There's no strings on me

...they're all over my workbench.

So the Vorson is re-strung with D'Addario EJ22's; "Jazz Medium Gauge" nickel-wounds. I shifted them one size up because of the shorter length; B string hung as E string, etc., then tuned them to guitar top four. That means most ukulele and guitar chords translate. Downside is the lowest string is only a D, so no playing the James Bond riff on this guy.

I sort of miss the sound of the original strings -- it was bright and edgy -- but I don't miss those cheese-slicer unwound strings at all. Plays fine through a mini-Fender and with my old Boss effects unit in front of a 10W Tourbus bass amp.

I cut the bridge a little more on the chincello to make it easier to hit the middle strings. That C string has such a high profile (seriously, it's a sixteenth of an inch in diameter). It also buzzes a bit. That's the string that's really pushing it -- going down an octave and a fifth is a bit much for a violin frame. I'm hoping a stickier rosin will help that. Some people suggest turning the bow a little and that seems to help as well.

It sounds quite cool through an amp, even a mini-fender. I haven't tried any effects on it yet.

And, yeah, that's enough stringed instruments so this became my big project this week:

I also wrote it up as an Instructable. After taking the pic above, though, I increased the width to 30" and now it comfortably fits all my strings. Now all I have to do is clear the pile of electronics at the foot of the bookshelf so I can put the stand over there.

Mixing the Kykeon

Prepared Kykeon last night. It's a drink described by Homer with some evidence that it comes from the Late Bronze Age. Main ingredients are red wine, barley flour ("roasted and crushed barley groats") and goat cheese ("grated with a brazen rasp.") Honey likely also features, and that's the recipe I tried for my first attempt; a California Merlot, Spanish goat cheese, locally-made honey, and a little water.

Next time, more water. Otherwise that's a whole glass of wine and that's a lot for me. Spices are referred to but without much detail. Two names did come up; pennyroyal, and rue. Neither will be find at the typical grocery store, as they are not used in any of the common cuisines here: both are described with cautions like "use at intervals to allow the body to recover" and "may cause gastric discomfort." I suspect tree moss and oak gall are similarly hard to source. However, oregano and thyme are also possible for the mix; I'd like to try those.

How is it? Well, basically it's a thickened, sweet wine. Goat cheese does not melt, so it remains lumpy even after being stirred in. So a bit like a thin chowder. It was a bit of a Paddington Brown experience mixing it; under a low simmer it thickens surprisingly, and I kept having to cut it back. It should be thin enough to drink from a cup -- Nestor drank a cup of it. Yes, "that" Nestor's Cup.



On the other hand, my plans for a bronze sword, a trip to the Aegean, etc., are on hold while I build up my finances. I've given in. The weaver is going to be in the book. I need to shape it to allow her.

The big questions I have at the moment, then, is how far to go along the heroic axis. On the one end, the characters are relentlessly ordinary, exemplars of their time and class. On the other, they are demigods in all but name; people with the ridiculous luck and physical prowess of action movie stars. I want to aim for something between these extremes, but I don't know which end to favor.

I also don't know if gods figure in. Or if magic is real. I'm tempted to reverse myself and go with deniable magic; that the scholar has chants from ancient books but he also has herbs from the same books and the latter might have been what actually healed the wound. And so forth.

And I'm not exactly certain what the date is, either. Some of the sources I've been reading claim the widespread destruction in the Mycenaean Empire took place decades before the wave of invasions along the Anatolian coast and into the heart of the Hittite Empire. Heck, even the "Trojan War" is hardly a fixed point -- Wilusa had been attacked more than once, in both legend and archaeological evidence.

I'm not even sure of form. I seem to be looking again at three "books," each in the 30-40K range -- too short to be independent, just awkwardly long enough not to stick between a single pair of covers.



Found a source for Pennyroyal and Rue. The mistake was looking at spice shops. What I wanted was an herb shop.

Oh, yeah, and about those boat guys...

After over a year of research I am no clearer about the Late Bronze Age Collapse than I was when I started. And, yes, this is partially because it is complicated. Very complicated. But the larger reason is because there is no academic consensus. Textual evidence is sparse and often untrustworthy, and archaeological evidence is selective -- in mostly the wrong ways.

In another direction, I've been unable to find any significance in whatever spot I pick out along a somewhat arbitrary line drawn from strictly historical to nearly pure fantasy. There doesn't seem to be a clear advantage in mechanical plotting, in market, in research effort, anything. Best I can say is that you could impose an arrow of "serious" vs. "light-hearted" along that same axis, but even that is arbitrary.

Oh, I suppose I could say that researching something that is archaeologically defensible would probably be more expensive. The references are more likely behind paywalls, in journals, in books that cost in the hundreds of dollars. Renting Hercules Conquers Atlantis would be a bit cheaper.

And, oh, the questions. The Mycenaean weavers are documented in palace records as being paid in grain. Which doesn't by itself make a meal. So one presumes some of one's grain ration would be traded for vegetables, olive oil, etc. To a state-run store? To local farmers in a barter system? I tend towards the former because of the way the Mycenaeans seemed to have their finger in everything. Which makes one suspect strongly there were official rules, and there was graft by said officials, and there were regulations attempting to control said graft, and the whole thing became as complex and dysfunctional as the Soviet economy at its worst.

But is this really defensible? You get glimmers of similar processes happening in Egypt, amid the workers at the Valley of Kings.

So many questions. Many of the weavers had children. Did the fathers work? Were they raised communally? Was being childless looked down upon? Some of them entered the country as slaves. Were there slaves in the weaving hall? Were they manumitted? How "free" were the "free" workers, anyhow?





So call that the "Real History" version. Keep the action around Knossos, at least for one book. Tell the story of the late bronze age within this teacup, and from the perspective of someone who never has the ear of kings.

