Ben’s Blog

As I drove home from work today, there was some great music on WHRB, as is often the case. The music was very familiar, but I couldn’t place it for about 3-5 minutes. Of course! The Bizet Symphony!!! What a great piece!!!

I played that with the Longy summer orchestra in 1997, which was the last time I played in an orchestra (still hoping to get my chops up enough for a community orchestra this fall). At that time, I wasn’t familiar with the piece, and I dove in that summer and learned quite a lot of the melody parts.

I particularly liked playing parts of the Adagio. I dusted that off in a quick take here. Bizet Symphony Adagio junk clip

I bought a version on iTunes from the New Zealand Orchestra for $5.99–what a deal!

I will definitely relearn some of these bass parts. Some of them might be great audition material in addition to Beethoven # 7 that is my most prepared of the Beethoven symphonies currently. In fact, time to put some energy into that project again. Where’s my rosin? Let’s hit the big bass and roll # 7.

bentorrey :: Aug.24.2007 :: Musical Thoughts :: No Comments »

While I was in Ithaca last month, I stopped by Ithaca Guitar Works (great shop!). As I left, I checked the message board and saw a card for “Ruby Gamba”, maker of 7-string electric viola de gambas. Neat! I wrote that down, figuring it was a local luthier. A few weeks later I checked the site and the instruments out, and found out they were in Europe. Great sounding instruments! Way out of my price range though, and the more I think about instruments the more I want to be only playing acoustic ones.

Just the thought of gambas took me back a bit though. In college I played in the early music ensemble one semester, and I got to borrow a 6-string bass gamba for the summer to prepare. That was a lot of fun to play. So, that thought led me to think about getting an acoustic gamba.

A google search found me a few hits, including one for $2500 that looked really good.

But as I started googling renting a gamba, I hit some serious paydirt. VdGSA, Viola da Gamba Society of America! I had no idea there’s a national society of viola da gamba enthusiasts. Awesome! I signed up and got on the rental list for a bass viol. If I end up getting one, I’ve got to make a serious committment to get the instrument “out of the house”, maybe finding a church that would like some organ accompaniment or something.

As I googled further, I found another cool thing. Being a huge AST/TSO fan, I happened upon Mark Wood’s really interesting Cobra 6-string fretted cello. Back on electric instruments, but boy that instrument looks like fun to play. I could probably get a taste of that by getting a cheap 6-string bass and tuning in 5ths (F-C-G-D-A-E) like the Cobra.

I even found a free podcast via iTunes from magnatune.com, beautiful, beautiful stuff. There’s a world of gamba resources out there.

Bottom line (no pun intended) is that I think I’ll get some sort of instrument like this at some point, probably to rent for now.

bentorrey :: Aug.18.2007 :: Instruments :: No Comments »

Have you ever wondered why it is that if you’re a singer/songwriter you can hit an open mike 7 nights a week, but if you play classical music you don’t have that option? You can show up and play classical music at a singer/songwriter/folk open mic, but it doesn’t exactly “fit”.

So, if you’ve ever pondered that question, then Classical Music Open Mike is for you! But, it’s not here yet.

We’re in the planning stages, hoping for a 3-session pilot (October, November, December) this fall.

More details coming soon…

bentorrey :: Aug.12.2007 :: Uncategorized :: No Comments »

As I’ve brushed off all the separate pieces of 6 Prelude, I’ve pretty much played them all as I had back years ago. But, one part that seemed like it really needed some rethinking was the e minor open string section. I always tapped that but I could never quite pull it off and it didn’t give quite the sound and bite that I wanted.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with using my thumb for parts of it, and tapping some notes. I think this might be the way to go ultimately, I like the sound and the way I can give emphasis to higher notes with a pluck here and there. I think the idea might have come from the fact that I’ve been listening to a lot of oud playing lately, Anoaur Brahem’s great ECM albums. I’m going to work with a metronome on that section for a few weeks and see if the approach pays off and see if I could get a bit of the rhythm and feel he gets on his oud for this part. (At some point I’ll post some really bad clips of me trying Rah Rah from Barzakh on my EAB.)

One fun thing, coming out of that big diminished 7th chord, it’s hard not to go right into Tr1al By F1re from T3stament’s epic N3w 0rder album.

Anyway, this part is the last piece of the puzzle that needs to be in order, and now maybe it’s time to start stitching things together, deciding what key I’ll do it in and any octave displacements etc, and getting performance ready.

bentorrey :: Aug.12.2007 :: The Quantity... :: No Comments »

You know how sometimes you “circle around an understanding” for sort of awhile before you “come in for a landing”?

I’ve really been doing that with cello over the last 12 months or so. I’ve been listening to so much cello music, and thinking a lot about getting one to just bang around on. I’ve had an RSS search feed that I’ve monitored on Craiglist Boston for awhile. I put in a search term of cello and max price of $300. I would look at it every so often, and usually not see anything in that price range.

On Friday I was driving into work listening to Yo-Yo’s incomparable Suite 5, and I realized that it’s time to get a cello. So, Saturday morning I fired up my RSS search results page and there it was: the $50 cello! The instrument needs some bridge work said the seller, but was in good condition otherwise. Estimated work at $100. So, at an estimated $150 for the total project cost, I couldn’t turn it down.

So, I went and bought it yesterday, and I’ll bring it to Rutman’s Violins in Boston sometime this week if they have time to work on it.

Hopefully some things will come back to me. I haven’t played cello really at all since I was 14, but a lot of fundamental stuff like bowing (french of course) and intonation I’ve worked on pretty consistently with my upright work. And, I won’t go in with grand expectations. If I could get as far as playing Suite 5’s beautiful Sarabande reasonably well, and being able to play Bach chorales with 3 other cellists, then I’d be very, very happy.

bentorrey :: Aug.05.2007 :: Instruments :: No Comments »

The Suite 6 Prelude is such an amazing piece. I think of it as an “Everest” like achievement to pull it off. Before diving in and going for it, I need to survey the terrain a bit, prepare, and consider what I’m taking on, like climbers do when they arrive at base camp.

Parts of the 6 Prelude I’ve played for years, some of it makes great cadenza-type material. I turned on my digital camera and took a few quick clips.

If you haven’t studied this suite, DEFINITELY get Yo-Yo Ma’s recording, CBS from 1983. His 6 is absolutely amazing. So, so intense. Fantastic!

In terms of range, so far I’ve done all the suites basically as written. 6 is of course a range challenge for us bassists. 6 was actually written for a 5 string cello (tuned C-G-D-A-E), which explains all the high E pedal points. As an aside, I had a very lucky coincidence a few months ago. I took an intro to Suzuki class at Longy, and I met a guy who told me about a senior cello recital the next day where a guy was going to play # 6 on a 5-string cello. I went and it was awesome. Really neat to see how the music flowed on the instrument it was written for.

Nonetheless, I seemed to have chosen bass, lol, so sticking with that. I’ll definitely have to play this on my 6-string electric. Amazingly, even tuned E-F I don’t have the high range to play it as written. Even 24 frets up on my F string still lands me a whole step short of that top G in that cool pedal sequence over the A there. I think that’s the highest note in the piece though, so I should be good if I play the whole thing down a whole step on my 6-string tuned E-F.

I’ll see how that goes…time for some training hikes.

bentorrey :: Aug.02.2007 :: Musical Thoughts :: 1 Comment »