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Latest comment: 5 years ago by Jerome Kohl in topic Recorders

Recorders

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Is it necessary to list every recorder type in the list? It seems like a person could easily just click "Recorder" and find their way to the various types of recorders from there. It doesn't list every type of saxophone and flute. So why should it list every recorder? Especially since for example sub-contrabass recorder is a stub.

Also the following list has notes in brackets with ". This seems unnecessary. Can I change these to just say "Garklein in C6." I have never seen someone write "(f")" before for music notes. Unless it's related to beginner recorder knowledge, I have never seen notes written in that way. The capitalization is not consistent either.

   Garklein in C6 (c‴)
   Sopranino in F5 (f″)
   Soprano in C5 (c″)
   Alto in F4 (f′)
   Voice flute in D4 (d′)
   Tenor in C4 (c′)
   Bass in F3 (f)
   Great bass in C3 (c)
   Contrabass in F2 (F)
   Sub-great bass in C2 (C)
   Sub-contrabass in F1 (F)

Change these to:

   Garklein in C6
   Sopranino in F5

65.255.181.151 (talk) 05:39, 13 October 2019 (UTC)Reply

I suggest you read the article Scientific pitch notation, where a number of different ways of indicating registers of pitches are discussed. The list you give indeed is not consistent in the use of capital letters, since in the second, bracketed system, F1 is written "FF", not just "F", which corresponds to F2.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:35, 13 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
Hello, I doubt my music professors have heard of this system of using primes to notate octaves. This system is not consistently in use across wikipedia for music articles. Nor would anyone who has a basic understanding of music be able to interpret C". The article you mention doesn't even fully explain the system. This is the only page I have seen using the prime system and it's unnecessary. If this was a scientific topic on sound then using primes is fine. This is a musicological topic on idiophones. The Hornbostel–Sachs system is this authority in this matter. This isn't a celcius to fahrenheit conversion. The amount of people using the prime system would be extremely low. This is too much information for a side-bar. Before even discussing the scientific interpretation of octaves we should discuss why every recorder is listed. As I think we could just have "recorder" we don't list every saxophone and clarinet. Or perhaps every instrument should appear on the list? I am just asking for consistency or a good reason to list every recorder. 65.255.181.151 (talk) 17:30, 14 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
I would be very surprised indeed if your music professors had never come across any of the systems of octave notation involving lowercase-uppercase letters and prime marks. You are correct, however, that these systems (German in origin) are not widely used on English Wikipedia. Unfortunately, there is also the discrepancy between SPN and MIDI notation (discussed in the SPN article), which are outwardly similar but differ by one octave, and a number of Wikipedia articles use numerical subscript notation without specifying which of the two is meant. As a recorder player myself, I think that Helmholtz pitch notation is probably more familiar to recorder players than SPN, largely because so many manufacturers and method books are German. Further, the older German notation (the one involving underscored capital and doubled/tripled lowercase letters) is also likely to be more familiar to recorder players because of its use by Michael Praetorius in his Syntagma Musicum (especially volume 2), which is something of a touchstone for players of early instruments.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:03, 14 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
Thank you. Perhaps there is a way to link users who haven't heard of HPN to that page earlier in the recorder article. In the Garklein recorder article it links to SPN: "C6–A7 (C8)" Perhaps (C8) could be its own link to HPN. Maybe I'll be the only person confused about the HPN. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.255.181.151 (talk) 04:47, 15 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
You are welcome. I'm sure you are not the only person unfamiliar with Helmholtz notation, just as many people familiar only with MIDI notation think they have found a typo when in fact it is SPN instead. It is good idea to provide links to the article on Helmholtz notation where appropriate. Let us do that. However, the parenthesized C8 in the Garklein article refers to a possible upward extension from A7. It is not Helmholtz notation, and it would be misleading to mark it as such.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 15:25, 15 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
Would it be more clear to write: "C6-A7 (C8 with extension)." I had found typos on the bass-clarinet page. Some notes were written as EEb. That's how I ended up here. 65.255.181.151 (talk) 04:13, 16 October 2019 (UTC)Reply
I agree that some clarification might be in order, but "with extension" suggests some physical apparatus added to the instrument, whereas it is a question of individual instruments and players. I believe there is no cited source for this, which makes things even more awkward. I will check the bass-clarinet page, but the note EE (in Helmholtz notation) is not within the playing range of that instrument, even with the low-C extension, which reaches down only to sounding BB (SPN B1).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:46, 16 October 2019 (UTC)Reply