Reflections on Telemann – Home Acoustics

A week has passed now since I posted my recording of Telemann’s Sonata in A minor for oboe and I have received kind compliments, thank you so much!

After listening to it over and over again, there are a few remarks that should be made:

1. Obviously, I still need more stability, especially on that 1st octave-key E-natural. My dynamics are inhibiting the tuning, but they are supposed to help each other out. I hope that a few more months of practice will take care of that. Although the hot humid weather did affect my reed, I cannot blame it nor my Lorée as both were definitely good enough for the task.
2. There are some very strange sound effects happening – on my word, I did not tweak the oboe part with software! – and a little acoustic analysis might help explain them.
3. As for stability of rhythm… yep, needs work… let’s just not talk about it!

Interpretation style:

The original Ensemble Arion.

Over 15 years ago, I had the immense privilege of being taught by 2½ members (the 3rd was a coach at a master-class) of the Ensemble Arion: one of Canada’s most pioneering ensembles that really ushered-in baroque performance practice on replicas of period instruments. These remarkable musicians, extraordinary teachers passionate about their work and simply really fine people flourished into what is now the Arion Baroque Orchestra.

The Ensemble Arion practiced one type of baroque interpretation they retrieved from their research-teachers in Europe during the 1970-80’s (I think it was this time). They emphasise the discordant notes and the rhythms in motion rather than the destination/resolution notes. They once said in a master-class that Baroque music savours the musical journey whereas Romantic music must emphasise the ends of phrases because they’re glad it’s over! Yes, they got huge laughter and applause!   This is how I approached the first and last movements in the sonata. The two middle movements sort of told me how they wanted to be played.

Home Acoustics: be careful!

In the few weeks preceding this recording, I had found that playing in the dining area gave a more living sound than cooped-up in my dry muffled studio. In my first few recordings, where I placed the microphones adds buzz and makes the sound ridiculously bright. But I found that as long as I keep it beside me, one microphone pointing at me, the other one backwards, then the recorded sound is truthful. However, the dining area (open to the kitchen, the entrance, the living room and even to the floors above and below) has its own quirks.

1. In the 2nd movement (especially), there are really parts that sound like 2 oboes are playing in unison.
2. There are places I moved my body closer to and farther away from the microphone in order to emphasise crescendi and diminuendi…. this backfired making the fortes sound muffled and the dolces sound harsh.

For the double-sound, I really think it has to do with the echo and the double-microphone (stereo) used by my recording device. Possibly (but I’m not certain), when compressing the stereo oboe track into a mono track to have the piano sound more to the left and the oboe sound more to the right, the software I used might have accentuated that echo that I did not hear when plugging my head-set into the recording device directly.

The first image shows where I chose to set-up my recording device. It is to the side of the oboe with one microphone pointing backwards because experimentation showed that this prevents buzz and gets the most realistic sound from my instrument. The two other images show potential sources of echo where the 2 microphones might have actually bee recording different sources.

The issue of the dynamics is much easier to explain: the microphones were lying flat on a table and I was standing very close to that table:

1. We naturally want to move closer to the microphone to make fortes stronger and move away to soften dolces. But the top image shows that in my setup, the exact opposite happened: turning towards meant the table blocked a lot of the sound and turning away meant the entire room bounces even more sound to the microphone.
2. When breathing-in, fully using the diaphragm and abdomen makes my back bellows which naturally curves me downwards. So the most powerful fortes puts my bell below the table… crescendo broken!

There are other issues: the microphone too far adds buzz to the sound, but too close gives a stuffy sound with all the key-clicks and other sounds the audience should not hear. So more experimentation with home acoustics is definitely required!

Engineering Oboe Players

Well over 5000 visits, now, from 58 countries!  

I wish I had something to present in order to toot my own horn, but these past few weeks have been rather busy and I've only begun to practice again last Saturday. 3 weeks absence is rooouuugh on the endurance!

Here are a few pictures of how I practice at lunch time in the truck. Last summer, before buying our vehicle, I did the same thing in a Nissan Versa: so it's not the size, but how you use it!

So instead of showing off something of my own, I'd like to pay a little tribute to you, my readers. That is, I don't know what characterizes my readership (you), but the blog is geared towards:

1. Oboe players (other instruments too, why not?)
2. who are probably doing something else in life and/or still in school
3. who must overcome hurdles to enjoy the wonderful thing which is practicing the oboe!

There are many oboists in situations like mine. Some play much more actively, some play even less than me. Some have no real trouble in life, some have much worse physical impediments than mine. Mostly, everyone contributes to society through their "day jobs" in a way that is made richer for being oboists. On the good ol' BBoard, I was surprised to see a good number of engineers and other non-musical professionals posting with lots of oboistic expertise. Some of their stories are on the BBoard. Some actually gained their engineering penchant by attacking oboe mechanical problems and improving reed making equipment.

... another odd thing is that it seems a whole lot of us are composers too! Yes, I compose, or used to: but that something for another time. For the purposes of this post, it seems that there is something inherently creative about the engineering personality which expresses itself as composition, when we don our composer's hat.

Which difficulty do you choose?

Whether you become an engineer or a nurse or or a teacher of English Literature or a financial consultant and so on, you have to devote years of harsh university training and certification. If you become an auto mechanic or a home contractor/renovator or a photographer, there is still training and certification involved (often ongoing) and to a great extent the safety of your clientele, their reputation and their comfort rests in your hands. Even garbage collectors and park cleaners have a huge impact on everyone’s enjoyment of life every day. To me, people who take their profession to heart are worthy people indeed.

Professional musicians must also devote years of their life training. The training is an enjoyable journey (I should hope so) but then they face an uphill battle for their livelihood: I know, I started up the path and quit! Although engineering was very hard for me because I didn’t have the talent for math and that kind of mental processes, finding a job was much easier once I got my degrees – so essentially, I traded one difficulty for another, but with an easier payoff in the end. What is really striking are the stories of people who have continued to play all through their alternate careers (e.g. engineering, nursing, government) and have been able, this way, to become as active as some professionals in their pre/retirement days. Many were fully trained at university (or equivalent) and almost none seem to regret the path they took.

Examples of how ordinary people use all the creative resources at their disposal to do some really amazing musical things. I can also mention a Registered Nurse who also suffers chronic pain and is, nonetheless, actually returning to music as means to earn her living. Same thing for a former government employee (now music teacher) who used to be sent to many countries in sometimes hostile situations as part of the job. I don't know if the oboe contributes or benefits from it, but these people (maybe you, now or later) are actually providing benefit to the world around whether they realize it or not. Hey, maybe there's hope for me yet!

In the meantime, thank you: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Cyprus, Ecuador, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Guam, Hong-Kong, Hungary, Italy, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Venezuela