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...

Pitch?

 Preview of the revision-in-progress:

So that's with the Tomb of Atreus background, new render of the calyx with cleaner ground and no bullets and a godray that took ten hours of render time even at 1/4 resolution. I had the side lighting cut because Dad complained about it, but I needed them to detach the pot from the background so rendered those off as a new layer and comped that in this morning.

One thing PhotoShop does not do, apparently, is let you adjust the kerning on individual letters. I'm still delving into that, though. (You can, of course, turn them into a bitmap and manipulate that.) It's really a sort of awful font -- Diogenes, and it was free at least. But it has the "Greek without being too awkwardly Disney Hercules" look about it.

And I just realized I'm breaking another rule by using a serif font with a sans serif. Well, with a decorative. The serif font is Archaeocaps, which is a caps-only font with a slightly awkward look that does sort of put across "history, but modern."

It's a tough cover problem, trying to juggle archaeological thriller with detective cozy. The other is worse. I haven't quite figured out how to not make it look like a crime novel.

And rewrites are going very slowly.

***

During lunch at work today I took the bridge off my violin and thinned it down. The main reason was because the mute didn't fit and it was cutting into my practice opportunities.

It's funny. You look at the "how to fit a bridge" and they all explain how to use sandpaper. Then the old pros speak up, horrified that you'd use anything but a very sharp knife. Well, I'm lazy. I used sandpaper. Although I did use a knife to fit the feet a little better than they had been.

The bridge fit. The violin also sounded nicer, much nicer. I am not into the bright sound and I just splurged as well for a "non-whistling E string." And a set of nylon-core (not the really expensive silk-and-gut ones, though). Strings don't last forever anyhow, and my A string had just unravelled and I had to scrounge up the strings I had before I got the Alphayues.

One thing led to another and I swapped back the old chin rest and it is finally starting to feel like it is placed right on my shoulder. Still some tension though, mostly in the arm.

Anyhow!

I put the strings on but left them a little slack so everything could ease in a little. Came back a few hours later, and with no reference pitches in my ear over that entire period tuned in the E to as close as my tuner could register it.

So maybe I do have perfect pitch? I really need to spend some more time training it up.

I was a teenage Beowulf

Finally into the fight scene. Just downloaded two books on stage fighting and already read one cover to cover (well...a lot of it was warm-up exercises so I skimmed it).

Once again there is so much wealth of things I can't put in the book or my critics will cry at me again. "Birdie" is one of those instant expert types (just add factino and stir). He's got a fancy "combat ready" sword from one of those Chinese companies but has no idea how to use it. Penny has had one class in stage combat, and she's ended up with a display sword with rat-tail tang. Graham is also in the scene and he's actually got HEMA background -- although he hasn't owned up to it yet.

And oh yes, we are starting in the Tiring-room at Shakespeare's Globe in Bankside. So there's props storage and a curtained alcove to stab your Polonius in and the stage is trapped and above the awning is the machinery for producing gods on cue. And the thatched roof with sprinklers in case another cannon shot gets loose.

Oh and just because that's never enough, "Birdie" (his name is Guy, he was calling himself Fawkes at the Battersea Power Station break-in, and another guy on that hack started calling him "Birdie" after, one presumes, the phoenix from Harry Potter) has a scouse accent which is he trying unsuccessfully to hide under the most up-town version of Estuary that doesn't slide all the way into Received Pronunciation.

At least this means no funny orthography. Although Penny does chose to remember that Tony, her Geordie foil, had called Guy a wanna-be "reet bobby dazzla."

So I had a bit of real luck on this. I asked on Quora and a very cool lady from Oxford explained a bit about the Globe backstage, and we shared a few theatre stories (and then I clicked on her profile and, oh, past president of an archaeological society? Whoah, I feel abashed.)

So I know more than enough about the Globe, stage fighting, and prop swords to drown my audience. The problem now is going to be sorting it and figuring out how much I can leave out.

All the time I was struggling with the second slot on my tenor trombone, I was thinking it might just be easier to switch. So I kept looking at alto and soprano trombones. The one advantage of the soprano is it slots exactly like a trumpet, so I wouldn't need to retrain my lips. Downside is it barely sounds like a trombone. There are some plastic altos that are really cute (and cheap) but they sound plastic.

And wouldn't you know. I'm starting to find the lip for the tenor. I still don't like the instrument. Trumpet is more satisfying.

