High and Low

Picked up a Yamaha tenor recorder. So not a SATB consort yet...those Bass recorders are way too expensive. But still enough to do some of that four-part recorder harmony writing. The fingers are way far apart, even with the key on the last hole. The one that kills me though is the thumb hole; I am so used to having my thumb positioned behind the top hole.

Meanwhile the trumpet is going high. Working with the pixie mute did something to my embouchure and suddenly I can go right up to that high C and maybe a little beyond. The slots do get very close together up there and I need more practice to be confident in finding them.

Oh, yeah, and started using the slides to get the part I've been practicing to be in tune. Forgetting that I'm using the plunger on that and that means no slides (the slide/support hand is out front holding the mute).

Almost recorded another draft of that part today but I was too tired to go out to the shop. That machining project is worrying me now. At least the other two parts I need aren't as bad as the first one, but I've still got the first one chucked in the mill while I try to take the stock down to the right thickness. There's a lot of metal involved. Took an hour just to rough-cut the block from the stock I purchased.

Today wasn't a total waste, though. I got some plotting done on the "slightly less" research novel. The character I'm calling "Herr Satz" is coming along, the Carabinieri posing as a slightly-dirty art dealer is coming along, and I've got a new Big Bad. The reception scene at the art gallery is getting more and more complicated; pretty much everyone there is putting on a mask and has some agenda, and few of the conversations have less than two levels.

Also moving research into the Scrivener file so I don't have to keep opening browser windows. Worked up a full page on the Enceladus Calyx itself, the titular artifact. Well...it is definitely Enceladus, even though it is a Late Geometric piece and thus is a few hundred years the Gigantomachy becomes a motif in art or writing. And is definitely a krater, but the calyx form also shows up a little later. As does true black-figure decoration, alas; the human figures that appear before the full flower of the Orientalizing period are both silhouette and rather abstract.

Yeah, research. My experience with the last few writing projects suggests that there's roughly the same number of words in the work files and in the final text. As for the full historical novel, I've already read on the order of 100x the number of words that will appear in the final text. I'd be happy to get it down to a ten-to-one ratio of words read to words produced, but even that seems to be a pipe dream.