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Re: U.S Marine Band Maple Leaf Rag speed question
Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2022 11:24 am
by Henry
Well, whaddaya know? Seems I may have been right, for a change. So if the arrangement played was in Eb, and the recording tracks in E, if you slow down the playback you'll be a tad closer to a proper tempo for the rag, as well as putting it at the correct pitch, but it'll still be too fast. With all due respect for the skill of the US Marine Band, past and present, the tempo is way too fast on the recording! Joplin himself declared, in his "School of Ragtime" publication, "Never play ragtime fast"; unfortunately, he doesn't define "fast." In this recording, the band scrambles noticeably through the first section of the trio---wrong notes and breakdown of ensemble rhythmic accuracy (i.e., they're not together). The tempo is consistently at mm=120 beats per minute, and it's so rigidly maintained that I can believe that the conductor was watching a metronome as he directed. A more musical tempo would be in the neighborhood of 108 or so.
Re: U.S Marine Band Maple Leaf Rag speed question
Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2022 10:05 am
by AudioFeline
Henry wrote: Sat Feb 29, 2020 7:26 am
OK, I woke up this morning and realized that I really overthought this one. To me, the answer is simple: slow down the playback enough to drop the tonic key to Eb (from E), IOW, a half step. That will slow the tempo so that it's a tad more reasonable (although of course the band will still be scrambling in spots, because that's the way they recorded it!). This is the probably key of the arrangement the band played. The key of Eb major (three flats) is a very common band key (it puts the so-called transposing instruments, clarinets and cornets/trumpets, in the key of F, one flat, which is even better for them!); the key of the trio then is Ab (four flats), also a reasonable key for band instruments. In terms of RPMs, I can't tell you what speed to set your phonograph to achieve this result; you'll need a tuner or pitch pipe to determine the key (unless you have pitch recognition), and that will give you the RPM indirectly. If you're not a musician, it gets harder to do all this measurement and determination.
Again, this answer does not address the issues of recording speed, or pitch standard in 1906. I'm using today's pitch standard of A = 440 Hz.
Wikipedia suggeests that British brass bands used a "high pitch"tuning of A = 452.4 Hz at 60 °F. The page also has a picture of a vintage silver-plated USA Conn New Wonder Series 2 alto saxophone from 1927, with a 'H' below the serial number indicating that it is a "High Pitch" (A=456 Hertz) instrument.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch