Music Notes

 I am so overdue to record something new!

Trouble is, my skills keep improving, so I keep putting it off until I am "good enough." Well, that, and until I have time (and with the current plan to write the next two Athena Fox books before I stop trying to push that series...)

That practice really needs to include more reading and more ear training. So I opened the theme to Deep Space 9 on MuseScore but tried to do the trumpet part by ear instead of looking at the chart. I was getting that high note with the screamer mouthpiece, but when I checked it with the chromatic tuner, it was only a D flat. So what's going on?

Oh. My chromatic was set for Trumpet, so properly transposing, but the MuseScore track was in Orchestral pitch. So actually that part is a whole-tone lower than I thought it was. Still a high trumpet note for a non-jazz score.

Incidentally, this isn't just me making up terminology. Kelly really does call the MPC that:

And, yes, that really is a "non-whistling" string I ordered:

I put the new set of nylon strings and the aluminium E on my newly re-fitted bridge and I do like the sound. I had confidence to go through a couple of practice pieces with the mutes off.

See, this is where the chin-cello really helped me. The violin is another loud instrument and it makes terrible noises when you are still learning. This makes it too easy for someone like me to go at the strings weakly, which besides poor tone also leads to things like poor bow control, a lack of authority in string crosses, etc.

I have to hammer at that chin-cello to get it to play, especially on the C. Plus my current chin-cello is based on a solid-body electric so there's not a lot of volume either way.

Notice the extra-thick strings. And that's my carbon-fibre bow.

***

So I have the latest "that would be amusing" project in mind:

I've had versions of this thought before but I woke up with it feeling even clearer. There's a sort of rather formulaic fantasy/epic music with lots of repetitive figures and basic chord sequences that doesn't keep a composer up all night trying to work out the harmony (something that's killing me right now in, say, trying to do proper voicing on the Hellboy theme).

With random ethnic instruments, of course. Well, to some extent, I now play both basic elements of the orchestra and a smatter of ethnic instruments. And although my music theory is basically pants, I know enough to fake my way through a I to IV chord change and a minor second key change on top of it.

It is also more-or-less how I used to build music on keyboard. Question is whether I can do this with real instruments in any sort of efficient way...