Jazzy Classy

100 thousand visits! ALL RIGHT! Other very successful blogs also mention how people like to read how difficulties and frustrations are shared by everyone… and how perseverance really pays off! I think this post will confirm that pushing on in the enjoyment of music resulted in pretty good progress.	Baroque and Blue	100 mille visites! SENSASS! D’autres blogues bien suivis mentionnent aussi combien le monde aime lire que leurs obstacles sont partagés … et combien ça vaut la peine de persévérer! Je crois que cet article confirmera qu’avoir poussé dans l’amour de la musique aura montré un progrès véritable.
I started practicing this last summer. I wanted to post it for Christmas, because Baroque and Blue is so playful and Irlandaise has the famous Chrismtas tune in it: a very comforting fire-side kind of feeling. It took me this long to get it ready, not just because of hectic work hours – those returned to normal after January – but also because my Tai-Chi is taking a more important role in my life and a few other home things. But in the end, it’s mostly about I wanted to do the best job I possibly could on these ones. Getting the sound right in the recording, mixing the trio MP3, my small-room track and the video take sure is a challenge…	Irlandaise	J’ai commencé à travailler ces pièces l’été dernier. Je voulais les enregistrer pour Noël, parce que Baroque and Blue est si joyeux et Irlandaise est un cantique de Noël si bien connu: sentiment chaleureux auprès du foyer. Ça m’a pris si longtemps les préparer, pas juste parce que le boulot empiète – les heures sont retournées à la normale après janvier – mais aussi parce que le Tai-Chi prend un rôle plus imoprtant dans ma vie et quelques autres histoires. Mais à la fin de l’histoire, je voulais faire de mon mieux dans ces enregistrements. Produire un timbre vraisemblable entre le MP3 du trio jazz, mon enregistrement de petite chambre et la vidéo présente un véritable défi…
Hommage to Jean-Pierre Rampal The original recordings by Jean-Pierre Rampal and the Claude Bolling Trio have been very special to me since my first years as a music student. Now, you’ll understand that having been raised in my teens and young adulthood on musicians with this kind of expressiveness, on many different instruments, I really cannot accept anything less from oboists. I never thought these pieces could sound well on anything other than the flute, but when I got the sheet music, just for laughs, I found them too much fun to resist! They are really challenging for the altissimo register, but that’s just part of the thrill!	Rampal & Bolling : Château de Versailles!	Homage à Jean-Pierre Rampal Les enregistrements originaux par Jean-Piere et le trio Claude Bolling me sont restés très chers depuis mes premières années en musique. Vous comprendrez maintenant qu’avoir été exposé, comme adolescent et jeune adulte, à des musiciens avec tant d’expressivité et sur toutes sortes d’instruments, je ne peux guère accepter moins du hautbois. Je n’ai jamais cru que ces pièces pouvaient bien sonner sur autre chose que la flûte, mais quand j’ai acheté la partition, juste pour rire, je les ai trouvés irrésistibles! Elles sont tout un défi pour le sur-aigü, mais ça fait parti de l’aventure!

Endurance at 30 minutes à l’endurance.

45 thousand blog visits from 90 countries! I consider this to be an Olympian feat in itself! I can only thank everyone for your interest! GO CANADA AT LONDON 2012! I’m not usually a sports fan, but I like the idea of the Olympic games. Moreover, they focus on many sports we do not usually see as part of prime-time TV athletics! The goals of the Olympian athlete is summarised in the words “faster, farter, stronger”. That makes this post very well suited to the beginning of the games. Most of last year, I complained that endurance was low. I wasn’t sure if practicing 30 minutes a day would be enough to build enough endurance to play in concert, let alone a full solo recital. Well, I’m ecstatic to say that, with time, it is!

Really demanding repertoire on endurance!

45 mille visites au blogue venant de 90 pays! Je considère ceci un exploit olympien en soi! Je ne peux qu’exprimer ma joie à vous tous pour votre intérêt! VAS-Y CANADA À LONDRES 2012! Je ne suis pas un amateur de sports, mais quand il s’agit des Olympiades, mon fusil change d’épaule! Surtout qu’on y voit des sports habituellement absents de la télé. Les mots qui décrivent l’horizon olimpique sont “plus vite, plus loin, plus fort”. Cet article coïncide donc très bien avec le début des jeux de 2012! Durant l’année passée, je me suis plaint d’une faible endurance. Je doutais que 30 minutes par jour soit assez pour bâtir l’endurance nécessaire à un concert, sans espérer un récital solo. Mais en voici la preuve!