Step two is spice it up a little; add revolution and secret cults and the coming of the Sea People. Plus add the Egyptian Scribe to our cast, at least.

Then there's the "Tale of..." version. Real people are documented as having made some pretty crazy journeys during the period. So Knossos is merely the start point of a tour of more than one hot spot of the Mediterranean. This is still ordinary people, but now getting into extraordinary scrapes (well, extraordinary in peaceful times. During the Collapse, crazy things happen to lots of people.)

Step past that is when these perhaps-lucky protagonists become Hero Protagonists. They become larger-than-life people that can survive escapades others might not. The Cretan becomes a seer, the scribe becomes healer and scholar, the Athenian becomes a mini-Xenephon.

Then add more magic. In this version, there are forces afoot, perhaps greater dangers lurking behind the visible destruction and conquests. The scholar can now work magic and everyone becomes impossibly skilled at arms.

And at some nebulous point here I have to drop my current cast and start working with people that vaguely resemble those of the Trojan War epics. Because now we move the Trojan War into the main focus. First version of that is new technologies; something new in the Troad that causes the Mycenae to have to go all 300 on them...or start up their Apollo program and start getting Steampunk Roman. This is the purest "Baen Books" version, where the historicity of almost everything is sort of defensible -- at least until things go East.

Then we stop worrying about most links to history and just wholesale enlist Homer's cast and throw them up against Atlantis.

And finally we toss out even those sources and we end up with demigods and heroes from across Greek mythology confronting a Disney version of Atlantis. (And, yet, we are still closer to known history than Xena, Warrior Princess).




So I guess I know one other thing. Wilusa (Troy) is one kind of story. Atlantis is another. And the two don't meet. So if I want to play with my weaver of Knossos, Atlantis, and yes probably most named characters of the Trojan War, are off the plate.

Feadóg Night

The current song is not going to sound good. But it is a good project.

You'd think that such a simple tune, I could just record the parts in and fix anything that needed fixing in the mix. I hope one day I'll be able to work that way. I'm getting better at holding multiple lines and basic harmonies in my head. But the details of an arrangement still need better tools. One of these days, also, I'll be doing that on paper. This time, I'm back to the old trick of making a MIDI mock-up and problem-solving the arrangement there.

Still lots of fun wrestling transpositions around to try to fit melodic patterns of the original into the playable ranges of my chosen instruments. And more work trying to figure out underlying harmonies. I really need to arrange things so I have a full keyboard to work with. It is so much faster discovering harmonies on a piano, instead of trying to hack them out by recording one voice at a time off a 2-octave controller keyboard.

One of the pieces I've been listening to -- "Awakening" from Izetta -- does stuff with harmonic progression I can only guess at. First there's a sequence which appears to be walking down through the chords towards the root. But one step short of resolving, it does a totally unprepared leap to an apparently unrelated key. And seemingly to the V chord, because it then moves up to a Dominant VII and does a big complicated glissando ending with a fermata. And then hits you with the root of the new key just when you can't wait any longer for the resolution. Which is used for the main theme...except that there's another shift (emphasis on the IV? Another key change? I don't have enough theory to tell) that sort of leans back towards the original key/puts it into a sort of minor mode. When it finally resolves back it does so in a greater and more complete manner than the simple heroism the first progression of the main theme was pointing to.

And this hits the underlying story elements perfectly. Izetta is a wild card, something that takes the existing situation/original chord progression and throws a monkey wrench into it. But her victory march turns melancholic the same way Reality Ensues in the storyline, resolving in a plainer heroism that recognizes sacrifice and loss as well as heroics.



So, yeah, I've got a whole lot of musical theory to learn. And the related skills of reading and writing and transposition and ear training.

In addition to the instrumentation. I think I've figured it out. I never wanted to play an instrument. I wanted to play music. And I'm too impatient to get the skills to where I could join a band, so it becomes up to me to compose and arrange and perform everything.

The Bb tin whistle arrived in the mail. Fingering exactly the same as the D whistle, just a wider stance of the grip. And the Vorson. I plugged it into the all-purpose amp, and ran it through an old Boss pedal I was last using as a telephone effect on some show long ago. I like it, and not just because of the generously wide neck (compared to the JR2). Tons of sustain and the finger tremolo I learned on other instruments sounds great.

Of course I'm re-stringing it. It's strung and tuned like a tenor ukulele, and I'm going for guitar. Probably the top four but I need to think about that. Also need a hardier pick.

On the chincello side, stickier rosin at the very least (it is hard work getting the lower strings to play). Lots of chincellists use a cello or at least a viola bow for this reason (just like most Vorson owners re-tune to guitar, usually with new strings -- D'addario seems a popular choice.) Plus, like the reviews noted, the frets could use some dressing so it is worth taking the strings off and doing a little work there.

That's a ridiculous number of instruments, though. I have hopes of being able to focus on one or two at a time as projects come to me. However. The Terminator "Folk Cover" is currently using bodhran, tin whistle, folk guitar, violin, and chincello (plus crumhorn pretending to be bagpipes).

Actually, though, it isn't as bad as it seems. Most of it crosses over; the folk guitar is mostly a larger ukulele; fretting skills and many of the chords translate straight across. Electric guitar is really just new tonal options and a different focus on picking and fretting techniques out of the same box. Same for bass, really. Fingering and tonguing carry through across most of the winds, with the only real outlier being the trumpet (what with valves, slotting, and of course embouchure).

But this goes back to how I approached my first instruments. Way back on recorder, I wasn't content to play the basic tunes. I experimented with and developed (some) skill in trills, vibrato, flutter tongue, multiphonics, glissando, and even tried out "chanter" style fingering (using the pad of the finger instead of the tip). On ukulele, I learned about and tried out slides, lift off's and hammer ons, ras strumming, forefinger and thumb strum as well as finger picking and even attempted claw-hammer. So many of the special techniques asked of guitar, bass, tin whistle, even trumpet were already something I'd tried. Heck, I'd even messed around with slotting on both natural horns and pieces of pipe.

