Recording through the Bach Cello Suites

I submit for your perusal, critiques, and perhaps even enjoyment, what I have so far in my 2020 new year’s resolution: to record the complete Bach Cello Suites on mandolin, publishing each next movement roughly every week. I am not aiming for perfect recordings: I damaged my left hand/arm overpracticing many years ago, and I am still slowly working back into fitness. But, I hope to inspire others to dare, and even bring a little light into this virus-plagued world while I get back to the level I hope to play at. Thanks for listening! -Phil

Today’s (well, I guess it’s now yesterday’s... I need to get to bed) recording (Suite 3, Mvt 3): https://youtu.be/irLxvwuggxo

Complete playlist so far: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...MOhvQrgw1ggdpf

That Courante was really nicely done! The tone of your instrument is very clear. I'm working on this same suite but have a long way to go.

Wonderful project you have going. Nice playing. Keep up the momentum. I appreciate all the effort that you have put into your project.
Maybe you could offer what you are getting out of this musical journey?

New Bach up! I like Sarabandes. Sorry for the delay getting this recorded and posted. Life happens (and I'm in no rush to get the the Fourth Suite's Prelude... knuckle buster, that!) Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/qqUZqKfUOxc

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Originally Posted by Barry Canada

Wonderful project you have going. Nice playing. Keep up the momentum. I appreciate all the effort that you have put into your project.
Maybe you could offer what you are getting out of this musical journey?

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Just trying to get better again at the mandolin after my long injury-induced hiatus, trying to practice stuff other than Thile music, sharing music I've loved for decades, and trying to inspire others to do it even better!

Suite 3 Bourrée is done! Hopefully the Gigue will get done this Saturday. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/L0nBJERPgXs

I'm now halfway done with my New Year's Resolution! Things get super hard next movement though. There may be a couple weeks before I record. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/MPY4dQjk2qc

Beautiful!

I've tried reading through parts of Suites I and II (G Maj and D min) just for fun. I'm way too new to mandolin to be attempting such challenging repertoire, so my attempt sounded pretty awful :) But you've given me something to aspire to. I hope to one day at least come close to being able to play these as well as you. Thank you.

Great stuff, Phil.

You guys might be interested in my recording of the whole suite...with a slight difference: https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/t...in-5ths-tuning

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Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop

Great stuff, Phil.

You guys might be interested in my recording of the whole suite...with a slight difference: https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/t...in-5ths-tuning

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Nice! Thanks for sharing: really well done!

I did a little of the same thing when I recorded the 2nd Cello Suite: I tuned the mandolin down a *half* step. Simple A minor just seemed so bright, especially compared to the original D minor, and I think while there were a couple side effects (strings/notes bend much easier at lower tension like that), going down to Ab minor turned out pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...ALsb-SmvliPfLf

Definitely better at the lower pitch, I think. Well done.

I'm working on the 2 Gavottes from Suite 5. You will probably get there by the time I finish. Bach wrote my favorite music when he composed those Cello Suites.

Nicely done, Phil! I've been working on several of the Bach cello pieces and sonatas for the past four or five years. Not the easiest stuff to pull off, but you do it with ease. I'm very impressed.

https://youtu.be/X132dXGY98Q

Yes, I crashed, and kind of right at the climax too.

This movement... this movement... This was hard for me.

I've been practicing it for a solid month now, and it's only the second movement so far I've had to have the music out for. I wasn't able to memorize it like I normally do. It beat me in another way, too: I wasn't able to make work a fingering technique I tried for a couple weeks which held the first note of each measure through the entire measure. It would have sounded great, but it was a few steps too far past my ability at the moment. The song pushed my left hand and forearm muscles past the limit again, forcing a few multi-day breaks completely off the instrument, with lots of massaging and cold treatments involved.

