight I took it apart. Here are some pics:

View from above, with the lid more or less in place. I've removed the smoked plastic insert which keeps dust out. You can see the buttons on the bottom of the picture, and the hinge on the top. It's a little ajar, since I've already started taking it apart. Also visible is the entirely pointless blue LED light for the chamber.

With the top piece removed. The wire harness connecting the switches and the blue LED comes out of the hinge at the top. No wait: the wire harness, carrying delicate wires without which the machine won't work, *is* the hinge, or one side of it anyway. Oh my goodness. I'd wondered how they'd arranged to avoid stressing those connections inside the moving hinge, there are ways to do that, no doubt. But not only did they not bother protecting the wires, they used the wires themselves as a structural component of the hinge. Probably durable enough to last for the one year warranty period, and no doubt flimsy enough to ensure that it wouldn't last much longer. Kind of a Chinese version of planned obsolescence. The thing is, putting the switches on the lid is totally unnecessary: they'd have worked fine fixed on the body, which would have avoided running wires to the top. The only requirement for a wire to be located up there is for the useless blue LED, whose primary purpose is to make the gadget look "techno" in marketing photographs.

Just for fun, pics of the bottom interior. The big piezo attached to the chamber bottom is the main thing here.

And the circuitry. At the left there are two big transistors attached to a black finned heat sink, this heat sink has a cutout for it which lets it rest near the chamber bottom. The circuitry and the piezo dump enough heat into the solution to get it warm during use. Whether it's just a convenient place to put the heat, or if it's an intentional design allowing the solution to warm to aid cleaning, I'm not sure. You can also see a fuse, a nice feature in an electric gizmo that's around water. In addition to driving the piezo, the circuit has to recognize the on and off switches, and has a timer, to let it buzz for three minutes before stopping automatically. At the bottom is where the wiring harness comes in. If I was going to jumper a new switch in, I guess I could do it there.

Finger mechanics

Precise and smooth finger motions are the key to technique. This is true for slow notes as well as fast ones. Fast notes are just coordinated finger motions, the fingers don't need to move any faster. And it's possible to practice just the motions. I was impressed watching one of my son's piano lessons the other day, how his teacher wanted just a particular smooth circular movement from the wrist and arm. When done correctly, the notes underneath came out in a beautiful flowing torrent.

I've long been convinced that my fine motor control is worse than average. Among other things, I get a shaking tremor in my fingers, sometimes vibrating more than a cm back and forth. I know a bit about it: it gets worse under fatigue, or anxiety. It runs in my family, so it's likely genetic. I'm mostly convinced it's some mild variant of Charcot-Marie-Tooth, though I've never been diagnosed, and not that knowing the name would help anything. As far as playing goes, it's evidently not so debilitating that I'm unable to play at all. However, I constantly have to put a great deal of attention into my fingers, and am always wondering how "normal" my experiences are. Not that that matters either. We all have flaws and advantages, and have to compensate for them and use them as best we can.

Looking for information, I found this video on focal dystonia. Dystonia is different, since it's acquired, not inborn, and likely acquired through overtraining. It's sometimes career ending for musicians, though. Certainly watching that saxophonist attempt to work the keys kinda squicked me out. Although the causes are different, I wonder if the exercises that get suggested for dystonia would be helpful me.

Dynamics and intonation

The biggest things I'm struggling with, in the university orchestra, are intonation and volume. The bassoons were being constantly shushed in the first couple rehearsals, and several times I got called out for being out of tune. Since intonation is an ensemble thing, maybe it's not surprising that I would struggle when jumping into a new group, particularly one that has much higher standards. Still, it's embarrassing at best. I spent some of the weekend playing perfect intervals against a loud synth tone from my iPod, and maybe it helped. At least, the conductor never once bothered to interrupt the entire orchestra in order to single out my intonation, so that's an improvement anyway.

Dynamics is another matter. Some of it is just focusing on being quiet in the quiet bits, and trying to do more with the phrasing. So 90% is okay, but not perfect. But there's one spot... a ppp open F, soli 2nd bassoon entering with 2nd clarinet, in the Egmont overture right after Egmont gets his head cut off by the violins. He's spent rehearsal time on it in every rehearsal, I spent my lesson time on it, I've worked on reeds for it, I've blogged about it, and it's not there yet. I think I can do better, but it'll be work. Double reeds just can't get as soft as other instruments, something that's worthy of a technical blog post at some point. I did talk to the clarinettist, to beg for a bit of mercy. Apparently he was trying to hide in that entrance, since he was uncertain about the pitch. (He's got an open G, I think?) Hopefully if I can convince him to come up to pp or so, we'll be able to have a bit of balance while I can have a decent chance of sound coming out. The other tricky part of that passage is the rest of the notes. It's supposed to be very legato, but my tonguing at the edge of sound production resulted in too big a gap between the tones. Maybe I'll just try slurring everything.

Serious orchestra again

For the next few weeks I'll be playing a couple of minor pieces with the university's orchestra. I've subbed in with them before, but this is the first time I've been scheduled to play with them. It's a fabulous experience, since the level is so much higher than my usual. First rehearsal was a few days ago, and things went mostly fine. The big repertoire for this show, including the wonderful solo in Firebird, is being handled by their two performance majors, so my job is primarily ensemble playing. But man, playing accurately and sensitively enough to fit in is not easy. I got called out a couple of times, both times for being too loud. One spot is a triple-p 2nd bassoon solo entrance on an open F after a pause, with maybe one clarinet and nothing else, which was both too loud and sharp. Clearly I need to spend some more time on dynamics and reeds. Mostly my practicing focuses on smoothness and beautiful full tone, and haven't concerned myself with how immediately and securely the reed responses when playing softly. I also think it's funny, getting nailed on something that might be the first note you'd teach a new bassoonist. Reminds me of my attempt to find something I could play well, except here, I wasn't able to play it well enough. Just goes to show, the things you think you need to work on, and the things you actually need to work on, may not be the same.

Remember that three-year-old conductor?

The guy whose enthusiastic interpretation of the last movement of Beethoven 5 became a viral video? I remember thinking, wow, if this guy keeps going, someday, after many years of work, he could be standing in front of a real symphony orchestra. And it's all turned out to be true, except the "many years" part. Here he is at age four. His stickwork has become a little more conventional, but the same joy is still there.