In any case. Unless I have a sudden uncontrollable urge to get a Xaphon or a Pbone, I'm done with buying instruments. Now it's all about the accessories....

Oh yeah. And next shop project? A case rack.

Silence Must Fall

Tried out Yamaha Silent Brass for the trumpet. Not bad. Not bad at all.

On the "silent" side, it lets through more noise than the LotFancy trumpet mute I had been using. Still good enough for practicing in a small apartment, though. The other half of the Yamaha, however, is the built-in mic and pocket amplifier, with Yamaha's touted "Brass Resonance Modeling."

Which works to a point. The sound is clear and removes the major problem with a practice mute; that you can't hear yourself. There's enough there to work on tone, and the back pressure isn't too bad. It's good enough to be scary; over the first run with it you'll find yourself pulling off the headphones just to make sure you aren't blasting the neighbors with a full-open horn. It isn't quite the true trumpet sound, however. More like a cornet. Or maybe a straight mute.

Still, it is good enough to record with, and that makes my tin whistle the instrument most in need of a rehearsal space. Err, and the violin. I just realized I effectively no longer have an e-violin. Not that it mattered, as what I needed to progress was the acoustic violin. And the same objections to trying to practice with a mute, or when I can't open up and play out, are still there. So I may be renting rehearsal space yet.




A thought for Yamaha; if they can do acoustic modeling of a trumpet, putting back in what is lost to the mute, they should be able to do the same for an e-violin or chincello. It isn't so bad on the violin, but cello suffers from that lack of body resonances when done with a solid-body instrument and piezo pickups.



Tin whistle and guitar are coming along. On the guitar, I'm slowly managing to get just enough of the tips of my fingers between those tight strings (3/4 scale guitar, remember) to finger-pick properly. It looks like it will come, with more time. On the tin whistle, starting to get the ornaments, and the breath control.

And sight-reading. That was unexpected. On literature written for the tin whistle, there's few or no accidentals and with some exceptions the hole pattern even matches up with counting bar lines. I'm getting to the point where I just play whatever is on the sheet music without going through the usual mental gymnastics of figuring out which note it is, what the fingering is, etc.



So with the chincello and a little octave-shifted trumpet I can fill out my symphonic resources. I've pretty much got the instrumentation to move forward and do some music. Now it is all about practice. Or more to the point, working up some new pieces and getting the experience I need (which very much includes practice in reading, writing, and transposing) that way.



The Feadóg and the Vorson showed up today as well. Now I've really got some tonal options. Unfortunately the work week just caught up to me so today's accomplishments are going to be sprawling on the couch under a quilt reading schlock SF.

And when I feel better, I need another set of strings and a new pick.

How low can you go

The octave strings arrived today, and they don't sound half-bad through my little Ashdown 10W bass amp. Had to open up the peg holes* and cut wider grooves in the bridge, and after trying them out went back and re-shaped the bridge to give it more curve.

The Sensicores are on the Cecilio and I'm still thinking about moving the Alphayue's to the Pfetchner...and the pellet with the poison's in the chalice from the palace.

I'll tell you this, though; even a chin-cello is a workout! You've got to really grind that bow in on the lower strings. And fret with a firmer grip, too. Good thing I've been working those muscles on the steel strings of a folk guitar.

Working on "Concerning Hobbits" now with the penny whistle. Not just because it's popular, I hasten to add. Although the plethora of samples and instructional videos doesn't hurt. But because I've got sheet music that writes out all the ornaments; every grace note, every slide. Because what I'm after here is getting into my fingers and my brain the idioms of tin whistle playing.

Terminator is going more slowly. I've been under the weather, the weather has been over the top, and as a result I've mostly been working or sleeping, not doing music. I've got a new idea on the piece, though. I'm going to give up on trying to mimic the original, and am doing a free interpretation of the basic elements.

Three reasons. One is what's the use of doing a cover on folk instrument if you are going to hide their identity with electronic processing? Another is I literally could not perform some of the parts I wanted and I decided I was against faking it with editing. Last is I want to learn more about arranging in a Celtic/Folk/pop style, more than I want to learn how to copy what Brad Fiedel could do with 80's synthesizers.



*getting down into the guts of the pegbox on the Cecilio has helped me grasp just how (relatively) cheap and shoddy the construction is, from materials to fit to final finish. My other violin is a 1970's German-made student violin constructed in vast quantities for the school trade and from $400 to $600 on the used market today. But every bit, from the fit of the pegs to the material of the bridge is almost beyond comparison.

So I'm getting new insights into the instrument-shaped object. I am still on the fence about ISO's, and there isn't a single simple answer. I can't disagree with the objections made about cheap instruments, but I also have to stick an oar in and say that there are companies like Cecilio and Roosebeck and there are people who, if not for them, wouldn't have an instrument at all.

Myself among that list.

Cats Go Down Alleys

St Patrick's Day and I'm practicing penny whistle (also known as tin whistle, irish whistle, etc.)

Sort of. I was listening to some random stuff and thought it might be fun to cover the Terminator main theme using folk instruments. In any case it was time to get to know the tin whistle. I'm learning "Washerwoman" for speed and "Misty Mountains Cold" for long legato passages.

The tin whistle is stubbornly diatonic; out-of-scale notes usually require difficult half-holing, although there are a couple of cross fingerings possible. Because of the way the overblow happens, though, there is some funny fingering around the octave break. "Ornaments" is a bit of a misnomer, also; the instrument is generally not tongued, so accenting the notes in legato lines is done by adding cuts and strikes and trills.