This video presents 4 impressionist tunes (OK, perhaps not by definition, but the style is right). One year ago, I could not have hoped to attempt recording Vocalise, let alone all 4 of these. And that’s not all, to put the video together, I had to record about a dozen takes of the entire suite (video and audio)! I did this in one day with no trouble at all! I’ll reserve a critique of this video for the next post. Now that the video is complete, I believe this is the most difficult repertoire I have ever played – ever! The rhythms are easy, the notes are mostly very comfortable, but the gentle articulation, sustained over entire pieces, was really the most difficult thing I have ever had to practice.	Cette vidéo présente 4 pièces impressionnistes (enfin, pas par définition, mais le style y va). Il y a un an, je n’aurais pas pu considérer enregistrer vocalise, encore moins tous les 4. Mais encore mieux, pour assembler la vidéo, j’ai dû faire plus d’une douzaine de prises entières, une après l'autre (vidéo et audio)! J’ai fait tout ceci dans un seul jour sans aucun ennui! J’en ferai la critique au prochain article. Maintenant que la vidéo est faite, je crois que c’est le répertoire le plus difficile que je n’ai jamais joué! Les rythmes sont faciles, les notes très confortables, mais l’articulation si douce, soutenue le long des pièces entières fut vraiment le travail le plus rigoureux de mon expérience!
Bad weather, bad oboe, bad me? I would like to blame the flaws in sound on the weather or an instrument with unstable tuning in this recording, but the truth is, I just don’t know. For sure, my reeds last week didn’t really crow, they quacked! They would crow after a few minutes of playing…. but still not the ideal raven (not even a blue-jay!): this is definitely weather! But I cannot know if another instrument with legendary reputation or new amazing technology would really make my tuning and sound more stable. The only way to determine this would be to try other instruments in bad weather conditions with quacking reeds! Either way, a competent musician is supposed to compensate and play well regardless. The question is then, with my 30 minutes a day and with this instrument, am I progressing adequately?	Ennuis de météo, d’instrument ou de moi? J’aimerais bien accuser l’instrument ou la météo pour les défaillances de justesse dans cette vidéo, mais en toute honnêteté, je ne sais pas c’en est le cas. Sans aucun doute, la semaine dernière, le cri de mes anches faisaient plus un canard qu’un corbeau… au moins si c’était un geai-bleu! Ceci est absolument et sans conteste la météo! Mais je ne peut pas savoir si un autre instrument avec réputation légendaire ou technologie de pointe pourrait faciliter la stabilité et le timbre. La seule façon de le déterminer serait d’essayer de tels instruments quand la météo fait de mes anches des appeaux de canard! De toute manière, un musicien compétent doit compenser et bien jouer. La question demeure, à 30 minutes par jour sur cet instrument, mon progrès est-il adéquat?
Lessons Learned: This production consisted of capturing video through a web-cam connected to my lap-top and sound separately on my recording device. This caused as many problems as possibilities. I was very lucky to meet a real expert in home-recording () who will help me in the weeks to comes with the next recording. Solutions will require more experimentation, other blog posts, but in the meantime, a list for thought: My microphone & room layout is all wrong! This required more noise reduction after the recording. Put together, the sound is not natural. Synchronizing audio and video is really difficult and long! Extra “takes” make it even harder, because note lengths are never the same!	Leçons apprises: Cette production consiste de vidéo capté par web-cam et la prise de son sur une enregistreuse externe, rassemblé et corrigé par la suite par logiciel. Je suis chanceux d’avoir rencontré un expert en enregistrement à domicile () qui m’aidera avec mon prochain enregistrement. Les solutions demandront plus d’expérimentation, mais entretemps, à considérer: L’emplacement du micro vis-à-vis la salle était complètement dingue! Ceci a exigé plus de réduction de bruit par logiciel. Tout considéré, le son n’est pas naturel. Synchroniser vidéo et audio s’est montré plus difficile et long qu’à l’habitude! Les prises répétées ont rendu la tâche plus ardue parce que la fin des notes n’ont jamais la même longueur!

Reed Season! – New Repertoire.

Physical update first:

Because my physiotherapist is on vacation, I’m actually skipping a month of treatments. Increased activity at the gym is a mixed blessing: I do feel generally more awake, but I do get extra sore the morning after. Every fitness and therapy person I speak to agree that it’s a matter of doing too much too fast. Right now, I can’t do much in the pool and too much time in the hot tub appears to seize my neck muscles resulting in passing headaches and pinched nerves.

