Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

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Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby Hugh-AR » 28 Jan 2022 14:07

I don't often play classical pieces as a classical piece usually involves movement with both hands playing notes .. and to do this you have to be able to read the music. But I can just about manage to play a melody with an accompanying harmony, which I have done here using a FREE PLAY STYLE for the harmony.

Handel's Largo
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https://app.box.com/s/cliy9r201xqs3lhu4fgkbhkhkjlqj92w

Yes, I did have the sheet music up in front of me while I was playing it, not to read the dots on lines .. but to follow the lengths of the notes in the bars whilst playing the actual notes of the melody 'by ear'. Another reason for having the music up in front of me is because with classical music all the notes are different from the beginning of the piece to the end .. so I needed the music to know where I had got to. A 'pop song' has verses and choruses that repeat themselves so I know where I have got to in a song.

If you want more information about how I set my keyboard up to play this, the sheet music for it and a download of the STYLE I used, click this LINK:

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http://www.tierce-de-picardie.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=479&t=9770#p62171

Hugh
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby barwonfan » 28 Jan 2022 23:14

I liked your playing of Handel's Largo . I like Free Play Style Styles, especially for introducing a song which is either classical or pop. At the moment I am experimenting with playing a song in Freestyle and slipping in a solo instrument so that it dominates the orchestra, but I am not making much progress. Problem is that I have to take both hands off the keyboard to turn off the ACMP; and can't figure out how to set it up on Registration Button #2. I rule out using my foot pedal, as I hate fiddling around setting it up.
I wish I could remember the name of a film I watched years ago where a lone trumpeter stood way up above everyone and played a few bars solo before he sat down and the orchestra continued. Maybe it was "The Glen Miller Story"
One unforgettable memory for me was in a beautiful cathedral I heard a lone soprano voice rising from somewhere way up in the organ loft at the back. Another great moment for me was listening to the distant sound of the organ as it rose, getting louder and louder, until the organist appeared from the depths of the movie theatre .
I am not a sports fan and am wary of mass hysteria, but I must admit that ,once, when I attended a football final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, arriving a few minutes late, I was deeply moved by the roar of 100,000 voices. But I digress. Thanks for your post Hugh. J.T.
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby Hugh-AR » 02 Apr 2022 23:23

JT,

I have recorded Handel's Largo again and made two changes (which you probably wouldn't hear unless I tell you what they are).

1. Eileen's FREE PLAY STYLE has some 'wha-wha' in the backing, so as I wanted to hear that I have upped the TEMPO to 120. As the style is running faster you do get to hear the wha-wha coming in.

2. Something you were on about in your message above. At one point near the end of the piece I wanted to STOP THE STYLE COMPLETELY. As you said .. too difficult to turn the ACMP 'OFF' and then trurn it 'ON' again later. But I have discovered (by sheer chance) how to turn the accompaniment OFF. Press the SYNC START button .. and everything stops. And the SYNC START button is flashing, waiting for you to play a chord .. and when you do, the style is off playing again.

I have updated my recordings above, so listen again. You can hear the point at which everything STOPS .. just for a couple of notes. Then when I play a chord, the backing comes back in again.

I did the same when I STOPPED the STYLE in Cherry Pink as I wanted the Trumpet to slide down an octave on it's own, without any Style backing playing. Pressed the SYNC START, which STOPPED the STYLE .. and the SYNC START was 'flashing'. Then when my Trumpet had done its bit of sliding about I played a chord .. and the whole lot was off again.

Click the below to hear all this; then after listening click the back arrow top left to get back to this page.
DEMO of pressing the SYNC START to STOP the STYLE

So I had the SYNC START flashing at the start, waiting for me to play a chord to get the backing going; then pressed the SYNC START again to STOP the Style playing .. and the SYNC START is automatically flashing waiting for me to play a chord and get the Style going again. This is how you can play a few bars of a melody and only hear the solo instrument playing.

Hugh
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby Brian007 » 03 Apr 2022 06:39

Hi Hugh,

That was such a nice easy to listen to arrangement and performance of that piece, the whole thing was very well thought out
and you used some really nice suitable sounding voices, well done you.