And while I'm on scales...still lots of fun relating between different instruments. Most of them are not transposing, but many of the ones I'm working with have a practical range of about two octaves so it is a lot of fun to try to find matching pitches.

That and changing between different string patterns; the JR2 -- which I am slowly getting used to despite the cramped nut width of 1.6875" -- is E, A, D, G, B, E, the Ubass is the standard E, A, D, G (Elves And Dwarves Gather) an octave below those same strings on the guitar. And of course the ukulele is on G, C, A, E with the typical "re-entrant" tuning that makes the C the lowest string.

Then violin at G, D, A, E -- the viola is pitched a fifth below, the cello a fifth below that, so the new strings I'm having shipped will be C, G, D, A -- that top string at two scale tones below Middle C. I'll be putting the Sensicore's on the Cecilio, then possibly switch the Alphayue's to the Pfetchner to see if I get a sweeter tone there. I also have a two-dollar set of Pesca's I may try out on the JR2 if I get really tired of cutting my fingers fretting those steel strings (I do love the tone, though).

With that, and the Yamaha mute I've also got coming in the mail, I'm down to only a handful of instruments that need a practice room. I can even record most of what I've got at home, which is a lot more practical than any of the alternatives. In addition. I had to make a personal visit to find out but the local Guitar Center has piano rooms for $10/hour. And they are just down the road from my workplace.




On that home front, however. The Terminator title has a hard-panned drum. I tried taping lapel mics an inch from the head (which meant I also spent a part of St Patrick's Day with soldering iron repairing mic elements) but that didn't get the necessary separation. I tried recording one half of the drums at a time but that weird meter is bad enough (I've tried it in 6/8 and 5/4 but nothing really lines up right). Finally damped the bodhran with a t-shirt then manually panned all the beats in Reaper automation. No amount of effects, however, would make them sound like the original drums -- and adding a bunch of effects seems contrary to the idea of doing on folk instruments in the first place, nicht was?

For the low pad, I am not running out to get Great Highland Pipes -- so I'm simulating bagpipe drone with digitally manipulated crumhorn. It sounds...okay.

I've seen various interpretations of the little synth arpeggiation that happens a few bars before the drums enter. I tried doing it finger-tapping on the guitar and I don't really care for that, either. Basically, the mix isn't working, not as a slavish copy of the material that's in the original.

So best bet is to do a free interpretation of the musical ideas. Which really seems to cry for some serious fiddle and whistle work as well as folk guitar. None of which I'm good at, not yet. Practicing parts is no good. I need to learn some traditional pieces and get decent at playing them so I can internalize the construction and techniques.

Well, the octave strings don't show up until next week, anyhow. And the "high" Bb Feadóg is coming by Royal Mail and will be another week again.

Maybe I should jump on another piece. The Hellboy theme is kind of cute for bass guitar and brass and a little cello might finish it up. I'm feeling very amateur at the moment, though. The practice is not going well.

In for a penny, in for £7.50

Selected the new piece and started rehearsing the penny whistle part on my Clarke. It's a bit high. Shrill, even. Annoy-the-neighbors shrill. Of course I already have a problem since the Clarke is in D, and the drones on the Highland Pipes I'm going to try to simulate are in A.

Sorta. Neither is a chromatic instrument, and pipes aren't tuned to 440 either. Their "A" is a bit sharp of Bb. Not that it matters overmuch since my crumhorn (which according to Susato is an alto) only goes down to D itself. See what I mean about range?

So it was worth looking into a second whistle. Of course the simple questions are often the hard ones. People don't make web pages or YouTube videos answering the simple questions, they make them for people struggling with the next steps. It took forty minutes to find the ranges of various tin whistles.

In case you were wondering, the standard tin whistle reaches the D below Middle C, the E, F, and G are pitched higher, and the C and Bb are pitched lower, with the latter being the lowest of the "soprano" whistles; after that you are in the (much more expensive!) Low Whistles, with D the most typical but G not uncommon.

And so I've got a Bb Feadóg on order.

I took the Clarke to work because I can still rehearse the fingering even if the pitches are going to change. But it was too shrill there, too -- I have classes above me and an office next door. This is an increasing problem and I don't have a great solution.

To be able to practice you need to be in a place where you are comfortable failing. Where you can try things and mess up, and where you can go over and over and over an exercise because that's how you get better. It hurts your practice when you are self-conscious and aware other people can hear you. But what do you do?

Practice mutes are a stop-gap. They change the sound, they change the feel. And some instruments (like the tin whistle) don't have an easy mute. Six hundred years of development has gone into turning what had been chamber instruments into power tools that can project to the back of a symphony hall. Those years have done nothing good towards making apartments more soundproof, or providing safe spaces for practice.

(Well, honestly, the trumpet has always been a weapon of war. Even if the Renaissance sackbut is quiet enough it can do a duet with a lute. The Great Highland Pipes, of course, are a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Do you know why pipers walk while playing? They're trying to get away from the noise.)

I could take classes, and that might get me a chance to sign up for a few snatched hours in a room at some inconvenient location. Or I could pay $14 an hour for the same opportunity in Oakland. Thing is, I'm a peripatetic practicer. I have a ukulele hanging by my desk and it works out great to pick it up for a few minutes when I need a break from writing or during a slow part in a movie. I keep an instrument at work and I take it out on my scheduled breaks.

And the same problems are there for recording. Worse, in a way, because if I want to tinker with a piece I don't want to have to bundle up the whole recording rig and drive out to a rental studio just to fix a couple of notes. 

Maybe there's no one-size-fits-all. Perhaps the thing to do is to schedule around the not-quit-so-piercing instruments, and accept work-arounds for the louder instruments. Such as record (and practice) with e-violin and Silent Brass and make that work for me.