But at least I'm not shopping for a new trombone. Oh, no. After the fuss with the contractor I ended up with the chin-cello hanging by my desk for "loading screen" practice. And I've realized I can really make use of that silent violin practice to improve my fingering.

So I want to switch that back to violin strings. And buy another electric to switch my octave strings to. So, yeah. There's always something in my Amazon shopping cart!

(That was an obscure post title. I'm pretty sure that was Book of Sequels. Anyhow, it promised plenty of "Saxon violence." I didn't manage to work in my continuing adventures with the Yahama Venova but, yes, sax is part of the picture of my growing stack of instruments.)

Good Vibrations

Vibrato, technically "a periodic change in pitch," is standard practice for classical violin. So much so that playing without vibrato is considered a special instruction to the musician. Traditional fiddle music and early music performance may omit the vibrato -- there is lively debate on the subject!

Violin vibrato is physically achieved by rolling the pad of the finger along the string -- towards the scroll, properly, so pitch is lowered. The performer accomplishes this roll by rotating the hand backwards at the wrist, or by moving the hand and forearm as a unit, or by a combination of the above (depending on speed, taste, depth, position on the fingerboard, and so forth).

On guitar and bass the wrist rotates in order to vary the position on the fretboard and thus change the pitch. There is another technique, however, and that is bending; the performer pushes or drags the string sideways whilst remaining on the same fret. This increases the tension thus raising the pitch. Bending is usually slower and more dramatic. Standard practice is to bend an accurate half-tone -- instructors get annoyed at students who can't consistently hit their pitch on a bend.

In singing, vibrato comes from the vocal chords but there is also a related pulsation that comes from the diaphragm. Essentially, vocal vibrato is a pitch change and has a higher periodic frequency, whilst diaphragm motion produces a slower change that is predominately volume. The two interact, giving a wide variety of tonal colors (and as well a wide variety in the ability of the singer to find and stay on their pitch, or to, as the detractors would have it, to attempt to disguise their failure.)

The recorder and tin whistle both respond to diaphragm vibrato, although it is considered non-traditional on the latter instrument. In addition they can practice something that is better called a trill; a fast fingered change of note. Unlike the other examples, a trill if not indicated otherwise is performed above the written note. The tin whistle adds an interesting idiomatic variant; on notes higher on the body of the instrument, a finger can be flicked over but not touching a lower finger hole, thus providing a subtler (and rapid) pitch shift.

There are many possible ways to execute these sorts of variations and color on the brass and single-reed families. I have found on the soprano saxophone (or, rather, the Yamaha Venova) diaphragm vibrato provides interest, fast finger trills are more than possible, but there is also a unique technique that involves small changes to the size and shape of the mouth cavity and shape and pressure of the embouchure by moving the jaw in a regular fashion.

Diaphragm vibrato is difficult to control especially at speed and is best suited for deep slow volume shifts during long sustained notes. The "lip trill" is fast and easy to employ and changes of speed and depth are extremely easy.

On the trumpet, a similar approach is used. Different players have approached this in different ways, from a jaw motion similar to that used on the single-reed (my current approach) to physically shifting the instrument against the performer's face. There appears to be at least one school out there that teaches holding down a valve and wiggling the finger on it as if it were a guitar string; the result, one presumes, being to shift the trumpet in and out of the selected embouchure and thus create a change of tone and/or pitch.

The trumpet of course has a variety of techniques to similar ends (many shared with the saxophone), such as the shake, the growl, flutter tongue (possible on single reed if you are careful), and -- a trumpet particular -- rapidly shifting between alternate fingering of the same note.



Vibrato adds color and interest and an additional expression to notes you want to give prominence. It can provide an emotional swell within a held note that is otherwise kept at a stable pitch and volume.

The downside? Once you learn how to do it (getting to arm vibrato on the violin is a good year's work), it is very, very hard not to use it all the time.

Well, if there's fake books...

Been so tired at work lately I spend my breaks, well, breaking. Too tired and no concentration for practice. Well, got the violin up on my shoulder yesterday anyhow and that was a good thing. (Worked almost entirely on string crossings, silent reverses, and vibrato.)

But I've put aside any illusion that I'm going to be able to come up with the practice hours many people describe. (I'm still not convinced those are entirely useful hours. I think focusing on time spent is the wrong way to go about it; better to focus on the actual learning. The best thing time gives you is comfort and familiarity -- which is also the best anodyne to stage fright.)

