 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: S.Koumas
Date: 2000-06-19 22:27
I no this maybe be totally of the general subjects, but i thought it would be fun to ask!
Does anyone have a Favourite Key!?!
Mines Bb Major!
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Author: Kontragirl
Date: 2000-06-19 23:44
I like concert C major, concert F major, concert Bb major, and concert G major. The concert A scale is fun, but I don't like playing in that key.
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Author: Bob Gardner
Date: 2000-06-20 00:58
what is a concert C major, verse C major????????
Kontragirl wrote:
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I like concert C major, concert F major, concert Bb major, and concert G major. The concert A scale is fun, but I don't like playing in that key.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-06-20 01:24
Bob Gardner wrote:
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what is a concert C major, verse C major????????
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The clarinet is a transposing instrument. If you are using a standard Bb clarinet, you would have to play in the printed key of D major to get a concert key of C major. If you play a printed key of C, you will end up in the concert key of Bb major.
For several instruments, the printed key matches the concert key. Some of these instruments are flute, oboe and piano.
Lots of instruments are transposing instruments and not all transpose in the the same way. The alto and baritone saxes are Eb instruments. The tenor and bass saxes are Bb instruments. French horns and English horns are F instruments.
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Author: Bob Gardner
Date: 2000-06-20 02:20
Dee that is a great answer--but it's way over my head. I was a business major. Thanks for the answer.
My understanding is that if you play solo it is ok to play piano music in the key of c. However if you were to play with someone else then you would would have to transpose. Is this correct?
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-06-20 03:10
Bob, I'm not Dee but ...
If you're playing alone and want to play some piano music as written (not necessarily in the key of C, or course) - go right ahead. However, if you wanted to play <b>along</B> with someone playing the piano and you didn't have music written especially for a Bb clarinet you'd have to transpose: all the notes would have to be played up one whole step (if the piano plays C - you play D. If the piano plays B - you play C#).
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2000-06-20 12:18
Bob, when you play the note that has left hand thumb and first three fingers down, all other fingers up, you get the note B flat. This is the same B flat as if you play a B flat on a piano, guitar, flute or oboe. It is approximately 233 vibrations of the reed per second. Because this note is so easy to play, clarinetists call it C. This is calling it a name that is one whole tone too high. All the other notes on the clarinet have names which are one whole tone too high as well.
When you look at music written for clarinet and piano, the piano part will be written in the correct key, known as the concert key. The clarinet will use the clarinetists names for all the notes, so that when the pianist is playing a B flat, the clarinetist will be playing what he or she calls a C. This is why it is important to buy music which is arranged specifically for a clarinet.
Oboes and flutes don't do this thing of calling the notes different names from what they really are, so the oboist could play directly from the piano part. If you are unlucky enough to have to play something written for oboe and piano on your clarinet, you will have to see a B flat in the score, mentally shift it up by a tone and play a C. When you see an F#, you must mentally convert this and play a G#. This is known as transposing.
If you just want to play the oboe part without any piano accompaniment, you just play it as written. It will come out a whole tone lower than the composer intended, but that shouldn't be enough to worry anyone.
I hope this makes it clearer.
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Author: Bob Gardner
Date: 2000-06-20 13:52
One of my problems is that a lot of the music I want is not available for the clarinet. As a result I buy a lot of music books for piano/vocal/guitar. Then i TRY and play it as written.
One of the things I love about this group is that you get some great answers.
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Author: Donn
Date: 2000-06-20 16:12
Slightly off the subject, but I'm curious. How do pronounce your name?
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2000-06-20 16:29
Yes, Eoin, me too, I've tried [successfully] pronouncing all the vowels. Dee, somewhere you used the term ENharmonic, which is now more familiar [from my musical dictionary], and ?isnt there a slight difference between, say, C# and Db, leading to the tempered scales [prob. due to the use of the 12th root of 2?]. I doubt we want to subject our students to musical theory here, maybe a good reference [Grove's Dict. ?] would suffice for the curious. Comments?, Don
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Author: Bob Gardner
Date: 2000-06-20 16:32
since we are on your name -is it male or female?
What ever it is I like it.
Bob (male)
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-06-20 17:56
Don - I've got a link somewhere around here on tempered scales - if people use the "Search Sneezy" button that can find it.
But - yes, in untempered scales (which are actually more common than people think - they're "natural" scales"), the enharmonic notes (C3, Db, etc.) are different.