I just listened to several recordings taken through Yamaha's Silent Brass system, and it seems acceptable for where I am and what I currently want to do with trumpet. I was going to pick up a stonelined anyhow, and the changes to the sound of the trumpet of that straight mute are very similar to what the Silent Brass imposes.

And use e-violin for as many violin parts as I can get away with. My other strings are all acceptable; ukulele is quiet, guitar is sufficiently non-annoying, and the bass (actually ubass) plugs in (you can't even practice without plugging it in to something. I know. I've tried.)

Oh, and speaking of violin and lower strings; turns out the same technology that made the ubass possible has been leveraged on violins; two different companies make "octave" strings. Applied to a viola, they drop the instrument down to the exact same tuning as a cello. Obviously you don't have the same body resonance, but I've got a solid-body e-violin. So that's going to be the next life for my Cecilio; I'm going to restring it as a cello. 

And that, too, goes straight into headphones and will not disturb the neighbors.

Blowing Down

Back in the hardware MIDI days I'd spend hours typing patch names into OSC so they would pop up automatically in my sequencer. When I migrated to soft samplers I spent days building and sorting patches. Now I'm window shopping for instruments.

A composer friend of mine selected a set of sounds and once he had them, he stuck with them for years. I wish I could do that. Sampler libraries are bad enough (you are always wanting a better choir, an obscure instrument, a performance technique that isn't in your other library.) Real instruments are worse.

Register is one issue. To simulate, say, a symphony orchestra you need the low instruments as well as the high.

I just did a little experiment in Reaper. I recorded some trumpet and ran it through an octave shifter. With a little bit of additional tweaking it makes an unconvincing but functional French Horn. I could probably fake 'cello the same way, although that's also a tough sell.

But trombone? Less effective (a formant shift plug-in worked somewhat). The problem here is articulation. And that's at the root of why I started playing real instruments instead of samples. There's not just ways notes are attacked, but idioms of play that are intrinsic to the physical construction and standard technique of an instrument. It doesn't matter if the basic sound is right, you can't strum a keyboard.

But what? Learn trombone and french horn and saxophone as well? And that's just the brass section: that way lies madness.



Thinking in terms of ensembles, though, I've almost got the selection to do all the "Bardic Covers" I'd care for. The biggest noticeable holes are low recorder. And the ukulele. I still love ukulele, but it sounds like ukulele. It doesn't do well at being other kinds of chordophone ("lute," by the full Sachs–Hornbostel classification.)

Unfortunately my new Yamaha guitar, as much as I love the tone, isn't a good instrument for me. That 3/4 bridge is too narrow for proper finger-picking. I can use a pick, and I can strum, but that's limiting. Best of all for the Bardic sound would be a lute, but I'll settle for an acoustic guitar at this point.

(Pictured; Rogue soprano, Kala Ubass, Yamaha JR2 folk guitar.)

And as I said, my current recorder collection can't even reach the root note of the harmonies. I need that tenor recorder (pictured; Yamaha alto, Schreiber soprano, Yamaha sopranino, and a garklein I picked up at a street fair in Bad Munster.)

Of course I just thought of another theme that would be cute to do a cover of. But the perfect instrument for one of the emblematic sounds of the original? Bagpipe.

(Another thing? The Bardic Cover is a concept but it requires much higher levels of musicianship than I have or expect to gain in the near future.)




What are other options? Much as I just opined against having a whole set of brass, trumpet isn't enough for jazz or symphonic. I'm going to experiment with how far I can fake it, though. I'd really like to try some jazzy stuff, especially since I've got my bass working again, but I am saddened by having to synthesize the drums. Because I am not going to fit a trap set. I was having trouble even fitting an e-drum set!

Well, I think I'm going to try that new cover anyhow. Maybe I can fake a bagpipe with crumhorn and a lot of mix magic...

Fish Dreams

Two ways of telling the "Seven Against Atlantis" story. One is the military fiction route, which often includes the engineer-hero trope. The underlying trick is some technological advance that destabilizes the power balance of the Ancient World. The cat does not go back in the bag; the Hellenes can reverse-engineer the Atlantean tech or come up with their own super-science but basically society changes.

I readily admit it's a fun challenge to come up with something which an otherwise Bronze Age society could employ but that ends up making them look like cover artist versions of Atlantis complete with rayguns and flying cars and, if at all possible, glowing crystals. Always with the crystals.

The polar opposite is Atlantis has something...high technology, alien technology, magic tech (aka crystal vibration crap) but on the side of the Hellenes is they are legendary. Demigods like Achilles. And real gods in the wings.

See, in the first case it is basically an alternate history. Start with a realistic Bronze Age, properly researched and all, then add new technology and stir. In the second case it is what is called a Constructed World; a world of myths and legends come to life, which only tangentially resembles the real world.

It becomes in short a story of battling tropes, a mixing of myths modern and old, with recognizable New Age crystal magic running headlong into recognizable characters from Greek (and other!) mythology.

And yeah. It's also a heck of a lot easier to research.



On the flip side, thinking about this is also telling me I probably have enough to start into the original story. I don't need a perfect plot. I don't need to solve the mystery of the Sea People or explain the Bronze Age Collapse. I've got enough to support a story with the character arcs of the "Minoan" weaver, the Athenian mercenary, and the Egyptian scribe.

Blowing Out

Took the trumpet out to the shop on a weekend with no-one around so I could finally play without the mutes. Learned quite a bit, mostly good. My articulation and tone aren't quite as bad as I feared, but some of that slot-changing is actually more difficult without the mute. Go figure (I expect what it is, is I am used to where the slots "feel" with the back-pressure of the mute.)

Finished putting the "California" pre-amp into my SUB UBass. Everything fit just fine, even if (unlike in the California) I have to unplug the LiPo to recharge it. That built-in tuner makes it so much nicer to keep it in tune (those floppy Pahoehoe strings stretch constantly.)

