Recorder Thread!, All Sizes Welcome... Options

[niobe]

I am in a bad mood and very grateful to this clip for reminding me that recorder can sound nice.

Limh, lovely YouTube clip. Saw Annabel Knight in concert a couple of weeks ago and the performance was so good my non-musical Other Half now appreciates why I want to play the recorder. (Haven't managed to persuade him to try yet (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif) )

[limh]

... on which subject, does anyone know from where it would be possible to buy (or otherwise legally get hold of) sheet music for Boismortier's Gentillesse in G-major (Op.45) as played by Passacaglia? I can't find anyone selling it/providing it online, but that's probably a combination of my stupidity and the fact that he seems to have shown little originality in thinking up new names for his pieces! So far I've been reduced to trying to transcribe the recorder part from the YouTube version but I'm struggling where the recorder splits into two distinct parts. If anyone knows a source, I'd be very grateful.

[limh]

Yesterday I came across a 2nd hand shop selling an Aulos tenor for 2pounds99....

[jacobvaneyck]

On the subject of players, I rather like Dan Laurin for Baroque stuff as he has so much style and finesse that simply can't be taught, same with Bruggen and Holtslag. Piers Adams can be mindblowing, but not always my taste, my recorder teacher agrees. For groups it has to be Royal Wind, Flanders and Sirena. Consortium5 are a new, young consort worth noticing too.

At the other end of the scale I am doing a small group with me, an SRP friend in my own village, a 9 year old on treble and an 8 year old on descant. Bonkers perhaps, but the kids have an idea what recorders really are and how much fun they are. Always love to bring this to children and dispel the popular perception of recorder.

[limh]

On the subject of players, I rather like Dan Laurin for Baroque stuff as he has so much style and finesse that simply can't be taught, same with Bruggen and Holtslag. Piers Adams can be mindblowing, but not always my taste, my recorder teacher agrees. For groups it has to be Royal Wind, Flanders and Sirena. Consortium5 are a new, young consort worth noticing too.

I know it's not to everyone's taste, but how Sirena manage to move and dance while playing, without losing breath-control, is a mystery to me. Our 4-year-old loves them.

[Aeolienne]

If I can get to a reasonable advanced level eventually, there would be opportunities to play and perform here in a baroque ensemble and with various others. Maybe my little five part recorder group could grow into something really rather good.
Good violinists are plentiful on the island, but advanced recorder players are scarce so that gives me more of a chance eventually, if I can ever get to a good level, of, well.....opportunities to show off, basically! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/party1.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
I'll need grade 8 violin to get my foot in the door of the back row of the most amateur local performing orchestra. That's probably never going to happen. Recorder gives me more of a chance to eventually do stuff in the more informal ensembles that are around.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clarinet.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif)

I wish I had the same opportunities for consort playing. As it is, I'm stuck with note-bashing at SRP monthly meets. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

[katemorrisviolin]

Recorder gives me more of a chance to eventually do stuff in the more informal ensembles that are around.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clarinet.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif)

I wish I had the same opportunities for consort playing. As it is, I'm stuck with note-bashing at SRP monthly meets. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

What about seeking out a violinist, classical guitarist or other instruments that go well with recorder and doing some mixed instrument ensemble music? That may be the way forward. Classical guitarists have societies which you could try contacting, or lute teachers might point you in the right direction of likeminded people. Lute players are even more of a rare breed than recorder players!
Edit: just read your profile. Wow I envy your achievements, good luck with finding playing buddies.

[limh]

I'm in a panic about articulation, and how beginners develop.

When I first started, I Doo'd everything, and tended to play everything quite a bit slower than ideal. That was while I was Online-Dolmetsching my way through the notes. Now that I'm AlanDavising my way through better finger-control, I can (more often) get from note to note smoothly without tonguing, and I've noticed that it means that when I play "real" music, I've got into the habit of playing it nearer the correct pace, but slurring together anything fast (fast by my standards! So, for example, a dance in 6/8 time with lots of sets of 3 quavers, I'd tongue once for each set and treat them almost like slurred triplets).