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Author: Eoin McAuley
Date: 2000-06-20 22:06
Firstly,
My name, Eoin, is pronounced "Owen", the same as saying the two letters, O. N. It is an Irish spelling of the name Owen. Both names are versions of the name John, Sean, Johann etc. Why does it start with an E? Because in true Irish pronunciation there's a sort of a "catch" in the throat before the O.
Secondly, in case you haven't guessed already, I'm male.
Thirdly, on the subject of enharmonics, the scale that we use and everyone has used since the time of Bach is the Equal Temperament Scale. In this, a semitone is exactly one twelfth of an octave and a whole tone is exactly two semitones. The "enharmonic" notes, for example C sharp and D flat are exactly the same. The natural scale used before the equal temperament scale used a different system where the do mi so chord had notes with frequencies in the ratio 4 5 6. An entire scale was built based on these ratios. In this system, there were a number of problems. The whole tone between do and re in a particular key (for example C and D in the key of C) was not the same as the whole tone between re and mi (D and E in the same key). These two whole tones, known as a major whole tone and a minor whole tone, were very close, but enough to be noticed. In particular, when you started modulating into nearby keys, for example going from C major to G major to D major, things started getting out of tune. One way around this problem did in fact result in F# being different from Gb, but even this didn't solve the problem. The equal temperament scale is the best for modern music because you can play equally in any key, although chords sound better in the natural diatonic scale.
I can go on at great length about this subject if anyone is interested.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2000-06-20 22:35
Eoin has already answered this pretty well. I'd just add that a group singing a capella will naturally drift back towards the Pythagorean type of tuning where C# and Db wouldn't be the same.
The Pythagorean tuning is built on the results of using the harmonics that result from changing the string length (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc). But this causes some problems. If you try to play in a key signature very different from the one that the instrument was built to, it is out of tune with itself. So modulating from key to key in a composition was tricky. One key would sound great and another terrible.
J.S. Bach was instrumental in developing and promoting the tuning we use now. His book "The Well Tempered Clavier" was intended to show the merit of the new tuning system. It shows how a keyboard instrument using this tuning can sound good in all keys and modulate from key to key.
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Author: paul
Date: 2000-06-20 22:57
In general terms, much of the history of tuning comes from tuning strings (voice, violin, piano, etc.). Okay, I can deal with it. I somewhat understand that if you tune an instrument absolutely perfectly to a modern tuning meter, you will get great clashes of bad tuning as you progress up the scale and to other octaves. I personally haven't done the math, but I've heard about it and heard it for myself, so I have an appreciation for this phenomenon. As I was told, you have to tune the notes to each other to let the notes in chords match up right, especially for strings (voice, violin, etc) or instruments that use strings (harp, piano, etc). The clarinet tunes internally on this same kind of philosophy, a series of compromises to make the notes fit together with each other, yet be flexible enough to be tunable to a meter on a note by note basis as needed. I don't know if I'm on the mark or not, but I heard once about tuning so you don't reach the "comma", in a simple sense, sort of like a point of no return. Can anyone talk more about this phenomenon in detail yet keep the terms down to earth for a novice like me to understand?
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2000-06-20 23:49
Most chamber groups will not play equal temperment; chords and harmony sound better when Pythagorean (perfect) tuning is used. If a keyboard is used then people are forced to use an eual tempering - except that most pianos are "stretch tuned" in one way or another so their harmonics will not be so out of tune.
It's never as easy as it seems :^)
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2000-06-21 07:47
paul wrote:
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... if you tune an instrument absolutely perfectly to a modern tuning meter, you will get great clashes of bad tuning as you progress up the scale and to other octaves
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No. The equal temperament scale is designed so that you get small clashes of tuning, and they don't get any worse as you go up the scale, change key or anything else.
If you play a C major scale in the equal temperament scale, you will find the F and G are almost exactly in tune with the C. Playing the notes together, they will sound well. They are actually slightly out, but the ear is not refined enough to hear it. There is only a difference of 2% of a semitone between these notes and the mathematically correct "perfect fourth" and "perfect fifth". The problem comes when you try to play C and E together. The equal temperament E is about 13% of a semitone sharper than the "perfect major third" which is the one that sounds right to the ear.
I believe that we of the western world have got used to this slightly sharp third since we have been brought up on the equal temperament scale since birth. I've heard it said that singers and string quartets revert to the just intonation diatonic scale when unaccompanied, but I've never seen any evidence of it.