The original video:

Performance

Had a few days off of bassooning for a work trip. As it turns out, I ended up with a bit of performance experience: I had to give a brief commendation as part of an awards ceremony. Shouldn't be a big deal, but I still feel like an imposter in my area, and the audience consisted of hundreds of the top people in my field, so even brief spots of visibility can be important. Worse, the format of the event had me standing awkwardly around on stage under the lights for a long period waiting to give my piece. And in some ways something short is more difficult than something long: if it's long, you can get used to being up there performing, but if the entire performance is thirty seconds, then your only impression you leave is your initial impression. Still, I was pretty happy with having had my musical performance experiences to draw on. I knew that what I was feeling inside is almost unconnected with the audience's experience of the event. I knew that the physiological feelings of racing heart rate etc were just that, invisible internal physiological reactions, and not harbingers of a debilitating career-destroying panic attack. I had practices to draw on: stand up straight, smile, and breathe. And I knew the importance of preparation and practice. Unfortunately I drafted my words on my iPod, which decided to get confused and unreadable when I put it on the podium under the lights. I was left with being completely ex tempore, which is to say improvising, but I got through it with only a minimum of stumbling. I felt fine afterward, happy about the performance, which is probably the most important thing, after being willing to do it in the first place.

Grateful

Here's our performance of Grateful this morning. Basically my wife's arrangement, and she's on piano. Our son is playing clarinet. Lotsa fun.

Grateful by TFox17

A classical voice teacher analyzes metal singers

At the suggestion of a metal blogger, a voice teacher listens to and critiques several famous heavy metal singers. Short version: lots of very skilled singing. But the human voice is the human voice, and an expert knows how to analyze it and maybe improve it, whatever the style. I love this kind of thing, even if I don't know what "adducting the vocal cords" means.

Claudia Friedlander

Grateful

I've got another gig, playing in our church next week. It's my wife's show, but she wanted me and our son to play too, and kinda put off picking pieces. One piece she has worked up is a vocal arrangement of Ian Tyson song Grateful, which she played with a small ensemble from her choir. I'd never heard of this song, but Ian Tyson I knew from Four Strong Winds, which gets played all the time around here. (I heard him sing it once for the Queen in the rain, that was kind of cool.) So it's country, but not that new-fangled Nashville stuff. And Grateful is obscure enough that I can't find it on YouTube. It's a simple song, extremely simple: exactly eight notes, one complete C major scale, without a single accidental or change of key. An understated cowboy prayer. The nice thing about playing a song is that the phrasing all works very comfortably for a wind instrument. It even fits into the range of my voice (though when I tried singing, both my wife and son started yelling at me to stick to bassoon). The down side is that, unlike a singer, I have none of the sounds or meanings of the words to use to keep things moving and interesting. Not much to do other than do my best to be simple and beautiful, and hope the vocal quality of the bassoon sound evokes the song.

Update: Ian Thomas, not Ian Tyson. Sigh, nevermind (in a Gilda Radner voice).

Milde scale studies

For studies, I'm working on the Milde scale etudes, Op. 24. I did them before, in 1984 and 1987, based on the dates in my Weissenborn, but I don't think I understood them then. I thought they were boring scale studies, didn't practice them much, and played one a week at my lessons until they were done. With M, I'm going through them at a much slower rate. After a year of study, I'm about half-way through, so about one a month. And I'm putting a lot of time into them, more than anything else I practice. I'm finding that they are quite beautiful, if you really dig into the harmonic changes and singing through the lines. Not easy, though.

Here's me playing #13, Eb scales, in a lesson back in August. I was pretty happy with it.

Milde Scale 13 by TFox17

Ice music

Here's a guy who carves his instruments out of ice. (Daily Mail article.)
I'd think that'd create some difficulties: ice is not exactly the easiest material to work with, even when it's cold. And I note that he tends to stay away from the wind instruments. But it works well, given that. And it reminds me that cold weather is coming here, it's already started frosting in the evening, and the days are getting shorter and nippy. I'm glad I can stay indoors while I play.

Gigs

I've been playing at the university more frequently. I really like playing with that crowd, since the general level is higher than my usual band, and it's a challenge for me. The first time I played there I was terrified. I'm less terrified now, but I still find it very difficult. I devote at least 90% of my attention trying to play in tune, with just a touch left over for everything else.

The most recent few times was a small ensemble set up by a student conductor, working on making an audition tape. We played the Beethoven Wind Octet, Op 103. I found this pretty interesting, since most of my life I've played with other amateur musicians, but under professional conductors, and this was basically reversed. Conductors can indeed make mistakes, and their mistakes affect the sounds that get produced, but their mistakes are different in kind from the type of mistakes that musicians make. An unclear or uncertain movement on the upbeat, and everybody comes in ragged. An unnecessary movement in a rest, and a player comes in. The funny thing about it is, it always seems like the players are at fault, even if the root cause can be traced to the center of the room. And also, it's possible to acclimate to almost any conducting style. In high school, I occasionally played in one community orchestra whose geriatric conductor balanced on a stool, making small vague motions with one of his hands. It was impossible to find a beat, but I was soon clued in that the entire orchestra watched the concertmaster's bow for entrances. And it worked fine, we were all together. This student conductor is much better than that, but there's nevertheless a process of developing a mutual understanding. Also interesting is the aspect of recording. I'm reminded of Doug Yeo's advice to stop immediately, and not waste even a moment continuing recording after an error which wrecks a take. It's the exact opposite of performing, where continuity is king. Here, what matters is the conductor's performance, and not ours, but you'd have to imagine that whoever was listening would care about how the ensemble performed under her baton. One of the takes seemed pretty good to me, but she immediately discounted it, apparently she'd made a face or two after small kaks from the players. With your back to the audience, no big deal, but it's the kind of thing that's easy to see on a video of the conductor. She seemed pretty happy with the last take, and indeed, I think we sounded pretty good. Amazingly enough, rehearsal helps. And we even got paid, if you count free food.

I also got asked to sub at a dress rehearsal with the main group. I really wanted to do it, but unfortunately had a work commitment. With regrets I said no, figuring they'd find someone else or do without. When the time rolled around, the event I was at wrapped up a little early, and I realized that if I rushed, I could show up late to the rehearsal I'd declined. Not sure if I would be needed, or even welcome, I decided to go anyway, just in case. I scurried in maybe 15 minutes late, looking to see if they found somebody else. No, and the conductor waved me in without stopping. I put the horn together, and was a bit surprised to discover a chair and a stand for me with the music on it. Had they not been told I couldn't make it? Were they mad that I was late? Nothing to do but play, but they weren't stopping for me or anything. After looking over the shoulder of the other bassoon player, I tried to guess where they were. Joining in I got a smile from the conductor, so I guess I did something right. And afterward I got invited to play in one of their concerts later in the year, so I'm pretty happy about that.

