Klarinet Archive - Posting 000174.txt from 2008/11

From: Oliver Seely <oseely@-----.edu>
Subj: Re: [kl] Alternatives to bassoon for a quintet?
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:37:35 -0500

No, that's right and cellists are wonderful people! 8-) If you have
the music in some music notation format, with a couple of keystrokes
you can transpose it for viola. That works pretty well, also. Bass
clarinet ought to work pretty well also -- again with a couple of keystrokes.

Music notation programs have changed my life from thinking that I'd
live and die without ever having had the chance to play some of the
world's great clarinet music. Now I do it every time I take out my
clarinet. And an unexpected bonus was that once I began to play
along with computer accompaniment, I couldn't stop, and I kept
getting better and better. Somehow the live musicians began to
appear here and there. When there was just one or two, like here at
the university where there is a French hornist in our Anthropology
department and a cellist in the library, we have all of those guys
who live in my little box. They are available night and day, they
never complain, they play exactly as I have commanded them --- and .
. . wait for it . . . their price is right.

The result is that I have begun to know a lot of live musicians which
have led to many sessions ONLY with live musicians. That's where the
power of music notation format REALLY comes into play because of the
ease of transposing things.

Finally, whereas I discover that playing along with the guys who live
in my little box, I am the WORST player in the group, when I get
together with live musicians, I'm the BEST. The irony of that offers
me great amusement.

Upward and onward!

Oliver

At 09:23 AM 11/13/2008, you wrote:
>So, earlier this year, I formed a woodwind quintet, and invited an
>oboe player from a local community band to join me. I quickly, and
>easily found a good horn and flutist to round out the set, and even
>found a good college-aged bassoon player who played with us for a
>short time, but had to leave because he graduated, and his instrument
>belonged to the school. I guess he wasn't terribly interested in
>playing with us anyway. So, only joined us a few times.
>
>So we've been without a bassoon player ever since then. The horn
>player has a friend who plays cello, and I told her to ask her to join
>us. In my (somewhat naive) mind, a cello player should be able to
>read bassoon music without any problems, since both are in the same
>key, and both read bass clef.
>
>Can't a cello player read bassoon music without any difficulty? Am I
>wrong in thinking this?
>
>
>--
>Curtis Bennett
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------

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