Posted by Rick Denney on August 18, 2002 at 20:49:15:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bflat trumpet to BBflat Tuba? posted by MA on August 15, 2002 at 17:45:13:
If I have to think, "This is a B, and that is an E, therefore it is a perfect fourth", then I'm already behind the beat. But I don't see the interval as a fourth and then play it as such. I see it as a note played 1-2 followed by a note played 2, that sound a certain way that, through habit, I hear in my head. I know they are a B and an E, but if I'm in an unfamiliar clef, I have to identify them as a B and an E before determining how they are played. In the bass clef, I don't have to do that--I can jump straight from the black spot to the sound.
I reference from the bottom of the clef when the note is near the bottom, and from the top fo the clef when it is near the top. For most band music where I'm playing BBb, it's the former, and for most quintet music where I'm playing F, it tends to the latter. I'm most likely to lapse from one to the other in the half of the clef I'm least used to on that instrument, but this is only an occasional accident at this point.
When the bottom part in a divisi is two-plus ledger lines below the bass clef, the top note is still near the bottom, and I naturally try to reference it to the bottom, which is, of course, obscured by the ledger lines. This will often mess me up. Referencing from the top of the clef is easy enough, but again requires that slight change in the automatic thought patterns that is all that is needed to require too much processing time.
Rick "running Pentium IV software on a 8080 brain" Denney