Musical Interlude

Turns out you do bite.

Now that I've figured out how the embouchure is supposed to work I got a lot better at the Venova, fast. Lower two octaves more-or-less clean and with concentration I can get through the top of the second and into the third. Which isn't supposed to exist on the Venova, and is terribly out of tune on that instrument but anyhow.

Between work and trying to get more exercise and of course trying to get as many words on the page as possible I've had little time for practice, much less for composition.

Maybe that's why more music is slipping into the novel. It started as most things do in Discovery Writing. I wanted to do a take on a story I heard about Army musicians in Italy during World War II sneaking off base past the watchful MP's by pretending to be Italian. So I gave my character a little band geek background.

Turns out many of the fun musical terms that fit the scene (sound like language, are less known as musical terms, etc.) are the variety of bowing terms for the strings. And since I know a bit about violin myself...

Well, one thing led to another. I read a couple of accounts of a woman who survived in the water after falling off a cruise ship; she had kept her spirits up by singing show tunes. Given that my protagonist was in High School theater, she must have done a few musicals. So can at least sing a little. So again one thing led to another and she's singing in quite a few places now.

Plus there was already a scene planned (I started writing that one today) where a couple characters talk about some famous opera arias. No, my MC isn't singing any of those.

* * *

So at some point I'd like to revisit the thought about how experience on one instrument can help with another. I've realized it didn't, for me, start with the recorder. It started with whistling. I got used to breath control, shaping of the oral cavity for tone and pitch (which is necessary for trumpet), and a number of extended techniques; tonguing, vibrato and tremolo (don't get me started on that particular nomenclatural quagmire!)

Those translated to recorder, which adds overblowing and of course fingering. To which I added the extended techniques of diaphragm vibrato, flutter tongue, and chanter fingering. Which helped towards the faster fingering and accents of penny whistle, which also adds a more focused overblow to the necessary techniques.

The Venova isn't a Boem system woodwind. It is fingered like a recorder. So what it adds to the mix is embouchure and general reed control, as well as the care and feeding of reeds (Rico Select 2.0 for the moment).

I still want a practice space. Even better than that, more understanding neighbors so I could just pull out an instrument any time I felt like it and blow a few licks. Well...I guess my current neighborhood is a good excuse to get the new uke out of the case and spend more time with that.

Well, if there's fake books...

Been so tired at work lately I spend my breaks, well, breaking. Too tired and no concentration for practice. Well, got the violin up on my shoulder yesterday anyhow and that was a good thing. (Worked almost entirely on string crossings, silent reverses, and vibrato.)

But I've put aside any illusion that I'm going to be able to come up with the practice hours many people describe. (I'm still not convinced those are entirely useful hours. I think focusing on time spent is the wrong way to go about it; better to focus on the actual learning. The best thing time gives you is comfort and familiarity -- which is also the best anodyne to stage fright.)

At the end of the day, though, I'm Theater. I never got into this to play an instrument. I got into it to make music. The violin is a sound I want for compositions and I'll make use of what I can do and work around what I can't.



I have a good variety of tonal options now. I can't play any of them well, but since I emphasized breadth over depth I have a variety of techniques to employ. I can't play that clean but I can play expressively; it works okay if I'm recording the best take and tweaking it in the mix. I keep having the window shopping urge, though. There's always new accessories, of course. Finally found a plunger mute for my trumpet but want the pixie mute to go with it now (plus I'm starting to outgrow that starter horn). Need a strap for my electric uke but resisted the urge to buy effects pedals for it -- and resisted with more difficulty the urge to build effects pedals for it -- because Reaper is fast enough to do good basic effects in software with almost no lag.

And the sax -- rather, Yamaha Venova -- is coming along better than expected, enough that I am having a longing for a real, alto, sax.

But I have enough to create music. And I'm backing off from the trap of thinking I have to perform everything -- MIDI still has a place. As does collaboration. Drummer friend of mine is quite open to doing some drumming for me.