The nice thing about equal temperament is that it never gets any worse than this. No matter what key you are in, the fourths and fifths are always exactly 2% of a semitone out of tune and the thirds are 13% out.
There were various attempts in the past to devise scales that got over the tuning problem. The most common were the Pythagorean scale and the Just Intonation scale. The Pythagorean scale is based on tuning G to be exactly in tune with C, then D is tuned to G, A is tuned to D and so on. This ends up that the fifths (do to sol) are all perfect but the thirds and other notes are wrong. This is the easiest way to tune a violin, harp etc. The Just intonation is based on tuning C E G to a perfect do mi sol chord, tuning G B D to another and F A G to a third, so that these thirds are exactly right. This is the so-called "natural" scale that singers are supposed to use. Unfortunately, D to A is not a perfect fifth, C to D is not the same as D to E and various other problems.
I think we should be happy that the equal temperament scale has been invented and we should stick to it.
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Author: Don Berger
Date: 2000-06-21 14:21
Wow, what a well informed discussion, makes me feel much like a sports time-keeper whose only contribution is to start the clock, I plan to copy it all and improve my education. TKS, Don
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Author: Lelia
Date: 2000-06-21 16:35
My digital keyboard (Yamaha Clavinova 811) can be tuned to several different systems, including Pythagorean, perfect meantone, Renaissance meantone, Werkprinzip (a Baroque system that I sure hope I'm spelling right!), equal temperament and a couple of others I've forgotten. I've messed around with early harpsichord music in the old scales. There really is an audible difference. I like the old scales *if* I re-tune the keyboard for each group of key signatures. In other words, if I tell the keyboard it's going to play in the key of C and A minor now, the individual notes are tuned a little differently than when I tell the keyboard it's going to play in, say, F major and D minor. The differences really sound striking the farther away I go from C. Setting the keyboard to play a C scale properly throws a G# scale so out of whack that it's unbearable -- and vice-verse! Yet the G# scale sounds better to me if I've tuned the keyboard for meantone in G# than if I use equal temperament. Those old tuning systems are the reason why many books of music, such as Couperin's harpsichord suites, are sets of short pieces all in the same close-together range of key signatures, so that the musician wouldn't have to re-tune the whole harpsichord between pieces. Yes, they really did re-tune the whole shebang to change keys, just as if the harpsichord were a harp. Life's a lot easier for string players, because they can "re-tune" just by moving their fingers a little bit up or down on a string.
The clarinet and other keyed wind instruments aren't really equal temperament instruments. They're as close to equal temperament (with a lot of compromises) as manufacturers can manage, given the limitation that we're using the same holes to play more than one note and that we can't move the holes around. I'll bet most people do as I do and "bend" the pitch here and there, to make notes sound right with the key signature, especially when it involves more than 4 flats or sharps. My clarinets sound *hideous* in the key of B, for instance, unless I do quite a bit of lip-adjusting.
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Author: cwisbeena
Date: 2000-06-25 04:19
i don't mean to go off even further from the original post ("what's your favorite key signature?" - cool where we ended up just the same though) but as soon as someone mentioned equal temperament (can't remember who it was now) my curiosity was piqued - my poppy's a piano tuner and he and i have talked about all this plus the harpsichord business quite a bit, and we always co-wondered, since neither of us has the gift/curse of perfect pitch and don't know all that much about it, what it's like for someone with it to listen to an instrument that's equally tempered vs. not - if they detect any difference??? this may turn out to be an embarassingly inane question, but i just couldn't help myself, and i hope someone will respond - thanks!
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2000-06-26 07:34
Perfect pitch consists of two things: an accurate sense of pitch, so that you can tell when two notes are in tune with each other or not, and a sense of absolute pitch, so that you know whether an entire orchestra is playing sharp or flat relative to the normal pitch. THe first of these is normal enough among musicians. The second is rare. It is reckoned to be a type of musical memory, in which you can remember a particular pitch for long periods of time even though you hear other pitches in the meantime.
The sound of an equal tempered scale really depends on the relative pitches of the notes, not the absolute ones so you don't need perfect pitch to be able hear the difference between it and a just intonation scale. Anyone with a good sense of relative pitch should be able to hear it.
My choir director has such a good control of the pitch of his singing, he can deliberately sing certain notes an eighth of a tone sharp when he's showing us how to sing, to encourage us to stop singing them flat!
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