A ciranda of seven notes

I'm currently working on Villa-Lobos, Ciranda das Sete Notas. I picked it from a pile of possible music M laid out because: it was relatively recent, so a good contrast to having worked on Mozart; and because it was Spanish, and I figured that I'd have a lot to learn since I'd never worked on something Spanish before. I'm having fun with it, but I was correct in thinking that I would have a lot to learn. For instance, I was having a hard time remembering its name. While chatting with my mom, I figured that it might help if I figured out what the name meant. It took a moment, but apparently it means Ciranda of seven notes. Also, it's Brazilian, not Spanish. That's what I mean about having a lot to learn. And a ciranda? That, apparently, is a
a circle dance, done in the village, with everyone of all ages particpating. While imbibing traditional Brazilian cocktails. Sounds like fun. Here's the pop singer's Ciranda, mentioned in the article about the dance:

An inspirational quote

The bassoon belongs to the first solo-instruments of the world. The tone of the instrument is so companionable, so delightfully talkative, so attuned for every pure soul, that until the Day of Judgment the bassoon can never be dispensed with. It assumes all roles: it accompanies martial music with manly dignity; it is heard majestically in church; it sustains the opera; it reasons with wisdom in the concert hall, gives a swing to the dance and fulfills every requirement.

CDF Shubart. (H/T Teresa.)

"So attuned for every pure soul..." -- I love it. I don't know much about Shubart. The quote is from 1809, and googling him I find a few facts (court keyboardist), and other examples of grandiloquent prose: of the Mannheim orchestra, he wrote "Its forte is like thunder, its crescendo a cataract, its diminuendo a clear brook babbling in the distance, its piano a spring breeze." He also spent ten years in jail: imagine anyone caring that much about classical music these days, to imprison a musician who thwarted their wishes.

Shufflin' along

Just had a birthday. I've now been back at bassoon for two years, and taking lessons for one. I tried listening to some of my old recordings, to see if I've been making any improvement, but nothing was too obvious. Oh well. I took a look at the RCM Exam syllabus, figuring that if I could find a level in there that I was comfortable playing at, maybe that shows where I am. Most of the music I don't have, but I did try recording one of the technical etudes for the Grade 1 exam, from early in Weissenborn. And while it doesn't look hard on paper, I wasn't entirely happy with how I sounded on it. I tried consoling myself by opening up Weissenborn not to something easier, but all the way back to the beginning, page 1, lesson 1. Half notes on C, with the occasional B, D, and quarter note thrown in for variety. It doesn't get easier than this, it really doesn't. Nevertheless, I found that trying to play it, and make it sound good, was very difficult, all consuming. Yet I felt that it was working, like I was able to get most of the way there, like I was achieve some semblance of the way I could hear it in my head, if I tried my very best. So maybe that's my level.

I've still been working on Ode to a Toad. I think I've been being a little sloppy about the articulations and rhythmic feel, among other things, so I've been taking it slow, like half tempo. At this pace, the basic rhythm pattern (written quarter note-eight note triplet, with a staccato on the quarter but not the eighth) becomes what I think is some kind of shuffle, a really heavy dumt, BAH-dump, BAH-dump, BAH-dump, heavy and long on the eighths. Really it kind of reminds me of what the boys on the elementary school playground sang when they were joking about di. (What's the name of that song? Buh dah di dah DUM,...) And, you know, in this interview with Tim Price, Pizzi talks fondly about working strip clubs when he moved to LA - music in the trenches. So maybe that's right, maybe that's the right feel for this piece -- at least at half tempo. At quarter note = 120, a different question entirely.

Picking pieces

I need to buckle down and get serious about what pieces I'm working on. I no longer have one big future event to prepare for, so there's no natural organization of my effort. I have a vague plan with a flutist friend to do a movement from the Gabaye Sontatine, but that'll be next spring, lots of time to prepare. We've read it over, and I think it'll be mostly fine, except for a high E at the end. Oh well, take it down or figure it out later. M is looking for a recital for me to crash near the end of the year, so that'll be my next performance opportunity. So really I'm looking to pick one piece for that. Here's what's on my stand at the moment:

- Pizzi, Ode to a Toad. I love it, and my family doesn't mind listening to it. It has its challenges, which I'd like to sort out. It doesn't seem serious enough for a formal recital, but it's fun enough it'll be useful. I'll probably try to get this worked fully up first.

- Boddecker, Sonata Sopra La Monica. I've spent some time on this, but the gnarly bits never got up to performance level. I'm a little tired of it, though, maybe I should let it sit for awhile.

- Villa-Lobos, Ciranda das sete notas. It's got some big leaps, like the Pizzi, and some other technical stuff, but hopefully overall doable. I think this'll be the next piece to get serious work.

- Alex Kotch, Techno Music. Fun, but I've read it, and it's harder than it looks. I think this one is going to sit as well.

- Milde scale studies. I put a lot of time into these, and they only get "performed" at lessons. Hopefully time well spent. At the rate I'm going, it might take me another year to finish getting through them again.

In other news, I listened to my Mozart recordings again. The second performance is still my favorite. I still find it hard to listen to myself and not feel terrible, though. Even at my best, so full of mistakes.

More books I'm reading

Arthur Weisberg, The Art of Wind Playing. I blogged this before. Actually, this got recalled so I had to give it back, but I'm still thinking about the things it said. Mostly working on trying to play in tune all the way through a note, from the attack to the release.

Walter Piston, Harmony. I tried skimming through this in high school, but you can't learn harmony by skimming. It's not for a class, so I can take as long as I want. Another book, a jazz piano book my wife is editing and producing a new edition of, suggests that harmony be learned slowly. So I'm taking it slow, trying to do all the exercises, and integrate the new material into what I know and play. That way, even if I don't finish the book, I've still learned something useful. Inspired by this book, I've started to play some harmonic minor scales, instead of just melodic.