This has been a frustrating month for me, and I showed up in front of the microphone today just determined to lay down my best effort. After several false starts (some a couple minutes long), I finally finished a take where I wouldn't have regretted every line. There are a bunch of moments in here I'm proud of, so I'll plant my flag there. Checkpoint reached! Onward we go!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl-3aHogSgE

I really liked practicing this movement. I frequently like to go back to basics, working on fundamentals like placing my fingers on the fretboard, cleaning up my pick strokes, and turning scales into music. This movement played right into all those desires. Besides having a couple tricky parts that took a bit more practice, I took an extra week to record this because playing this set of notes just felt so nice. By the time I got to this take, I was almost in Glenn Gould mode, practically singing along with the music as I played it. I just wish the 98% of the song that I actually loved the result of would smooth over the little bobble at the end!

I felt like I went through a big growing phase practicing for this song. Sort of like computer processor manufacturers go through a tick-tock innovation process, I had a bit of a "tick" this song: my technique is actually a bit different, though the benefits aren't really apparent yet. I finally learned (or maybe re-learned) the importance of a proper left-hand anchor point (causing me to now want to reshape and resize the neck of my instrument), and I'm getting more comfortable with the new picks I got a month or so ago which led to a paradigm change in my right-hand technique. Learning advances, another movement is recorded and dropped, and onward we go!

https://youtu.be/bKGjKJWbQ1w

This is one of the movements where a mandolin can actually outperform a cello. There are several places where the melody note is played, followed a beat later by all the other harmonies of the chord. A mandolin can continue sustaining (as much as a plectrum instrument can sustain) the melody note while playing the other two notes, unlike a cello which would have to stop bowing the melody note to play the other two notes. Mwaahaha.

I was starting to worry I wouldn't be able to put all the pieces together at the same time in today's recording. Every recording day for me is as if, if one could graph it, a couple simultaneous curves are progressively plotting. One curve, the one plotting how well I know the song and can remember the right notes in time, generally gets better as I do take after take. But there is another curve to contend with: the more I play, the more tired my hand and fingers get, and the less I'm actually able to execute the notes I know I'm supposed to play. Ideally, those curves intersect above some level of "acceptable listen-ability," so that the take I end up posting isn't too horribly annoying to listen to. Today, with all the sustained chords, my "tiredness" curve was going in a bad way quickly, and I still kept blanking on various parts of the song. Fortunately, probably about 15 minutes before my hand would have become practically useless, I had a take where I missed only two notes toward the end which I would have been content to keep. Then, just for the lulz, I went for one more take after that, and though there was just a hint more buzzing, the notes and phrasing all ended up almost perfect. Win! I hope you enjoy this nice tranquil slow movement!

https://youtu.be/ed-MWZrCC0g

I've always heard this movement as "The Official Start of the Second Half of Bach's Cello Suites." Obviously, by movement count, it's several movements past the midway point, but to me the character of the music from this movement forward is a different maturity level from what's before. It's as if Bach had the 5th and 6th suites already in mind, sort of his ultimate creations for solo cello in minor and major keys, and this movement is sort of a spin-up for those masterpieces.

Technically, this is all about shifting and even pick strokes. I do neither perfectly, but I certainly learned a lot over the last week while I practiced it. I hope this recording, just like all the rest of this series, gets taken as a dare by other mandolinists (and musicians in general) to progress past what I've done and to do it even better. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/QyGVTbVDND4

I've always liked this movement, and have decided that it is the most jig-like Gigue in the Cello Suites. Had issues with my left hand cramping up during recording tonight, and had trouble making my brain keep up with the notes, but was able to get through by focusing on producing every note with the pick (not the left hand), and it got done. Thus is the Fourth Suite complete! Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/kt2Szk9eh_k

Phil, What a treat! Many thanks. - Doug

That was great. Well done.
I'm struggling with this one now.
The concentration required is awesome.

Suite 5 has begun!

It seems like a lot of teenagers bond strongly with music during the years transitioning from childhood to adult, whether they latch onto an artist or an album or a song or a genre. This song, this particular movement, was that song for me. My family grew to hate it because I would play it on repeat for hours, month after month, for years. This song means a lot to me.

