What a fascinating chart. The tuning forks must be reliable. I'd be slightly scared of relying on an organ for pitch too exactly though; surely organs tend to be subject to a lot of rebuilding and alteration, and I don't know how easy it is to document the un-tampered nature of an early one? I'm not one bit sure how you estimate a pitch from a stringed keyboard instrument. I had no idea there was that much variation. It's also interesting that data derived from a single instrument can still differ quite a bit.

Mazie, ohje, I hadn't thought how complicated it is. I'm sure our predecessors would get the giggles at some of the things we do, or disapprove heartily of others. It's a completely amazing thought that we're just a handful of decades into a totally new era of music history: no one in the future need ever wonder how we interpret music, how we tune, or anything. they just have to listen to recordings.

Harpsichords do actually carry some clues as to the likely pitches they'd have been played at - their strings have an optimum sounding tension, so if you know string length and gauge you can get a fair idea of what they should be tuned to. You do need to make this assessment in a part of its scaling which is not in anyway foreshortened, ie, not in the bass, and you need to make it on the correct strings. At the moment I'm fuddled and hot and sticky because it's tropical in Edinburgh today, at least 19 degrees C so I can't remember which are the strings you test, but I'm guessing the highest note for each gauge of wire. Gauges change every few notes throughout the scale of the instrument, and in many there are also two or three different materials used to make strings, typically iron, yellow brass and sometimes also red brass. The optimum tone is got very slightly below breaking strain - go higher and the tone sounds unhappily tight, go lower and it sounds soggy and boingy.

However for a real indication of likely pitch, you'd have to go to the pitched pipes. There is, in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, a baroque flute with several corps de rechange, or middle sections, to allow the player to play at different pitches: it'd have been used no doubt by a travelling flautist, so that he could play alongside ensembles in different countries in Europe. The other clue to pitches used is found in organs - though it's known that there were different reference pitches customary in churches compared with outside them, again from local literature, and the pipe lengths of instruments of the time.

On temperaments....*these folks are going to chuck you off the forum, anacrusis, stop being such a boooooore and hogging the recorder thread*....

.....one more nugget and I promise I'll stop.......

there is a little tinkling instrument in the Russell Collection in Edinburgh, a keyboard one, like a cross between a piano and a set of chime bars - inside it are tuned bars of glass, no possibility of altering their pitch at all, struck by hammers operated by a tiny keyboard.....and the temperament of that is unequal, but not mean tone. As one might expect: it's probably mid 18th century, if I remember rightly .

I have just discovered I live less than a 15 minute walk away from the local SRP.

Excellent!

W

Already I have left the cleaning rod whilst practising at someone's house when I was baby-sitting. I have the fluffy rod which came with the wooden recorder but am not keen on using that but had to tonight. I had been using the cleaning rod that came with the plastic and a cotton handerchief.

*jealous*....
I sent a letter requesting membership and cheque to the Country and Overseas branch a month ago, no reply. Emailed them last week, no reply. Does the Country and Overseas branch exist? Is anyone here a member?

(anacrusis you are not a bore, I find your posts fascinating!)

Yes COS branch does exist but the secretary was away last week. I used to be a COS member before I was able to get to a branch regularly...

W

Hah, I didn't last long, did I?
you could make a pullthrough . Just a strip of cotton, or linen, or if you want to be fancy, a silk hankie, small enough to fit through the smallest bit of the bore of the instrument but big enough that it has to bunch up a bit inside. My oiling one is longer than the middle joint of the longest instrument I own. Loop the end over, thread some tough packing thread, or some not very fuzzy knitting wool through the loop, then round it, and tie a knot, or two. A bulky-ish knot in the other end helps the thread to drop down the bore of the recorder, once it emerges, you can just do as the name says, and pull it through. To clean the head, drape it over a long pencil or biro, and poke carefully up the head joint.

As for the fluffy thing, I know what I'd do with that....

Thanks very much, anacrusis.

I hope you will hear soon, katemorrisviolin.