At the end of the day, though, I'm Theater. I never got into this to play an instrument. I got into it to make music. The violin is a sound I want for compositions and I'll make use of what I can do and work around what I can't.



I have a good variety of tonal options now. I can't play any of them well, but since I emphasized breadth over depth I have a variety of techniques to employ. I can't play that clean but I can play expressively; it works okay if I'm recording the best take and tweaking it in the mix. I keep having the window shopping urge, though. There's always new accessories, of course. Finally found a plunger mute for my trumpet but want the pixie mute to go with it now (plus I'm starting to outgrow that starter horn). Need a strap for my electric uke but resisted the urge to buy effects pedals for it -- and resisted with more difficulty the urge to build effects pedals for it -- because Reaper is fast enough to do good basic effects in software with almost no lag.

And the sax -- rather, Yamaha Venova -- is coming along better than expected, enough that I am having a longing for a real, alto, sax.

But I have enough to create music. And I'm backing off from the trap of thinking I have to perform everything -- MIDI still has a place. As does collaboration. Drummer friend of mine is quite open to doing some drumming for me.

At a price. His trade is he wants me to perform with him. Incidental music for stage plays. Live.

Maybe I do need to increase those practice hours after all.

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.

"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

For all that the double-whammy of doxy and prednisone is doing to me, got some good practice in today. Did a "naked" session on the violin. I can actually do arm vibrato without a shoulder rest, even though it threatens to yank the fiddle out from under my chin. And my bowing didn't fall to pieces without that extra stability, either. Shoulder rest is the default, but it seems a useful exercise to go without every now and then. Sort of a sanity check on how I'm orienting to the instrument.

Trumpet is finally starting to slot properly again. If I feel good tomorrow I'm taking it to a piano room where I can open it up a little -- I'm getting tired of fighting the back-pressure of those practice mutes.

I have the penny whistle to the point where doing the finger tremolo is feeling natural, and the cuts and strikes feel good, too. Still a bit of a squeak changing octaves (going chromatic, you have to go from all fingers off to all fingers down and back again).

Guitar is progressing more slowly. Working on fast-picking right now; varying between James Bond theme on the low E and Godfather on the high E to work that double-pick action. My softest pick, held right up at the tip and slightly angled. The latest is cut from a scrap sheet of .020" styrene. Maybe I should take a few out to TheShop.build (sigh) and laser them out.



And yeah, that's how I practice. I'd like to spend more time. Really, I would. Instead of laps, though, I do wind sprints. It's not a way to become a good musician. It is a way to get competent, fast.

The big trick is concentration. Almost nothing is relaxed. But the big trick is keeping the balance. Don't fall into wasting time on easy rote exercises. But don't beat yourself up trying and failing at something that's beyond you. Stay right at the edge, just past your comfort level, because that's where you gain the fastest.

I split my time roughly in thirds. One third in pure exercises. These are designed to highlight one aspect but the trick to them is doing them slow and smooth and doing everything right. Like this week was all silent bow changes, on one note at a time. Adding arm vibrato when I was ready for it, but all through keeping an eye on tone, angle, Kreisler Highway, shoulder tension, etc.

(A note; vibrato and tremolo have distinct meanings but there are traditional ways of referring to certain effects on certain instruments and I bow to those in my usage.)

Another third is in experimentation. This is in trying things I can't do yet, or do very well. I'm constantly inventing exercises to work on a specific problem spot.

The last third (these are only rough in terms of time) is playing actual pieces. There are two advantages here. One is to keep your spirits up -- one can only stomach so many scales. The other is because when you concentrate in on just one technical problem you risk solving it in a way that won't work in the context of actual performance. The flip side is actual performance reveals weaknesses you wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

I spend roughly equal time to my instrument-in-hand practice time listening to other players, watching other players, reading up on technique, and thinking about what I've learned and what I should try next.

And, yeah, there's cross-over. No matter the instrument I'm practicing at the moment, I'm refining muscle and breath control, refining my pitch sense and rhythm, etc. I actually think practicing multiple instruments helps. It's like doing circuit training; I lose my lips for trumpet quickly but I can switch to another wind and keep learning. Or to a guitar and get my fingers a workout.



Music is going much more slowly. I'm on the fifth sketch for Terminator and still not happy. I have this idea in the back of my head of crossing it with "Toss the Feather" and in my head it sounds like it should work...of course my fiddle playing isn't up to that point yet...

