{"items": [{"author": "Peter", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103618186481362054522", "anchor": "gp-1332338730246", "service": "gp", "text": "Carol Kycia did a doctoral thesis on Daniel Bonade who developed a method of playing clarinet to compensate for the fact that orchestras grew from violin sections of 16 to over 40 while still having only two clarinets.", "timestamp": 1332338730}, {"author": "Bryce", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/110073329443149494347", "anchor": "gp-1332340687317", "service": "gp", "text": "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroh_violin", "timestamp": 1332340687}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1332341197921", "service": "gp", "text": "@Bryce\n \nhttp://www.jefftk.com/images/2009/all/IMG_2092.jpg", "timestamp": 1332341197}, {"author": "Victor", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293420334062784", "anchor": "fb-293420334062784", "service": "fb", "text": "I disagree with your premise. The instruments you mention can be played with great subtlety and control. In the classical realm, violoas are tha butt of jokes-another instrument that can be played beautifully. Perhaps certain players gravitate towards certain instruments and make a bad impression.", "timestamp": "1332341671"}, {"author": "Robert", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/117732328885787456164", "anchor": "gp-1332341706773", "service": "gp", "text": "So does that mean there's going to be a tuba in Davis Square tonight?", "timestamp": 1332341706}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293427957395355", "anchor": "fb-293427957395355", "service": "fb", "text": "@Victor: consider the bagpipes: the musician keeps a steady stream of air, varying only their fingerings to choose from nine notes. They can't change volume, they can't change tone, they can't get intermediate notes, they can't pause the sound. They make up for these limitations somewhat by using intricate finger trills (birls, throws, doublings, ...) but they still are giving up a lot for volume. Or the tuba: more control than the bagpipes with more notes and the lips able to affect the sound, but much less control than the double bass. And subtlety? With bagpipes or tuba? Very difficult.", "timestamp": "1332342690"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1332343223"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/103013777355236494008", "anchor": "gp-1332344009277", "service": "gp", "text": "@Robert\n If you bring one.\n
\n
\nWe do play mostly in D, A, and G, though. So you should brush up on those sharp keys!", "timestamp": 1332344009}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293442764060541", "anchor": "fb-293442764060541", "service": "fb", "text": "@Justin: Bagpipes do have some similarity to organs, but they have double reeds instead of fluted pipes or free reeds so they sound pretty different, and they can't do rests. They're also not chromatic, so you'd need to put arrange in the appropriate key. It would be pretty strange.
Better might be to alter a pipe organ to use double reeds, but that would be an incredible amount of work. And you'd need to use durable plastic reeds or you'd be constantly whittling new ones.", "timestamp": "1332344724"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293453084059509", "anchor": "fb-293453084059509", "service": "fb", "text": "I'll jump in (as one of the bagpipers in the group) saying that I disagree with the premise of the main post and one of the comments. I have trouble with the \"because\" in your statement \"because they trade subtlety, tone, and control for volume\". I think that's asserting causation where it doesn't necessarily belong--by the same token, we would mock amplified rock guitars, drum kits, piccolos, etc.
Accordions, banjos, bagpipes, and tubas all share another association besides those you mentioned: they're all either folk instruments or strongly associated with folk traditions (see the accordion traditions around Europe, the bagpipe traditions around the whole world, and the British colliery band movement). There's an incredible amount of elitism and disregard for (white people's) folk music in the academic/'classical'/'serious' music world, and I think a lot of it has spilled over into our unexamined beliefs about different musical instruments.
Another thought: these instruments also carry the reputation of being primarily the domain of unskilled, uneducated players; the images of the bumbling bagpiper skirling away, or the inbred hick playing the banjo while he bangs his sister, or the happy fatass tuba player jovially playing bass lines... these are not so far from view. I think there's a correlation between loudness and perceived skill of players, for a different reason: if you look at population models, there are always going to be many times more unskilled players than experts, at any instrument. The differences is that when you play a really loud instrument, everyone can hear you practice. When you practice guitar or mandolin, people in the same building are often unaware--so they only notice you once you become skilled enough to 'play out'. Even if they do hear you, it's likely to be more along the lines of \"Oh, I think Jeff is playing again\"--they can't hear clearly enough to know more. Contrast that with bagpipes, where everyone in the same building is going to know about it as soon as you strike in. If you look at the population model, that means novice players of loud instruments are going to be directly involved in forming the public's opinions a LOT more often than novice players of quiet instruments.