At a price. His trade is he wants me to perform with him. Incidental music for stage plays. Live.

Maybe I do need to increase those practice hours after all.

Switch

Single-reed is different.

It actually does require a certain amount of strength to focus the air and control the reed. I'm finally getting clean notes at the bottom of the scale but working it makes my mouth sore. It's right back to the first days of trumpet; you've got to build up those muscles.

The Venova; Yamaha's "Casual Musical Instrument." It's a saxophone that fingers like a recorder. Yeah...a plastic version of a woodwind instrument usually made out of brass.

As with the brass family, I've discovered with a degree of chagrin just how much the embouchure affects the pitch. You look at a trumpet, and you think with those buttons it should just go from one pitch to another. Nay. You can lip up or down nearly to the next note, and worse, you can force it to play outside of the usual harmonic series.

Woodwinds are worse. I'm tempted to blame Equal Temperament, but I think it is inherent in the mathematics of sound production. Yamaha openly admits that several of the notes are compromises; they will play sharp or flat and there's no alternate fingering that fixes it. You can try to half-hole them, or you can lip them (which changes the tone).

Apparently on a real saxophone there are extra keys for just these sorts of problems, plus yet another set of keys to make certain transitions easier (for trills, say).

But I have to say, even within the chromatic scale there are problems. The top of the first octave plays terribly flat if I don't blow it up, notes past about the fifth of the second octave are difficult to reach, and the lowest two notes of the chromatic scale (the ones with the keys on them) squawk badly and have trouble settling in.

Some of that is just the sax. Apparently the lowest notes are always a pain this way, and opening up the top octave is the same as with the brass family; strengthen your embouchure and eventually you get there. But some of that has to be this peculiar little instrument itself. It is an interesting acoustic experiment, folding the length of a soprano sax to where you can mostly stop holes instead of manipulating an assemblage of rods and valves. So it is cheap and travels well. And it sounds...okay.

So will I, in time. I'm just about where I can get through a tune without squawking.

Thank You, Jeeves

I broke down and added a Venova, Yamaha's "Casual Musical Instrument," to my collection. Since it is a soprano saxophone that fingers like a recorder, you could by a stretch call it a kind of recorder. Just as the Vorson electric guitar and the Kala Ubass (and the Baroquelele that I tried to get a first-hand look at over at Lark in the Morning) are technically ukuleles.

The Venova is also my first single-reed. (My bombarde is a double reed, like an oboe, and so is the crumhorn although in that case it is a reed cap instrument and your lips aren't in contact with the reed). A Rico 2.0 reed, at the moment. The Venova ships with a plastic reed but it is stiff and hard-playing and doesn't sound as good, so I slipped a real cane reed into my mpc right away.

(Yes, I'm already starting to talk sax. They never write "mouthpiece" all the way out.)

From squawk to "that sorta sounds like an instrument" was about an hour on this one. At the moment I'm balancing the needs of tone and range over the needs of not having the neighbors bang on my door; it is actually fairly easy to play softly and I do like the tone with that kind of embouchure but the range is constricted; bottom two notes are rough and I can only get a few notes into the second octave.

Why is another question, one I'm really starting to obsess over. I have yet to get my keyboard arranged so I can start using it again. I have lots of musical thoughts but I'm not really writing or recording anything. It is just endless practice. Practice which keeps underlining how much of an amateur I am and am likely to remain.

Which is maybe why. I can't play an instrument well enough to carry a performance with just that. So instead I'm orchestrating -- and for that, it is nice to have a good pallet of colors.

(The fact that I'm trying to play these all live now, instead of doing them with MIDI...well, that's another issue.)

Musician-Shaped Objects

I've decided it makes no sense to hold a single position on cheap musical instruments. The reason is, there's not one kind of musician.



I sort of have a hard time going into the headspace of a band student now.