I am also refining my ideas towards a Hellboy cover but there's a one-octave leap on the trumpet part that's still tough for me. Plus I haven't had the bass out of the case for a while, even if it is a simple riff. Pretty sure the original is bass guitar and french horn to start -- I'm having to pitch it up quite a bit to do the horn part on trumpet but going to try keeping the pahoehoe on my SUB for the nonce and use that upright bass-like sound instead.

Flirted with the idea of getting a snare and brushes but if I get that far, I'll toss the idea towards my drummer friend Don and see if he wants to record the drum tracks instead. That would be a lot of fun.

Doing Violins

Finally time and focus to get back to practice.

The task this month is to finish the change-over to the new shoulder rest and a proper vibrato grip. No more death-grip on the neck. I'm working through my scales and the various shifts and string crosses but now with my hand as free and relaxed as I can get it.

I can do arm vibrato now but it is going to take a while to integrate it and to refine it. I've got some depth and speed control but I'm still having fun keeping the instrument stable with a smooth bow stroke. Add the silent reverses and....

Of course on the violin there's never a single position. It isn't like piano where once you get your hands set right you pretty much use them like that. On violin every note, every problem is a different hand position with its own unique muscle memory. The shape of the hand for the A string doesn't get you to the G string. You can have a nice open hand and full arm vibrato in first position, but up in fourth position you are wrapping your hand up around the upper bought in order to reach the notes and -- at least for me -- reduced to hand vibrato.

And of course you change depending on how fast the passage is, how loud, where the next note is. Each note is available in multiple places. I've been working my scales without open strings now, so going from four to one, then back one to four (the former I find easy, the latter is giving me trouble. Don't know why but my bow angles when I go in for that fourth finger on the way down). But you might have a fast passage where it makes sense to skip the harder fingering and use the open string anyhow.

Or you might have a singing passage where to stay legato you stretch or do a shift on one string instead of crossing. You almost need to practice by the specific piece instead of by rote scales and exercises.



Anyhow. The chincello is up and running. Ordered some bass rosin for it (and still tempted by a carbon-fibre viola bow for more weight). So today I'm going to risk taking the strings off the Pfetchner and hang the Alphayues on  it instead.

Silence Must Fall

Tried out Yamaha Silent Brass for the trumpet. Not bad. Not bad at all.

On the "silent" side, it lets through more noise than the LotFancy trumpet mute I had been using. Still good enough for practicing in a small apartment, though. The other half of the Yamaha, however, is the built-in mic and pocket amplifier, with Yamaha's touted "Brass Resonance Modeling."

Which works to a point. The sound is clear and removes the major problem with a practice mute; that you can't hear yourself. There's enough there to work on tone, and the back pressure isn't too bad. It's good enough to be scary; over the first run with it you'll find yourself pulling off the headphones just to make sure you aren't blasting the neighbors with a full-open horn. It isn't quite the true trumpet sound, however. More like a cornet. Or maybe a straight mute.

Still, it is good enough to record with, and that makes my tin whistle the instrument most in need of a rehearsal space. Err, and the violin. I just realized I effectively no longer have an e-violin. Not that it mattered, as what I needed to progress was the acoustic violin. And the same objections to trying to practice with a mute, or when I can't open up and play out, are still there. So I may be renting rehearsal space yet.




A thought for Yamaha; if they can do acoustic modeling of a trumpet, putting back in what is lost to the mute, they should be able to do the same for an e-violin or chincello. It isn't so bad on the violin, but cello suffers from that lack of body resonances when done with a solid-body instrument and piezo pickups.



Tin whistle and guitar are coming along. On the guitar, I'm slowly managing to get just enough of the tips of my fingers between those tight strings (3/4 scale guitar, remember) to finger-pick properly. It looks like it will come, with more time. On the tin whistle, starting to get the ornaments, and the breath control.

And sight-reading. That was unexpected. On literature written for the tin whistle, there's few or no accidentals and with some exceptions the hole pattern even matches up with counting bar lines. I'm getting to the point where I just play whatever is on the sheet music without going through the usual mental gymnastics of figuring out which note it is, what the fingering is, etc.



So with the chincello and a little octave-shifted trumpet I can fill out my symphonic resources. I've pretty much got the instrumentation to move forward and do some music. Now it is all about practice. Or more to the point, working up some new pieces and getting the experience I need (which very much includes practice in reading, writing, and transposing) that way.



