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.