Oboe-wise: my fingers are feeling great! I don’t get the fatigue and the soreness in the fingers themselves anymore (“Mashala”, as they say: “God made it so!”). These past few days, however, I’ve been getting those twinges in the forearm and shoulder that remind me of tendonitis. They are not tendonitis, I’m sure, but either a pinched nerve in the neck or a few tight muscles. I know this for sure because my fingers are playing just as smoothly as they have in these past few months, which is more than ever in my best days.

Reed Season:

I’m starting to think that there is something special about the end-of-summer / beginning-of-autumn season for reeds. In the past couple of weeks, my reeds have been much easier to make than usual and showing clearly if they are good or bad; that is, a bad reed shows it has no hope so I can break it without regret and the good ones clearly show what they need to become their best. My reeds have also been sounding generally better than usual…. that is, they can sound bright or dark, but there is no doubt as to their character.

I have recently made excellent reeds on rainy days, so the notion of sunny days are necessary to making good reeds is now demolished. However, this is pretty much the opposite season to February, which typically gives the worst sounding and behaving reeds. So I think the notion of seasons and climate is well evidenced.

New Repertoire: copy-cat or comparison?

I received a shipment of Music Minus One (MMO) material last week. I got some really good baroque repertoire for oboe, recorder and flute (that will all be played on the oboe) and discovered a baroque composer I did not know before: Veracini. I also got some straight-forward jazz and Brazilian repertoire for flute. These will be interesting because they really use the high register of the flute. I will need to practice note in the following range:

Telemann, Son. G-Dur mvt.1

Included in that shipment is a collection of Telemann duets for flute with no continuo. The MMO CD has a flutist playing flute 2, but the sheet music has both parts. I thought it might be nice to record some of these with the flute on CD and with myself playing both parts. By Murphy’s law, someone had done this and posted it on the BBoard! That someone is Craig Matovich, whom I respect quite a lot as an oboist and as a person: we disagree on some aspects of reed making and tooling, play very differently, but we share many ideals including:

1. 

   Telemann, Son. G-Dur mvt.2
   Pursuing oboe performance for the sheer joy of it to spite any difficulties.
2. Using technology as an ensemble when we can’t get people to play with.
3. Sharing our experience in the hopes it benefits and/or encourages others.
4. Exploring classical, world-folk, jazzy and fusion of musical styles.
5. 

   Telemann, Son. G-Dur mvt.3
   The love of music and life overall and hope for peace, understanding and caring in the world.

I had intended to work on another sonata, but Craig agreed that it might be interesting to compare the same work with our different sounds and styles. I personally think he did a remarkable set of recordings. So while I prepare for mine, here they are his. His knowledge, experience and tooling (hardware and software) are far superior to mine, but still accessible to the amateur home-producer.

Mental obstacles to technique

Reading through these have been very enlightening in terms of how my body reacts to technical passages. I know from my old repertoire that my technical abilities are decent… for example, I have shown in a previous post that I can paly Telemann sonatas well enough. But when I read a new Telemann piece that is of equal technical skill, I fail miserably. I observed that my mistakes mostly come from 2 mental processes:

1. Expecting notes and rhythms that are not actually what is written.
2. Not knowing what to expect and therefore fumbling at every note grouping.

So, improving technique for me, at least in baroque repertoire, is essentially training the mind more than the fingers. I have to see if the same is true with Saint-Saëns, Poulenc and others.

video #2, recording #4 - MIDI Accompaniment and Faith in Music

Well over 8000 visitors: BRAVISSIMO! 65 countries: AUSGESEICHNET! To honour all you visitors, I will keep the list of countries in another tab. Eventually, I will put your flags next to your country’s name.

Blog: over 6 months

I started this blog for 2 reasons:

1. to track my progress as I attempt to regain my former skills on the oboe, now that I am a software engineer living with chronic pain;
2. to communicate with people of all descriptions and, hopefully, encourage others in similar situations to mine.

Interestingly, Blogger Statistics shows me that people actually get here by Google Searching topics which include:

1. oboe reed cases (the single most popular post by far),
2. MIDI accompaniment and sound recording techniques,
3. general oboe playing topics,
4. IMS and physiotherapy concerns,
5. playing with an extracted tooth!

I wish to express my gratitude to all of you for taking the time and making the effort to visit here. I really enjoy when people leave comments or send e-mails. All contact with people from several continents and from home is a real treat and I hope the favour is returned!

