Saxon Violins

Back to practicing the violin.

The trumpet is where it needs to be for the moment. I could squeak my way through Ecstasy of Gold but fun as it is, that's not really the best instrument for it. "Mark's Theme" (from A Better Tomorrow) is totally a horn piece, but it goes right up into the nosebleed octave and I'm not ready for it yet. So just practicing with whatever is interesting...a bit of St. James Infirmary Blues right now, because it gives me excuses to work on the slide, the wah-wah, and the growl.

For the longest time it felt like I wasn't moving forward on the violin. But since recording with it, I've been better able to take aim at some of the trouble spots that bug me worst (string changes, largely). This week I feel like I am actually improving again.

I also messed around with "Awakening" from Izetta, the Last Witch and now I've got motivation to do some double stops. I still find it easier to work stuff out on keyboard first, then translate to instrument (even recorder, which I've been doing long enough for the notes to be almost instinctive).



I want to record again.

I've got this urge towards more "Bardic Covers." When I covered "Khajiit Like to Sneak" I was thinking thinking in terms of the instruments a bard character in Skyrim would actually use. There is in fact a way to plug custom music into the bard performances in the game (the animations, as you can imagine, aren't closely tracked to the actual sounds being produced).

Plus it is now a tested set of instruments. I know how the recorder, ukulele, bodhran fit together. So I can sort of hear arrangements on these instruments of, say, "Still Alive" from Portal, or "NYC" from Annie.

Which is making me tempted to go in a different direction for the ukulele upgrade I've been wanting for a decade or so now; in the direction of one of these:

But the whole idea is rather silly. Besides not having the $300 or so for one of these guys, the video I put up with the last "Bardic Cover" garnered all of 16 views. Of course one does art for art's sake, or for one's own sake, really, but it is always nice if you can share it. 

(Yes...that's a "Lute-ulele, a four course six-string lute-back instrument with a tenor ukulele fingerboard and tuning.)

Oh, yeah. And this week I've really been wanting to work out some kind of arrangement of "Awakening."