Drawing with Bach

[masterofheroes1]

Prelude in C... great piece

[shaivista]

that was beautiful

[paradoxicus]

"Ese gracil y eterno bucle".

Inspirado registro cromatico.Bach es la Matematica.

La belleza fuera de este mundo.

[Od1n90]

The piano was very nice, but the drawing part, didnt match with the song...

[mlmffa2]

ci fosse una logica, andasse a tempo, cambiasse inbase agli accordi, fosse coerente all'interpretazione... niente...

[wcbroccoli]

Bach never had his Well-Tempered Clavier printed, but during his lifetime and afterwards it was widely circulated in manuscript.

In the title page he wrote: "For the use and profit of the musical youth desirous of learning as well as for the pastime of those already skilled in this study."

It occurs to me that if Bach had in mind an

unknown system of tuning, he would have described that system in sufficient detail in the manuscript rather than encode it in cryptic loops.

[wcbroccoli]

In recent years there have been several proposals of temperaments derived from the handwritten pattern of apparently ornamental loops on Bach's 1722 title page of the Well-tempered Clavier.

Despite this recent research however, many musicologists say it is insufficiently proven that Bach's looped drawing signifies anything reliable about a tuning method. Bach may have tuned differently per occasion, or per composition, throughout his career.

[wcbroccoli]

Equal temperament had been described by theorists and musicians for at least a century before Bach's birth.

Research has continued into various unequal systems contemporary with Bach's career.

Accounts of Bach's own tuning practice are few and inexact. The two most cited sources are Forkel, Bach's first biographer, and Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, who received information from Bach's sons and pupils, and Johann Kirnberger, one of those pupils.

[wcbroccoli]

Forkel reports that Bach tuned his own harpsichords and clavichords and found other people's tunings unsatisfactory; his own allowed him to play in all keys and to modulate into distant keys almost without the listeners noticing it. Marpurg and Kirnberger, in the course of a heated debate, appear to agree that Bach required all the major thirds to be sharper than pure—which is in any case virtually a prerequisite for any temperament to be good in all keys.

[wcbroccoli]

Between 1724 and 1732 Johann Georg Neidhardt

described a range of unequal and near-equal temperaments (as well as equal temperament itself), which can be successfully used to perform some of Bach's music, and were later praised by some of Bach's pupils and associates. J.S. Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach himself published a rather vague tuning method which was close to but still not equal temperament: having only "most of" the 5ths tempered, without saying which ones or by how much.

[pjps1234]

VERY NICE PLAYING.

[iCheesey]

Lol i do that sometimes when i listen to my ipod XD

[chocokitty7312]

i think i just saw a cloud somewhere in there :|

[p0lyph0ny]

This makes me think of the doodle that Bach made on the front of the WTC, and the absurd lengths some musicologists have gone to to try to derive an entire tuning system from it.

Anyway, nice job. Maybe in 300 years some historian will be going through the ancient youtube files and try to extract something of musicological significance from this video :).

[kingstravinsky101]

dude thye DID find a tuning system on those doodles....... its for every scale of the major and minor! it makes the preludes and fugues sound amazing, but you have to retune to play in different keys, for example if u tune it to C, you can only play things in c, anything else, like G will sound wrong, so u gotta retune it for G. this was probably easier in bach's day cause harpishcords are easy to tune compared to piano.

[p0lyph0ny]

Yeah, since my previous comment I listened to the tuning system and was quite positively impressed! I'm still innately a bit skeptical of deriving a whole tuning system from what looks to me like a doodle, but I don't know...it sounds wonderful, and there may just be something there.

I still find the thought of musicologists analyzing this video amusing though :).

[kingstravinsky101]

is it hard to belive that bach was smart enough to write down a tuning system in doodles? and plus its nothing new,before standard tuning every keybroad player tuned his keybroad to what sounded right to his ear. so you could play in their form of C, but not in anyother key, cause this produced what they called wolf tones! so thye retuned thier stuff all the time, but this became kinda of a bitch,there was no standard! so u cant play another guy's song without tuning your thing to HIS own key.

[p0lyph0ny]

No, I suppose it's not so hard to believe that Bach was smart enough to do so -- it's just that I make totally senseless doodles all the time, and I guess I tend to project my own tendencies onto Bach.

In any case it seems probable that Bach favored a more equal temperament -- there is an anecdote (in the New Bach Reader) that when Silbermann (who was opposed to e.t.) visited, Bach would launch into an improvised fantasia in A flat major, forcing Silbermann to leave to avoid his own wolf 5th.

[kingstravinsky101]

i dont know man, if bach favored equal temp. becuase then why would he leave a tuning system with these preludes and fugues? their ups and downs with equal temp, and personal tuning! i think it just depends on taste and how much time your willing to put tuning your keybroad.

[p0lyph0ny]

Well, that's why I said "more equal temperament," not "equal temperament" -- I don't think the modern system of e.t. even existed in Bach's day, but the Bach-doodle tuning system still makes the differences between intervals in various keys less noticeable (or at least there aren't any jarring dissonances). Of course the term "more equal" is kind of a nonsense phrase, so I should probably not have used that phrase.

[kingstravinsky101]

well it doesnt really matter, since "equal temp" changes with time. i mean what we say is C was something else in chopin's day. ( i think they were one note back, so a c would be a b note.)

[WidjettyOne]

That doesn't change whether it's equal tempered. The temperament defines the distance between notes, not the absolute pitch. So regardless of whether your A is played at 440 Hz or 415 Hz, you can still play an equal tempered scale.

[wcbroccoli]

There's no evidence that Bach's loops signify a reliable tuning system.

"Well tempered" does NOT signify "equal tempered".

A precise equal temperament was not attainable until Johann Heinrich Scheibler developed a tuning fork tonometer in 1834 to accurately measure pitches.

However, the use of this device was not widespread.

In 1917 William Braid White published a practical aural method of tuning the piano to (something very close to) equal temperament.

[wcbroccoli]

The notion of well temperament predates Bach. He did not invent it.

Everyone, including Bach, tuned keyboards by ear well into the 19th century.

It was NOT necessary to retune one's keyboard to "play another guy's song", provided his song was not in, and did not modulate to, a remote key.

Even Bach's music rarely modulates to remote keys. And he never used "strange" keys, e.g., C# major or G# minor, EXCEPT in WTC. And rarely did anyone else until well into the 19th century.

[wcbroccoli]

Listened to WHAT "tuning system"? Listered where?

[wcbroccoli]

The purpose of playing a "well-tempered" keyboard was not to make things "sound amazing", but to allow you to play in both common keys and remote keys (keys with more than 2 or 3 sharps or flats) without having to retune and without sounding badly out of tune.

The notion of well temperament predates Bach. He did not invent it.

And from what I've read, not everyone is convinced Bach loops signify a reliable tuning system.

[foozlefoozle]

vive la non-existence...

[gkdeppe]

I like the fact that you drew nothing at all.

Vivre le non-representation!

[audioglass]

interesting concept. I enjoyed.

[JulesVerne13]

I dunno, I know it's fluid, but Bach's full of angles for me.90 degree angles

[Azshmo]

Sure, he is, but I dont think the Prelude in C really has many of those angles

[ExtremeRyno]

Strangely, though you're just making curves, I like this a lot better than some of your other stuff. Nice.

[velron]

Fancy :)

[thelastpogo]

kewl...and i mean that..

[projectkTV]

nice!

[morindhe]

it's quite wonderful, actually :) thanks