I broke rules on this song. The first one was that I didn't drop the pitch of my high string a step, as is called for in the purest transcriptions (i.e. I should have been tuned G-D-A-D instead of standard G-D-A-E.) I've done that tuning before on octave mandolin (listen to my recording of Sheebeg and Sheemore), but it makes a mandolin significantly more twangy and causes the intonation bend significantly with just normal finger pressure. Also, it would take away any reflex of going to hit a note from regular relative pitch instinct during the middle of the song when mental focus frequently drifts momentarily.

The other rule I broke was that of the truth of "concert A." Normally, the A string is tuned to a standard 440.0 Hz. (Europeans tend to go a bit sharper, up to A = 442.0 Hz.) Since I'm already playing this song a fifth higher than it was written, in G minor instead of C minor, and on a soprano-voiced instrument to boot, I wanted some way to make the song sound just a little darker. In Suite 2, I did this by tuning down a full half-step. This song didn't require quite so much, but I still retuned down based off A = 435.0 Hz, just enough to darken down the intonation a bit. Sorry if you're trying to play along... the intonation is in the cracks on purpose.

This song is long, at seven and a half minutes, over a full minute longer than the second longest song, the Suite 2 Prelude. In the title part of the description, I call it the "Prelude [and Fugue]" because it really is practically two different songs tied together, like Bach's super-famous organ piece "Toccata and Fugue," and the second half is Bach ingeniously writing music that resembles a Fugue (music with interleaving variations of a motif) even though it's being played on an instrument that can really only play one note at a time (exceptions apply). It's a spectacular piece, and I'm sorry to have included any mistakes at all, but I really wanted to have this be a single take. Since this is the first time in my life I've ever attempted to learn/memorize/play/record this song, I consider it a good first effort. Now I have a bit of a foundation to actually get proficiency on the song over the next couple years. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/ao_0PO_jf_w

Another movement complete. I was just trying to enjoy the sound of my mandolin on this one. Trills were meh, and I left four notes out, but I'll leave it to the listener to find out which ones. Onward!

https://youtu.be/wFQ7p_nWhW4

Trick or treat! Some funky fingerings in here! In the first measure, I have to go to negative-1st position for a few notes. (Or 0th position? Is there a 0 in position numbers?) Later I have some goofy shifting trill dismounts. All throughout, there are some very un-violin-like half-step shifts to make the fingerings work out. Lots of concentration needed!

Concentration is a weird thing in these songs. These solo pieces feel like giving speeches of various lengths and difficulty. Some movements, like 1.1 or 3.5, are almost like smoothly quoting memorized school speeches that everyone learns: a lot of the thought goes into making it interesting and not like everyone else's rendition. Other movements such as 2.1 or 5.1 are like the long Shakespearean soliloquies, where one needs to get into character and really study the piece and, in a way, become the art in order to absorb it and re-transmit in a way that pulls a listener in. Then there are songs that sort of feel like a long complicated joke, where every word and turn of phrase through the whole thing is necessary to get "just so" to pull the joke off. That was this song: condensed strings of tricks with goofy "mounts and dismounts" (what I term the run-up to and preparation for complex passages, then the transition back to "normal" playing), all necessary to make the song work out. It was a fun one!

(In a technical equipment note, I'm pretty sure I need to get my mandolin worked on a bit. I have had the hardest time the last couple months keeping my A strings from going sharp as I play. I've spent so much time trying to bias the tuning flat so the strings end up in tune by the time the take starts or ends... ugh.)

https://youtu.be/qCE_Z7Ylqdo

Nicely played!

The short scale and the more tension-reactive A strings make mandolins sensitive to dimensional change from humidity shifts. I remember Tim O'Brien making this complaint about going sharp while playing. It is the humidity in your presence that makes the mandolin body expand as you hold it. Your breath but also the moisture expressed by the skin gets absorbed and the strings go sharp, usually differentially. The A strings are the most reactive.