I'm still thinking of a set of metal-wound strings but for now...



Went to Guitar Center and purchased.....a guitar. I checked out the ukuleles but I feel I really need guitar sounds for the pieces I've been thinking about. Dawdled a while over a guitarlele but the thing is...they aren't good at being ukes and they aren't good at being guitars. It is an interesting instrument with unique potential, but the final thing that decided me is that it has nylon strings on top and steel-wound below. Meaning most of the uke strums don't work right.

Probably because they get so many people getting a guitar for their kid, Guitar Center has a wide selection of kid-sized guitars, at mostly starter prices. What grabbed me was a used Yamaha 3/4 steel-string folk guitar. Not as deep or rich as a full-sized guitar but a sweet tone that reached out and grabbed me. I dithered for a while over a 3/4 dreadnaught with much better low end, but when I tried a little picking on that one I found the upper strings had an unpleasant boxy sound. So the JR2TBS it was.

I've been avoiding guitar because I already went through uke chords and I was afraid of how many frets you'd have to remember with six strings to work with. Turns out -- since the top three are identical tuning anyhow -- the uke chords more-or-less work. Guitars (I say this as a uke player) cheat. Many of the standard chords don't even bother to fret half the strings, and just say "please don't hit these ones on your strum."

However. I'd forgotten the reason I'd also shied from 3/4 scale instruments, preferring to go the uke route; those strings are way close together. So fretting is both easier and harder than I expected.

But I still like the tone.



I re-discovered a performer on YouTube who is probably who first put the idea in my head of going one-man band. He performs all the parts for his game and movie theme covers. With some surprising fidelity...he went out and got, for instance, udu drum, steel pan, vibra-slap. And a set of horns in black to suit the look of his James Bond theme cover.

And that last was quite informative. I could see the P-bone label clearly; that's a hundred-dollar plastic trombone. And the violin looks suspiciously like a Cecilio. So, yeah, the advanced students and the actual gigging musicians can claim, fairly, that cheap instruments sound cheap, he's getting the sound he needs out of them.

Similar note for technique. I was looking to see if he was doing arm vibrato on the violin (that's a mark of someone who has more than one year behind them) but when a camera angle came around to show his arm properly...I couldn't believe how far his wrist was collapsed. So, yeah, the spotty articulation and tone issues I was hearing are there.

I'm not saying he's a poor player. Like I said, the finished effect is great. But he is underlining something I've said before about how a skilled musician knows how to get a musical result from poor chops...or a poor instrument. Because he's playing to his strengths and arranging to the musical assets he has and those arrangements are great.



So, yeah, I've looked up additional brass and winds (and one of my major objections is I'd have to buy a whole batch more practice mutes) but what I'm going to do instead is experiment with electronic modification. Starting with octave shifting. I may want to record as many parts as I can acoustically, but I'm not silly. I fixed timing and pitch issues on the "Khajit" piece and I'll gladly do the same again.

Biggest issue I'm looking at right now is a place to record the louder parts. I'm not sure doing it at work is going to fly...

Cleaning Blues

Sudden insurance inspection -- ran around like a madman and lifted the top layer of dirt. Odd how much cleaner it feels with so (relatively) little work. Most times I set out to clean, I start by trying to figure out what to do with all the piles of semi-abandoned projects and scrap materials and reference books and so on and go directly to despair without passing go mop.



Just gave the trumpet a bath.  Also finally got around to fitting the "California" pre-amp into my Kala Ubass. The electronics part is next; have to separate and jumper the PC boards so it will fit, and switch out the coin cells for a LiPo left over from the Holocron project. As for practice, spent today fiddling (!) with the Bon Musica shoulder rest. I'm still tensing up with both shoulder and neck and I still press too hard when I fret. So still basically doing modified scales (with shifts, with no open strings, with arm vibrato; that sort of thing).

I need to jump on to the next recording project. No dithering around finding the perfect project, just get something else done and see what I learn from that. I can't help thinking I should do something that uses the trumpet and bass and leverages what few keyboard skills I have. I've sort of re-thought the idea of a "simple violin line." The violin isn't going to be suitable for even a section until I have decent vibrato.

I'm quite tempted by the thought of doing section stuff, though. Overdub the trumpet enough times for a section, the violin enough times for each chair. Thing is...there's other colors needed for a good symphonic picture. Violin is not 'cello, but that's not the worst of it. One brass does not a brass section make; no matter how many jokes there are about how to make a trumpet sound like a French Horn (stick your hand in the bell and play out of tune), you just can't reach those sounds. And then there's the wind section...

I'm already dithering over a next purchase because my ukulele really doesn't work for anything but a ukulele part -- and not even very well at that (it's a cheap uke and it is a soprano, which is a bit small for my fingers). Thing is I want them all; guitar tones, lute tones, electric guitar tones even. And if nothing else, that's a lot to learn. Heck, that's a lot just to clean and maintain!



Anyhow.

Top of the list right now is to attempt to cover "Still Alive" from Portal in a hootchy-koochy sort of thing with wah-wah trumpet. Or do it salsa. Or I might do something original.

Or rather, originally unoriginal. I'm rather leaning on cheating my way through a pseudo-orchestral thing with no real progression or melodic content but just some of the tried-and-true chord pairs and repetitive arpeggios of far too many dashed-off movie scores. And just to be really really obvious the Ominous Latin Chanting would be along the lines of "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..."

In the longer range, I really want to sit down and figure out how to voice a proper "medieval" sound, with or without correct period polyphony.

Stupid Jetpack Hector

I'm deep in academic papers on political structure of Mycenae, international trade in late bronze age Crete, and so on and so forth. But I'm still going to take some time to think about the new idea -- the one I've given the (farcical) working title of "Re-Sink Atlantis!"

