So up he rose to run once more

Finally over the 'flu and in the middle of that excess of vigor that comes sometimes. So did something I've been dreaming of for a while. Literally. I have this recurring dream where I wake up well before dawn and decide to go out for a run.

It went better than I'd feared. My endurance is shit right now. Could only run a block or two before I had to drop to a walk. But after a few rounds of that I caught a glimpse of the "zone." My heart finally answered the engine-room telegraph, the bounce came into my stride, etc. I erred on the side of cautious for this first time out, of course. And I'll have to see how my legs feel two days from now. But I'm aiming to do it again. (Plus now that the rain is over, resume walking to work on alternate days).

Started building a Shetland Gue. Made the mock-up above to check dimensions. This may look crude, but it is capturing bridge placement, scale length, "action" height, string access, foot shape. I built it to be comfortable held between the legs (seated), and close to vertical, with the supporting hand on the near pillar and the bow at right angles to the string. (I've noticed in videos, though, that many players hold it far off vertical and often bow cross-wise to the strings.)

There's an intentional modification to the traditional design on this one; I opened up the access hole to allow fingering up to the first octave (I also spaced the strings to allow placing the hand between the strings...some players do this to finger the drone string in addition to the melody string).

I did more research on tonewoods, including what woods are native to Scotland, but since this is more an experiment than a fancy instrument I went with white pine once more. I'm pushing the capabilities of that wood, though; taking the back and sides down to around 1/4" (the soundboard is once again 3/16" basswood, but I'm going to experiment with a bass brace on it).

Did most of the power tool work yesterday and probably should have glued and clamped the body then, but I felt like smoothing out the chamber a little more first. But then, the horsehair (for strings) doesn't arrive until next Friday so there's plenty of time to finish the rest.

Uncharted Worlds is done. Good enough. Cut the violin part, played with the mixdown. Really, it should have been an octave down. That's a danger of working from a MIDI file. By the time I'd compared with the original recording, my instrumentation was set.

Lessons learned. I'd really like to have another piece recorded by Tuesday but I can't think of anything that's close enough. Terminator is still struggling -- I want to try the Shetland Gue on that one and see if it solves any of the problems I'm having. At least the trumpet has come along to the point where I should be able to do that part of the Hellboy cover cleanly. Latest exercise has been rolling up and down the partials as fast as I can, top to bottom and back again.

But I have two performances today, I might want to go into the shop Sunday and put a couple more hours on the timeclock, and I might be walking to work Monday...