Mentioned recorder making course to teacher. He was...not discouraging
Mentioned recorder making course to husband. He was...not discouraging, especially when finding it was in commuting distance, though then enquired about the price He was pondering possible solutions [as I'm about to pay the painter to paint the house] when I pointed out that the next course was November, and I was thinking about next year's bonus anyway (and handily, I can in September elect to "buy" extra days of holiday for 2013...) I think he was expecting me to be off next week

Naughty tempting people, but I will certainly put it up with some other musical things as Something To Think About

Firstly, you are not a bore.
But secondly, I am now wondering about different shaped bores, and what shape you would be if you were one.

PS I had a "two-quaver chromatic anacrusis" in my lesson yesterday

As a bass player, I'd be a big fat wide one

Thankyou Alan Davies for correcting my alto fingering error, I now play c# and d flat using the half hole on my right ring finger, as well as fingers 4 and 5. Tsk! It sounds so much better in tune like that.

I asked my daughter if she was embarrassed about me playing my recorder in the car in the school car park with her, whilst waiting for my son to have his trumpet lesson. "No not at all" she said, without any hint of sarcasm. I've brought her up in a world where this sort of behaviour is considered normal!

[quote name='willobie' date='May 23 2012, 09:33 PM' post='1149929']
[quote name='katemorrisviolin' post='1149927' date='May 23 2012, 09:28 PM']
[quote name='PianoNotes' post='1149890' date='May 23 2012, 07:57 PM']
I have just discovered I live less than a 15 minute walk away from the local SRP.
[/quote]


Thanks for mentioning the SRP, folks. I have just sent an email to the local (I think) branch to find out whether they have activities for treble beginners -or lapsed descant players. The website seems to be quite out of date - or perhaps I just looked in the wrong place!

Another vote for "anacrusis is not a bore"! Thanks for the comments about the glass keyboard thing in Edinburgh. Yet another good reason to try to get north of the border again one day. How on earth did its maker tune it? It must have been a spectacularly difficult instrument to produce, but I'd imagine such a thing would sound rather nice (as well as impressing its owner's guests!).
I'm seriously impressed at the deductions from harpsichords. It makes me realise how little I know: how long strings last, whether they change with time, how they vary with the quality of metal they are made of, and whether modern alloys and ancient ones are similar. I still struggle to trust an organ though; they're too easily modified during refurbishment, and seem so often to have been viewed as works-in-progress by their makers, with successive generations of organ-builder adding and changing. I think I'd want Definitive Proof that a chamber-organ was accidentally walled-up in a spare room in 1700 and forgotten until a plumber knocked through last week, before I could trust it as a firm historical source. But then I'm sceptical about everything...

KateMorris, well done on child-rearing! The world needs less embarrassment. I don't think ours is embarrassed by me, he's just taken a long cool look and decided I have no musical talent...

[quote name='niobe' date='May 24 2012, 01:54 PM' post='1150016']
[quote name='willobie' date='May 23 2012, 09:33 PM' post='1149929']
[quote name='katemorrisviolin' post='1149927' date='May 23 2012, 09:28 PM']
[quote name='PianoNotes' post='1149890' date='May 23 2012, 07:57 PM']
I have just discovered I live less than a 15 minute walk away from the local SRP.
[/quote]


Thanks for mentioning the SRP, folks. I have just sent an email to the local (I think) branch to find out whether they have activities for treble beginners -or lapsed descant players. The website seems to be quite out of date - or perhaps I just looked in the wrong place!
[/quote]
SRP Homepage

W

Thanks (and also to the others who kindly said so )
there'd be a nipped in bit, at the lower end of the head, so that top F would sound okay . (I think that is the bit they call a "neck" on humans - and mine's made of brass, cos I'm cheeky.....)


*skips*

Virtually every town had it's own definition of "A" quite often determined by the local organ. As we move on, we start to get standardisation through use of pitch pipes and later tuning forks. A440 as a standard is a C20th invention.


Presumably something like Velotti?

I like "boingy" - so descriptive!