I am sure of this explanation, because of one summer at a beach house. The humidity was monstrous, temp also. I left my Buchanan in the upstairs room, and every time I took it out to play it was sharp. It continued to be sharp every day, in spite of high temps. The temperature would make the metal of the strings expand and go flat, so the humidity had to be the cause.

After I returned home to air conditioning the instrument was flat every day until it dried out sufficiently. Then it was stable, except for the normal slight rise in pitch as I play. That steadies after the first half hour, I'd say.

I wish makers would seal the inside like the outside. (My solid body ten-string is very stable.) The belief in the damping effect of coatings blocks this sensible approach. I asked my local repair guy to seal the inside of my backup instrument, but he only did the back, not the top.

One can get used to it, just warm up a fair amount to make sure the instrument has finished absorbing moisture.

Thanks for the input! I wish it were that easy. I usually leave my mandolin in the recording room overnight to acclimate it before I show up. Then, between the warmup and the many takes, I usually spend about 90 minutes trying to record. The A strings still go significantly (2-4 Hz) sharp within 30 seconds of starting to play again, even at the end of the recording session. A humidity change would likely be asymptotic, eventually slowly leveling out, and would take a bit to take effect between tunings. I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the fact that the nut is 18 years since its last refresh, and my "flat-to-sharp" tuning method (the standard method, especially for violinists) leaves some tension "stuck" behind the nut that ends up releasing once I start playing. I was super careful last string change a month or so ago to clean and re-graphite the grooves, but the problem remains. These last couple months have been the only time in the last ~20 years of playing this mandolin that I've had the issue.

Remaining tension is indeed an issue that I deal with. I usually just pick hard/loud, from both directions, to settle the A strings. I also do not use only increasing-tension tuning direction. I will wiggle the peg a little to relieve excess tension behind the nut.

An old nut probably has the strings sinking into a tight slot. Good reason to make a new one. Alternately, file the slots after shimming the nut higher.

The newer the strings the less they bind, likely because of less accumulated corrosion. I also resort to actual light machine oil, which the Micarta I use for the nut doesn't mind.

I love this movement. There are a couple special things about it. First, the intervals Bach writes in are truly inspired, beyond what you'd expect from any Baroque music... some really juicy dissonances. Second, this is the only Sarabande in all the Bach Cello Suites that is written one note at a time: there are no double stops or chords of any kind. This makes it one of the loneliest-sounding songs ever written.

On the cello, this loneliness is emphasized in the mournful low sonorous register of the instrument with all its beautiful sustained bowed notes. Unfortunately, the mandolin is diametrically opposite in its mechanical abilities: it's soprano and plucked. But the notations of the music call for sweet, sustained notes... which led me to try something daring. Instead of playing in the normal soprano register of the mandolin, I decided to play... an octave higher...

...entirely in artificial harmonics.

This makes the song more than three times as hard, because I have to still nail the left-hand fingering, but now I must pile on top moving the right hand "touch-point" to make the harmonic every single note, plus holding the pick between my thumb and middle finger and using a strange coordinated twisting motion. Now, instead of mournful, this song is haunting and ethereal. The harmonics sustain more evenly than regular notes. I had a little more fun with the reverbs too.

I'm pretty happy with this effort, and I hope you enjoy it too!

I'll be taking an extra week off now. My mandolin has been needing some work on it, and I'm finally sending it out to Mr. Bruce Weber in Montana tomorrow. I definitely won't be finishing the Cello Suites in 2020, but I will finish them, and hopefully with an instrument that's not fighting back so much!

https://youtu.be/ym8ebY-VvgE

Back in the saddle again, and with some upgrades! Got a new phone, so I'm using that as my video source now (hello 1080p!), using the microphones on the phone to seed the reverb channel, and most importantly, Mandolin has made his great journey out and back from Montana to see Mr. Bruce Weber for a well-deserved spa day at Montana Lutherie. Got new frets, a new nut, a smoothed out neck, and intonation and playability tuned up. It's working pretty awesome now! (The flat intonation is due to my deliberate decision for this Suite, not anything wrong with the mandolin or setup.)

