This is the second time I am seeing a contraption like this. The device in the picture above was sold on eBay without much info to go with it (i.e. "belonged to my grandfather, don't know what it is" or some such). I assume eight keys on this one are equivalent to a major scale. I saw a similar instrument on shopgoodwill.com previously, except it had thirteen keys, arranged in a vaguely piano-like pattern (i.e. eight "white" keys on one side, five "black" on the other); not much info there, either. The absence of slides is also notable. I am completely lost as to what this could be and how it is supposed to work... was it made for creatures with eight fingers on one hand and thirteen on the other?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
A chapter from Lennie Tristano: His Life in Music by Eunmi Shim, detailing Tristano's pedagogical approach - read it on Scribd. Maybe jazz educators should get a f-ing clue...
I firmly believe that modern jazz education as it is practiced in American colleges serves only one purpose, and that is to castrate the student, kill his creative impulses, stamp out the natural ability to enjoy music making, and force him into conformity. The music that is taught and played there is not jazz, but modern American classical music that semi-convincingly emulates jazz.
The following four things can rectify the situation: * The students should play by ear and from memory as much as possible. * The focus should be not on individual solos, but on the band sound - namely, the arrangements, the balance, the communication and interplay between the group members. * As a long-time student in the "jazz combo classes," I know first-hand that it is possible to finish the class and get an A without hearing the original tunes once. This SHOULD NOT be the case. If the students play covers, they MUST listen to the originals. * The students should be not just encouraged, but forced to take creative control - come up with their own arrangements, write and perform their own tunes.
I could never imagine that a teacher in a jazz combo class not only won't encourage playing by ear and/or from memory, but would actually discourage it. Truly the end of this style has come, my friends. The so-called jazz is dead.
I am reading The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments. I doubt I will read everything, so instead of a full review I'll just make a few points. It's a collection of essays by different authors on brass-related topics. A majority deals with academic music, with subjects like instrument history (sackbut, keyed trumpets, ophicleide, Baroque/Classical horn etc.), repertoire, brass pedagogy; also several essays on the topics outside of academic music. Of what I read, the essay I liked the least was the one on jazz. Best ones were essays on the rise and fall of cornetto and "Vernacular Brass Traditions".
Cornett(o) is a fascinating instrument; looks much like a recorder with a trumpet mouthpiece. It first rose to prominence in the early 16th century, together with the early trombone (AKA sackbut), and developed in tandem with it; a good amount of music was played by the cornetto/sackbut consorts, and both instruments went into a steep decline after about 200 years of prominence. However, sackbut had a rebirth and second flowering as a trombone we all know and love (or hate), and cornetto disappeared without a trace. The mystery, of course, is - why? Cornetto is claimed to be a difficult instrument, but trombone is, perhaps, even worse. It should also be not that difficult to make; there's a master in UK doing semi-pro level resin replicas for ~$200, so I am sure they could crank out some cheap ones in China...
The other article I liked is about brass bands and "vernacular" brass music around the world - which I much appreciate. The following passage I found particularly interesting:
In Jakarta, bands retaining the name by which Portuguese colonists called them — Tanjidor — play what Ernst Heins has described as "Jakarta-Chinese, and Sundanese gamelan music. .. on the instruments of the European brass band," the effect of which is a "dazzling heterophony, which defies any rule and regulation of European musical theory" This case is a particularly vivid example of a phenomenon that has become widespread in the twentieth century. Any western brass player uninformed of such practices who listens to one of these non-western brass bands could be forgiven for mistaking the sound it makes for a cacophony. In fact the players in such bands are exercising a different set of values. They may be playing western brass instruments, but the musical culture that shapes their terms of reference derives from their own indigenous roots.
A big ethno-music boom is happening nowadays; there is a multitude of small labels that seek out, unearth, or record music in rural Eastern Europe, Nigeria, Colombia, Senegal, Turkey, Thailand, and basically anywhere else, yet it seems that tanjidor is virtually unknown. Most links that turn up on Google are in Malay. There are a few scattered mentions in scholarly ethnomusicological research, but even there the 1975 article by Ernst Heins appears to be the only serious treatment of tanjidor. And the recording evidence is even more scant: I think the disc below is the only thing available. I am yet to hear it, and I really want to.
Why are trumpets pitched in Bb? Here's the clearest explanation I've seen so far.
There are three kinds of instruments which are transposing:
1. Instruments where historically players would have been expected to change instruments to play in different keys. This includes trumpets and horns which started as natural instruments (and where changing instruments was typical in the early days of the valve) and also instruments like the clarinet (in orchestras it is assumed that players use B flat and A clarinets).
