Re: Re: Scanning Music Redux


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Posted by Klaus on December 20, 2002 at 00:41:00:

In Reply to: Re: Scanning Music Redux posted by Chuck(G) on December 19, 2002 at 17:46:53:

You are selling yourself too cheap, Chuck!

You are a master in transformations, displacements, and interpretations, or whatever the term might be, of complicated mathematical and text-based entities. And you have the good fortune to have the foundation, that all instrumentalists should have: That of being a skilled pianist!

As an engineer you are trained in taking a fast assessment of any situation and then act from there.

Let's rule out whichever number of octaves to be displaced as any sort of transposition. There is a full identity but for some fingering and maybe embouchure matters. Already the old Greeks wrote on the octave problem. They found the similarities so much larger, than the differences between different octaves, that they had difficulties in defining the musical entity of the octave.

Farkas in his book advocated employing various clefs as a tool in transposition. One might think, that this recommendation was a result of the very thorough vocal training, that is an admirable part of the Hungarian school system.

My reading practises take the opposite road. As a youngster playing a Eb instrument, I was confronted with parts in G, F, E natural, Eb, D, C, and Bb basso. As often told of, I was too lazy (and my high school years so short in time), that I just started transposing on sight, skipping the transposition-on-paper-step after having written a few bars of a transposition to D.

There are two major transposition methods:

to read as is, and then hear the displacement interval

or

to move the notes the-called-for-interval in the reading process, and then play, what one reads.

I adhere to the latter method. Not because it is better per se, but because it suits my very visual way of thinking.

When I am confronted with clefs I don't work in often, then I call the C-alto clef "Horn in D" or "Horn in Db" depending on the key.

C-tenor clef is "Horn in Bb basso" or simply TC Bb baritone/euph.

When a trombone-tuba ensemble on a camp, where I only had brought my Conn 28D, ran short of a lead player, I played the BC part on the Bb side with the fingerings as used on my baritone.

There always (almost) is a smart trick to be applied as long we are talking of tonal music. It is when we as players can not follow the logic of the composer, that problems arise.

Klaus


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