Timeline for Can someone clarify the range of orchestral strings?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 12, 2021 at 9:30 | comment | added | Divide1918 | Let us continue this discussion in chat. | |
| Apr 12, 2021 at 9:29 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | @Divide1918 well, that's the nice thing about this particular situation: I don't need to convince everybody. But the more are convinced to put a little 8 under their bass clefs, the better. | |
| Apr 12, 2021 at 9:27 | comment | added | Divide1918 | @leftaroundabout As if you had any powers to change anything about it. It's not like you could just force everyone to write their double bass parts with a 8vb clef. Also if it's detrimental to reading existing parts (in the case of viola, most or basically all of them) then it doesn't make sense. | |
| Apr 12, 2021 at 9:23 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | ...Likewise, what would arguably make a lot of sense is to abandon the alto clef and notate viola as a violin in F (since most violist also play violin anyway). Now, that's probably not going to happen because it might be detrimental for reading existing parts, but notating bass in 8vb and calling it a concert-pitch instrument is a zero-effort, zero-risk change. Let's do it. | |
| Apr 12, 2021 at 9:15 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | @Divide1918 maybe that's the definition, but it's a silly one. Silly definitions should be changed. In case of the transposing wind instruments there are inherent reasons for why they are transposing, even when it's at the octave: so the player will be able to use the same fingering for the same-position blob in the score on different-key instruments. But when do double bass players ever do something comparable? (Scordatura tuning isn't “transposing instrument”.) It would make some sense if double bass were considered an octave-transposing guitar, but that's not where we're at. | |
| Apr 12, 2021 at 7:42 | comment | added | Divide1918 | @leftaroundabout Except the point is, as long as most double bass scores aren't notated with an 8vb clef, it is a transposing instrument. That's the definition of transposing instruments. Octave transposing instruments do exist. | |
| Apr 12, 2021 at 7:20 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | @Divide1918 no need to get into philosophical absurdities. Whatever the historical background, there's no good reason to keep on considering guitar and double bass as transposing instruments: just write them with 8vb clefs, and it'll be immediately clear from any score what the true pitch is whilst players don't need to change anything. (I would hope, however, that orchestrators would change something: not quite as mindlessly double the cello and bass parts in octaves anymore, as they do so often. There's a lot of interesting sound variation to be had by using different voicings.) | |
| Apr 12, 2021 at 6:27 | comment | added | Divide1918 | @leftaroundabout Double bass is an octave transposing instrument. So was guitar (check out Paganini's guitar works on imslp). You said, "for double bass it somehow hasn't caught on" but that doesn't mean the double bass is not a transposing instrument. Rather, the exact opposite. An octave transposing instrument becomes non-transposing when we start using 8va/8vb clefs for the instrument in general. There'sno such thing as "it's non-transposing, but the notation hasn't caught on", because by the same logic you could actually claim that all instruments are transposing, which is clearly absurd. | |
| May 9, 2015 at 12:52 | comment | added | Carl Witthoft | No, @Tim, it is not relevant. Only if parts are marked "8va" or "sub8va" does the written range not match the actual range. | |
| May 9, 2015 at 7:58 | comment | added | Tim | @leftaroundabout - nevertheless it's a relevant fact. It effectively gives the double bass an extra octave to what it seems looking at the dots. Just what the OP ordered. Transposing or not? I feel a question coming... | |
| May 8, 2015 at 22:15 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackMusic/status/596800629152063489 | ||
| May 8, 2015 at 19:04 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | @NeilMeyer: I consider that a needlessly complicated perspective. Guitar and double bass aren't transposing instruments, they simply use a different clef, which happens to be an octave lower than treble / bass clef, respectively. In guitar scores, this is generally written as such (with an 8 below the clef); for double bass it somehow hasn't caught on. | |
| May 8, 2015 at 18:24 | answer | added | leftaroundabout | timeline score: 6 | |
| May 8, 2015 at 18:23 | comment | added | Neil Meyer | Yes the sound it produces is an octave lower than notated. | |
| May 8, 2015 at 18:22 | comment | added | aeroNotAuto | @NeilMeyer is that similar to guitar, where the concert pitch differs by an octave, or is it a different note altogether? and then is e1-c5 the double bass range in notation or concert pitch? | |
| May 8, 2015 at 18:13 | comment | added | Neil Meyer | Please note that the Double Bass is a transposing instrument what they play and what you here is not the same. | |
| May 8, 2015 at 17:07 | vote | accept | aeroNotAuto | ||
| May 8, 2015 at 16:54 | answer | added | user1044 | timeline score: 7 | |
| May 8, 2015 at 16:47 | answer | added | MattPutnam | timeline score: 11 | |
| May 8, 2015 at 16:13 | history | edited | aeroNotAuto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added clarification
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| May 8, 2015 at 15:56 | history | asked | aeroNotAuto | CC BY-SA 3.0 |