Hi all,
I got a new flute about a month+ ago, a 1920’s Boehm with a metal head and a wood body, similar to a Rittershausen. I’m playing a tune I wrote a couple months ago. This is the very first take, recorded on my fiddle partner’s iPhone. Pardon the blip last time through.
Very interested in feedback of any sort.
Thanks.
Lovely tune; lovely playing.
Yes, lovely. The rhythm seems to change noticeably when you reach the B part. The part that precedes is
beautiful, in fact, but not sure of the rhythm.
Nice, and didn’t notice any rhythm anomalities in the B part. The A part doesn’t let the ear lean on the beat but that’s the way the tune is written I suppose…
Your flowing way of playing adapts well to the Boehm sound, a bit like Paddy Carty.
Flute sounds pretty nice the way you play it, and allowing for poor (rather bottly) sound quality from the recording via my cheap 'puter speakers. 
EDIT - the following comments and ABCs are substantially but not entirely superseded by material down-thread!
I’m not convinced by the triplets in the A music or its overall format (B & C sections are fine - conventional reel form). If you’re going to keep the composition unaltered I think you need to accent the on-beat of each triplet and make sure they fit in their allotted time so as not to have a waffly effect, especially so near the start of the tune, and also state the first 4 notes which are normal quavers more firmly so their time value is clear before the digression into what seem to be near-enough dotted quaver triplets. This is pretty hard to notate accurately and conventionally, and however you do it you come up with a 9-bar (or in one case 10-bar - see below) A music, either with bar-lines not consistently marking strong on-beats or with two half-length bars, or with multiple time-signature changes.
I think these metrical matters are why, apart from Akiba’s playing of a new tune not being fully confident and rhythmically definite, folk have found the A music a bit perplexing. Played more confidently and with the intended rhythms clearly in mind and projected, it works well, IMO, though the odd number of bars in the A section remains a little incongruous. But, so long as no-one’s going to dance to it, what the hell? 
I haven’t transcribed the whole tune, but you can do the A music thus:
T:The Stone Castle
C:Jason Pollack
O:USA
R:Reel
L:1/16
M:C|
Q:160
K:Dm
G2D2G2B2|(3A3D3A3 (3G3D3G3|(3F3C3F3 (3E3C3E3|D2C2D2E2 F2E2F2G2|A2B2A2G2 A8|
G2D2G2B2|(3A3D3A3 (3G3D3G3|(3F3C3F3 (3E3C3E3|D2C2D2E2 F2E2F2G2|E2D2C2E2 D8:|]
OR thus:
T:The Stone Castle
C:Jason Pollack
O:USA
R:Reel
L:1/16
M:C|
Q:160
K:Dm
G2D2G2B2 (3A3D3A3|(3G3D3G3 (3F3C3F3|(3E3C3E3 D2C2D2E2|F2E2F2G2 A2B2A2G2|A8 G2D2G2B2|
(3A3D3A3 (3G3D3G3|(3F3C3F3 (3E3C3E3|D2C2D2E2 F2E2F2G2|E2D2C2E2 D8:|]
OR (probably “best”/nearest to conventionally “correct”) thus:
T:The Stone Castle
C:Jason Pollack
O:USA
R:Reel
L:1/8
M:C|
Q:160
K:Dm
[M:2/4]GDGB|[M:6/8]ADA GDG|FCF ECE|[M:C|]DCDE FEFG|ABAG A4|
[M:2/4]GDGB|[M:6/8]ADA GDG|FCF ECE|[M:C|]DCDE FEFG|EDCE D4:|]
Here’s a handy converter to see the staff notation/play back in midi
Anyone going to do the rest of it for us? I’m out of time…
Hi all,
Thanks for the feedback. The rhythm is not all that intricate, just sounds intricate. 8 bars in 4/4 for each section.
Here’s a link to the dots: https://www.box.com/s/yerp9m4mofc7est1yixo
I like it as it is, but I may try to play it with more beat emphasis in the beginning. And yes, it’s not a dance tune more of an alternative mood piece.
Hi Jason - OK, from your transcription I see what you intend in the A music - if you literally intend what’s written there. And it works just fine - no reason to change it if you actually play it that way - it’d be perfectly danceable too. But I think my notation is a more accurate rendition of what you actually played in your clip (Ben, MTG?) - my previous caveats about confident performance standing. The patterns of notes in those “funny” bars push you to playing them as triplets, and in the clip at least your timing slips out of strict reel timing as you’ve written it. You’d have to work at playing them not to be triplets until you can keep them in time (to a metronome if necessary) and then let the phrasing make them have a tripletty/cross-rhythm syncopated effect without the timing getting warped. If your intention is to keep the timing of the clip, your notation doesn’t represent it accurately.
Well, it’s a lovely tune and I do like the fact that it’s named after me.
When can I move in?
I’ve been having a go at it, and no matter how hard I push/emphasise the first notes of each group of 4 quavers in the syncopated passages to try to play them “square”, they come out sounding tripletty because of the pitch shapes of the figures. I was really being careful to stay strictly in reel time when I made this clip, to play the note lengths absolutely even, and as I played I felt I did emphasise the on-beats in cut time, made quite exaggerated breath-pushes on them. However on play back that really hardly shows - the ear is tricked to hearing the triplet pattern. Nice - clever stuff, Jason. But as I wrote above, you do have to be very careful not to let the triplettiness take over and drag or rush you out of strict time. They need to be played strictly as on-beat groups of 4 and they’ll sound off-beat and like groups of 3 regardless. Try to play them as triplets and you’ll lose the overall timing.
Jem,
Thanks for such a in-depth review and analysis. I intend to have the synchopated feel in the A part (probably an influence from McGoldrick). Not intended as a dance tune. Will listen more closely and try to straighten it out and see what I think.
BTW, I realise my 2nd & 3rd posts rather contradict the 1st. That’s because seeing your notation let me understand properly what you were trying to do, whereas just listening to your clip left me puzzled. Perhaps I should remove those now irrelevant ABCs.
Like I wrote, try to play it straight and it will come out as syncopated/tripletty as you could wish, but in time. Try to play it accentuating or being carried away by the triplettiness and good timing will go awol.