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Re: Handel's Largo

Postby kens » 03 Apr 2022 10:42

Hi Hugh. That was lovely. Thanks Ken S
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby barwonfan » 03 Apr 2022 11:19

Wonderful. You have solved my problem and what you have played is wonderful. Congratulations.
On another matter, I wonder if you would , one day, look in to the matter of legato and stucco on keyboards. I imagine that it is not a problem on organs but on a keyboard , I often,when using a style, find the sound is not as smooth as I would like. Thanks again for your help. J.T.
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby Hugh-AR » 03 Apr 2022 19:12

JT,

You've got me there!
Stucco is a cement-type mixture made of Portland cement, lime, sand and water. It is a thin finish coat that goes on the outermost layer of residential and commercial constructions. Modern stucco has polymers and other agents for increased flexibility that improves its resilience.

So not sure what you are on about here. Can you give me an example of what is not as smooth as you like when playing a Style? I presume when playing chords in a Style, when you lift your hand off the keys the chord and Style continue playing until you play another chord? (As far as I am aware, that is the 'default'.) I also have the LEFT HOLD button ON so the same applies to the Left Voice Chord I am playing. This means that when I change chords I can play a chord anywhere and there is no 'jump' between one chord and the next. This also means I don't have to form my chords by 'keeping common notes to both chords down'. This means I can play the inversion of the chord I want to hear. I agree that the backing in the STYLE would be the same whichever inversion of the chord I play .. but not so the LEFT HAND VOICE, as that ''sounds' the actual notes you are playing. So if I want to hear the 'third' or 'seventh' harmony on top, that is how I would play my chord.

Seems to me that a lot of people 'analyse' two chords to check out which notes are the same in both chords and aim to 'anchor' those notes when changing from one chord to another. This means you would probably play a different inversion of a chord every time you play it. How complicated! This would mean learning every inversion as a 'new' chord. I play the same inversion of a chord every time I play it .. but of course have to lift my hand completely off the keys in order to play it. If the Style suddenly 'stopped' when I took my hand off it would be a different matter.

Hugh

PS. I am not a music teacher. I just play what I like the way I want to play it.
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby barwonfan » 03 Apr 2022 23:32

Staccato Gee I am careless sometimes. I meant staccato I should have looked up how to spell the word instead of imagining that I was a good speller. This morning I looked up Google and it says,
" What is legato and staccato in music?
Legato and staccato are articulation opposites. Legato means to play the notes as smoothly connected as possible. Staccato means to play the notes as short and crisp and detached as possible, when each note is detached from another"
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby dentyr » 04 Apr 2022 01:16

Hello John, That answers your question and why I play with the touch off. I play my music legato, holding some notes to ease into others. With the touch on I have to push the keys softly or harder to get a note to play. I don't want this, I want all my notes to play when I press the keys. Saxophones are a nightmare with touch on, pressing the keys at the correct pressure to match the other instruments is an art to be learned. Lots more can be said about this but that is my way.
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby Hugh-AR » 04 Apr 2022 11:40

We have digressed somewhat from my original post .. putting up Handel's Largo as a piece to listen to in the Classical section. My fault, as I changed what I had originally put up to playing it differently .. with a 'break' in the STYLE towards the end. Which of course has led on to other things.

John .. playing notes legato or staccato. The way you play an instrument should reflect how the original instrument sounds (or can sound). So a piano can be played both ways. Thing is, a piano can play two notes at the same time (ie. it is polyphonic) so you can play one note .. and play the next note before releasing the first note ie. play the notes smoothly. Or you can make sure the piano has no 'sustain' on and play the notes 'smartly' ie. staccato, which gives 'attack' to the notes. These two ways of playing it make the piano sound almost like two different instruments.

Horns (Brass) and Saxophones are monophonic (ie. they can't play two notes at the same time) so you would play these instruments differently. You shouldn't hold two notes down together, but should release one just before playing the next. But you can still play the instruments 'smoothly'. As the volume of these instruments changes depending on how hard you blow, you can only get an authentic sound of playing eg. a Saxophone by having the TOUCH ON .. and mastering the technique of playing this way. Without the 'touch' the sound of the saxophone may be OK, but it would sound very regimented. When Yamaha put technology into their keyboards they do it because they are trying to enable you to play instruments authentically. If they didn't think this was a feature worth having they wouldn't bother to do it. But as Den says, you have got to spend some time mastering the technique of using it.