Someone has done something similar with recording from the earliest wax cylinders onwards to work out how pianos were tuned and discovered that until about 1917 (when the modern method of tuning was first promulgated) "equal temperament" pianos were in fact rather more like sixth coma mean tone.



Hmmm nothing for Shropshire, Cheshire, or Staffordshire (where I live plus adjacent counties). Just Manchester, which is about 50 miles away.

[quote name='Tenor Viol' date='May 24 2012, 09:33 PM' post='1150087']

[quote name='willobie' date='May 24 2012, 02:44 PM' post='1150021']

Thanks for mentioning the SRP, folks. I have just sent an email to the local (I think) branch to find out whether they have activities for treble beginners -or lapsed descant players. The website seems to be quite out of date - or perhaps I just looked in the wrong place!
[/quote]
SRP Homepage

W [/quote]
Hmmm nothing for Shropshire, Cheshire, or Staffordshire (where I live plus adjacent counties). Just Manchester, which is about 50 miles away.
[/quote]
SRP South Staffordshire

Any use?

W

Marginally at 43 miles!

Apparently the little glass chimebar pianoey thing is sort of like Vallotti - nearer to Werckmeister III, and is actually about 1815-20, harpsidoc tells me.....

Tenor Viol, I spend a lot of time in Shropshire.....maybe we ought to start a recorder group

The only challenge is that I'm a novice recorder player...

Further to my email I received a friendly message from the Secretary (South Downs branch) inviting me to attend as a visitor. The meeting is approx 40 miles from my home. I've just realised from another look at the SRP website that there is a Guildford branch which is only 20 miles away. Think I'll try the South Downs first as the secretary was so welcoming!
The SRP branch list is a little confusing as some branches are listed by county, others by town or region. (Well confusing for me as I tend to search by county, must be the way my brain works )
Enjoy the sunshine!

Guildford does have a very successful beginner recorder group as part of its SRP meeting, so if that's good for you in terms of travelling, it could be what you are looking for.

[/quote]
Guildford does have a very successful beginner recorder group as part of its SRP meeting, so if that's good for you in terms of travelling, it could be what you are looking for.
[/quote]
Thanks!

I was very excited to see the other day, whilst peering through a classroom window looking for daughter's mislaid clarinet, to see a bass recorder sitting on the teacher's desk. A bass recorder! Maybe there is a recorder ensemble going on that I dont' know about and can help with!
I forced my daughter to ask about it even though she's not interested, as I'm a nosey parker and was going to volunteer to help.
No, there's no recorder group, but there is a ukelele "orchestra" (five ukelele players and a bass guitar).....Daughter was very excited about this and has joined, having seen the superb Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain perform.
So apparently the Ukelele is taking over the role of recorder in some schools as the apparently easy accessible way into ensemble music making. I think that's a shame........but I'm going to find out who owns that bass and why it was out. Maybe I could start up a club or something. I've run kids' guitar clubs in the past. But a room full of out-of-tune ukeleles, good grief can you imagine!

That reminds me, mustn't forget to take bass and great bass recorders to Aberdeen tomorrow: the Scottish Festival for the SRP is happening there, and I believe I have a commitment to go and play as part of the Scottish Recorder Orchestra.
*goes off to find contrabass part, as that's one she's not done in rehearsal but is needed for too*

*looks forward to getting to play a contra again too *

Not sure if this should be here or in the happy thread - but I'm getting to play recorders with other people tomorrow

So am I.

so am I!
Playing tonight at Castle Cornet museum.
We've been asked to play there again next bank holiday tuesday, in Elizabethan costume. I will look like a bird who swallowed a plate.....

Around here it seems to be the Ocarina. Poor recorders

After readng this thread for a while, I decided to buy myself a treble recorder. Best money spent in a long while!
I've wanted to play it for about 15 years (my cousin got 'promoted' to treble in primary school but I only ever played descant) and I'm having so much fun working through the Tme Pieces for Treble Recorder book! (Much more fun than Abracadabra clarinet ). I'm planning on having lessons in the near future (out of interest, does an oboist / recorder player sound good for lessons?)