This is obviously historically wrong, and it's also not what good players do. Listening to the Boismortier Gentillesse whose link I posted, Annabel Knight and Louise Bradbury clearly articulate every note (hard to tell at full-speed, but to transcribe the faster bits I resorted to listening slowed-down).

So now I'm panicking. Should I abandon dedication to good fingering and try to catch up on tonguing a bit? I'm a bit frustrated putting so much effort into slurring because, for the sort of music I like, I get the impression slurring is a very rare thing. On the other hand I'm enjoying the process of getting confident with better fingering. But does it mean I'm "cheating" and making myself a steep learning-curve in the future, where I'm going to get very depressed and unmotivated relearning a lot of music that once sounded nice, but now playing it properly, with the articulation it really needs?

I'm also scared by articulation because the descriptions make so little sense to me. Anacrusis explained did'll in a thread on this site much better than I've seen in any text-book, but "ru" makes no sense to me. I can't see how any consonant that doesn't involve blocking the air-flow completely can be useful in articulation (that's also my problem with "l"). And descriptions by non-English speakers worry me because I have no idea how Hotteterre pronounced an "r", and in any case, my French pronunciation is totally dreadful, especially of "r" (which seems the most difficult consonant to do in different languages!), so how can I make sense of it? I'm confused!

[anacrusis]

I'm in a panic about articulation, and how beginners develop.
....... how can I make sense of it? I'm confused!

First, don't knock "doo" - it's a way better way to articulate than "tu" as taught in primary schools in the UK. And yes, one does have to start slowly - I'm learning a piece by Fontana, which has some very swift demisemiquavers in it, and dared to present that at a masterclass/lessony thing with Philip Thorby, who is an astounding teacher, but quite demanding of his tutees. I was trying to tongue that run - double-tongue it, for sure, but tonguing nonetheless...and he actually gave me "permission" to slur it because otherwise I wasn't going to be able to play it up to speed.

Slurring everything does actually also achieve something - you can't fudge, and have to be accurate, so also worth doing.

But how to get one's tonguing faster, whilst staying neat and in control? I think the answer is to do both, slurring is rare but brings a skill you also need to acquire, and tidy tonguing does take some practice. I know exactly what you mean about the need to seal off the airway - when I first looked into double tonguing I was an oboe player, and couldn't see how one could possibly generate the pressure needed to make an articulated sound using "k" away from the reed. The recorder though is much lower-pressure, and you don't actually need to seal off the airflow totally, only to interrupt it, to sort of strangle it a bit, in order to get that articulation.

I advocate starting with doo because it's less harsh than tu when produced by native English speakers: "tu" historically comes from a French tutor, and in French of course that consonant is much more softly spoken. It's also worth seeing just how soggy you can make the doo go - from a relatively hard Germanic one, right down to a nearly missed it altogether French one. If you can do the latter, then you will also be able to see how close that comes to a d'll sound - when doing di-d'll you effectively tongue once by touching your tongue on your palate and bringing it away, and once on the "return", by touching your tongue back up. Both end up interrupting the airflow almost equally - and almost is actually also the point. There are stronger and weaker notes even in fast runs - with four semiquavers, the first and third have more importance than the second and fourth, if you start on the beat. When playing di-d'll, you do actually match them up to the strongs and weaks - if you start on an anacrusis (hehe....) then you actually play di-di-d'll so that the weaker d'll co-incides with the weaker notes in the run.

It takes time to get double tonguing to work correctly - and it wants that very slow approach in the beginning - what I did was to go on playing the repertoire I had already learnt whilst only able to single tongue, in the way I'd done before, but gradually added in pieces which were new, looking for music which had runs more so than jumps in, in order to consolidate - and doing the simple exercises patiently and methodically beforehand. At some point, I can't remember when, it suddenly clicked into place and I realised I was using it reflexly....which then signalled the time to start getting more complicated, and learning d-g or even t-k for more abrasive modern music Castello sonata secunda has an example of the opposite, at about 3:06 - I think the player here is doing what I do for this piece - and tonguing the repeated quavers, four to a bar, "l" - and that, by the way, is the piece my teacher first chose to teach me double tonguing on (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ohmy.gif).

