'faking' music for an F recorder

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: Tootler
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 06:48 PM

Jack is absolutely right. DO NOT TRANSPOSE Music for C recorders so that F recorders can read as if they were transposing instruments. The recorder is never written as a transposing instrument and if he wants to learn an F instrument he must learn to read it at pitch. True it lets you get started quickly but your friend will pay the price for it in the long run. All recorder players need to learn to read and play both C and F instruments at pitch. It's not that difficult it just takes a bit of adjusting - and, of course, practice. The fingerings are actually the same, it's just that they produce different notes and you have to learn that.

If he wants to play Bass recorder, then he must, repeat, must learn to read in bass clef because bass recorder music is always written in bass clef.

When I started playing bass recorder, I got a selection of tunes that I knew well and transposed them to the bass clef, so I could read them at pitch but using the bass clef and then I worked through them. Because I knew the tunes well, it meant I could concentrate on reading in the bass clef and learning the fingerings. It took about a week to adapt. I find it easier to transfer between soprano or tenor and bass than I do to between soprano or tenor and alto.

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 06:47 PM

TheSnail got it right, except that instead of "whichever brings it into the soprano range" I would say "whichever brings it into the range of comfortable fingering". Applying +7 semitones preserves the sounding octave, -5 will lower the sound by one octave. (Remember that the bass recorder it is actually an alto instrument, "four-footed".) Hopefully, the NC will add a flat to the key signature; if not, do it yourself.

If the player plans to play the bass recorder regularly and with dedicated music, together with other "four-footed" recorder players, he may want to learn the suitable notation, as Jack rightly points out. (Four-footed: where soprano, tenor, and bass sound an octave higher than notated.) Playing from traditional notation is considered a cultural act in itself, which gives us better access to the ideas of early music.

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an Fa player recorder
From: GUEST,Ebor_Fiddler
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 06:46 PM

There is really no logical reason why the would-be "new" bass player cannot be given dots to make his/her life easier. S(he does not have to accept them or even use them if (s)he does not wish to so do. We are discussing grownups here, I hope.
The Recorder Police really have no authority on how a player plays, either legally or morally. No doubt, they would like some of my friends who play "killer" treble at sessions to play like the Dolmetches in every place they go.
So leeneia old pal - go for it kiddo!

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 06:14 PM

You can't expect to "forget you have an F instrument in your hands" and also expect to ever play any of the music published for it. The range you will see on the page runs from F to the G two octaves and a tone above.

Using transposed music makes it FAR more difficult to learn the untransposed stuff, which is a great deal more useful. The whole point of having both C and F recorders is so you can play music that lies in ranges specific to each - it expands your possibilities enormously. Which is why almost all recorder players use both.

There is much more Baroque music for the F alto recorder than the C descant or tenor - it's the core of the instrument's repertoire. There are tens of thousands of pieces for it, and would be sheer pointless drudgery to enter it all into a computer for resetting (which would also lose any nonstandard details in the score like unusual ornaments, which recorder music has lots of). Figures are more equal for Renaissance and earlier music. But every recorder player needs to handle both, and it isn't hard to learn. The total time involved would be about the same as it would take to enter and proofread one Handel sonata into the computer.

How you go about it: learn a few "anchor notes" first, i.e. C, G and F in each octave. Other notes will be a bit higher or lower than those: so you interpolate. Think, that's a D, so I take one finger off the fingering for C and that'll get me a tone up. And so on. (I have done this process many times over for many different woodwind instruments - once you've cracked it for C and F recorders, reading at pitch with a G recorder or B flat clarinet comes very quickly).

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 06:08 PM

Why not my group?

No reason, except that that's not how the rest of the world does it.

I learned to play the recorder at school, like everyone else; I now play D, G and C whistles. The fingering's exactly the same for all three, only different. Your fingers pick it up in no time.

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 05:49 PM

Clarinets, French horns, trumpets, have special music to make their lives easier. Why not my group? Especially when it's so easy to print the music, given today's technology.

I don't think what we are doing is transposing. Transposing is something else. For example, when we look at music and transpose it, we have to be aware of what we are doing every minute. With my scheme, Michael can forget he even has an F instrument in his hands.

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 05:19 PM

Please God, DON'T.

If you even start getting people to treat the alto recorder as a transposing instrument you will set them up for years of confusion.

Recorders DO NOT TRANSPOSE. Never have done. Take a part in a recorder group and you will never be offered transposed alto recorder music. Whether for mediaeval, baroque or contemporary music, you can't buy transposed alto recorder scores. Everything is published at pitch.

It takes most people about two weeks to learn to sightread using F alto fingerings if they're accustomed to doing it on the C descant. Just put the C recorder away and only play the F while you're making the transition. Another couple of weeks and you'll be able to switch between them fluently.

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: TheSnail
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 04:49 PM

Get the piece in the key you want it played in in a Noteworthy file. Click on "Tools" in the menu bar then "Transpose Staff..." in the drop down menu. Select either 7 or -5 as the number of semitones to transpose, whichever brings it into the soprano range. Leave "Update staff play back transposition" checked and it will play back in the original key but will look like the fingering for a soprano/tenor.

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: Jack Campin
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 04:30 PM

The point isn't that recorders are chromatic, it's that unlike clarinets and saxophones, music for them is never written in transposed form. You just get used to using different fingerings for the same pitch.

And I mean NEVER. It's a very bad idea to use transposed music at all.

Music for F bass recorder is usually written on the bass clef an octave higher than it sounds.

There is another convention sometimes used for the F alto recorder of writing the music an octave lower than it sounds ("alto-up"). This never really took off outside Germany, but it's worth learning to read that way, since that's the notated range of a lot of fiddle music that sits on the bottom three strings, and if you can read at that pitch you can play a lot of fiddle music inaccessible to the soprano recorder. And using a bass recorder, if you read that way you'll be playing at sounding pitch.

Subject: RE: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: Leadfingers
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 04:17 PM

Recorders are CHROMATIC !! You can play in ANY key on a recorder !

If I can 'fake' C , F , G , D and their relevant minors on a C whistle
it should be DEAD easy on a recorder

Subject: 'faking' music for an F recorder
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 26 Mar 12 - 04:01 PM

I'm asking for help from our trained musicians here.

I have a friend who has only played C recorders (soprano and tenor.) He would like to try a bass recorder, but a bass recorder is an F instrument. I have Noteworthy Composer, which should be able to produce 'fake' music for him, but I'm not sure how to do it.

We do music in C, D, F, G A and B-flat, mostly. I would like a rule which I can apply so that a musical line in one of those keys can easily be faked so that Michael can play C fingering on an F instrument.

It would help if it rhymed - you know, the kind of rule I can apply when they are all going to be in ten minutes, and meanwhile the tea kettle is starting to shriek.