2nd video:

O Souverain: oboe & MIDI orchestra

Apart from a few sagging notes, undecided phrasing here and there and a bit of hasty rhythm (all predicted in this previous post), pretty good improvement in 4 months, if I may say so myself! If this trend continues, in a year, I should be a decent player again. My apologies for the bad picture quality: I have a lot to learn about lighting… nah, I’d rather spend my time practicing oboe! On the other hand, I really should have spent more time on the MIDI accompaniment…

A cute thing about making recordings at home is that I have to contend with my dogs not understanding that silence is more important than the cat running on the other side of the street! But, how can I get angry at such a cute little thing? ( Dogs are great! I truly love them! ) I could have just cut-out my interjection “Popcorn Down!”, but you see my mouth moving in the video….. and because the opening recitativo is never played at the same speed, it’s really hard to use the video from one take with the sound-track of another!

One thing that really amazes me is how much the choice of speakers and/or head-phones (ear-buds) change the quality of my oboe sound. On my real sound system, it sounds like I hear it when playing, also true on my desktop computer and an old head-set that came with a waterproof Sony Walkman tape-cassette player! But the high-quality new Sony ear-buds I just got or my lap-top speakers…. much brighter and a little buzzier.

MIDI accompaniment AND multi-tracking.

This is not the first time I use MIDI as accompaniment for a recording, but I’m glad to have found a file ready-made with dynamic expression already included. I’ll add links to MIDI sources and free sheet music to my page on great places as I come across them. I did use software to add some orchestration a little bit, but thankfully, most of the work was already done for me (thank you Aria-Database!). For this recording, I had to “clean up” the MIDI file before it could play well with instrumentation other than the piano. The only dynamics are done by adding or removing instruments and there is no rubato apart from the opening recitativo. I found it curious that playing the file without rubato or dynamics at all still conveyed an inspiring quality. I guess this is the evidence of an extraordinary composition.

Music is faith… in my point of view!

Ô Souverain, sung by Ben Heppner.

I must have already mentioned that I consider music to be more than an art form, more than a mathematical equation; in fact, I consider it a full-fledged expression of the living soul. I consider music to be the closest direct language of Divinity that humans are capable of understanding. Some songs, a small handful, seem to speak to my soul very directly and stir something that I cannot describe in terms of emotion or psychology. In fact, I don’t even understand what effect they produce, only that I can’t sing them because my throat gets a lump! “Ô Souverain” is one of these.

Music, greater than song!

I believe that songs are music with a handicap; that is, because words convey a clear meaning, they severely limit the potential panorama that we can experience from a melody is restricted to the meaning of the words. Some melodies, however, seem taylor-made for the words. These songs usually loose much when they are translated. In the case of O Souverain, the link between French words and the melody is so strong that I would play it with one pattern of dynamic phrasing and articulation, but would be disappointed when playing back the recording. When putting the words back on the notes, it became clear why my phrasing was wrong.

I’m really not a fan of opera, but I have to admit, Jules Massenet wrote an powerful song as part of his opera Le Cid. It might be an overstatement, but Radio hosts have said that the Metropolitan Opera would not have been able, at the time, to perform Wagner without Ben Heppner. So it is a privilege for me to include a You-Tube of this amazing Canadian Tenor. The performance I give does not follow his style. Apart from the fact that I play the oboe in my study rather than singing at the Met, one of the the miracles of music is that it speaks differently to everyone with a Cartesian product of different messages from each performer and at each performance.

I usually consider lyrics to severely restrict the meaning of music. But some melodies seem custom tailored around words that are especially meaningful on their own right:this song is one of them. Translation is a very difficult thing because a language is much more than a vocabulary and grammar, it is a whole mind-frame  and worldview; it reflects the deepest characteristics of the culture that uses it in the unique way it uses it. So here is the original French and my best attempt to translate it.

Ah! tout est bien fini. Mon beau rêve de gloire, mes rêves de bonheur s'envolent à jamais! Tu m'as pris mon amour, tu me prends la victoire, Seigneur, je me soumets!	Ah! It's all over now. My wondrous plans of glory, my beautiful dreams of happiness are all now dust in the wind! You have taken my love, You now take my victory, O Lord, I do submit.
Ô souverain, ô juge, ô père, toujours voilé, présent toujours, je t'adorais au temps prospère, et te bénis aux sombres jours. Je vais où ta loi me réclame, libre de tous regrets humains.	O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father always veiled, always present, I adored you in prosperous times and bless you still in troubled days. I go where your law commands, free from all human regrets.
Ô souverain, ô juge, ô père, ta seule image est dans mon âme que je remets entre tes mains.	O Sovereign, O Judge O Father, Your image alone fills my soul which I commend into your hands.
Ô firmament azur, lumière, esprits d'en haut, penchés sur moi, c'est le soldat que désespère, mais le chrétien garde sa foi. Tu peux venir, tu peux paraître, aurore du jour éternel.	O Firmament, azure blue light, Spirits on High leaning over me, it is the soldier that despairs but the Christian keeps his faith. You can come, you can appear dawn of the eternal day.
Ô souverain, ô juge, ô père! Le serviteur d'un juste maître répond sans crainte à ton appel, ô souverain, ô juge, ô père!	O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father! The servant of a just Master answers your call without fear. O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father!