The Feadóg and the Vorson showed up today as well. Now I've really got some tonal options. Unfortunately the work week just caught up to me so today's accomplishments are going to be sprawling on the couch under a quilt reading schlock SF.

And when I feel better, I need another set of strings and a new pick.

Cleaning Blues

Sudden insurance inspection -- ran around like a madman and lifted the top layer of dirt. Odd how much cleaner it feels with so (relatively) little work. Most times I set out to clean, I start by trying to figure out what to do with all the piles of semi-abandoned projects and scrap materials and reference books and so on and go directly to despair without passing go mop.



Just gave the trumpet a bath.  Also finally got around to fitting the "California" pre-amp into my Kala Ubass. The electronics part is next; have to separate and jumper the PC boards so it will fit, and switch out the coin cells for a LiPo left over from the Holocron project. As for practice, spent today fiddling (!) with the Bon Musica shoulder rest. I'm still tensing up with both shoulder and neck and I still press too hard when I fret. So still basically doing modified scales (with shifts, with no open strings, with arm vibrato; that sort of thing).

I need to jump on to the next recording project. No dithering around finding the perfect project, just get something else done and see what I learn from that. I can't help thinking I should do something that uses the trumpet and bass and leverages what few keyboard skills I have. I've sort of re-thought the idea of a "simple violin line." The violin isn't going to be suitable for even a section until I have decent vibrato.

I'm quite tempted by the thought of doing section stuff, though. Overdub the trumpet enough times for a section, the violin enough times for each chair. Thing is...there's other colors needed for a good symphonic picture. Violin is not 'cello, but that's not the worst of it. One brass does not a brass section make; no matter how many jokes there are about how to make a trumpet sound like a French Horn (stick your hand in the bell and play out of tune), you just can't reach those sounds. And then there's the wind section...

I'm already dithering over a next purchase because my ukulele really doesn't work for anything but a ukulele part -- and not even very well at that (it's a cheap uke and it is a soprano, which is a bit small for my fingers). Thing is I want them all; guitar tones, lute tones, electric guitar tones even. And if nothing else, that's a lot to learn. Heck, that's a lot just to clean and maintain!



Anyhow.

Top of the list right now is to attempt to cover "Still Alive" from Portal in a hootchy-koochy sort of thing with wah-wah trumpet. Or do it salsa. Or I might do something original.

Or rather, originally unoriginal. I'm rather leaning on cheating my way through a pseudo-orchestral thing with no real progression or melodic content but just some of the tried-and-true chord pairs and repetitive arpeggios of far too many dashed-off movie scores. And just to be really really obvious the Ominous Latin Chanting would be along the lines of "lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..."

In the longer range, I really want to sit down and figure out how to voice a proper "medieval" sound, with or without correct period polyphony.

18 mos Violin

I swapped out the old shoulder rest for a Bonmusica. Now, yeah, I can get the web of my hand off that violin neck and really start practicing arm vibrato. But the hand and arm positions are different now, the cues that my muscle memory was based on are different, and basically it's like I'm back to the beginning.

Only this time I'm getting those basics down faster, and the results are cleaner. I feel like I am finally progressing again after six months of what felt like stasis.

Yeah, but that also means all my practice sessions right now are endless exercises in string crossings, vibrato, and a little shifting. Lots and lots of scales in first and fourth position.

The trumpet is also pretty much in exercise land. My exercises now are speed and tone, plus a little on keeping the articulation clean and controlled. Speed is really about the slotting (and a bit about the tonguing). I still have trouble moving from the top of the range to the bottom of the range; to get into those different slots -- particularly with a good tone -- you have to slip your lips slightly within the mouthpiece. Right now I'll start a scale, go up to my top note, but run into trouble on the way down. Especially when trying to do it fast.

The valves mean less and less as time goes on. The key muscle memory is in finding the right slot. To some extent you can play the note even if you've got the wrong valves in. It will usually be a weak harmonic and sound terrible, though. It can be very confusing, until you figure out what you did.

It's also time for another cleaning.

Thinking the next recording might be an attempt at a trio. I'm not that good with the trumpet yet, but I have a keyboard (Behringer controller, but still...), and bass. Gave away the e-drums, though.