So thank you all for dragging me back in!

(And good luck and have fun for those who are playing today!)

Another recorder player! We shall take over the world!
I'd recommend some sort of method/technique book as well as the time pieces books, even though you are already a musician.

Could you possibly recommend any, please?
I do get the feeling I'm playing like a clarinettist
I would like to be able to play a few pieces before my first lesson (my muscle memory is pretty weak so habits are easily broken!)

I really like Enjoy the Recorder (Brian Bonsor) Book 1. There is also a book 2.

A few pages back on this thread there's some excellent suggestions from people much better qualified to advise you than me. I'm getting on very well with Alan Davis's book "treble recorder technique", but it's a book only for those who are already musicians on another instrument. If you're at least grade 4-5 on clarinet you'll be fine with that one.

Does this mean for once in my life I am part of a trend! Trendy at long last....

oh no oh no I don't know if I can cope with being part of a trend! By the way, isn't an ocarina just a recorder with an unfortunate figure?

I'm still struggling with getting higher notes to sound reasonable and not too windy with a faint undertone of something wrong. The good thing though is that every time I go back to a note I thought was hard to do, and rather unsatisfactory, it sounds better than I thought. I hope this means that I'm getting better, not that I'm lowering my expectations... It's been difficult learning in a confined space to blow hard enough for confident high notes; in a secluded corner of an overgrown cemetery, things go right that seem almost impossible in a small crowded garden shed. But the shed is good for hearing things in detail.

I shall have a look! Thank you!


Thank you!
I should be okay with it then, it sounds great!




I honestly blame this thread for my recorder-ish-ness! I found the forum whilst searching for something and have read lots and got an urge to try playing the recorder again (mainly because of this thread)!

Could I interest you perhaps in a treble, tenor or bass viol? A lot of repertoire in common with the recorder...

I'm utterly exhausted after my day trip to Aberdeen, only two and a half hours there and back, and only a mile and a half to walk between venue and the station but my goodness, the heat....

....it was well worth the trip, though . I got to meet Willobie, and Mr Willobie, and played lots of fun music, and got to borrow a tree to play in the ensemble (contrabass), where I was filling in for absent colleagues, and didn't even fall too hard on my nose playing in 21/8 and 15/8. I still need to let the conductor of the SRO know that it wasn't me who played the loud b*m note in the contra part... (though naturally enough, plenty of others elsewhere )

Sounds like a good day

I once tried to learn the violin. I got as far as thinking I would have star or circular stickers for the fingerings. (I never did decide but I think I should've gone with the stars... My violin is happiest when it is in its case )
(I am also staying out of other sections of the viva part of the forum!)


Glad you had a good day!

Viols have frets .....no stickers required .

We have a very pretty tenor viol hanging on the wall here, and I keep toying with the idea of getting harpsidoc a bass viol too: he did play cello once upon a time. Then, if we had a harpsichordist visiting, we could do sonatas with keyboard and viol continuo .

*sets mind to work on the thorny problem of sharing contrabass recorders with folks of very different height, ruefully rubbing back and legs the while*.

Isn't the recorder a good instrument to play outside on a tree-lined park on a summer day? Really needs a park in truly Claude-esque style, with leafy-fronded trees standing in serpentine shapes around the edges, and a river, perhaps fed by stream tinkling across jutting rocks. Oh, and the recorder has to be played by a swain (or damsel) of course, not some random bloke in jeans.

On which, I have a question: Does anyone know what the piece is, that is played towards the start of Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princesses (played by the shoe-maker, visually on some sort of skinny whistle, but clearly really on a recorder)? I can't find any obvious answer by googling, except one person who claims it's played on a treble with A=415, but I can't see how he/she can know that unless (a) they've a phenomenally-good enough ear to hear which notes are played with which fingering, or (b) they know the key, which means they must have recognised the piece. It's possible, if they're mistaken, that it's actually something by Arnie Roth (musical genius behind most of the Barbie series, and quite capable of out-composing any classic Frenchish flute composer). Embarrassing admission: it was this piece, as found by Small Son, that set me thinking it was time to find my school recorder a few months back, and made me think to buy a treble when I found it in a bric-a-brac shop. Good bloke, Arnie Roth. Whatever the piece is, it's a very attractive tune.