Piano with computer AT LAST! … and melting reeds!

I finally got my laptop to communicate with my Yamaha Clavinova (CLP-150) . I did so by installing a 2nd operating system on my computer (Ubuntu Studio) . For those who don’t know about dual-booting: I can use either Windows 7 or Linux (Ubuntu) on the same machine . With a powerful computer, you can even use both operating systems at the same time (I do that at work)…

The great advantage of Ubuntu Studio over other Linux distributions is that the most important “behind the curtains” packages are already included. For instance, because MIDI is an international standard (decades old), it has a module that detects MIDI connections and allows you to connect them to your performance/recording/printing software. This is how I only needed to plug-in my Piano and “ta-da!” it works: no drivers no nothing! If you have ever tried to install hardware drivers on Windows, you’ll appreciate the value of this. But more still (for frustrated Windows users), booting up and shutting down are lightning fast and the updates hardly ever require restarting the computer…. they certainly don’t shut down the computer when you’re turning it on for a presentation! And for those who really know how to use the operating system, program crashes don’t break anything else!… really not as easy on Windows.Linux is what I use at my job: it’s built solid, dependable and fast. Any task (any at all) you do on Windows or on a Mac can be done on Linux.

Unfortunately, the really powerful (and expensive) software is for Mac or Windows. Ubuntu studio comes with a selection of programs for recording, composing and so on and you can easily get some much better ones (all for free – legally! ). However, almost all programs can export/import in MIDI format, which means the heavy work can be done on the big programs in Windows and the performance and recording work can be done in Linux using the same files!

I still have a bit of trouble getting these files to make the piano play and record what I play on the piano directly to a musical score writer. But that should not be too hard to figure out: the really aggravating part is getting the computer and the piano to communicate: as I said, completely automatic in Ubuntu Studio.

Dog days for oboe reeds…. a bit early this year.

In an earlier post, I mentioned how cool dry weather can ruin reeds. Well, hot muggy weather is not any better! Reeds that were playing well enough have now “melted”: they don’t respond until I blow hard, but if I blow harder, they also want to stop playing!

Some reeds do play well, those that were made with hard cane. They are hard to play, but they are responsive and they do allow for a good dynamic range… they are just murder on endurance. The fantastic reeds from a few weeks ago are still playing very well… but you know what? I think I’ll save those and protect them from potential aggravation!

Overdoing it & Recording Practice Sessions

Stuff going on this weekend, so pictures of the sides of my reeds comparing “manual” alignment with the Cane Guide will have to wait ‘till next week.

It’s been about a year now since I started lunch-time practicing with my fixed-up (almost) 1921 Pan-American beginner model and sent my Lorée to get revoiced in NY. I suppose my next You-Tube video should commemorate that milestone. I got the Lorée back at the end of June or beginning of July, so I still have time to get in better shape.

Update on physical progress.

No treatment this week. The weather was pretty sunny all last week, this week is turning to rain again. When the weather gets sunny, I get sore, when it gets cloudy/rainy, I get tired. But I’m doing much better than expected: yesterday the software development team spent the afternoon merging source-code all gathered around someone else’s computer. The twists and contortions I had to do to read his very small fonts should have given me a monster headache, but no, I’m doing fine! In fact, not even any Saturday morning headache. So the IMS treatments are evidently working.

(Not) Waving for the Camera

Musical, not physical expression.

In a previous post, I discussed how swinging the body while playing might help or hinder the expressive qualities of playing. My conclusion was that too much is distracting and completely stiff is boring. I also opened the question that perhaps body motion aids in phrasing.

Well, consider this video, one of my favourite pop songs of all time. I have never seen a band with fewer stage stunts … but close your eyes and just listen: there’s no denying the power and depth of their musical presence!

Can “expressiveness” be overdone?