Still think the "Bardic Covers" are amusing, and I do like the challenge of trying to work up proper polyphony on the wind parts and properly idiomatic "lute" work. Thing is, I still haven't settled on the upgrade to the ukulele. The one thing I'm sure of is I don't want soprano any more (the fingering is too tight). I'm caught, though, between guitar-like tones, lute-like tones (and look!)...and electric.

By which I don't mean piezo pickups (I have in the closet a project solid-body uke with piezo bridge pickup), but a steel-string, fender or strat style uke with real humbuckers.

I found one cheap recently, and the reviews say the biggest problems are the frets aren't dressed and the action is too high. No problem for me. (A crooked neck, on the other hand, I'd rather not deal with). But, still, that is a bit of the other dirty secret of musical instruments. Bought my first uke. Then bought new strings, and a pick, and looking for a strap. Bought a cheap trumpet, then spent almost as much for cleaning kit, then a practice mute, then another mute, and looking for a fresh tin of spitballs now. Or the violin; bought new strings. Shoulder rest. Better rosin. A new bow. Two more shoulder rests. New chinrest. Oh, yeah...and a new violin!

Scoring yourself

The more I practice violin, the more I can hear mistakes -- in myself, and in others.

To properly evaluate a skill you need to have some of that skill. Of course, there are external metrics possible; you don't have to know how to play a violin in order to be able to detect if one sounds bad. The thing you don't know is how much skill is involved.

Everyone commits a Dunning-Kruger somewhere. Here's my rule of thumb for avoiding that syndrome; assume a bell curve. If it seems really, really easy or simple to you, but other people are spending a lot of time and effort and otherwise complaining about how hard it is...it is probably you, not them.

As a corollary or maybe ancillary, humans are competitive and ingenious. They will always find a way to do it better, or otherwise raise the difficulty. So whatever activity you are thinking of, look at it in terms of how much time, effort, money it seems sensible for people to be investing it. That's the peak of the bell curve.

So, yes, there are tools by which you can evaluate yourself. It is easy to say you are your own worst critic. In one sense this may be true; you are critical of those things you notice. The wider audience may find other flaws more worthy of attention. Thing is, to say that someone is better than they think they are is the same as saying they don't know what "good" sounds like. And if they don't know that...they aren't very good. Either way, this well-meaning comment is, basically, insulting.




The flip side to the bell curve above is that if you know almost nothing about it but believe it is too hard for you...you are probably wrong. If violin was as hard as some people think then they wouldn't sell a lot of violins. (Well, they might sell them, at that...but there wouldn't be a lot of symphony orchestras, because those things need half a hundred players each).

A thing I hear a lot from people is, "I wouldn't know where to start."

Oops. Now you do. "Where do I start?" is a very, very good starting point. The first step is not to be thrown in the deep end with a violin and a concert score. It is by talking to people who play, watching videos, browsing stores, talking to teachers....basically, answering that question of, "Where do I start?"

Every project I have done has required planning. And more often than not the planning started with planning the planning; with trying to frame just what the project is, what skills or resources will be involved, what the overall goals are. I may be "creative" (whatever the hell that means) but I don't just sit down with a keyboard or paintbrush or CNC Router. I start with scraps of paper and conversations with friends...

...and long, rambling blog posts.

Saxon Violins

Back to practicing the violin.

The trumpet is where it needs to be for the moment. I could squeak my way through Ecstasy of Gold but fun as it is, that's not really the best instrument for it. "Mark's Theme" (from A Better Tomorrow) is totally a horn piece, but it goes right up into the nosebleed octave and I'm not ready for it yet. So just practicing with whatever is interesting...a bit of St. James Infirmary Blues right now, because it gives me excuses to work on the slide, the wah-wah, and the growl.

For the longest time it felt like I wasn't moving forward on the violin. But since recording with it, I've been better able to take aim at some of the trouble spots that bug me worst (string changes, largely). This week I feel like I am actually improving again.

I also messed around with "Awakening" from Izetta, the Last Witch and now I've got motivation to do some double stops. I still find it easier to work stuff out on keyboard first, then translate to instrument (even recorder, which I've been doing long enough for the notes to be almost instinctive).



I want to record again.

I've got this urge towards more "Bardic Covers." When I covered "Khajiit Like to Sneak" I was thinking thinking in terms of the instruments a bard character in Skyrim would actually use. There is in fact a way to plug custom music into the bard performances in the game (the animations, as you can imagine, aren't closely tracked to the actual sounds being produced).