One more aside - the last four teachers whose brains I've picked about my playing have all asked me, what form of double tonguing do you use? ......so the secret is out....you can't actually tell! (they did also all say "good" when I said di-d'll, but were Piers Adams ever to ask me I'm sure he'd be quick to suggest branching out - he's well known for producing positively tongue-twisting combinations of sounds, and at some fearsome speeds, too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)).

[Maizie]

Articulation is complicated. I am still at the stage of using 'du' for everything except on special occasions. It always requires a lot of thinking about at first, during which time while I am concentrating on my tongue, my fingers go to pieces. I figure it'll sort itself out at some point, but as du does for most things most of the time, I'm not going to get hung up on it (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[katemorrisviolin]

fascinating stuff, Anacrusis. I throw in the occasional cheeky "dugudugu" but try and get by with doo doo for most things, and tu for accents. I don't play particularly fast so noone notices the difference! I can dugudugu on one note at speed quite well but find it impossible at the moment to coordinate with a run of different notes plus the double tonguing at speed. Music that would require this skill is beyond me at the moment so I'm not making a huge effort with it yet.
Happy playing everyone.

[limh]

Thanks so much all (especially Anacrusis). It sounds like I can stick to Doo while concentrating on getting my fingering neat, and be happy that learning to slur is good training for all those articulations where the pause between notes is so very tiny that it wouldn't disguise even small inaccuracies of fingering. I am also filing away the thoughts on did'll in preparation for tackling more sophisticated articulation when it becomes necessary.

Yes, I can see that "Tu" in French might have quite a different outcome to "Too" in English. Another problem is that if you simply ask someone to "say 'Too'!", they will probably stress the 'T' ("that's Too much" - "you Too!"), rather than saying it in the way you would if it cropped up half way through a sentence ("We'll go to the top shop tomorrow"). I found a lady explaining in a video here. I'm deeply suspicious of 4-minute videos that explain how to play an instrument, but her explanation of using articulation like normal speech is interesting, and I was embarrassed it'd never occurred to me to make "Too" and "Doo" noises with my palm in front of my mouth to feel the difference. It's a good idea. Incidentally, thanks Maizie for pointing me at Hotteterre's writing. He comments that force of articulation is Oboe>Recorder>Flute. Probably obvious, but I'd not have thought about it.

Another incidentally, I tried recording myself and was shocked to find that I wasn't playing 6/8 quavers as sets of slurred "triplets" 'Abc'Abc (capital = accented, ' = tongued), but actually I was (mostly) playing 'Ab'c'Ab'c. It really shocked me to realise that what I thought I was hearing/playing wasn't actually what I was hearing/playing. Oops. So much for my musical self-awareness...

[Aeolienne]

Recorder gives me more of a chance to eventually do stuff in the more informal ensembles that are around.
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/clarinet.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wub.gif)

I wish I had the same opportunities for consort playing. As it is, I'm stuck with note-bashing at SRP monthly meets. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

What about seeking out a violinist, classical guitarist or other instruments that go well with recorder and doing some mixed instrument ensemble music?

I've advertised on FormingBands, Meetup and Justfortheloveofit, to no avail.

Wow I envy your achievements

Don't. I've spent more than two-thirds of the last three years out of work, and I only play one instrument.

[niobe]

Had to cancel the lesson planned for end of August but today is definitely the day for my first recorder lesson! Yeh, can't wait. Roll on 11.30!!! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/woot.gif)

[Maizie]

New TG syllabus is out (for 2013).
Looking at the G8:
- the pieces look similar (possibly identical, I don't have the current syllabus memorised that well though!!)
- but they are now arranged in two lists rather than 3 (you still play three pieces) It looks like it might be possible to avoid playing modern stuff / play a completely baroque programme (no I won't think of actually doing that for a moment (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) )
- mixed articulation is no longer on the scales list!

Obviously other woodwind also have new syllabuseseesesess, but I have no idea on the differences so can't comment.