Two possibly contradictory thoughts: at least with bagpipes, which are my area of expertise, there are a lot of different types of pipes, and they really run the gamut with regard to loudness. Tone quality is subjective, but expert musicians certainly spend a lot of time and money hunting for the exact tone they're looking for. It's possible that definitions of tone differ between string and woodwind players, but they're present in both. Anyway, there are lots of different bagpipes: some are quiet, some are loud; some allow stopping the sound, some do not; some allow chromatic tones and multiple octaves, some do not. I assume we're talking about Scottish highland bagpipes here, which is just about the lunatic fringe as regards volume--it's one of the few bagpipes anywhere in the world that features two drones tuned to the same pitch, and the second tenor drone seems to have been added solely for volume.
The other thought: there's a floor below which it's no longer possible to make quiet double reeds using natural materials--certainly not with anything approaching consistent tone. After a certain point, you run into problems with material stiffness, normal variation in cane cellular structure, and the weight of the bag/stocks/blowstick playing more of an effect on bag pressure than the squeezing and air inputs do. Beyond that point, you can't make playable instruments because the player can't control the reeds properly. So at least part of this debate (for bagpipes and free reeds) stems from physics: properties of materials dictate some of the rules.
Most of the evidence suggests that bagpipes developed after the shawms, curtals, bombardes, and crumhorns of the world--that the other capped reeds came first, and that the bag was a specific addition for the purpose of gaining uninterrupted sound. It's interesting that the uninterrupted sound now sounds like a liability in your book. As for not playing intermediate notes: instruments from cultures whose music includes intermediate notes possess ways of producing them, whether from a bore design that permits cross-fingerings (Galician gaita, Scottish border pipes, Irish uilleann pipes, Italian zampogna, etc.) or from the addition of keywork to achieve the accidentals (Northumbrian smallpipes, Irish uilleann pipes, etc.). Come to think of it, pianos don't allow intermediate notes between half-steps, which makes them less useful for music that requires quarter-tones--but that's not the music the piano was developed to play.
My final point is, perhaps, the subtle one. It's unimpeachably true that instruments are different, and that they have different strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes, I think, a \"difference\" is not the same as a strength or a weakness. A guitar isn't better than a piano, or worse. Guitar's way better if you want to have a percussive strum style going for some dancers; piano's way better if you want to play some Liszt waltzes. But after a certain point, they're different tools--intended to create different tone colors, contribute different kinds of sound to the mix, function under different circumstances, etc. By the same token, my Dremel router and my table saw are less subtle tools than my jeweler's saw, and they're all very different from my drill press, my hand drill, my hammers, and my little block of wood with sandpaper glued to it. If what you value is the ability to start and stop quickly, to vary the volume of notes, to play chromatic incidentals all the time, etc., of course bagpipes are a poor choice for your needs, just as using a wrench to cut strings is a poor choice of tools. It doesn't affect the value of the tool.", "timestamp": "1332345981"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293455324059285", "anchor": "fb-293455324059285", "service": "fb", "text": "@Justin: the range limitations become the issue. In cylindrically-bored instruments (most of the smallpipes out there), you can't get any kind of overblown registers, so you're limited to however many notes are drilled into the chanter--usually not more than an octave and a half. With conically-bored chanters, it's possible to make reeds that will give extra notes, but a lot of the traditional reedmaking techniques are designed to specifically reject overblowing.
In Spanish gaita bands, it's not uncommon to hear people playing gaitas in multiple different keys, for orchestral effects. This has the effect of giving them more range to play with, and that's where I'd go looking for the kind of thing you seek. To whet your appetite, here's my friend Carlos doing one of the Bach cello suites on gaita. He often switches bagpipes in the middle of a piece in order to get more workable range. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdDSqu9MA18 .", "timestamp": "1332346263"}, {"author": "Victor", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293465944058223", "anchor": "fb-293465944058223", "service": "fb", "text": "I was thinking more about accordions. Perhaps you'reright about bagpipes.", "timestamp": "1332347600"}, {"author": "Hollis", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293467457391405", "anchor": "fb-293467457391405", "service": "fb", "text": "Oh. Yes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8-RkPNUSVY... His name is Hrustevich, and he's amazing.", "timestamp": "1332347788"}, {"author": "opted out", "source_link": "#", "anchor": "unknown", "service": "unknown", "text": "this user has requested that their comments not be shown here", "timestamp": "1332349228"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293503527387798", "anchor": "fb-293503527387798", "service": "fb", "text": "@Hollis: Lots of good points.