I consider two kinds of dynamic expression: short expressions and long phrasing. The long phrasing is what we spend most of our years perfecting, the short expressions are anywhere from one to maybe 6 notes long, but describe our personal style and our understanding of how the particular style (baroque, classical, tango etc.) speaks.

Swelling notes, but not too much.

I’ve been recording my practice sessions lately, and I wonder if I’m not going to far in my dynamics. The long phrasing is fine, but the short expressions will go from a true pp to a true ff in a matter of one beat. When I just write/say that, it might sound like a dream come true for the oboe, but when I record myself and play it back, I’m not so sure anymore. Then again, I need to play with the microphone and computer “gain” (sensitivity) settings and their positioning: this changes the way the recording ends-up sounding quite a lot!

When I listen to my hero Albrecht Mayer playing what could go berzerk with dynamics, I find his playing much more tame than I would expect, but full of energy and vigour nonetheless!

Computer Aided Practice Recording.

More and more, I’ve been using the computer to record my practice sessions. I’m finding it downright revealing!  Using the free and powerful software Audacity, I recorded the piano accompaniment on one track. Every time I press the record button, a new track is added while playing all the tracks already there so I can hear the piano while recording. Previous tracks of my own performances can be muted one at a time or all together. This way I can compare the different performances and verify the progress.

One REAL test for tuning is to play along with one of my previous tracks or have 2 of my tracks play together… OUCH! When playing this way, I am forced to adjust to the “other oboe”: nothing says that the “other oboe” is in tune , but there is an old saying in musical performance: “If the other guy is out of tune, it’s my fault!” [for not compensating]. This is much more difficult than playing with other instruments.

Getting the piano part is not too difficult, it requires a CD or any kind of computer file where the piano was recorded. A CD can be “ripped” with free programs such as WinLame and each tune or movement becomes a separate MP3 file. In all formats of recorded performance (actual sound file), just drag-and-drop the file onto Audacity and a new track is made for it. If you have a MIDI file, it can be converted into an actual sound file with other free software such as SUPER.

First Video: Musical Offering to #BachChat

45 Countries have visited my blog for a total of over 3 500 visits!  

The bottom of this page has the list: please let me know if I missed yours!

The Twitter event #BachChat is on Monday, but I'm getting a wisdom tooth pulled out on Friday: I won't be able to play for at least 2 weeks after that. I will spend my "practice time", during those 2 weeks, gouging cane, shaping cane and tying reeds.... I'll get to try out that new Cane Guide gadget.

So I had to hurry-up and get my video together on the weekend and today. This is the 3d movement from Bach's Sonata for Flute in E minor BWV 1034.

First “public appearance” in about 15 years!

I call it "le corps humain" (the human body) because it was the theme song and background music for a documentary series (named "Le Corps humain") by Université de Montréal in the 1980's.

 

RECALL:
I have only been practicing an average of 30 minutes a day for about 9 months now, after a near total absence of 10 years (average 30 minutes a month).... my apologies for trashing this beautiful piece!

My endurance has somewhat improved since the 1st video: two months ago, I would not have been able to perform this piece at all (practice, yes – perform, no), let alone do several takes for the video! In the take used for this video I'm already tired, so the tuning went off at times, otherwise I think my tuning has actually improved compared to 15 years ago. This might be due to the revoicing done on my oboe and better reeds.

Explanation of oboe reed crowing.

The reed I used in the video was very good, not amazing, but very good: satisfactory concert reed. There were questions on the Oboe BBoard about crowing, so here’s a demonstration using the reed I used in the video.

This time, I did a little bit of a warm-up (maybe 5 minutes worth) before the first take. More warm-up would have been good: I noticed my reed got easier, better sounding and simply played better after the 3rd take.

I did the MIDI accompaniment and managed to get rubato and dynamics in the most essential places. The computer played out the speakers and the recording captured that with me on oboe as if it were a live performance. It’s really hard to synchronize a cadenza and start the return of the melody with a machine that does not hear you!

Getting the right settings for microphone gain (sensitivity) was difficult: 5% on the microphone, mic volume of 30% and no more than 30% gain inside the Windows driver, otherwise, crackling noise was just deafening. I don’t know if these settings change the sound, perhaps more gain on the mic and less in the computer would be better?…. need to experiment. For sure, it would have been MUCH easier if I had done multi-track recording like in my 2nd recording. I think the video capture software that came with the webcam is not suited for the complex sounds in music: I did not have these troubles on the device directly or when using Audacity.

Which to choose: better sound? Video really annoying!

Making a video is HARD!

