instrument suggestion

Hey everyone,

I'm having a little challenge in a musictheatre piece that I'm currently writing. I need an instrumental color which can symbolize the first primal scream of a newborn child. I'm considering various woodwinds and brass instruments, if necessary with some extended technique, but so far I couldn't think of a good color or instrument... any suggestions are welcome!!

grtz,

Joost

How about trumpets in their extremely high register?

Have you ever heard any really late John Coltrane? Or Archie Shepp/Albert Ayler or someone? It's just that harsh multiphonics on the tenor sax sound extremely primal (baby's crying, cows being maimed all that sort of thing)- it's really easy to get a very dissonant wailing sound!

How coincidental is this?

I'm currently writing a tone poem where I use a trumpet to emulate a newborn baby's cry. I just posted a request for someone to write a trumpet score that will emulate the cry.

I actually have a wave file of a newborn baby's cry that I've already emulated with a trumpet using a rising glissando. I agree with others that a sax might do better, or possibly a clarinet. Some of the double reed instruments might do well too. I'm using a trumpet as the babies 'voice' as it grows.

My tone poem will be in four separate movements when completed. The whole piece is called "The Journey Home". The four movements are, Infancy, Adolescence, Maturity, and Senility. It covers the lifespan of a single human from birth to death with many joys and heartaches along the way.

I'm just starting this thing and I have no clue how it will evolve. I'm not a professional composer so this is a learning experience for me. Sometimes I have really great feelings about it, and other times I feel like it's going to turn out to be total garbarge. But no matter how it turns out I will have enjoy the experience of creating it.

Here's a wav file of a newborn baby cry (This is like the very first cry at birth, not at all the same as an infant crying which is quite different)

http://www.csonline.net/designer/ideas/newborn.wav

Here's a wave file of an infant crying (kind of pouty)

http://www.csonline.net/designer/ideas/infant.wav

And here's a file of an baby laugh if your interested.

http://www.csonline.net/designer/ideas/laugh.wav

I'd like to see composer's attempt at writing score for various instruments to emulate these sounds as well. And here their midi files too.

Any brave composers out there up to the challenge?

Let's here your instrument midi file and see the score of a newborn baby's cry, and/or baby laughter. Use the instrument of your choice, but I'd particularly like to see it done using a trumpet or clarinet since I'm writing a composition that includes these instruments.

i agreee i think a sax would be best

Just to avoid confusion, the wave files I posted above were an actual baby.

I wrote a rising glissando for trumpet to emulate the newborn baby's cry, but I have no way to save it to a midi or mp3 yet because I'm still waiting on a license for the software. Should be available by monday.

Originally Posted by tenor10

i agreee i think a sax would be best

Possibly...

alto...

soprano...

HARD/SHARP altissimo ...

bite the reed.

I recorded a section of my music onto a wav file. This is pretty crude stuff. It sounds bad enough as it is, but I had to record this by playing my sheet music program out my speakers and then recording it back into the computer via a microphone using Windows Recorder. So the sound quality is really poor.

I clipped this down into an mp3 file that 175 KB in size.

It's only about 25 seconds long. It breaks in near the end of a flute melody. Then you hear a cymbal crash, that's suppose to represent the doctor smacking the baby's butt and is immediately followed by two trumpet glissandos, they are supposed to symbolize the newborn baby’s cries.

Of course it’s no where near a perfect emulation, but I think with music, it’s really only supposed to be symbolic. I also think that a real trumpet player would do a much better job. I see nothing wrong with putting a comment right on the sheet music. I actually have a note there for the trumpet player that simply states “Newborn baby cry”. Nothing wrong with annotation in score. I even have a note for the cymbal player “Smack baby’s bottom”. I think it helps for the performers to know what they are symbolizing.

After this initial birth wail the flute continues it’s phrasing and then you’ll hear another pair of trumpet ‘yelps’. This is a secondary cry as the baby is placed into the mother’s arms. Again, I think real performers are going to be able to deal with these emulations if they are aware of what they are supposed to be emulating. My tone poem is full of this kind of stuff, and any performer will be well aware of the contextual nature of the piece.

Here’s the very poor quality recording of the excerpt of the baby’s birth in my tone poem. (175kb *.mp3)

http://www.csonline.net/designer/ideas/trumpet2.mp3

lol - that's soo funny, I too had the doctor's buttslap, but I'm going to use a musical whip for that...

I think I'm going to combine a fastly raising solo cello figure with in the end of that an oboe or clarinet playing a multiphonic in crescendo and maybe fluttertongue...

See how that works... and thx abracadabra for the baby samples :-)