The Inner Game of Music. A classic, which I found randomly browsing in the music library. I read the Inner Game of Tennis many many years ago, which was the first in the series. It advocates an intuitive, almost unconscious approach to teaching and learning, and argues that traditional analytical instruction techniques create many more problems than they solve. Victor Wooten's The Music Lesson, which I read awhile back, is along similar lines, as it The Perfect Wrong Note, which I mentioned before. Interestingly, both these books are by bass players. I think at least some of my flaws in playing are due to my relentlessly analytical approach. When working on etudes, I've been focusing on legato, and trying to learn how to play scalework evenly without accenting every note, as I strain to play each note clean. (Here's the Matsukawa masterclass that talks legato.) Music teaching is full of tactics to get people to think and not think in the right ways. Play this arpeggio as one gesture, says M, as opposed to my natural tendency to see it as a dozen distinct slurs, each of which I can screw up in its own way. We'll see if reading the book can help me.

As a side note, I had a lesson yesterday. I got sent on to the next etude after only one lesson on this one, Milde Scale Study #13 (E-flat scales). First time that's happened, which is cool, although I have to say, I played it better during the lesson than I ever did at home. I'm still all over the place on solo pieces. We worked on Ode to a Toad, which has some painfully big leaps. M's going to look for a recital I can crash around Christmastime, so I'll have a performance to work towards, which should help focus me a bit.

Alien reed making

Looking for reed instruction, I found this set of videos (here is complete set), showing how to make a bagpipe reed. It's very strange to watch, because some things are the same: it's a double reed, and shares the same physics of sound production, so on any planet, there'll be certain things which remain constant. The bagpipe is a different instrument than the orchestral double reeds, so some things have to be different: the reed is enclosed, so there's no interaction with embouchure; the air comes from a bag, the range is small and uses no overblowing. However, there seems to be no overlap with the cultural history of double reed making. In particular, there's a near total absence of specialized tools: no reed knife, no gouging or profiling machine, etc. The tools he does have he's made himself: a forming mandrel for the staple, which he filed out of a nail, the easel, the bed he gouges the cane in. Very interesting.

Vacation, ear training, bassoon techno, and improv

We were gone for about ten days, arriving home yesterday. It was a great trip, long enough to get my head out of the space of my day to day, which is what vacations are really about. I didn't bring my horn, didn't want to worry about it on the trip, but we did bring some instruments (keyboard, a drum) and occasionally goofed around with music. I also took the opportunity to start trying to learn some harmony, something my formal music education seems to have left out entirely. Long ago I tried reading Walter Piston's Harmony text, but I kinda skimmed over the exercises and getting the ear training into my head, so naturally I didn't get too far. I'm hoping this time will be different. Another book I have suggests that harmony ought to be learned slowly, giving as much time as required to internalize and make functionally useful any new concept. So that's how I'll approach it: slowly, and integrated with my goals for using the harmony. This means I have to do ear training.

There are a few ear training apps on my ipod I've spent some time with, trying to learn interval recognition. I have gotten better: it does improve with practice. But it doesn't seem like it's gotten better at the rate that I would have expected, given the time and effort I've put in. Some of these apps I've been playing with for more than a year now. And this is all chapter 1 material, the kind of thing a music student would be expected to internalize, I'm guessing, within weeks. I still make mistakes, all over the place. I recently identified one factor that may be contributing. My wife was playing random arpeggios for me to identify as major or minor, the kind of thing which would appear on a Grade 1 exam. I was terrible. I felt like I was guessing, and indeed, she told me that I was right only about 50%. However, she did note that whenever the root was a black note, I'd called it minor, and a white note, I'd called it major. It looks like I probably have some tendency, however undeveloped, towards perfect pitch. Our son has perfect pitch, so if there's a genetic component, maybe I have some of it. Some semblance of perfect pitch is pretty common -- members of the general public, if asked to sing or hum a tune from the radio, are usually quite close to the key -- but for me maybe it's interfering with trying to get the intervals identified. And it's not so developed that I can just name the pitches, and figure out the interval by subtraction, the way my son can. A little frustrating, and I wonder if the effort will bring a reward.


Now that I'm home again, I can play. It's always odd, playing after even a couple of days off. I have no major projects right now, mostly just a few vague plans to do duets. I did find one pleasant surprise on my stand: the sheet music for Techno Music for Bassoon and Electronica, a piece by Alex Kotch which he kindly sent me. I blogged about discovering the piece earlier, but I'd forgotten about getting the music. I spent a few minutes with the part, playing long tones on its Bb minor arpeggios. Later, I goofed around with my son, him on piano and me on bassoon, mostly in a Bb minor pentatonic groove. That was a lot of fun. And that's the point, really: knowing enough, and being good enough, to play with people I care about.

Electric bassoon again

I've been trying to goof around with electric stuff again. For looping and overdubbing, I've done some experimenting just with apps on my iPod touch. For audio input, I've been using the onboard mic, with output through the earbuds. The audio quality seems okay, and there are not too many cables. The app I've been working with is Everyday Looper, which seems to have acquired some hyperkinetic fans.  It's not perfect, as you need fingers on the screen in order to control the app, but it works well enough to have some fun. It also allows me to just play long tones with myself: we spend some of my lesson time playing tones together, listening for intonation and tone, and this is a way to replicate that at home. For a performing situation, though, I worry about feedback when combining a mic and an amp. Last year I bought one of Trent Jacob's Little Jake pickups, and modified a bocal to attach it. I was a little surprised at how different the tone was from the acoustic bassoon tone, see the link for recordings, but since it's intended as a sound source for further processing by effects pedals, etc., I accepted it. But I didn't have any effects pedals, and got busy with other things, so I kind of let it collect dust for awhile.

Other pickup options I've run into : Paul Hanson claims that his FRAP pickup has a very natural sound, essentially equivalent to a studio recording mic, and used only the FRAP when recording with Bela Fleck. The FRAP is no longer available, but the Josephson WT2 seems to be the closest equivalent, which Paul recommends here. (Paul also recommends the Little Jake.) I haven't seen pricing on the web, but I seem to recall reading that it would be more than $700 or so. The classic Telex is a more reasonably priced alternative, sold by Forrests, and is reviewed here. I have a hard time translating the words into what it sounds like, and I don't know of any recordings of it online. But I think Trent has one, and was nevertheless motivated to design, build, and market his own, so I'd expect Trent's to be lots better.

