Recorder Thread!, All Sizes Welcome... Options

[limh]

Oh you lovely wonderful people, you have been soo helpful. And Katyjay, how did you guess the E was the problem?

I went back and looked carefully at my actions after what you all wrote, and this is what's happening: when I play passages that are entirely on the left hand, my right hand slips into a support role where thumb and little-finger are holding the recorder, with little finger not actually directly over its hole, rather slightly mouthwards, the edge of the pad nearest the first finger-joint just touching far side of the ornamental turning of the foot-joint of the instrument. When I play the E before the C#, I lift fingers 4 & 5 of the right hand, and they're still flapping around in the breeze when C# starts, which means there's no support apart from thumb. Katyjay I'm sure you're right that should be enough, but I tend to hold the recorder only very lightly in my mouth, and it's a slippery shiny plastic one, so even if I keep it at a 45-degree angle, it still tends to feel as though it will slide away from me, so I feel very insecure with the C#, and hence try to use my left-hand fingers and thumbs more ferociously than necessary for the C# and B (to make sure I close the holes effectively), which makes the instrument bounce around, which makes me feel even less secure.

Going back over this, I think the rot sets in at the beginning of the bar, with the F-to-d transition. Now I'm trying this: after F, keep little finger down while playing d. All left hand fingers come up for the G, play down F, to E (Katyjay's problem E), then keep 3rd finger of RH down after E while playing the c#. This finger does make a minimal difference to the tone on my instrument, but only a tiny one, and barely noticeable on this fairly short note. With the added security of that finger, the recorder isn't slipping around, and I can reign in the flapping left hand and play the left-hand notes with less ferocious finger-movements, and the whole bar feels calmer. I think it's going to take some time to get right, but it feels comfortable and doable.

This reminds me of all the time I spent with my organ teacher, finding fingerings to get through passages. I feel such an idiot that despite his efforts, and despite carefully practising the buttress finger exercises in the Alan Davies book, I didn't actually engage brain when a real need happened. I might just as well practise juggling if I'm not going to learn. Grrrrr.

Thanks again!

[anacrusis]

On the business of how we interpret old music - "Wat zalmen" is fresh in my mind, as I attempted some of the variations for the last Adult learners concert .... attempted being the operative term (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif). I did at the beginning say, I'm not sure if this title represents the discussions over what one should do of an evening, or the actual activities embarked on - but forgot to get impressions back of the audience about what, if anything, they'd heard in what I put out there. I'm guessing I might well have got a few varied answers....

And there's the thing: since we all are quite likely to find different stories to what we hear, so it becomes reasonable to have different approaches to how we interpret in playing. We are of our generation, we can't help but bring our experiences with us in how we perform, and those experiences are built on huge foundations of history and geography. Italian performers of baroque music (I'm limiting it like that just because it's something I know a little more about) play very differently from French musicians, who are again different from the Dutch, or Germans, or British players: and Japanese or far eastern interpretations are startlingly different again. Maybe it's not so startling, given how radically different their cultures are....

So- I was thinking, as I played, of the discussion about Wat we zalmen do this avond, and that was my theme: then as the divisions progressed, I thought more of folks acting out their thoughts, progressing to a more and more lively capering, with more voices adding themselves to the mix in that clever way van Eyck did his divisions...and finally ending with the limping hoppety skip of a somewhat tired bunch of celebrating folk in compound time - there were more variations but I was more than conscious of how much time I'd hogged already, and besides, it was about to get boring. It's likely that very little if any of that got across as such, but I had fun, and feedback suggested others might've had too - the beauty of not trying to be too precise is that another time one can try it out a different way, maybe, and keep it fresh (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif).

[limh]

I should have liked to have heard that...

[anacrusis]

erm....not anything like as good as the proper recorder players manage... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ph34r.gif) - but, self-indulgently, I'm afraid I had fun...

at least it leaves plenty of space for improvement (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)