2. Instruments which are conceived as part of a consort, that is a range of sizes all with the same fingerings pitched in different keys and octaves like saxophones and saxhorns.
3. Auxiliary instruments like English horn, alto flute and so on which use the same fingerings as the "main" instrument.
The timbre of the cornet lies somewhere between that of the horn and the (natural) trumpet, having the blaring, penetrating quality of the latter without its brilliant noble sonorousness. The great favour with which the cornet meets is due to the facility with which it speaks, to the little fatigue it causes, and to the simplicity of its mechanism. We must, however, regret from the point of view of art that its success has been so great, and that it has ended in usurping in brass bands the place of the bugles, the tone colour of which is infinitely preferable as a foundation for an ensemble composed entirely of brass instruments. Even the symphonic orchestra has not been secure from its intrusion, and the growing tendency in some orchestras, notably in France to allow the cornet to supersede the trumpet, to the great detriment of tone colour, is to be deplored.
Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing (@)
1. Listen to the birds That's where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren't going anywhere.
2. Your guitar is not really a guitar, your guitar is a divining rod Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you're good, you'll land a big one.
3. Practice in front of a bush Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush dosen't shake, eat another piece of bread.
4. Walk with the devil Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the "devil box." And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you're bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
6. Never point your guitar at anyone Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
7. Always carry a church key That's your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He's one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song "I Need a Hundred Dollars" is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf's guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty-making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he's doing it.
8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
9. Keep your guitar in a dark place When you're not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don't play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.
10. You gotta have a hood for your engine Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can't escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.
"Louis Licks" and XIXth century Cornet Etudes: The Roots of Melodic Improvisation as Seen in the Jazz Style of Louis Armstrong, by Peter Ecklund (PDF). A great article on the connections between the early jazz vocabulary and the "parlor music" of the time.
My practice time is very limited, what with the work, the family, and the commute. I am always trying to squeeze the most out of my daily 40 minutes. The right balance is not easy to find. If I don't play something fun every day, I lose my motivation fast. If I don't work on technique (i.e. scales/arpeggios = boring shit), I don't get better, so I end up playing the same stuff over and over and lose my motivation slowly. Seems like Catch-22.
I did a few transcriptions this year. It started with Badinerie - I wanted to try it and could not find a trumpet adaptation. Then a few more Bach pieces. Then I read somewhere that Warne Marsh and Lee Konitz played Bach's Inventions for Two Voices as duets for alto/tenor saxes; in fact, No.13 in Am is on their London Concert LP, here is is below.
So I tried the Inventions and got hooked. I never thought it possible to pack so much musical education into so few bars of music. Bach himself subtitled his work as follows: "Honest method, by which the amateurs of the keyboard – especially, however, those desirous of learning – are shown a clear way not only (1) to learn to play cleanly in two parts, but also, after further progress, (2) to handle three obligate parts correctly and well; and along with this not only to obtain good inventions (ideas) but to develop the same well; above all, however, to achieve a cantabile style in playing and at the same time acquire a strong foretaste of composition." Let me proceed in order: - "to obtain good inventions [...] to develop the same well" These pieces are based on simple short phrases - bits of scales, arpeggios - that are stretched, compressed, inverted, and finally woven into rich tapestries. Each piece is a lesson on thematic development - something every jazz improviser aspires to learn but so few master. It is amazing how much mileage can Bach get out of an eight-note sequence - see, for instance No.1 in C. - "acquire a strong foretaste of composition" I would recommend the Buzoni edition of Inventions, available for free at IMSLP. Each one concludes with a discussion of the form. There is also a book called "An Analytical Survey of the Fifteen Two-Part Inventions by J.S.Bach," I actually have it but have not read much of it. - "to learn to play cleanly in two parts" Of course a monophonic instrument cannot play solo in two parts, but all horns have to be able to play with others - a skill that Arban and other brass instructors address with duets. Bach's Inventions can and should be played as duets. I typed them into Finale and generated audio files every which way - slow, medium, fast; both voices audible or top voice removed - and then used them as a play-along. They are quite challenging to play that way. A lot of Arban duets have voices play similar figures. Here the voices are complementary and opposite: one is fast, the other is slow; one is busy, the other lays out; contrary motion all over the place... I found canons to be the most difficult - when the other voice plays something you played two bars ago, it can really throw you off. These pieces are great for developing the ear and ability to hear