A bassoon pickup ought to be similar to other woodwinds. The clean sound on this electric clarinet is pretty good, assuming there's no acoustic mic offscreen. It seems to be some kind of custom job, and he doesn't say what type of transducer he's using. The Pasoana is one commercially available option for clarinet. For flute, a close mic is common, especially one at the lip plate, or even inside the cork, such as the Barcus Berry 6100. Barcus Berry also makes contact pickups, but these give unacceptable amounts of key noise, says Marc Eubanks. For sax, I think the usual solution is a small clip-on mic pointed into the bell. Some bassoonists mix the signals from two close mics, one at the bell, and another near the right hand, to get sound both from the bore and the toneholes. Trent's thesis reviews this in more detail.  Linsey Pollak has some kind of pickup in his Mr. Curly video below. I'm not sure what the natural tone is for a feather duster or a garden hose, so it's hard to critique the pickup's quality. He mentions in a couple of places using a Danabug pickup, made in Scandinavia, but I can't find more information about it anywhere.



In any case, I have a pickup, I have an iPod with a mic and many apps which will simulate amps and effects. Yesterday I picked up an iRig, which is a $40 adapter that allows you to actually plug your guitar, or whatever pickup or mono sound source you have, directly into your iPod, and get the audio out again. So now I have a complete chain: Little Jake pickup -> preamp (LR Baggs) -> iRig -> iPod -> {iOS apps: Everyday Looper, AmpliTube, RiotFX, etc} -> amp. I spent a couple hours, just playing with sounds, figuring out the technology and trying to not get tangled in all of the wires. It's more convenient than an acoustic mic, audio interface, and a computer, in terms of complexity, but it's still a lot more trouble than just picking up the horn and playing. The all software solution has disadvantages, compared to hardware floor pedals: you can't route audio from one app to another, and control requires fingers. But the software has big advantages in flexibility and cost. No recordings yet, but I'll get there.

Coffeehouse new music

I really like this: the piece, the playing, the venue, and the atmosphere.  Intimate and casual: just right, I think, for new music.

Learning from books

I've had a bit of down time, bassoon-wise. I have no pressing performance situations planned, and only a vague set of goals outtlined. So I've been doing some reading, and getting back to practicing only in the past couple of days after a week off.

There's a couple of library books I've been reading. One is Arthur Weisberg's Art of Wind Playing, written in the 70's. After some preliminaries, noting that wind instruments lack the sophistication and expressiveness of string instruments or the human voice, he starts talking about reeds. The book is supposed to be general, for all wind instruments, but funny thing, all his examples are bassoon-related. So he shows the reed tip opening on bassoon, noting that you need a smaller opening when playing quietly, in order to maintain the pitch constant at soft and loud volume levels. Well, yeah, I knew that, and I think I do it, at least some of the time. Then he points out that this means that the embouchure needs to adjust the reed tip opening during crescendos and diminuendos. I hadn't really thought about that, but it follows naturally from the connection between volume and pitch. I guess I can do that too. Finally he points out that the attack and release of an individual note is nothing more than a rapid crescendo or diminuendo, and you have to do the same level of tip opening adjustment during the attack or release as you would for any crescendo or diminuendo over that volume range, or else you lose control of the pitch of the note during the attack or release. Now that I did not know. I'd never thought about the attack or release of a note having a pitch. When I play slow scales in front of a tuner, I've always been happy if the needle is in the right position during the solid middle of the note. Tuners aren't fast enough to tell you what's happening during the attack or release. I guess I was used to the idea of inflection, where the end of a breath released note should have a bit of a lift, like a smile, but that seemed mostly a trick to avoid a complete collapse of tone and pitch at the end of a note. Weisberg wants every part of the note to be in tune. Weisberg goes on to discuss various types of attack and release,  staccato, accented, sfortzando, fortepiano etc., with the admonition to practice each kind in all registers and dynamics maintaining intonation during every moment of the note. For me, with my consciousness newly raised, it seems like plenty to try and get a clean attack and release, with a blocklike profile for the note. (Ie a square wave of volume, and a flat line of pitch.) Presumably once you can do this you can then allow intonation to shift for effect if you want it to. I think the standard bassoon staccato, that stereotyped bassoon-as-clown role, has pitch inflection which turn each note into a chuckle.

The other book I've been reading was written much earlier. It's a recorder manual by an Italian named Ganassi, and published in 1535. IMSLP has a facsimile of the original printing, but I've been reading a translated version with modern-looking music typesetting, much easier to work with. It's still very strange. I guess the earliest music I'd had exposure to was Baroque, and Renaissance was quite different. The first thing I noticed is the total absence of slurs. Every note was to be tongued. However, Ganassi notes that there are many different ways to tongue, and goes through a variety of choices for double-tonguing (teke-teke, tere-tere, lere-lere), each of which has a different effect, and which you can use for expression. Ganassi, like Weisberg, holds the human voice up as the model instrument, to which the performer should aspire. So some things don't change. I found my son's $10 plastic school recorder, and figured out how to play a scale, using lere-lere. What do you know, it came out sounding something like the minstrels in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So that was interesting. Ganassi also had lots of comments about intonation. All of Weisberg's remarks hold true, except that there's no reed tip opening to adjust. Finding a way to get acceptable pitch anywhere in the note, and especially during the attacks and releases, is non-trivial. The positive side of the story is that recorder very much encourages you to get creative with fingerings: adding extra cross-fingers, opening half-holes, adjusting their size, moving fingers close to the hole without touching -- anything to get close.

Most of the body of the book, though, is concerned with improvisation, or "playing divisions" on fragments of a melody. That's why I got the book in the first place: a friend recommended it as a resource to help figure out how to elaborate the theme in the Böddecker sonata. So it's not even a book of Renaissance music, but rather a book of examples or exercises, organized by interval, kind of like an Aebersold for 15th century improvisers. Very interesting. I'm not sure it'll be useful to bassoon, but it's fun regardless. Also, the recorder is smaller than the bassoon, which allowed me to bring one along on a work trip recently. I was able to play quietly in my hotel during off-time, hopefully not disturbing anyone. Fun!

Turk's head

This is the first Turk's head I've ever wrapped, done at my lesson a couple weeks ago. I've been playing for 29 years. As it turns out, making that ball of string isn't as hard as I'd thought all this time.

