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 Chris posted on Friday, 18 November, 2005 - 02:18 am
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This quote is from Brian Bennett of The Shadows, circa 1975. I find it intriguing to say the very least...
"For the past ten years I've had my own sticks made for me, with no name or code attached to them. I've ordered about 200-300 at a time and so far these have been made by Len Hunt, until he retired, and since then by his successor, Tristan Fry."
So what do we make of this? Could there be another Tristan Fry out there who makes, or made, drum sticks? Is this too much of a co-incidence? If so, is this another string to Tristan's bow that deserves some coverage?
Can anyone add to this? |
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| Steve Gray posted on Friday, 18 November, 2005 - 05:59 pm
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Yup, same Tris. He owned Hunt's for a while.
On another topic, the Baldwin electric harpsichord was IMHO the nastiest keyboard to play ever - my heart would sink if I walked into a studio and saw one of thoses beasts waiting. There was no guarantee when you played a note whether it would come out loud, soft or at all.
In answer to Chris's questioon; if you played a harpsichord sound on an electric keyboard - synth, sampler, whatever - then the harpsichord sound would be able to do whatever the electric instrument was capable of. On my Korg Karma, aftertouch and velocity are disabled on the GM Harpsi patch, but it would be very easy to add it, and pitch bend and mod wheel vibrato are already present. As to whether it would sound 'wrong' - that would depend on what you intended in the first place. |
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| Chris posted on Saturday, 19 November, 2005 - 12:04 am
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| Thanks for that, Steve. Some very interesting little snippets of information there. |
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| Tim posted on Saturday, 19 November, 2005 - 01:22 pm
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I think SG's HO is shared by other musicians. Apparently the Beach Boys tried taking one out of a studio and needed to take the instrument's own tuner (a person not a spanner). If SG ever intends to reproduce the sound on his current keyboards, he'll find pitchbend useful so that it sounds like it's going out of tune as it's played!
Tuning problems led to the demise of the lute. The increasingly complex 18th century archlutes and theorbos led to the remark that a lutenist who lived to be eighty would have spend sixty years tuning. |
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| Bill D posted on Sunday, 20 November, 2005 - 10:41 pm
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Hence the joke about lutenists...
They spend half their time tuning the lute and the other half playing out of tune! :-) |
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| Tim posted on Monday, 21 November, 2005 - 12:06 am
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| The other lute-playing joke is "how many lutenists does it take to change a light-bulb?" |
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| Bill D posted on Monday, 21 November, 2005 - 04:20 pm
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| OK. I give in. How many? |
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| Tim posted on Monday, 21 November, 2005 - 06:41 pm
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Four. One to change the light-bulb, and three to advise on Elizabthan and baroque technique.
What on earth you may ask has this got to do with Tristan's sticks? Not a lot, but...
One of the critics of period instrument or historically informed classical performance has been composer-conductor Pierre Boulez. He said that just because tuned percussionists used only one stick per hand when he wrote his early compositions, he would expect a performer now (how's that for Gallic optimism) to use the modern style of two per hand and not be limited by old-fashioned ways.
And I'm sure that in his classical percussion work, Tristan Fry has been called upon to music by Boulez. |
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| Tim posted on Tuesday, 22 November, 2005 - 09:43 pm
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| Ah, an eternal truth! Mention modern 'composers' like Boulez and you put everyone off.... |
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