(I wish I'd done band as a child. The practice, the skilled instruction, but more than that, playing with other people, playing what you are handed, playing when required. The chance to get real-world performance chops and the exposure to so much of the standard literature. Learning on your own, it is too easy to be a two-trick pony; to learn just enough to get by on whatever it is you are currently interested in.)

In any case, band is demanding. You need an instrument that can stand up to constant use. You need one that meets standards; you can't chart around the weaknesses of a bad instrument. And you need one that is made of good materials with standard fittings so when the inevitable breakage occurs it can be repaired.

The learning process of a student is different. You are learning everything at once; musical ear, notation, pitch relationships, rhythmic sensibility, and -- assuming you are young enough -- the basics of fine motor control.

The student needs a decent instrument. They don't have the experience or the leeway to be struggling with their own instrument. So no cheap instruments. Not even used instruments -- unless you can afford to take it to a professional and get it repaired tuned and properly setup. So rental from a company that does rentals, or put down the money for a decent student instrument from a name brand. Anything else is a disservice to the student -- and to their instructor and their bandmates.

For this market, the hundred-dollar Big Box instruments are a disservice, no, worse, a trap, and can not be sufficiently condemned.



And then there's the other musicians. I'm going to leave aside the professional gigging musician, because that isn't a group who has a need to shop for low-priced instruments.

Instead I mean everyone from the fifty-bucks-a-service pit musician or the pick-up band or the home recordist. People who aren't making a living at it, and don't see themselves on the career path to a chair in a regional symphony orchestra.

For these people this is a golden age; used instruments, cheap instruments, experimental instruments. They move in an environment that is open to experimentation and flexible about what can and can't be achieved. It won't blow the second octave? Rewrite the part. Out of tune? Fix it in the mix. A key fell off? Glue or the appropriate fixit skill. The whole instrument fell apart? Well, then it was a noble experiment and it isn't like they have to have one for class in the morning.




The latest to catch my eye is the Yamaha Venova. Billed as a "Casual Wind Instrument" it is planted as a weird cross between a student saxophone and the kind of ABS recorder found in every classroom. It is pitched as a soprano sax and more-or-less sounds like one but has very few keys; most of the holes are played with the bare finger, just like on recorder. It is even designed so with one quick adjustment it is fingered recorder-style.

It is of a folded-pipe design and to give it an even more space-age appearance there is a weird funnel-like extension. Although it is a cylindrical bore instrument, the extension changes the harmonic series and makes it overblow at the octave like a sax. Interestingly enough, if you stopper the extension, it sounds like a clarinet...just a clarinet that won't play in pitch (as the keys no longer line up with the harmonic series).




Truthfully, I don't know if "experimental" (or should you call them "novelty") instruments are cheaper because of intrinsic qualities (the electric ukulele, for instance, has only four string and is smaller than a guitar, meaning less material) or because they haven't been accepted widely enough. I suspect the latter, because Ubasses are coming out now that cost several times what the first crop did.

What I do know is these are new enough to bypass the "academy" thinking that swarms around established instruments. What I said above about the student versus the adult amateur stands, but I've found a great many people don't understand or can't accept the later group. They get almost angry about anyone who won't get a proper instrument and sit down in proper classes -- with the unsaid expectation of playing semi-professionally ten, twenty years down the road.

Some people can throw every waking hour and every spare dollar into their hobby. Most of us don't. There is music to be had outside of the standard path. And for those on that path, even the instrument-shaped object takes on a very different shape.

I still think you are better off with a used instrument or an experimental instrument, but if you have sufficient skills and the fortitude to stomach blowing a few hundred bucks on something that doesn't work at all, they have their place. That said, most of mine are modded now, making them more experimental than cheap.



Oh, yeah. And the adult beginner?  I mean, a true beginner to performance? Your path should look more like the band student's path. Except as an adult you need (and can afford, both mentally and financially, an accelerated profile). Rent a decent student instrument. Hire a one-on-one instructor. You don't have the luxury of endless rote practice time and you don't have the background to hack it alone. And you, too, should stay away from those damned ISOs.