A Mighty Wind

Was working on the trumpet today and realized I'd been cheating the lower notes by over-tonguing. That is, I'm not hitting those slots fast and clean and I was hiding that failing by playing very staccato.

I'm also still having a lot of trouble slipping the lip coming back down from the High C. So as usual, a lot of the practice session is very mechanical. Scales and worse.

That's how it goes; steadily smaller incremental improvements, meaning more practice time for less perceived gain. Which is a good reason why I find it more exciting to learn a new instrument than to continue improving on one that I own. I'd really like to learn another brass instrument -- especially since brass translates, meaning much of what I've learned on trumpet could be applied to, say, French Horn.

Against that is the thought of what might actually be useful in the task of getting some more music completed. I'm still playing with the idea of "bardic covers"; of using generally Early Music/folk instruments to cover a variety of game and movie themes.

The real fun of this is the challenge of using idiomatic writing and performance techniques of the instruments; renaissance recorder consort voicings, Irish bodhran licks and penny whistle ornaments, fiddle double-stops, and so forth.

And, yes, that's a hell of a lot to learn. Especially at the composing end, especially for someone who really doesn't know that much theory.

On the upside, the way the Terminator and Hellboy covers have been staggering shows me that stuff with a lot more rhythmic content is going to go a lot better. And if I can get over the hump of understanding the jig form, then I'll have a template to create and record (within the limitations of that style) with a great deal more comfort.

(Hellboy is a weird meter I still haven't quite figured out. Recording the bass part has been a pain in the butt as I keep jumping the thirds and slewing the syncopation. Terminator has a simpler meter but the original was dense pad-like synth sounds and that means the translation ends up with slow, legato, extremely exposed lines...lines where every bow crossing or intonation error leaps out in the listening.)

I've been listening to a lot of PPF and other YouTube multi-instrumentalists and I've come to a more nuanced position on digital trickery. Which is simply that I'm not about authenticity. I'm about expression. Sure, some people get bragging rights because they could perform the whole thing live. I'm just as happy if I can get it right once in a hundred tries and put that one on tape. I'm completely find with adjusting EQ, compressing, doing all the usual audio mixer tricks, but also doing pitch correction and effects (octave shifting, flanging, chorusing, distortion) as necessary.

(Speaking of which, I have a weird scheme in mind to improve the sound of electric cello. Which is to take the recorded performance, shift it up a couple octaves, play it back through a contact microphone attached to an acoustic violin, record that, combine the recording with inverted copy to remove the original signal and save only the body resonances, re-pitch that, and add it to taste back to the original recording.)

So, yeah. The smart thing to do now is to keep practicing at the instruments I have, keep working on arrangements with them, and prioritize pieces that fall within my existing skills (like Uncharted Worlds, which doesn't require any techniques I don't already more-or-less have, and should be possible within my existing instrument collection.)



Arrangement-wise, the new Terminator idea seems to be working in the MIDI mock-up. I'd really love to do a cover of the Relic Hunter theme. And there's a couple other Mass Effect pieces that are quite similar to Uncharted Worlds in instrumentation/technique needs. One being the first Citadel underscore. Another being...Vigil. Which really, really cries out for the melodic line to be played on a Turkish Ney...