Plus it is now a tested set of instruments. I know how the recorder, ukulele, bodhran fit together. So I can sort of hear arrangements on these instruments of, say, "Still Alive" from Portal, or "NYC" from Annie.

Which is making me tempted to go in a different direction for the ukulele upgrade I've been wanting for a decade or so now; in the direction of one of these:

But the whole idea is rather silly. Besides not having the $300 or so for one of these guys, the video I put up with the last "Bardic Cover" garnered all of 16 views. Of course one does art for art's sake, or for one's own sake, really, but it is always nice if you can share it. 

(Yes...that's a "Lute-ulele, a four course six-string lute-back instrument with a tenor ukulele fingerboard and tuning.)

Oh, yeah. And this week I've really been wanting to work out some kind of arrangement of "Awakening." 

A Little Night (Vision) Music

The Khajiit piece was a really poor choice for my first experiment in recording.

My vision has been to largely create with virtual instruments (aka MIDI) with recordings of real instruments folded in where possible. That was one of my goals in learning violin and, yes, penny whistle. The best thing I can say about the Khajiit piece is, due to the peculiarities of the arrangement, I can perform all the parts on physical instruments.

This is also one of the downsides. It depends on my performance, in every instrument above. There's no place I can use a keyboard or a drum track to give more of a gloss.

I would have done better with a jazz piece. See, this is almost a tone poem, using instruments coloristically. And that makes the parts very hard to perform. The thing that a more standard setting gives you is a well-defined rhythm and well-defined harmonic structure. Having that bass and drums behinds you pulls you along in the right meter and on to the right pitches. The Khajiit parts, instead, sort of float out there -- as witnessed by the fact I found it as easy if not easier to record some of them in isolation to nothing but a metronome track.

Most of this has been using the extremely basic Behringer U-control USB interface that came with my MIDI keyboard, with an AudioBuddy pre-amp and phantom power unit in front of it. I tried recording a couple of the violin tracks at work; I brought a Zoom recorder with me to the shop, and dialed up a metronome application on the iPhone.

Everything gets assembled in Reaper:

That's barely a quarter of the tracks there. Another disadvantage to this piece; it is all about changing tone colors, meaning I'm basically playing in little more than a couple bars at a time. There's not really a chance to get into the flow of the piece and the performance I'm trying to contribute to the mix. Just do my best to stay within the tempo and hit the right notes.

At the moment I'm at ukulele (my $40 Rogue) standing in for lute; plucked, slow-strummed, and fast-strummed with ras accents. There may be more. Violin (my student-model Pfetchner) in sustained lines and in some improvised harmonics for a spooky effect. Bodhran (my Pakistani-made 18" tune-able) with tipper, rolls, fingertip, scratching and brushing, and stick accents. The wooden soprano recorder I've had since childhood and a Yamaha ABS alto. Crumhorn (a sadly out of pitch Susato in brown ABS), and shawm (a bombarde from Lark in the Morning at Fisherman's Wharf, sporting a badly fit oboe reed these days).

So, back to working method. I imported the original version of the song into Reaper as track one. Then went through my libraries to find virtual instruments (instruments I could play from the MIDI keyboard) with similar sounds to those physical instruments I would be recording.

The opening riff was just a matter of using my ear and matching what was on the original recording. The "theme" was more difficult; as the original was spoke-sung, I had to go into notation mode, type in the lyrics, and line those up in time with the original recording. Then I could work out a melody track that sort-of echoed the speech patterns of the original, and stayed somewhere in range of the chord structure.

Since there are sections of multi-part harmony I worked that out here, too. Actually, I disliked the violin harmony and when I was at the shop recording those parts I took out some music paper and worked out new voice leading there. A not-small advantage of this technique is I can play the mock-up of the part back and learn the line by ear from there (I'm still not much of a sight-reader).



So call it a noble experiment. I'm still nowhere near ready to embark on the big Tomb Raider piece I have in mind. So I'm hunting around now for something jazzy. Something with a more straight-forward rhythm and harmonic progression I can really feel like I'm jamming to when I record in the parts. And, yeah...maybe something with a trumpet part or two.

Senseless Violins

Man, my playing is bad.

I got in a good practice session today. Did nothing but try to get the bow straight, relax my death grip on the neck, get the right pressure on the stroke, and cross the strings over a scale.