Last Mozart show

The last performance of the Mozart has come and gone. We were playing in a school gymnasium in a small town a couple hours away. We had a good turnout, it was a benefit organized by a few local teachers, with dessert served at intermission, and an auction afterward. We were set up fairly close to the audience, so there was maybe two feet between my bassoon and the people in the front row. Right in front of me was a burly biker type, he scowled and crossed his arms during my entire performance.  It was the attack of the bassoon soloist, I'm not sure I would have been happy either, with a bassoon in my personal space. Nevertheless, I was satisfied with how things went.

Here's the reed I used. In the end, I used the same reed for all three shows. It was starting to get a little old, but I felt like the pitch was a little more stable with this reed than the other one I was considering, even if that one was a little brighter.

And here's the recording. I left my iPod out propped against a video camera case from someone who was recording. Unfortunately, they came by and tidied up, resulting in my recording having been taken from *inside* the foam camera case. Not the best mic location, but you can still hear what happened.

I'm not yet sure which performance was best. I'll have to listen carefully at some point, and see if I can't put together a canonical, souvenir version. Something I can show to my parents, or listen to later.

Overall, it was a great experience to have had. I learned a lot while doing it, and had a lot of fun.

  Mozart Bassoon Concerto 2011-06-12 by TFox17

Robotic bassoon

This is a very strange thing, a bassoon with all the tone holes operated by solenoids, so it can be played by a computer. And yes, the wheels are powered too, so it can move and dance around on stage. Rather than have a robotic mouth, they replace the reed with a speaker. Unfortunately I can't find any recordings or videos, to hear how it sounds.

On goals

As one project (the Mozart concerto) draws to a close, I thought it was worth a couple of minutes of reflection, to try and clarify, for myself, why I'm doing this, and what my goals are.

For the Mozart, my goal was simple and clear. I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. I never expected to get the chance to play in front of an orchestra, and when that chance arrived, I feared that it might never come again if I let it slip by. Was I ready, when I was asked? Was it an appropriate piece for me to accept performing at that point? No on both, absolutely not. It turns out that it's a pretty difficult piece, for me anyway, even if I did first see it decades ago in junior high. I think if I'd appreciated how hard it was, and how hard I'd have to work to get even to where I am now, I'm not certain I would have been able to do it. Still, the work is done, and I prepared as best I could, given everything. Two shows have happened and gone fine. I've now played in front of an orchestra. (And I'll do it again, once more before I'm done.) But beyond the performance itself, to take advantage of the opportunity doesn't just mean to stand on stage embarrassing myself for a few minutes. Rather, I think it includes taking advantage of the incentive and the opportunity to spend the time, effort and resources doing the preparation for the performance. An opportunity to work, if you will. And I think I did that too. It's been about a year of work, and I think I've been successful in improving over where I was at. Maybe this is a low, "personal best" sort of standard -- I'm not any audience member would have felt an impact of the music other than, you know, being happy for us that we seemed to be having fun up there. Still, giving it your best is, by definition, the best you can do, and I think I can feel satisfied.

So what next? Why am I doing this, and what am I trying to accomplish? (It's much easier to accomplish things if you're clear on what it is that you're trying to accomplish.) Well, I'm an amateur. I'll never be a professional, or even a serious student. I'm here to have fun. So what does that entail? Well, here are a few thoughts. Hopefully I can make some progress on them in, say, the next year.

I'd like to learn how to make reeds that are more fun to play on. The reeds I have been making do make sound, and sometimes, for a good note on a good day, I've even been able to force them to produce a nice sound, with reasonable tone and intonation. It's always been a struggle, though, difficult, and physically tiring. I think some of that is reed, and can be solved. This isn't just about getting the pitch up, but also improving responsiveness, so I can play rhythmically, without fretting if the note is going to speak. For an example of the kind of "fun" playing I'd like to be able to try to do, listen to Ray Pizzi's performance of his own Ode to a Toad. He describes it as a "whimsical swamp blues", and fills it with swoops and other jazzy ornaments, but I'd be happy to just be able to do that rhythm and feel.

I'd like to learn enough basics of double-reed acoustics that I can understand the physical basis for how reeds work, and how pitch and sound arises. A lot of this is known, if you read the right papers or books, but it's not known by me. Note that this is not something that a professional or serious student would necessarily have the time or the background for, and it's certainly not required in order to be able to make reeds well. But I like understanding things, because understanding is fun.

Improving my ear, and knowledge of harmony and other parts of music theory. Again, because understanding is fun, even if it's not specifically directed to improving some failing.

Getting generally better at playing, of course, but in the context of developing musically. There's no real point, I now think, in, say, practicing scales fast for their own sake. I think I'm starting to appreciate that skills need to be developed in context in order to be useful.

And I'd like to continue to find new opportunities to play with other people. Because that's really what it's all about, isn't it? Making music with other people. And having fun.

Second Mozart performance

Different hall, different night, different flubs. Overall better than last week, I think. I felt like I was able hear and stay in time with the orchestra a bit better, maybe I was rushing a little less. And I feel like my intonation was improved. I'm happy with it. One more to go, in about two weeks.

  Mozart Bassoon Concerto 2011-05-31 by TFox17

On listening to recordings

My wife took a video of the Mozart performance, and I watched it the next morning. All the mistakes I remembered were there, plus a few other ones too. But that's not what struck me. What surprised me was the sound, especially my intonation. It was terrible! A sustained tenor F4 at the end of the cadenza, a note I'd milked for impact, was incredibly painfully flat. Not the impact I was looking for. But it wasn't just one note or two: every bar, starting with the opening statement, had a few notes which were only vague approximations of the right pitch, or which did such wonky things over the duration of the note that you'd be hard pressed to describe them as simply sharp or flat. I didn't remember being that bad while I was playing, I thought I'd sounded fine. And I've been listening to lots of recordings of myself recently, so it's not the novelty of hearing myself. Was I good while practicing but bad at the show, or have I somehow been deluding myself that I was close to okay? Kind of a shock, really. Searching for something positive to think, all I could find was, "Well, at least there's something basic I can improve on! No worries that I've peaked yet!" I chatted with my wife about it, and she helpfully pointed out that I sing out of tune too, so maybe it's connected with that.

Later I watched it again, while trying to prepare the file for uploading. Maybe I was ready for it, but this time the intonation didn't bother me. I could still hear that it wasn't right, but somehow it didn't seem as severe. Weird. This stuff seems like it should be absolute, but in terms of how it gets perceived, nothing is absolute.