And boy was it good the instrument was easier to play: this is one of the hardest movements in the Suites. Thankfully, even getting spun back up to form after a couple weeks without a mandolin, and getting this song ready for camera, my hand and arm are still feeling really good! Huzzah!

Still not a perfect take, but that's still OK! Got it done, and now I move on to the Gigue and hopefully will get that laid down before the end of the year. That leaves Suite 6 (the final suite!) for the beginning of 2021.

https://youtu.be/ad6MmJ-T5cs

I’m not going to live long enough to memorize that. Beautiful!

The final recording of 2020, and so ends Suite 5! The trills weren't what I could hope for, but the rest was acceptable.

Got a Blue Chip pick for Christmas (CT 55), and I used it for this song. The tone is clearer than the Wegen TF140 I've been using since Episode 4.5 (Suite 4, Movement 5) and the friction from the pick is nearly non-existant (so less pick "grind" noise), but it's a little harder to dig tone out of my medium-quality mandolin. Hopefully I'll be able to tweak my pick stroke over the next few weeks a little to compensate.

See you in 2021 with Suite 6, and the completion of the Johnny Bach Resolution! Standby for the most ludicrously exhilarating movement of the whole collection!

https://youtu.be/4BGOiH3AoRw

I'm just catching up on the last few entries in this series and I have to comment on the Sarabande, it's extraordinary. Your solution to finding more sustain in an already haunting movement really adds a new layer to the piece and it's really beautiful. Very good work on the other movements of suite 5 too, none of them are easy.

I'm curious what key you plan on playing suite 6 in. I notice you've been very sensibly playing everything up a fifth to preserve the fingerings but with the sixth suite being written for a 5 string instrument, I find it makes much more sense to play it as written in D. That prelude is probably my favorite piece to play on mandolin but it's a workout for sure. Good luck!

Nice Phil - That might be my favorite piece of music ever. Thanks
I'm still working on my rendition.

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Originally Posted by Ken_P

I'm just catching up on the last few entries in this series and I have to comment on the Sarabande, it's extraordinary. Your solution to finding more sustain in an already haunting movement really adds a new layer to the piece and it's really beautiful. Very good work on the other movements of suite 5 too, none of them are easy.

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Thanks! Very gracious of you!

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Originally Posted by Ken_P

I'm curious what key you plan on playing suite 6 in. I notice you've been very sensibly playing everything up a fifth to preserve the fingerings but with the sixth suite being written for a 5 string instrument, I find it makes much more sense to play it as written in D. That prelude is probably my favorite piece to play on mandolin but it's a workout for sure. Good luck!

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I plan on playing it in D, as you said. I'm using Polo's violin transcription of the Suites for the notes thus far, but there really haven't been any differences from the cello recordings I have indelibly engraved in my neurons (other than one incorrect note I found a few movements ago). I'm ignoring his fingerings, dynamics, and phrasing and making this my own. However, for Suite 6, I don't agree with some of the octaves he chooses for some of the passages (or even some of the individual notes, where he tries to straddle an octave break), so I'm modifying from Polo slightly to keep the emotion I want. Some of the octave jumps will need to be delineated just by pick articulations rather than actual movements up the neck/register. Should be fun!

LUDICROUS EXHILARATION! This song just screams "I'M SO HAPPY!"

The ironic part is that, today, I wasn't. I woke up feeling overwhelmed, and had a crushing day under that feeling. No reason in particular, but mentally and emotionally I was not happy, or bold, or energetic, or daring. This performance, in all its imperfection, is a great big "take THAT" to the previous 12 hours.

My mandolin isn't set up well for this song. In all the efforts I take not to re-aggravate old muscle and tendon injuries, I have my action set very low and use light gauge strings. The buzzing is just my version of "analog overdrive," because there is no way in my mind to play this song without absolutely maxing out the volume on the instrument a lot. (Again: LUDICROUS EXHILARATION!)

It's possibly my favorite movement in all of the suites. I hope you enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghud7Tq9Ums