I always have the touch ON as being a pianist I am used to playing this way. A piano has 'hammers' that shoot forward and hit the strings .. so the harder you hit the notes the louder they sound. But .. there is a difference between playing a real piano and playing piano on a keyboard. I have heard so many people say, "I don't like to 'hammer' my keyboard" and my keyboard/organ engineer says people that do this end up making holes in the membrane underneath, which then causes the keyboard to malfunction when playing notes. I say, why would you 'hammer' a keyboard? Hitting the keys really hard does not make the mechanical parts of the piano move any faster .. as there are no moving mechanical piano parts in a keyboard! On a keyboard it's the speed the note travels that makes the note louder .. and you can do this 'softly'. It's all to do with the technique of playing the keys.

If you concentrate on how instruments sound you will find that you play the keyboard differently for each instrument. If you record on the keyboard to MIDI, you can change the instrument to a different one if you don't like it after you have done the recording. I could do this on my AR organ too. They must be joking! It's not just the sound of the instrument you want to change, it's the way that you play it. And the MIDI doesn't do that! Can you imagine playing a Trombone like you play a Piano? I would probably have had some 'slide' on the Trombone .. which would not sound good on a Piano!

Hugh

PS. I am not a music teacher. I just play things the way I like to hear them.
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby barwonfan » 04 Apr 2022 23:26

Thanks, Hugh. Many things to think about there. J.T.
PS. You must be a pretty good typist. I have started writing my posts in Word and copying them onto my posts. I have not yet mastered Drafts on this Forum . Not sure which key on my laptop is the one which puts me into Drafts; although you DID post a "How To" on this subject sometime last year. J.T.
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby Hugh-AR » 04 Apr 2022 23:48

JT,

I don't actually type into a WORD document .. I do a REPLY and type directly into the posting box (as I am doing here). The reason for this is because I put in BOLD and ITALICS and COLOURS by dragging across the words and then getting the BBCodes from above the posting box. The CODES that are set up have square brackets round them with eg. b for BOLD and /b in square brackets at the end. When I want to see what it looks like I click on Preview at the bottom, which shows how it actually looks. Then I carry on in the box with my typing. When I have finished I click on Submit. If I notice any mistakes at this point I click on the EDIT (top right) and get my posting box back again to change what I had written.

But I do use WORD to back up what I am doing .. just in case! So I 'highlight' all my post (I use the keypad and press Ctrl A ie. Ctrl and the letter A together), Copy the highlighted words to the clipboard (by pressing Ctrl C ie. Ctrl and the letter C together) .. then open a WORD document, put the mouse cursor into it .. do a right-click and choose Paste from the drop-down list. Then I SAVE the WORD document. And I do this every so often, replacing what was previously in the Word document.

So what I have in my WORD document is what I have been typing with the CONTROL CODES. Just typing into a word document will only give you the basic text. No bold, or italics, or colours. Then if my posting box disappears I can highlight all my WORD document (with all the Control Codes) and Paste it back into my Reply box.

Hugh

PS. The DRAFTS function is so complicated it's not even worth attempting to do it. When you Save a draft, what you are doing disappears, and then you have to find your draft. And every time you Save, you get a new Draft ie. it doesn't 'update' the previous one. Waste of time!
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Re: Handel's Largo & Comments about playing a keyboard.

Postby Hugh-AR » 06 Apr 2022 09:25

Thinking about forming chords by 'anchoring' common notes, it has occurred to me that maybe this is the best way to do it if you are wanting to form your chords without looking at what your hand is doing. It's all very well for me to say that I play my chords anywhere on the keyboard, but then I can glance momentarily across to see where my fingers are going as I am not concentrating on reading the music score. I do glance at the music score if I have it up there, but only to remind myself of the chords, and sometimes the lengths notes are held. Not concentrating on what notes to play. If I was concentrating on reading the music 'note for note' then I think I would need a method of forming my chords without looking at them. Anchoring notes common to both chords would certainly be a way of doing this.

If anyone else has general comments about how they play a keyboard please do click on POSTREPLY and let us know your thoughts.

You are more than welcome to contradict everything I say. I have not had any musical training so what I do are things I have picked up for myself over a period of 60 years.

Hugh
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