counterpoint. - The brass players may not have the technical challenges that the pianists have, but there are definitely a few of our own. These lines were not written with a horn in mind. Bach loves long, flowing phrases with three, four, five bars of consecutive sixteenths and for me, every time it feels like a drowning accident - by the third bar I would turn blue and dizzy and then gulp air like a fish, trying to steady my breath. It does get better with practice, though. - There are also range considerations. Fortunately, Bach's keyboard did not go much beyond C above the staff, and most of the time right hand stays within two-and-a-half octaves. In some pieces, top line can be played right off the score; in others, I transposed it a step down. Even the transposed ones have a few high notes in them - A, always; Bb, often; B, sometimes; C, occasionally. Playing the inventions integrates the high-note practice in a very natural way and since last spring my register expanded and got much stronger at the top. Another aspect is that there are plenty of runs from one extreme to the other and sudden jumps of an octave or even more. These things are avoided in the beginner's studies because they are difficult - not a consideration for Bach, obviously. Here they are naturally integrated into a bigger piece, which makes them easier to practice - at least the point of doing it is obvious; the jumps are there because of the inner logic of the line. - Another challenge for me is the aural training. I am trying to memorize them and sing them along with the bass line. Of course, this is not specific to Bach. I find the Inventions to be very different in difficulty - some get imprinted in my mind very quickly, others I keep struggling with. Interestingly, the ones I find more attractive - and easier - are the minor inventions: Em, Cm, Am are the ones I learned already. Many of the major ones seem like a jumble of notes; I am now wrestling with No.3 in D. - Not a challenge, but a side benefit for someone learning the inventions is that, unlike the trumpet etudes etc., these can be heard. There is a multitude of recordings out there that can be played over and over for fine details of interpretation and articulation. I heard several and my favorites are Gould and Peter Serkin.
This all sounds rather difficult, and it is. When I first looked at No.1 in C, or, worse yet, a beautiful but very hard No.13 in Am, I was really intimidated. However, the challenges are varied enough to stay interesting: once I get tired of trying to hit that high C at tempo, I can focus on breathing, or try to sing along with the bass line, or simply listen to Gould ripping through them. And the lines themselves are really beautiful.
Derek Bailey speaking on the same topic as Glenn Gould in Improvisation, Its Nature and Practice in Music - great book, BTW (long quote behind the jump)
There seem to be two main attitudes to the instrument among improvisors. One is that an instrument is man’s best friend, both a tool and a helper; a collaborator. The other attitude is that an instrument is unnecessary, at worst a liability, intruding between the player and his music.
There is a multitude of lists compiling top ten trumpeters; who is the fastest, highest, most soulful, underappreciated, overrated, this, that, and the other... But I am yet to see a a list of the favorite brass bands. Let me step up with my nominations.
Fanfare Ciocarlia - Gili Garabdi Subtitled "Ancient Secrets of Gypsy Brass," this album brings the Balkan brass tradition to the new century. A few recognizable covers - James Bond Theme, Caravan - are thoroughly balkan-ized, while even the most traditional of Horas and Sirbas have unexpected quotes bubbling to the surface (e.g. a glimpse of Pink Panther Theme in Hora Evreiasca). There are Balkan bands that are more authentic, playing more odd-metered dances and less pop fare (Slonovski Bal), there are some with a more virtuosic playing (Boban Markovic Orkestar), featuring a fiery frontman - but there are none that can compare with Fanfare Ciocarlia in their single-minded pursuit of getting people to dance.
Брасс Белые Ночи - Ретро в Советах (White Nights Brass - Soviet Retro) Here's an obscure one. I love it not for being groundbreaking and revelatory, but for faithfully and lovingly recreating a dying - or, rather, stone-cold dead - tradition of Russian brass bands of the early XXth century. I believe they play not just the right tunes - waltzes, marches, tangos - but the original charts. There are no attempts to modernize the sound in any way except for the modern recording quality. Each voice comes through clear and strong, the fine dynamic shadings are not buried under scratches, boxy sound, and poor remastering. Extra points for the prominent use of baritone - used not just for oom-pah-pah, but as a leading voice. Grab it if you can find it.
Bollywood Brass Band - Bollywood Brass Band I don't think I can give the background to this any better than the article East Meets West Meets East Meet... I'd like to include it in my list for a few reasons. This album is one of many that led me to picking up trumpet. It was not necessarily a major life-changing influence, but at some point I realized that most of the music I listen to have a brass section, and this disc was definitely on the horizon. Secondly, like Fanfare Ciocarlia above, it has the same fine balance between being reasonably authentic yet palatable to Western ears. Thirdly, it is really as good as much of the conventional brass band music, yet different and unique. I guess it can be interpreted as "my music taste is hipper than yours" selection :)
Honorable mention: The Brass Company - Colors [1974] 36 years old; also, not really from a brass band tradition but more of an overgrown modern jazz combo. From the fact that it came out on Strata-East and from the affiliations of the players, some classify it as "spiritual/deep jazz." Anyway, great music, very adventurous harmonically, and also features my new favorite player Charles Tolliver. Great stuff!
