On 12-Mar-07, at 11:55 AM, Leigh Daniels wrote:
Hello all,
I'm arranging some jazz pieces for a quintet which includes viola and
tenor trombone. What are the keys that players of those instruments
tend to enjoy playing in the most?
At 12:52 PM -0400 3/12/07, Christopher Smith wrote:
Trombonists don't really care, as there are no real technical
difficulties from one key to the next (unless you are low) though
most of them like band keys like C to Ab, but this is just what
shows up a lot.
Violists, on the other hand, tend to play better in sharper keys, as
lots of flats put them in half positions, say from C to E or so.
[I don't understand the "C to E or so" since those are on the sharp side!]
Hi, Leigh and Christopher. As someone who plays both, allow me to
chime in. Christopher is correct as far as it goes, but those
limitations (or tendencies or whatever you want to call them) apply
to beginners rather than to professionals, with everyone else sitting
somewhere on a continuum between the two end points.
A better question, Leigh, might be, in what keys do the instruments
SOUND the best. For viola, that means keys in which the open strings
can resonate, and you start losing open strings with the notes C# on
the sharp side and Ab on the flat side, with each additional sharp or
flat taking away one more open string. But in fact, violists can
play with equal facility in ANY keys, and the 19th century composers
forced us to do exactly that!
Now if I had to choose between 6 sharps and 6 flats, I'd go with 6
sharps, because Christopher is correct in that in sightreading the
flats force the hand into half position, while the sharps do not.
As to trombone, there's no theoretical preference for keys, even
taking into account that the instrument's home key is Bb, but note
this: there are no difficult notes or slide positions, but there ARE
difficult combinations of slide positions, especially those involving
5th position (although a good player will use plenty of alternate
positions to reduce those difficult combinations).
So write in whatever key you want, and leave it up to us to play it!!!!
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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