Harpsichord, like, dislike?

Digital skeletons copulating on a digital tin roof is too much for me to bear. I shudder for the ghost of Sir Thomas! It must give him bad digital goosebumps of the frightful kind!

Originally posted by scacchipazzo
Harpsichord, like, dislike?

I prefer the clavichord. More intimate, or perhaps subdued, introspective even, and con sordino, as it were.

Originally posted by scacchipazzo
Digital skeletons copulating on a digital tin roof is too much for me to bear. I shudder for the ghost of Sir Thomas! It must give him bad digital goosebumps of the frightful kind!

I know, there is no substitute for the sound of string upon air.

Originally posted by robbie carrobie
I know, there is no substitute for the sound of string upon air.

the sound of a cash machine acknowledging you do have some money in your account.

baby laughing

women climaxing

willow on leather

click of a kettle boiling

sound of a ball hitting the net

the sound of my balls.........i better leave that one there.

the kop singing 'you will never walk alone'

the sound bacon sizzling in a pan

just a few off the top of my head better than sting upon air.

Excellent! Just don't ever make the missus mad. She might strap you to the business end of a harpsichord and let them quills pluck your gonads!

Think of a harpsichord piece played on a piano. I love Scarlatti's piano sonatas, almost all written with the harpsichord in mind.

Originally posted by FMF
I prefer the clavichord. More intimate, or perhaps subdued, introspective even, and con sordino, as it were.

Lovely indeed, but too soft to play in a small chamber ensemble. Perhaps way too intimate. I like both, but much prefer the harpsichord!

Originally posted by scacchipazzo
Please, please jog your memory. I'd love to listen to folk music on the harpsichord!

I'm still looking for that cassette of the folk player on harpsichord.

I found this clavichord piece on youtube:

YouTube

here is a tutorial of clavichords, harpsichord and piano:

YouTube

That was part 1.

Here is Part 2:
YouTube

The dude is David Shrader, from Roosevelt University. A great player, clearly!

Also found this piece by Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas

YouTube

probably composed around 1688.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dido_and_Aeneas

Dido and Aeneas, one of history's great works! One of the first operas I purchased and one making me fall in love with the great master Purcell. It is unfortunate he lived such a short life like Mozart and Schubert. Not until Elgar did another English composer approximate his fame and quality.

Originally posted by scacchipazzo
Dido and Aeneas, one of history's great works! One of the first operas I purchased and one making me fall in love with the great master Purcell. It is unfortunate he lived such a short life like Mozart and Schubert. Not until Elgar did another English composer approximate his fame and quality.

I couldn't find out what the story line was about. Can you give me a 50 cent tour? I really loved the opening instrumental, seemed to preview later Mozart, to me anyway.

The skinny is Dido queen of Carthage falls in love with Aeneas, fleeing from Troy. Sorcery/trickery makes Aeneas believe he is to leave Carthage to form a new Troy. Dido is despondent at Aeneas even remotely having the very thought of leaving her and forces Aeneas to leave. She then sings "Dido's Lament" one of operas most beautiful numbers and must die. The story is allegorical. Presumably Aeneas leaves Carthage(or feels he has to by order of the gods), goes to Italy, father's the royal line of Alba Longa including Numitor, father of Rhea Silvia, who then sleeps with Mars and bears twins Romulus and Remus. Before this Aeneas father's a child with Venus, Iulus, first in the line of the Julii(Caesar's forebears). The librettist does not explain all that, only that Aeneas was compelled to leave the heartbroken Dido.

cant cite, just from memory, prokofiev: harpsicordists spend 90% of their time tuning their instruments and 10% of their time playing out of tune

Originally posted by coquette
cant cite, just from memory, prokofiev: harpsicordists spend 90% of their time tuning their instruments and 10% of their time playing out of tune

Now we have tuners capable of helping out tremendously in that talk. Hammer dulcimer players have the same problem. I have that problem with my 108 year old Gibson mandolin but there is the new tuner called the 'snark' that makes it all easy now. Before, tuners responded to the sound of the instrument which was ok if you were alone in a room with your instrument. This newer technology is different. It responds to the VIBRATIONS of the instrument hooking it directly to some part of the instrument that transmits vibrations, it can be an un-amplified electric guitar or a hammer dulcimer or a piano or a harpsichord or a harp, whatever. I have a buddy whom I play music with and he plays the Irish bagpipes and he just clips it to one of the chanters and it responds with the exact note you are playing and exactly how far out from the modern standard of A=440.

You can tune a piano with just that tuner and the usual felts and cranks and do a pretty darn good job of it too.

For instance, my wonderful Gibson mandolin is incredibly loud and has a great tone but in a gig when you first start playing it starts expanding a bit which changes the tuning, changing because it is very small, you hold it close and your hand is on the fretboard a long time so it is very responsive to your touch. This means it goes out of tune pretty quickly, you maybe get only a couple tunes done before it needs tuning. But with my snark, I can see it going out of tune, it has a screen about the size of a quarter, LCD screen with green and red bars arranged clock wise around the circle and when you hit a perfect A for instance, the A bar turns green. You can also compromise for frets slightly off or strings slightly out of tune because of usage, they don't stay in tune forever. But with the snark you can make one string slightly high or low to emphasize chords being used that are more in tune than if you just tune the strings to pure G D A E which is the same as a violin tuning. A violin doesn't get out of tune that way because you can adjust your fingering and make everything work out right because it doesn't have frets. A fretted instrument will always be slightly out of tune at best so the snark helps me make say the A string slightly higher so when I play a chord that needs the A string open played with say the 5 fret E string, I can make a compromise that sounds better than just pure A-ness.

The neat thing about the Snark is it only cost's about 30 to 40 bucks whereas the best audio tuners (the ones with a built in mic) cost twice that and they are a pain in the ass to use in a room crowded with other musicians. So for an acoustic band, the snark is de rigueur!

Banjo's, autoharps, guitars, mandolins, mandola's, fiddles, hammer dulcimers, lap dulcimers, we use the snark on ALL those instruments and more!