Okay, that last is a steal from the excellent Book of Sequels from the National Lampoon authors. Just like the title to this post is referencing TVTropes and the alternate W.W.II stories with Stormtroopers flying around on rocket packs. (An even more obscure option, for you fans of Ancient Greek Playwrights, might be "Seven Against Atlantis.")

Yeah, this one intersects with a lot of memes, and the basic idea goes way back. You want bronze-age heroes going after a high-tech civilization with nothing but their wits and a sword? Let me introduce you to the Italian Hercules movies.




Right, let me step back a moment for the elevator pitch: "Homer's Hellenes go up against Donnelly's Atlantis."

That is, a coalition of relatively realistic late bronze age warrior chiefs are forced into a battle for their very existence against a 20th century version of Plato's Atlantis: one with aircraft and ray guns.




Of course I'd just been reading about both the Trojan War, and on the history and evolution of the Atlantis story. And researching the Sea Peoples, which includes the rather suspect Luwian Hypothesis (not as batshit crazy as Protochronism, or Thracomania...the point of similarity here being the huge and unlikely empires each draws on their maps.)

And also some Steampunk Roman stuff, and been contemplating questions of footprints of technology and the implausibility of most of the Ancient Astronauts nonsense, and, basically, a lot of weird stuff that was floating around ready to get pulled into the mix. And, no, the conflation of Troy and Atlantis isn't exactly new, either. The new take I'm adding is to go full Constructed World with it (not trying in any way to seat it within archaeological plausibility).

In any case, there's a lot of different ways you could go with this. There's real-world examples of numbers versus technology -- Rorke's Drift, Pizarro, Gate Pah -- and you can pick the side you want to root for. Many is the work of fantasy and science fiction where the Evil Empire has the upper hand in both numbers and force multipliers, and the heroes have to do something exceptionally clever (I'm reading a fanfic now which crosses Mass Effect and Half-Life -- more-or-less successfully). At the nadir it's all Ewoks vs. Stormtroopers, and if you can't even Zerg Rush them...

(As a total aside, I like a lot about Rogue One but I think it's biggest failure is that the Star Wars universe is inherently a heroic one. The decks are stacked so far in the Empire's favor the only convincing way to stop them is by being the hero of the story. Casting the tale in grey-vs-grey morality is powerful but it makes their eventual victory unconvincing. The Leia-bot that appears at the end of the film is appropriately out of the Uncanny Valley, because the kind of simplistic heroism she represents doesn't belong in the Rogue One universe.)

Anyhow, my temptation is to go what I call the Baen Books direction. Unable to match the Atlanteans one-on-one, the Hellenes hire Daedalus, start up their own Apollo program, and go about getting their SandalPunk on. This might be extensions of vaguely historical technology -- Greek Fire, early iron, crossbows, whatever -- or reverse-engineering Atlantean Crystal Technology. Either way, by the end of the book history as we know it is shot and the Ancient World is nigh-unrecognizable.

A different take is a variation of the magic v. technology trope, from heroes and demigods and the occasional Circe or Medea vs. the glowing crystal magitek of Atlantis, all the way out to Gods vs. Grey Aliens.




In any case, an important element in my original conception is that this isn't unabashed heroism. The Hellenes are steeped in realpolitik and no-one gets the moral high ground (even if I would't want to go so far as making them historical bronze age warriors; "nasty, brutish, and in short kilts.")

Which is going to be true whether you use historical Mycenaeans and allies (one would really hope Egypt would get involved), Homer's Hellenes (Agamemnon is an opportunist and the wily Odysseus is rather a bastard), or the 10,000 BCE Athenians of Plato (who are basically romanticized Spartans).

And, yeah, you could flip and put the poor final remnants of Atlantis on tiny Thera or something facing the unwashed hordes, but no matter which side you want to side with, it needs to be a more complicated story, with good people and bad people on both (or all!) sides.

Right. All sides. Because as frozen in time as Egypt usually is, under enough threat they will invest in new methods. The Hyksos forced them into adopting the chariot, and they made good with it. And from a writer's point of view, the Egyptian Kingdom with fancy new magitek would be way, way fun to play with.



So what is this Atlantean tech? Connected to this is a question of not how but how not. The easiest assumption is the technology is new. Otherwise they'd have conquered the world already. If it is self-limiting (say, only works within the city limits) then they aren't going to conquer anyone. And if this is ancient secrets being rediscovered...well, that just moves the question back in time and thus is no solution.

Anyhow. Assume "glowing crystals" (the typical form from 1960's onward visual representations -- I think Donnelly was the first to say it) is a story-teller's interpretation of something they didn't see first-hand. So...silicates in the form of, say, silicon wafers (aka microelectronics?) Or how about crystal as shape and molecular structure aka carbon-carbon nanomachines.

I'm not fond of either. I rather like the trick from a couple of books; of making one new thing available and the rest is built upon it using essentially bronze-age approaches. When you get right down to it, it's really about power. You have power, you have metallurgy; from copper to bronze to iron to steel is basically about how hot you can get the furnace. From Hero's engine to practical steam power to internal combustion to rocketry is largely, again, about packing potential energy (and being able to handle it!)

If you want flying cars, much less levitating platforms, you are talking power. And that's a Kizinti Lesson waiting to be taught. (Of course, the trick in military applications largely boils down to speed. A candle, a battery, a Mars Bar, a cartridge and a flashlight battery contain roughly the same potential energy, but only the cartridge releases it fast enough to put a bullet downrange. So, yeah; being able to light a street is not the same as being able to light enemy ships on fire -- Archimedes aside).

In any case, given a power source you can manage some pretty crazy tricks with even primitive engineering and materials. So, yeah, I'm leaning towards some sort of cold fusion or super-piezoelectricity or something.