Here's a plot (using Melodyne) of that last bad F. Yeah, 27 cents is pretty flat. Worse is that the big preparatory open F before it is sharp, so you've got an octave leap which is a full quarter tone out. Maybe pain is the only rational response, and all else is delusion.

Here's the whole thing, in case you'd like to hear it for yourself. A year of work.

  Mozart Bassoon Concerto Allegro by TFox17

The big show

The show happened - last night I played a movement of the Mozart bassoon concerto with orchestra. Here's a pic, taken just as I went on. It went well, about as well as could be expected, given who and where I am. One odd squawk, one concentration slip just before a tricky bit, those are the flaws I remember, but overall I was pretty pleased. Everyone clapped at the end and said nice things to me afterward. My daughter was in the front row, about a foot away from me since the stage was a little cramped, and she was giving me feedback and a thumbs up after every passage. Once I have a recording I'll put it up, in case either of my readers wants to listen. It was a lot of work, and while the end result was not perfect, I learned a great deal along the way. We'll do the whole show twice more over the next few weeks, after which I can put this piece away for awhile. I think everyone around me will be grateful when that happens.

Just have fun

I was complaining to my wife about the Mozart yesterday. I know how I want it to sound, and I'm almost there, in the sense that every passage, in isolation, can go well at least occasionally. But running it does not magically staple together the best performances that I ever had in practice, rather I'll be lucky if everything is typical. So I know already that the final performance will leave much to be dissatisfied about. Kinda depressing, really. She made a rather wise remark: the people in the audience are not there because they are expecting an amazing show, perhaps because some famous international soloist is coming. (Is there such a thing, on bassoon?) Rather, they are there to watch a bunch of amateurs having fun. So have fun -- look like you're happy to be there, and play it happily. That's something simple to keep in mind. Enthusiasm is infectious.

The thought process, the internal tape loop of negativity, reminds me of an essay by bassoonist John Steinmetz I read awhile back (before I started this blog in fact). The whole thing is worth reading. Why do musicians look like they're unhappy? Well, after spending thousands of hours practicing self-criticism, naturally you get pretty good at it. I don't know the right way to deal with this. He offers some advice, but it's more easily said than done. And besides, I'd like it to be good, and it's not clear to me that spending time trying to accept my flaws will improve the performance faster than spending time trying to correct them. I guess that's the core of the problem, and it's infinite. So better to go back to my wife advice, keep it simple, and have fun (despite the inevitable flaws).

Dress rehearsal

I've taken to saying that there's a fairly narrow range for how a show can go. There's a limit to how badly it can go, determined by your preparation, and also a limit as to the best possible you can do, given who you are and where you're at. Psychologically, you may feel sad, or happy, depending on where in that range you end up, but in terms of the impact on the audience, on the listener, the difference between best and worst is not that large. To be honest, I have no idea if this statement is true, but if it helps me process the pressure of performance, I might as well believe it.

I almost took it back at the dress rehearsal last night. Mozart went first, so I pulled on the shoulder strap and went. Somehow I ended in a slightly uncomfortable posture, with too much weight not just on my left hand, but forward onto my fingers which were trying to play the notes. They ended up slipping and not sealing, nor feeling right. I ended up muffing entire *bars* of sixteenth notes, not exactly an auspicious beginning. And it's hard to phrase and sing beautifully when you're presiding over a train wreck in progress. So yeah, while there is a range for how badly it can go, that range might not be "narrow".

Still, I listened to the tape later. It sounded rough, like the bunch of amateurs we are, but not as bad as it sounded in my head. And while things improved as I got myself sorted out, but there's no time for that at the show. It occurs to me that when I practice at home in my room, I get set up standing, warm up with scales, then work hard passages up slowly, so I have lots of opportunity to get balance issues and everything else ironed out. At the show, I'll have to get up, put on the shoulder strap, walk to the front, and do it. I'd better start practicing doing that.

Here's a recording of the final runthrough.
  Mozart dress 2011-05-18 by TFox17

Mozart performance

Well here we go. This was at a recital, with piano, for an audience of other bassoonists.

  Mozart Bassoon Bash 2011-05-14 by TFox17

Concert publicity

Here's what I put on the door of my office this afternoon. You can tell it's a serious concert, since we're charging admission, even if all of the proceeds are going to some worthy cause.

Had a rehearsal tonight. The sub for our conductor got a surprise gig, so we had a sub for the sub, a student conductor who carefully videotaped his performance. He did great, except maybe on time management, and we didn't do the Mozart. We have our last rehearsal next week, then the show the week after. It'll be fine.

Practice chart

Here's the practice chart I made for Mozart. Each snippet of a few bars gets a name ("regal opening", "F arpeggios", "trilly bit"), and every date gets a column. Performances are circled. After I work on a snippet, I mark it off, usually writing the metronome mark I achieved. Mostly I'm putting the metronome on 8ths, so my full tempo is 210+. The idea is not that I expect myself to deeply practice every bar on every day - I find it pretty easy to blow 20 minutes or more on two beats, and I don't have enough time or energy to spend the hours required. Rather, the chart lets me see at a glance though what bits I've been neglecting. If a passage hasn't been worked from slow to fast in a few days, it could probably use some attention. Also important, filling it out gives me a feeling of accomplishment, a record of small victories, however transient, over the notes.

The fastest possible trill

For the trilly bits in Mozart, starting at the pickup to 51 and again at 120, I long ago decided I wanted to do 32nd notes, something like this:

Three turns, starting from the bottom. The advantage of straight 32nd notes over something like a 7-tuplet is that it's easier to practice slowly with a subdivided beat. When I crank up the metronome, I don't always manage to get all three turns in, or maybe there will be two clean ones plus a little bounce near the end, but this is the plan anyway.

There are lots of ways to play these, of course. My teacher I think told me he played 5 turns, which seems like a lot to me. And of course, when he demonstrated, they went too fast for me to count. With recordings, we can slow things down. Here's that section from Klaus Thunemann's recording, which has pretty fast trills:

  Kt-normal by TFox17

It's too fast for me to count, unless I slow it down:
  Kt slowed by TFox17

From that, it's pretty easy to write out what he is doing:

I count four turns, starting from the top, for straight 32nd notes all the way through. So not, on paper, any faster than my plan, although faster in practice, since he both takes a faster tempo, and is able to execute the whole thing beautifully.