\"by the same token, we would mock amplified rock guitars, drum kits, piccolos, etc\"
I think of electric guitars as being really quiet, but then we amplify them to make them way loud. Same with electric basses. They are fundamentally dependent on electrical amplification. They also do let the player have quite a lot of control over tone and articulation, I think more than the four I listed.
Drum kits start loud and then we make them louder. I think we haven't replaced them with something quieter mostly because the tradeoffs are different: you give up very little to make drums loud. Hitting things tends loud in a way plucking or blowing do much less.
I don't know much about piccolo, but I think it's a lot like flute, where you have much more control over the sound than the ones I listed.
\"they're all either folk instruments or strongly associated with folk traditions\"
I agree that's part of it. But so are guitar, wooden flute, mandolin, and double bass. And I think we mock those less mostly because of how quiet they are. I think the difference between the views of a normal whistle and a low-D one has this too.
\"Contrast that with bagpipes, where everyone in the same building is going to know about it as soon as you strike in\"
I know people now start off with the much quieter chanters. You can take the resonator off a banjo (do people do that?). Tuba can take a mute. I don't know how much of it is this.
\"I assume we're talking about Scottish highland bagpipes here, which is just about the lunatic fringe as regards volume\"
Yes. When most people talk about bagpipes here, especially to mock them, I think this is what they mean. People talking about uilleann pipes are generally not making fun of them, but those are also going to be folk enthusiasts.
\"there's a floor below which it's no longer possible to make quiet double reeds using natural materials\"
True. The oboe is still on the loud side. (Though, it does tend to get mocked too ...) Using a double reed at all is a design choice, though, and is part of the tradeoff.
\"the bag was a specific addition for the purpose of gaining uninterrupted sound\"
The bag also means the player needs much less breath control. Playing a chanter by mouth takes a lot out of you: lots of high pressure air in a steady stream.
\"pianos don't allow intermediate notes between half-steps, which makes them less useful for music that requires quarter-tones--but that's not the music the piano was developed to play.\"
Sure. They also can't slide into notes; the best the can do is play one and another in quick succession. Every instrument has limitations as a product of it's design tradeoffs. You're right that the music an instrument is designed to play affects this (do we need quarter tones? Can we get away with a diatonic scale?) but I'm claiming the volume needs go into this too. Louder music (to a point pretty much unreachable before amplification) sounds better, richer, and more energetic. We build far fewer church organs than we used to because we can now get (a good approximation of) that power and intensity with a digital organ and a PA.
\"It doesn't affect the value of the tool\"
It does. The value of a tool depends on it's use cases. Mechanical strength amplification tools are much less useful now that we have hydraulics. Two-man crosscut saws are pretty much unused now that we have chainsaws. Each tool is formed out of a combination of constraints, and when those change we develop and use different tools. This isn't to say that a crosscut saw is better in some absolute sense; if we lost electricity and gas then it would again be a better tool than a chainsaw (given the current constraints). For the outdoor dances I run there is no electricity and keyboards and electric guitars are useless while mandolins are too quiet to be much good.", "timestamp": "1332352487"}, {"author": "Jeff Kaufman", "source_link": "https://www.facebook.com/jefftk/posts/293345737403577?comment_id=293536520717832", "anchor": "fb-293536520717832", "service": "fb", "text": "@Victor: you're right that accordions provide some subtlety and control. But not nearly as much as instruments like the flute, violin, or even tuba where the creation of the tone is at the player's lips or fingers. With the accordion you choose only for each reed whether to let air through and for the whole instrument how much air to move. It's a step less control than the piano provides, and we only accept that because it gives us so much control over simultaneous notes.", "timestamp": "1332356497"}, {"author": "Robert", "source_link": "https://plus.google.com/117732328885787456164", "anchor": "gp-1332362028452", "service": "gp", "text": "Oh, damn, where \ndid\n I put that tuba? Those things are so easy to lose amid the clutter.", "timestamp": 1332362028}]}