What did not help my endurance at all are the computer problems during the recording! How many times did I start over just because it failed to start recording or because the accompaniment went berzerk? If you get the impression my computerized accompaniment sometimes “yawns” and stretches a beat or two: it’s true! Some of the takes I had to reject had much worse breaks in the video than this.

 

Maybe I need to get more memory and/or deactivate the Internet and a bunch of other things, because at every few takes, the MIDI playback would slow down terribly for a few beats and then pick up again.... was Windows 7 running updates in the background? Also, because I recorded directly to the computer rather than in the recording device, the computer seems to have added pops every once in a while..... maybe I need a MacIntosh? I still have to try Linux (Ubuntu Studio). I could not use Windows Movie Maker at all because of the pops!

 

IMS #6:

last week (#7 tomorrow), went well, but this was a rough week. The weather heated up a lot and this caused my arms and shoulders to get painful again... not as bad as a month ago, but stiff and sore. Towards the end of the video, there are two arpeggios including is that infamous dominant 7th on D. They are not "clean" because of strain in the shoulder: a few weeks ago, I had no trouble with these at all.

 

Thanks again to everyone

I get visits almost every day from every country on the list. I guess this means there is something interesting here! I really enjoy your (rare) comments and e-mails: don’t be shy to criticize, that’s useful too! One thing is for sure, your visits really encourage me. I hope this can also encourage you and motivate you in your endeavours too!

Thank you:
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Columbia, Cyprus, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, U.K., Ukraine, U.S.A.,  Venezuela

2nd Recording: reeds are not enough!

Here it is: my second You-Tube recording! And just in time because during the week, 6 more countries have been added to the list! Welcome to: Belgium, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Venezuela and Vietnam !

2nd recording: my real sound, but more work on room acoustics needed!

This time, the focus was on trying to capture my real oboe sound with the recording equipment. And this time I used Music Minus One as accompaniment (Played from a CD) instead of a MIDI file. I also used multi-track recording: the CD was piped directly into the the recording device (no microphone) and then the oboe was recorded with the stereo microphones while I listened to the piano (in head-phones) being played by the same recording device. More on that later, but this required that I use mixing software to ensure volume and left/right balance between the piano and oboe.

In a few other posts, I had complained about my sound being adversely affected by where I put the microphone and where I stand. That is, the house itself can add buzz and make my sound more shrill. This time, I found a good layout that preserves my real sound BUT:

1. I did the recording on 2 different days (same reed, same position of microphone and myself).
2. There are settings for volume and recording level on the microphone (recording device) AND on the mixing software.
3. I forgot to write down these settings: the 2nd day sounds different than the 1st day!

So, in both dances, you do have what I really sound like, but the sound is still different: it’s like if you were sitting and/or if the instruments were located different places in the concert hall on the different days.

I have to admit, I don’t like multi-track recording because of the required mixing: its not like taking a live performance…. but it is a WHOLE lot easier!

Impressionist Music

I had never heard of Laurischkus before this Music Minus One production. I cannot find much about him on the internet either. But there is definitely a Satie-esque impressionistic aura about these 2 dances.

I am mostly a lover of the Baroque, but I really like impressionist music, just as I really like impressionist painting though Rembrandt remains an incontestable master. Despite the simple melodies, it explores harmonic colouring and sound-scaping that delves more deeply than the very clear and precise imagery of the classical period or the technical supremacy (for composition, in my opinion) of the baroque. I’m sorry to use such fluffy and meaningless language, but its very hard to explain.

Impressionistic music, like the painting, has its difficulties: because it is not as clear and well defined as the classical, interpretation and soul must lead the way more than the notes and dynamic markings. Luckily, Max Laurischkus, like Eric Satie, wrote catchy tunes that help both the listener and the performer. Luckily, these tunes do not require a lot of facial endurance to play (unlike Bach)! Perhaps next time I’ll be able to do the Debussy and Glière I’ve been wanting to do from the start.

Old Cane and Rubato MIDI

It seems the full moon is having its effects: work gulping my practice time and great reeds going bad just because the cane is too young.

