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The Fine Song for Singing [message #40285]

Fri, 11 March 2011 21:08

b_twin_1
Messages: 2596
Registered: September 2008
Location: Victoria, Australia

Senior Member
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The Fine Song for Singing

I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel ~ Blackadder

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40286 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Fri, 11 March 2011 21:38

Bratsche
Messages: 269
Registered: October 2008
Location: Washington State, USA

Senior Member

Quote:

This is very hard on the stressed-out not-very-musical.

Robinnnn......to my way of thinking, you can no longer call yourself "not-very-musical". Maybe "not-as-musical-as-I-want-to-be-someday" or "not-as-musical-as<fill in the musician's name>" or some other sort of hedge. However, you are clearly loving singing (as well as various types of bell ringing) and continuing to get better and better at it. Make sure you give yourself some (more) credit for that!!

And congrats on taking advantage of your pocket pianist (how handy you found yourself one before you really needed him!). Are you willing to share which book he gave you to read?

Quote:

Or something else entirely, hiding behind injudicious use of accidentals.

One of the operas I've played (sorry, I don't remember which one) had zero sharps or flats in the key signature (for all 3 hours plus of music). Sounds ok, right? Until you look at the page and realize almost every note has an accidental on it. I'd so much rather have a key signature with lots of things in it than deal with that again.

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40289 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Fri, 11 March 2011 23:47

EMoon
Messages: 664
Registered: March 2009

Senior Member

Ever notice that composers who start in a sensible (i.e., no more than three flats or sharps at the most) key more often stay in it than ones who start in four or five flats or sharps?

You say you want to sing Britten...I hope you have better luck with him than I've had, because he makes my throat hurt. It's like singing with a mouthful of tacks. It's one of his, IIRC, that changes tempo every measure or so, and key every few measures, with handfuls of accidentals thrown in. Whereas Mendelssohn (for instance) is like sipping cream with a dribble of dark chocolate in it.

What I find hardest about the many-flatted/sharped keys is that then someone throws in accidentals, and I can't "hear" them as easily as I can in C. First I have to remember that something not usually a sharp or flat is one and then remember whether its natural is up or down. (Few things being as embarrassing as going up a half tone while the rest of the section goes down a half tone...unless the tenors happen to be on the note I just landed on.) That places an enormous load on my limited processing capability (just as German is doing now, with the Bach.)

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40290 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Sat, 12 March 2011 00:09

ScorpioMouse
Messages: 7
Registered: February 2011
Location: Virginia

Junior Member

I've never been brave enough to even attempt Britten. It SOUNDS like it feels like a mouthful of tacks, as EMoon says, though his orchestral work is really lovely and fascinating.

If you get into Britten, I can't imagine believing that you're not very musical anymore. I've done my best to be accommodating on this point so far, but...at that point, I think it's just a case of the song - much like the story - being much more beautiful in the mind than it is on the tongue. And I don't think that's something that ever should go away.

~ Mouse

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40291 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Sat, 12 March 2011 01:33

Diane in MN
Messages: 2731
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA

Senior Member

I'm glad that Peg II is going well--hopefully it produces a satisfying tiredness--and that the singing was not traumatic. As for the ringing,a broken bell rope in the course of practice sounds like more than excitement to me. Hit the sofa with dogs, books, and yarn. Frankly, that sounds wonderful!

_{"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich}

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40292 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Sat, 12 March 2011 03:06

Aniaj
Messages: 3
Registered: January 2010
Location: Reno, Nevada, United Stat...

Junior Member

I can't say I've sung much, but as a string player I much prefer sharps to flats. That said, when it gets to the point that there are so many flats or sharps in the key signature that it's just easier to try to remember what's natural, it's all a bit silly. I have yet to play anything in C-flat major that wouldn't sound equally good in B. Composers are just evil that way sometimes. And there are some these days that only list the key signature once in the beginning of the piece (instead of the normal beginning of the line) and it's you that has to remember three pages later what key to play in, and whether you missed a key change or it's supposed to sound that jarring.

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40293 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Sat, 12 March 2011 08:30

Mrs Redboots
Messages: 943
Registered: October 2008
Location: London, UK

Senior Member

Not a singer, so can't really empathise - you want my daughter for that (she is singing in a concert tonight)! But I am sure you did it wonderfully well, far better than it felt like.

What I want to know, though, is do you still play Fingerzilla on Pooka, or has the delights of virtual handbells rather eclipsed it.

Mrs Redboots
I love my computer because my friends live in it!

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40316 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Sun, 13 March 2011 12:50

MarytheBraider
Messages: 1
Registered: March 2011

Junior Member

Well-tempered tuning does not mean the universe doesn't exist. It just means that people are lazy, and don't want to retune claviers, pianos, etc.

Turns out several different folks created several different well-tempered tunings. Take a look at the picture of Bach's book on well-tempered tuning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier

See the doodle of swirls along the top? According to an NPR article last year, a piano tuner suddenly got the idea that the "doodle" was a visual depiction of the tuning, having to do with pulse frequencies. He tested it - and some of Bach's works that always sounded boring at best in modern tuning ... sparkled.

Yes, I'm a music geek.

But never attribute to non-existence what can easily be explained by laziness. Wink

Mary

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40319 is a reply to message #40316 ]

Sun, 13 March 2011 16:15

blondviolinist
Messages: 1069
Registered: October 2008
Location: Midwestern United States

Senior Member

MarytheBraider wrote on Sun, 13 March 2011 12:50

Mary

Kind of sort of, but not quite. Robin is right about physics *itself* being against proper tuning. You can have perfectly tuned fifths and octaves, or you can have beautiful tuned thirds and sixths, but you *cannot* have both in all key areas on piano or organ. The wave properties of sound *will not* allow it. (If you play a fretless stringed instrument, however, you can make the small adjustments needed to perfectly tune intervals. Hurrah for the violin family!)

(PS: the "Well-Tempered" Bach squiggles thing has been around for a while, and has been called into question. Scholars and specialists in Baroque music already knew about various Baroque styles of tuning before that. I'm sorry that NPR was in this case regurgitating out of date and somewhat incorrect information.)

"Purity of heart is to will one thing." Kirkegaard

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Re: The Fine Song for Singing [message #40324 is a reply to message #40285 ]

Sun, 13 March 2011 21:51

skating librarian
Messages: 571
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont

Senior Member

I went to a concert/lecture/demo of the Hardanger fiddle last night ... it has extra strings which work through sympathetic vibration (if I understood properly) and twenty different tunings. There's a lot I don't understand about music, but apparently in some parts of Norway folk beliefs have it that the stranger notes are effective at keeping evil beings away.

The music brought to mind the D'Aulaire's Book of Trolls and Nancy Farmer's Sea of Trolls. Haunting.

"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin

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