We were at our friends the other day and got to flip through a reproduction of a 1900 Sears Roebuck catalog, full of puzzling and amusing retro marvels. The fashion section all bristling with mustaches, the medical pages with a $0.75 "Reliable Cure For the Opium And Morphia Habit" and "vegetable cure for female weakness," livestock section with unspeakable contraptions for embryotomy (real word) and deballment etc.etc. And then I got to the musical instruments, which had me completely mystified. The picture above (from Horn-u-copia) is not from the 1900 catalog, but has most of the items. What a marvel of variety! Eb cornet, Bb cornet, C cornet, solo Eb alto, circular alto, bell-up alto, Bb tenor, Bb baritone, Bb bass, Eb bass, Eb contrabass, and any number of trombones.
Now, it took me forever to figure out the brass nomenclature, but I thought I had it sorted: Bb piccolo and a variety of high trumpets in D, Eb, F, A - Bb cornet or trumpet - Eb alto/tenor/mellophone (UK vs US terminology) - Bb baritone/euphonium (one octave below trumpet) - Bb tuba (two octaves below trumpet) - Eb tuba. Now the catalog is messing it up. What the hell is a Bb tenor? Is it the same Bb as baritone, but smaller bore? then why is it grouped with alto? Or is it an octave below trumpet and baritone yet another octave lower? That seems unlikely, given there is is also a bass (another octave lower) and a contrabass, which should boldly cross the lower human perception limits and also be pretty damn hard to play.
Another mystery is - why did all they all go extinct? They used to be common enough to be put in a catalog with bicycles and women's fashions. Now, I doubt one in a thousand even knows the word mellophone or can identify a baritone by name; not even musicians recognize it in my hands. Horn-u-copia also has a pdf with Sears catalog scans spanning 1897-1963, and you can clearly trace the rise and fall of brass. 1908 page has the most variety. Several trumpet models appear in 1927, but alto, baritone and bass are now confined to a footnote and "are unmailable", there is no tenor, solo alto, or contrabass. In 1937 there is but one trumpet, one cornet, and one trombone, ditto 1956 and 1963. What a loss!
PS: A mystery revealed! From Bob Beecher site: The tenor and the baritone horn were both pitched in Bb (B-flat). Studying illustrations from early makers' catalogs, they also appear about the same size, except that the tenor horn has slightly narrow tubing - or a smaller bore - and a quicker flare at the bell. These differences affect the timbre of the instrument, giving the tenor horn a brighter sound. So, although it may play in the same range as the baritone, the tenor horn will not sound quite the same. Somewhere along the way, the names Tenor and Baritone Horn evolved into Baritone and Euphonium, respectively.
I don't want to turn this blog into a freak show, but this is too good to pass up:
A carved wooden French horn:
The inquiring minds want to know - how does it play? The maker speaks: not very good to tell you the truth. It marginally worked, and the valves do register different notes. As I build more instruments and experiment with different woods, I imagine I will eventually discover a combination that makes it sound better. But just refining my technique so I can build them with thinner tubes makes a big difference on sound. He also made a semi-playable wooden trombone and plans for a tuba and a trumpet.
Now, a real instrument - a borosilicate glass trombone:
I think this horn ended up costing me at least three times its real price, and probably more. It was an impulse eBay buy, and then "just needs a little oil" turned into a $200 valve repair. On top of that it has a European-size lead pipe, needing a special mouthpiece - trumpet shank, but shorter (of course it came with a wrong one). So, custom-cut conical Parduba mouthpiece (6½ double-cup) = more money. I actually sold my guitar to cover the repairs. Even then it's not perfect - the intonation is uneven, I have to keep the third slide pulled halfway out.
Nonetheless, I am not bitter. I had it since May and I still cannot get over just how cool this thing is. It used to be lacquered, but now it's all raw brass except inside the bell; large, heavy, awkward, totally steampunk thing - look at the the valves in the last pic. Sometimes I feel like just sitting and quietly holding it in my arms. I used to think I have an incomplete Y chromosome, missing the gene that confers the ability to tell front- from rear-wheel drive... but I guess my gear obsession gene is still expressed, just in a different way. Good people at Oakland's A&G Repair, namely Brian, replaced the valve springs, cleaned and lubed the whole assembly, so the valves are superfast and supersmooth. I find it easier to play throughout the entire register on this thing than on my trumpet, and I expected it to be the opposite - flugels are notoriously hard to control above the high G. I think it might be the mouthpiece. I read about double cup before and thought it was a gimmick, but maybe not... And, of course, the sound, the sound! deep V mp + extra-wide conical bore = deep, dark, mellow.