Now, how fast can a trill go? It turns out that there are limits in principle, not just practice. First of all, there are limits as to how fast fingers can move. Kochevitsky's book on piano technique goes through some of the studies.   Apparently the 2nd and 3rd fingers can make 5-6 movements per second, 4-5 with the other fingers. Training doesn't help peak speed: great pianists and members of the general public were about the same, with some untrained participants able to make 7 per second, which some pianists were only able to do 5. For a trill on piano, you can alternate two fingers, so 6 movements per second can give you 12 notes per second. On a wind instrument, you can only move one finger, but each full movement cycle, up and down, gives you two notes. So it's more or less the same, 12 notes per second. It turns out that there's a limit to what the ear will perceive of as distinct notes. Passages played faster than this will blur together. This makes sense: after all, every note is just a cyclical progression of pressures, and A0, reachable by a contra with an extension, has a frequency of about 22 Hz. The limit of hearing notes depends on several things: the pitch of the notes (low notes get muddier faster), the complexity of the passage (scales, trills and tremolos are easier to perceive than more complex passages), and the listener. This limit is typically around 12 notes per second, sextuplets at 120 BPM, which interestingly corresponds to about the limit of what's possible to produce. For a trill, the limit quoted is more like 15 notes per second, which is around what Klaus Thunemann is performing his trill. We can test this ourselves, though, by shifting the tempo on the recording, and seeing what happens.

Here's the tempo shifted to about 150 bpm, which gives us about 20 notes per second:

  Kt 151 by TFox17

And again, to about 180, which gives us 24 notes per second:
  Kt 182 by TFox17

For me, at 150 it still sounds like a trill, though I certainly can't count the notes. At 180, it's degenerated into a sort of fluttery effect on a sustained tone. At 240, the 16ths become indistinct.

From this I think we can conclude that Klaus Thunemann's trills are, not just fast, but essentially at or near the limit of being the fastest possible, either to perform or to hear.

Plotting the tempo

There was some discussion awhile back about whether, and which, rock bands played to a click track, ie used a metronome to keep their drummer precisely in time. Post-recording quantization is also used, and, like pitch correction, has percolated down to consumer software such as Garage Band. I thought it would be interesting to use the same software to see how steady my beat is. Here's the version I used, which allows you to upload your own track for analysis. (Or, if you just want to look at tracks found online, this is slightly more advanced.)

This is a plot of the tempo during the rehearsal last night. Our maestro picked a rather bright pace, compared to previous rehearsals, perhaps because we had only a couple minutes of rehearsal time left. To be honest, it felt a little too fast to be in control for me, although on an absolute scale it's a reasonable speed. There's some wandering up and down, but it ends up about where it started. After the rehearsal I was guessing the speed at 116, but in fact it averages more like 106, which is around where I'm aiming. When you're working with the software, you can have it play sections, and watch the marker move on the plot, so you can see and hear how the tempo change affects the music.

For comparison, here's a plot of Dag Jensen's recording. It's much faster overall, around 120 average, and steadier, with certain large deviations for effect.

Finally, here's the recording itself. I'm not happy with it, but being pseudonymous is what lets me post stuff like this. And while I did screw various things up, the final show is probably going to sound a lot like this, so I can consider it a preview.

  Mozart Rehearsal 2011-05-03 by TFox17

Sticky pad

I've been having some trouble this week with the pad on the G key (right hand ring finger) sticking. A couple times I opened up the case, and found the key stuck entirely closed, and during playing, sometimes it would stick a bit and open slowly. After consulting with my tech who did the repad a few weeks back, who unfortunately lives far away, I've been trying to clean the pad with a dry Q-tip and various kinds of paper (cigarette paper, Kimwipes from the lab), closing the pad firmly against the paper and pulling the paper out. Whatever has gotten into the pad and tone hole surface that's causing them to stick, I'm hoping that this can remove it, and let it close. Probably the pad has gotten wet, so I've also changed how I clean the instrument out. Now I swab the boot first, although this requires juggling the wing joint while I'm working with the boot. And being careful to be sure that the G key is not being pushed closed in the case, so it can dry. Blocking open the other keys which can attract condensation is also a good idea.

It occurs to me that lots of short practices is worse for condensation than continuous practice, just because the horn has time to cool off and hence condense moisture again. That might be part of my problem too.

Also I'm probably using too much force on the key, but that's not easy to fix. I can get it to stick if I press hard, just about every time.

Here's Mozart from this morning. Different mistakes, every time.

  Mozart runthrough 2011-05-02 by TFox17

RSI care for bassoonists

I took advantage of the long weekend to put in some extra practice and reedmaking time. I think it was really helpful, there were moments early this when I felt really good about my playing. And it had physical effects too, I felt like the muscles in my hands, arms, and abdomen are getting stronger. All delightful. Unfortunately, I also developed some arm pain, mostly radiating up from my pinkies (mostly left) to the elbow. On Friday, I even had to stop practicing due to pain. I've dealt with RSI in years past, due to typing during periods of intense work and stress. It can be scary, since there's a risk of permanent injury from overuse, and needs to be taken seriously I know. I've been trying to practice in smaller intervals, taking breaks to rest the arms as well as the brain. Trying to be a little more selective in what I work on, since the practices are short. I've also been trying to sleep more, my old typing RSI seemed to be responsive to extra rest and reduction of general life stress, which makes sense if the inflammatory disease is partly autoimmune. At my lesson on Thursday, M showed me some stretches that he does: hands placed palms together in front of chest, arms out and fingers pointing up (like a praying yoga pose), and again with fingers pointing down; another with arms straight out, hand hanging down, and pushing the hand further down. I've been trying these, plus anything else to stretch the affected region, like the wrist stretches I learned years ago taking aikido. Stretching is therapeutic, according to this link, apparently it helps the muscles and tendons relax and reduces the stress. Also hydration is important, something I wouldn't have guessed. M also suggested ibuprofen. I knew it was a good antiinflammatory, but I always worried that it'd just mask the pain, making it more likely that you'd overuse the injured part, and doing more harm than good. A med student friend assures me that this isn't the case: reducing inflammation is an absolute good, allowing the injury to heal, and suggested up to 600 mg maybe 2x a day, but to not use the affected part during the hours after taking the drug. The idea is to use this period to heal, not to allow even more overuse. I have to be careful, but I also have to practice.