Anacrusis, I now have a worrying image in my head of a huuuge bass with the top end having a telescopic crook, and the bottom end degenerating into a long flexible pipe like comes out the back of a tumble-drier, with the middle section attached to the player by some sort of breastplate arrangement?? You need a Heath-Robinson thinking about this one.

You also have me thinking about whether anyone ever made a player-harpsichord with punched paper rolls, to provide continuos... It really would have been the perfect instrument to automate.

Performing outside yesterday on my wooden bass recorder, little gusts of breeze took the sound away from some of my bottom notes. It didn't affect the other higher recorders. Bit of a problem....I found myself turing my back to the wind to shelter it from this happening, which made it look like I was in a huff with the lovely tenor player to my left!

The contra does indeed have a slightly Heath Robinson look about the crook, with a little bunsen burner sort of tap thing to adjust the height of the brass tubing, and a funny valve thing which dribbles out condensation when twiddled just so, as if it were really a brass instrument . The problem with the instrument is that there really is only one height at which it can be held for the arms to fit right, and I couldn't get it up high enough to allow my right arm to reach readily, so had to sort of hunker down slightly to play. As my gymnastics days are now many years in the past, this did have something of a knock-on effect on me muscles for a few hours after ....Plus it's not easy to adjust the mouthpiece height correctly for a given level of hunkering

The Player-Harpsichord wasn't ever invented as far as I know - it'd help with the times when my in-house accompanist has fallen asleep, right enough .....

My first recorder lesson on Saturday went very well and was very enjoyable.

Some other good news is that I discovered on Friday that I will be able to have recorder lessons straight after my musicianship lessons. I explained this to the recorder teacher I went to on Saturday (who is someone I actually know) and she was totally understanding about it being more sensible for me to do that rather than travelling to her. Even though she is fairly local it still meant at least half and hour to 40 minutes journey to her in both directions. Cutting down travelling time = more practice time.

My new recorder teacher is now Bagpuss.

That should make for a very joined up approach to music making! Lucky you! Enjoy.

I do feel very lucky and feel confident that under Bagpuss's watchful eye I will learn to play the recorder well.

That takes all the fun out of it
(Although it has got my interest, now)

How big are bass viols? (small town, even smaller school, one viol for the district... My only experience with viols )


Ouch!
I empathise!


You shouldn't be embarrassed! It's a nice story!
(As long as you don't go around chanting 'I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!' - I've found most people who have the Barbie films seem to have the Peter Pan film this is from )


Glad you enjoyed it! (And that you don't have as far to travel, now!)


I seem to have attracted a few school children whilst playing the recorder. It is so hot I've had to have the door open whilst practicing and so they heard me, stared into my window and had massive eyes - I assume they suspected another instrument but not a recorder! (These kids seem to think I'm cool because I have 'odd' pets so they may now think the recorder is cool? Who knows? )

Ooer, my husband informs me that Henry VIII had a virginal "that goeth with a wheel, without a person to play upon it" - wow ......

Bass viols I think of being more feminine shaped cello sort of instruments - slopey shoulders and wider hips than chest, compared with the squarer shoulders of the cellos .

Does anyone else recognise that feeling of fingering patterns for recorders being just about ready to fall all into place...but not quite there yet? I find I'm able to skim-read music, get the fingerings all right, until the moment when my brain stops to think about it, then kerblam, I fall off . On Saturday I played tenor, bass, great bass, contrabass and treble one after the other, and at home I spend most of my time on the voice flute, and have that sense that they're all going to fall into their slots beautifully and let me play the right notes whatever the instrument, just not yet. I'm finding each new instrument's sets of fingerings seems to help me with identifying weird fingerings for accidentals we don't use all that much, like Gb, or E#....the fatal bit being then thinking whoopee this is going okay......splat. AAARGH! but it's fun .