Free advice for new reed makers:

In my posting wimpy [ weather cane mouth | reeds ], I mentioned how the weather is public enemy #1 for reeds… well, freshness doesn’t help either! Ever since my own student days in Montréal, we always said that you just can’t make a good reed out of green cane: good cane is ripe cane! Today just confirmed that for the ump-teenth time! For the past few years, I had been experimenting with shapes made on request by Roseau Chantant. I was always impressed with the quality of his cane and workmanship, but tonight, I fell upon one piece that just won’t play. When cane is not ripe, you can make a reed that will play wonderfully just after you scraped it, but the next day it goes dead (no more crow). Scrape it again: it plays great for 15 minutes and goes dead again. Scrape it again, and the same thing over and over again…

I have tube cane from 1994, and this never happens. Using almost any shaper, this cane will make from good reeds to fantastic reeds, rarely bad (except, of course, where the grains were always wrong to begin with). You’ll know “green” cane by a kind of very-hard soapy wax-like feeling when you scrape: it doesn’t feel like cane, it doesn’t scrape like cane. There is also a yellowish-greenish shine to the grains under the bark.

I know this will not provide comfort to new oboists on a budget, but there is really only one thing you can do to prevent this: buy lots of cane, and let it age at least 5 years!

MIDI accompaniment

Leading up to my 1st video (Gammal fabodpsalm), I mentioned preparing the accompaniment as a MIDI file (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) to be played by my computer. Well, luckily I have some very powerful software, but the neat thing is that there are tons of free music editing programs out there; you can also get almost any piece of music in MIDI format for free off the internet. You can see how this becomes interesting to students and amateurs!

I’ll write more on that later after trying out a few things, but this is what I consider important in an editing program:

1. Easy computer keyboard note entry: mouse entry looks easy, but it is actually very tedious, hard on the wrists and prone to mistakes.
2. A way to change tempo in chunks of music: in other words, select a few bars and say “do a rallentando” or “do an accelerando”.
3. A way to change the dynamics (in MIDI, this is called velocity) in chunks of music: in other words, select a few bars on one instrument or several instruments and say “do a crescendo” or “do a diminuendo”.

Those seem obvious and natural enough, no? Points 2 and 3 are surprisingly hard to find! I have only found 1 freeware program that does tempo changes, and this is not even rall./accell.! Finale, one of the most popular programs (and one of the most expensive) does it all, but not easily. But looking for freeware is hard because doing a Google search for “MIDI editor” will bring thousands of results, most of which for ring tones and drum beats!

At any rate, for my next few recordings, I want to concentrate on sound quality (of the oboe) during the recording process, so I’ll use Music Minus One and other recorded accompaniment I have instead of . Also, there is a Linux distribution (Ubuntu Studio) designed especially for multimedia artists, so I’ll try it and hope it will allow my lap-top to communicate with my digital piano. Installing Ubuntu Linux (and its variants) has always been flawless for me, so I have hope!

Return to the (virtual) public spotlight?

Well, my preference would be to start playing with some ensemble, preferably chamber music. But I don’t know a whole lot of people right now with whom I can play – and not many people can introduce me to musicians seeking oboes right now. But – TA-DA! – You-Tube is out there where people are posting themselves left and right! Hey, maybe there’s some potential there for me?

Why play in public?

That’s an excellent question because I really don’t have an answer. Of course, some psychologists would argue that I need to be heard because of some childhood trauma or for some narcissistic need to expose myself… yyeeaaaahhh NO!

But some time ago, Hannah’s Oboes was selling a really special (and expensive) Oboe d’Amore and I was rather disappointed when someone else bought it (sigh!). I told her that I was glad it was sold to someone who would play it in concert: such a special instrument deserves to be heard.

THAT’s why I want to play in public. I don’t think I’m so great or anything, but I believe the oboe is an amazing instrument, music speaks directly to the soul and people need – especially in these parts – to share in its spirit. MP3s, streaming radio and CDs will just never compare with even a mediocre live performance: there is a connection that occurs. Of course all artists need to express themselves, and expression needs an audience, but its the shared experience that matters.

The stage still lures me strongly, in part because I want to make-up for some failings and in part because I live in denial that I have ever left it. In my soul, I "hear" the sound that I want, the character that the music should have, the voice that should be expressed when I play. Although it is very aggravating to miss the mark when I take my instrument and listen to myself in a recording, I cannot stop aiming for that voice, that character, that soul.

Now, what to play?

I have always been wild about the baroque, finding it easier than the post-impressionist or contemporary repertoire most players in my circles would usually prefer; they thought baroque was harder. But surprize, surprize, it seems now that the other way around is happening! It might be that, since the summer, I’ve been concentrating on sound so much that this is now best reflected by the likes of Debussy and some lesser known ones. At any rate, I have to limit myself to the one MMO CD I have and a few MIDI files: my “ensemble” will either be the CD or my Digital Piano played by the virtuoso Hewlett Packard (though less impressive than Angela Hewitt!!!). I’ll keep playing around and see what comes out well on my recordings.