Wednesday, May 16, 2018

A Doctor a Day Keeps Apple Away

Over an hour of practice yesterday. Put down ten bucks for a practice room and blew trumpet until my lips gave out. But they recovered; I was able to work more of the Hellboy theme when I got home (Weird fingering. First time I've had all three valves down at once.)

Oh and by the way; chin vibrato is easy on the trumpet now. It just hit, and I have no trouble at all applying it at will. Unfortunately my multiphonics are not keeping pace. I can growl one note fine but it messes me up trying to do quick slotting into another note. I'm sorta split now on Hellboy whether to stick with the original idea of harmon mute, go full open (and growl), or...pick up a pixie stonelined and a plunger and do it that way. Whatever. That octave leap is still a pain all by itself.

Oh, yeah. Horn was starting to feel funny so I took it apart for thorough cleaning. That leadpipe was foul. Corrosion starting on the exposed brass of the slides, too. I polished them up and was liberal with the slide grease when I re-assembled. I'm starting to rethink upgrading to a used Conn. Not sure I want all the maintenance!




That and fifteen minutes on violin during my afternoon break and about ten minutes guitar in the evening mostly working that fast back-and-forth pick action. That's gotten decent enough on the .020" pick I'm ready to take it up to a harder pick.

Arm vibrato has also taken off. So much so I have trouble forcing a wrist vibrato and I don't like the way it sounds when I do. Once you've got arm, you can go deeper and slower and the whole thing is much smoother. That's because there's so much more weight (and larger muscles) in the arm; you've got a full pendulum to shift and damp in a regular oscillation. In the wrist vibrato it's basically antagonistic muscles only; instead of being applied against the inertia of a weight in motion, the muscles are forced against each other until the wrist trembles.

Over-simplifying, but you get the idea. Wrist is choppy, and because your hand remains in contact with the violin the depth is less. Arm you can use the weight of that arm to force your finger completely flat and get a very wide vibrato, and because of the damping effect of pushing into the fleshy limits the motion is much more of a sine curve.




I'm overdue to make some progress videos. I was doing a regular series of the first few terrible weeks of picking up violin (and later, trumpet). But I got all of a dozen views each so I don't feel terribly obligated to keep it up.

No new music yet. Want to rehearse the Terminator parts for another week before I record. That first guitar part is still hairy but the penny whistle is bearing so much of the weight of the composition it really has to be lyrical and intense and that comes with being really comfortable with it.


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