I decided tonight to practice my English Horn. But I have a concert on Saturday that is principally Oboe. So I played through the oboe music for the concert on the English Horn anyhow. The fingerings are the same, although it sounds a fourth too low.
Then I got out my “music minus one” Albinoni concerto for Oboe. I opened the accompaniment track in Adobe Soundbooth CS3, and selected “Change Pitch and Timing” and entered ‘-7’ for one fourth lower. (A fourth is seven half steps.) The fact that the UI is in half-steps but musicians say “a fourth” is evidence of the gap between computer scientists and musicians. At least it wasn’t in octaves or frequency, in which case I would have had to dust of my base-two logarithms.
After thinking for about five minutes, I had my accompaniment for English Horn. Fun!
Soundbooth can also slow them down. So that devilishly difficult movement (Allegro) — I could ease it up a bit. Nobody would know.
(Actually, I think maybe the dog was offended by the transposed accompaniment. I found her hiding in the bathroom when I was finished playing. Lucy used to get excited when I got the double reeds out, because it meant the quintet was probably coming over. But I haven’t had a quintet for some time now, so now she leaves the room when I get them out. Hiding in the bathroom is a nice touch. {sigh}. Being a dog is a rough life.)
Also, an aside.
I have invented to rubrics for remembering the serial numbers on my instruments. The oboe is NH-12. The English horn is HS-44.
For NH-12, I think of the TV show “The West Wing” and the main character: Jed Bartlet. He is from New Hampshire. New Hampshire has 12 letters. NH-12.
For the English Horn it’s even simpler. HS-44. Oboe in French is Haut-bois. Haut-bois starts with an H and ends with an S. And Haut and bois are both four letters. HS-44.
(English Horn is “cor anglais” in French. Actually, the English horn might be a misnomer. It was probably originally called “Angled horn” due to the bent bocal it uses. But a Frenchman probably heard the English word “angled” and thought of the French word “Anglais” (which means English), and thus the angled horn became the English horn. Actually, wikipedia disputes this as a myth, but they’re just a bunch of humbugs, it’s more fun if it’s true.)
It occurred to me, a better way to remember the serial numbers would be to write them down. That’s what this post is. Now Google has them, so they’re probably safe forever…