A thread on Lidl Flugels on the TrumpetMaster board - people mostly say good things. Not everyone is happy with Lidls, though: Of course, there are good rotary trumpets and bad ones, just like with piston trumpets. I've bought a number of poor ones on eBay, all antiques, mostly from Czechoslovakia. - from Youtube comments
Monday, August 16, 2010
Canon 1 à 2 from J. S. Bach's Musical Offering (1747) being turned into a Moebius strip, then played in two directions at the same time.
By the way, I looked through Russo's Composing - A New Approach; many of the exercises deal with resource limitation - i.e. a cell, a row (using only certain notes of the scale and/or in a certain order), composing with only a certain rhythm etc. I was playing Bach's Bourrée in E minor the other day and realized the whole thing is written with a single simple rhythm throughout (quarter-eighth-eighth-quarter-eighth-eighth). He probably wasn't doing a "resource limitation exercise", just writing a tune with the bourree dance rhythm, but it came out as a perfect example of how much you can accomplish with extremely limited means.
There is much confusion as to nomenclature of the various instruments in different languages. ...most instruments referred to today as flügelhorns are actually soprano saxhorns. @ In truth, the flugelhorn has been extinct for some time. @
...we long ago let the "real" trumpet (the natural trumpet as used in the Baroque Period) be replaced by a soprano valve trombone, and that today's orchestras and bands are missing what could be a gorgeous additional voice, the true trumpet. @
The modern Bb trumpet is not a trumpet... The real Bb trumpet, in fact, is and always has been the Eb contra-alto trumpet whose useable range is identical to the Bb cornet. @
Torricelli’s trumpet is obviously not a ‘real’ trumpet, it is a 2D surface which is described by the equation x2(y2+z2)-1 = 0, x belongs to [1,∞) and can be formed by rotating the curve xy=1 around the x axis by 2π. @
By the way, a bazooka is not only a weapon, but also a wind instrument!
While a trumpet is not only an instrument, but sometimes a weapon: Musical Instrument Adapted to Emit a Controlled Flame
This trumpet includes a gas cartridge and spark mechanism triggered by the musician. The gas is routed so that a flame is emitted from the bell of the instrument. @@
Fortunately, a few people listed their choices for the most underrated players; two I will have to check out are Carmel Jones and Dizzy Reece; honorable mention for Claudio Roditi and Don Ellis, whom I know and like.
P.S. My favorite trumpet players would be Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, Armstrong, Buck Clayton, and possibly Art Farmer. I like Don Ellis' recordings and Mulligan/Baker Quartet, but not necessarily for the trumpet playing; ditto Jazz Messengers.
My main horn as of right now. I think is is the "original" Collegiate from '62, and not the later T602 model. Repeatedly named as a sleeper on the trumpet discussion boards, so I figured I should check it out. This was an eBay buy of $130 including shipping - all oxidized, missing two finger buttons, broken case etc.etc. I gave it a CLR bath and good cleaning, got the replacement buttons from an online shop that should remain unnamed (took me a month of emails and phone calls to get them to ship it), replaced the spit valve corks and the felt/cork rings, and under the grime and rust it was a sleeper indeed. Great valves, great response. Raw brass; looks like the lacquer was stripped. Switching from an Olds Ambassador, it felt like my range immediately expanded by a minor third. Later I came to suspect that the top notes on the Olds were so unsteady because I was using a Bach 7C, not the original Olds mouthpiece, which makes it much nicer to play. With this one I tried a few mouthpieces and settled on a Holton 24 with a deep V cup. It's a mystery gadget I bought by accident, unlisted anywhere and unlike any other trumpet mouthpiece I ever seen. In fact, it looks the most like a vintage cornet mouthpiece; when they talk about getting "the true dark and mellow cornet sound", deep V is usually suggested. I have a Holton 1 mp with the same cup design - a short-shank cornet piece I got with a 1918 Conn that would be a subject of a future posting. It is said that deep V makes the top notes more difficult to control; that is certainly true with some trumpets, but not so much on this one. The high notes may indeed be a little bit harder to control, but the rest of the register gains so much stability and richness of sound, that it's a perfectly worthy trade-off.
I am using an Olds case for the Holton, BTW. They are the same dimensions, but the valves are almost an inch closer to the player on the Holton. I think I want to try a Holton Collegiate cornet, too.
