It was interesting that when I produced my first round of recordings in the Czech Republic they understood everything I wrote in Italian, not necessarily what I wrote in English (e.g., "white keys"). To communicate "rim shot" I had to rap my pencil against the side of the table at a slant. Zawsze czekawy!
Aaron J. Rabushka [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://users.waymark.net/arabushk ----- Original Message ----- From: "Randolph Peters" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2007 2:08 PM Subject: Re: [Finale] OT: too much notating; was: Hyphenating text underlay > I like how Donald Erb puts explanations in his scores. He doesn't > make them too lengthy, but if the requests are unusual, he will often > put an "!" at the end. Sometimes his comments are humorous. "You will > sound like an insane monkey," and that kind of thing. It gives the > musicians a laugh, but more importantly, it communicates the intent > and spirit of the piece. > > Other times he writes about dynamic balance in places where > traditional expressions don't quite convey what is wanted. For > example, he might ask one player to match the volume of someone else, > or "alter" another's sound, while a different player is told to > always stay in the background. That's not quite the same as giving > two musicians a forte marking and the other a piano, or using > Hauptstimme and Nebenstimme, especially when you want the music to > rise and fall, ebb and flow. Or when you want to create unusual > mixtures of timbre. Erb's acoustic orchestrations have a lot in > common with the way you make combinations of sounds and control the > attack, delay, sustain and release in electronic instruments. > > With Erb's music, amongst many others, there is an exploration of > instruments at their extremes. At the extremes you sometimes have to > explain what the effort is like and what the result is. A flute, to > use a simple example, played quickly at its low end is not very loud. > Do you write "as loud as possible" or mp or what? There are two > schools of thought when it comes to dynamics -- write the resultant > dynamic or write the effort you want to go into it. A brief > description can clear that up. Multiphonics are like that as well. > Sometimes you have to blow your brains out just to get that quiet > high partial to appear. > > The drawback to using a lot of blurbs and text blocks to explain > things is that musicians from other backgrounds and languages might > not get the idiom or nuance. > > "To communicate is our passion and our despair." > --William Golding, Free Fall > > > -Randolph Peters > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