The thing from the last couple decades has been information technology. Which in many applications is about making do with less. You can design weaker structures because you can calculate the margins closer. You can extract more information from cheaper sensors. You can tolerate lack of tolerances because you are employing automatic correction. Hard to figure out how to leverage this onto Bronze Age technology, though.

Oh, but then there's sciences of the mind. Biologists and psychologists probably feel the same way physicists do when "quantum" gets thrown around to excuse everything, but to someone without a lot of background in the appropriate sciences it doesn't feel at all like rubber science to have some method -- a technology, a drug, an operation, a stray meme -- that allows Big Brother levels of social control.

Because if you can control minds, you've got the Zerg rush.

18 mos Violin

I swapped out the old shoulder rest for a Bonmusica. Now, yeah, I can get the web of my hand off that violin neck and really start practicing arm vibrato. But the hand and arm positions are different now, the cues that my muscle memory was based on are different, and basically it's like I'm back to the beginning.

Only this time I'm getting those basics down faster, and the results are cleaner. I feel like I am finally progressing again after six months of what felt like stasis.

Yeah, but that also means all my practice sessions right now are endless exercises in string crossings, vibrato, and a little shifting. Lots and lots of scales in first and fourth position.

The trumpet is also pretty much in exercise land. My exercises now are speed and tone, plus a little on keeping the articulation clean and controlled. Speed is really about the slotting (and a bit about the tonguing). I still have trouble moving from the top of the range to the bottom of the range; to get into those different slots -- particularly with a good tone -- you have to slip your lips slightly within the mouthpiece. Right now I'll start a scale, go up to my top note, but run into trouble on the way down. Especially when trying to do it fast.

The valves mean less and less as time goes on. The key muscle memory is in finding the right slot. To some extent you can play the note even if you've got the wrong valves in. It will usually be a weak harmonic and sound terrible, though. It can be very confusing, until you figure out what you did.

It's also time for another cleaning.

Thinking the next recording might be an attempt at a trio. I'm not that good with the trumpet yet, but I have a keyboard (Behringer controller, but still...), and bass. Gave away the e-drums, though.

Still think the "Bardic Covers" are amusing, and I do like the challenge of trying to work up proper polyphony on the wind parts and properly idiomatic "lute" work. Thing is, I still haven't settled on the upgrade to the ukulele. The one thing I'm sure of is I don't want soprano any more (the fingering is too tight). I'm caught, though, between guitar-like tones, lute-like tones (and look!)...and electric.

By which I don't mean piezo pickups (I have in the closet a project solid-body uke with piezo bridge pickup), but a steel-string, fender or strat style uke with real humbuckers.

I found one cheap recently, and the reviews say the biggest problems are the frets aren't dressed and the action is too high. No problem for me. (A crooked neck, on the other hand, I'd rather not deal with). But, still, that is a bit of the other dirty secret of musical instruments. Bought my first uke. Then bought new strings, and a pick, and looking for a strap. Bought a cheap trumpet, then spent almost as much for cleaning kit, then a practice mute, then another mute, and looking for a fresh tin of spitballs now. Or the violin; bought new strings. Shoulder rest. Better rosin. A new bow. Two more shoulder rests. New chinrest. Oh, yeah...and a new violin!

A Tale of One City

Well, that went well. The six months I gave myself for an outline are already over and I haven't even determined the basic shape of the novel.

I could totally do the entire thing on Crete. Mostly in Knossos, even. The weaver as the central protagonist. Much of the story of the late bronze age can be encapsulated in one city, but Knossos has the extra cachet of having been previously the Minoan palatial center.

We've got excellent records, spectacular ruins. We have mute evidence of the coastal raiders in the retreats dug into the stony fastnesses of the inland mountain ranges. And we have those connections of trade; from the earliest moments of the bronze age through the coming of the Iron Age -- right through the Greek Dark Ages -- Crete is still in trade contact with the rest of the Ancient world so the story of Crete really can be a story of a big chunk of the bronze age.

And, yeah, keeping to one setting makes the research a little more plausible.

The opposing plan is still some version of the five man band cast; of several characters -- heroes, really -- each with their own skills as well as their own quirks and backgrounds. And hitting at least some of the fun tour stops, at least one of Mycenae, Cypress, Pi Ramses, Ugarit, Hattusha, Wilusa.

I wasn't entirely truthful above. I do have an outline for this, one that is good enough to start breaking out specific research questions (some of them very specific -- such as, at what point did the Laconians become laconic?) I can even say I'd have more fun with Setna running around the Peloponnese hooking the sword-arms of pirates with his khopesh...it's just that, at the moment, I'm so fascinated by whats happening in the palatial centers...and the potentials of a story at a smaller scale.

Oh, but there's a totally different story that is starting to creep into my head right now. It came to me today while listening to the excellent Trojan War podcast. Start with the Luwian Hypothesis, roll it all the way out, but splice in large parts of the Trojan War. So the Luwian Empire is threatening the entire Mediterranean Basin, and a Mycenaean coalition forms to oppose them -- forms with all the realpolitik, all the use of Helen as a casus belli, Odysseus playing mad to get out of the war, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, etc. All the good and the bad, that is. Of both sides, if possible.

And then take it one more step because the Luwian's are Plato's Atlantis, and oh yes the gods are real and Achilles is nigh invulnerable and all that. And no point in stopping there. Go back and trace the history of myths and stories and there are a hundred versions (and details accrete over time.) Since we're only resembling the standard Trojan War story, elements of Theseus and Jason and Medea and all sort of other interesting things can sneak in there too.

And the best part of it? The serial numbers are still under there but everything has been remelted and jumbled together so much "research" ceases to be an element at all. I mean, if you have to squint to recognize Hector, there's not a Myrmidon who can complain that the galleys have the wrong number of oars.