A fascinating thing for me is how much it isn't like learning to ride a bicycle. There isn't a magical moment where you finally get the motion right, and after that it is much easier. The motion is always hard. You are always having to control weird little noises. The bow is always bouncing. You fingers are never perfectly on the desired pitch. Instead of not having to worry about those things, what you gain over the many hours of practice is skill in dealing with all these things as they happen.

So, yeah, the fact that you are consciously having the same problems but doing a better job of hiding them makes you your own worst critic. But I think I have enough background in listening to, mixing, working with musicians to recognize what a certain level of ability entails in the way of cleanliness of articulation, focus of tone, accuracy of pitch, and adherence to tempo.



Writing is an oddly similar task. You will always be aware of where the problems are, and only get better at hiding them from the reader. And there is an equivalent of muscle memory. Over the first years or first 100,000 words or whatever you have to keep stopping to check that you are in the right tense, the consistent POV. You are measuring paragraphs and counting lines so the pacing is consistent and there's a good balance of dialog and description. And, yes, outlining in great detail.

And over the next 100,000 words that stuff becomes basically instinctive. You can still pull it to awareness at any time, and tweak and adjust to meet the needs of the story, but you don't have to step out of the flow in order to make your verbs agree or check the Oxford Commas.

Which is good, because I've gone a little crazy on my current writing.

I'm excited again about writing for publication. The story I'm tinkering on won't take massive research or world-building and I have hopes I can get it done in a year.

But I do want to complete the Tomb Raider/Stargate crossover and put that away, rather than leaving it on a back-burner. So I'm adjusting the outline to let me conclude within the next four chapters (which, at my historical rate of progress, is about four months!)

And I also got re-invested on a simpler piece, "Sam I Am." A fluffy piece, first-person POV through the snarky, profanity-laced voice of a secondary character from the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot. The only research I've been doing is looking up titles and directors of documentaries (it is a running gag; Samantha is canonically a documentary film-maker, so I've turned this into her version of the Junior Woodchuck's Guidebook; whatever the plot needs her to know, she conveniently remembers the details from a documentary she saw once.)



This would be so much simpler if I had my strength. Cardiologist is supposed to be contacting me this week. With luck, when he sticks a camera in there he'll find something that we can actually fix. Until then, I'm taking long naps immediately following work and there go all my productive hours....

FIddlesticks

Thursday's practice was thirty minutes of doing scales.

The Cecelio arrived in early July of 2016. That means last week I marked the first year of learning violin. I can basically get through a tune now. Accidentals, string crossing, shifting, the start of a vibrato. I'm not doing much in special bowing and I've yet to assay a double stop.

This next year is basically about refining. About, more than anything else, getting comfortable. Right now it still takes so much concentration there are days I simply can't practice.

A Bridge Too Far

I've taken ownership of the Pfretzschner. That is to say, I've started modding it. I don't know what the history of the bridge is (it's probably not original) but it looks like it has been through a number of hands. On closer examination, the curve is all wrong.

The A string was sunk far too deep. I could work with it in 1st Position but when I really started working 3rd I couldn't sound it without hitting another string. So I cut a tiny sliver of hardwood out of the back of a file handle and glued it in with CA glue. Re-shaped, cut a new notch.

The E string is still not right. This may be the fault of the bridge having been cut for an E without the protective sleeve. In any case, the compound curve just isn't there (oddly, though, someone seems to have monkeyed with the G string -- the curve there is sharper than it should be). Enthused by my success with the A string I lightly recurved and deepened the notch for the E string by less than a string width.

And it feels good now.

And that all inspired me to another crafts project:

The metal practice mute was not working for me. I have lots of scrap materials at work, though. So I cut two pieces of thick rubber, bolted them together (no need for Barge Cement for something this simple) and cut string notches in it.

Works like a charm. The volume is significantly lower but much of the sound quality is still there. Only drawback is not being able to see the fingerboard over the mute. But then, I'm not supposed to be working by eye anyhow.

Now all I need is to find a shoulder rest I like. Perhaps I should build my own there, too....




The U-bass, meanwhile, has developed a minor electronics issue. Volume dropped a bunch. I may have to swap out the pre-amp. Going to try adding an external pre-amp first.

I'm working up a full Instructable when I finally finish the thing, but here's a preview pic of my other bass-related project:

At two violins, a ukulele, and a bass (not to mention three recorders, a crumhorn, a bombarde, and a penny whistle -- and of course two 61-key keyboards and a couple of mini keyboards) I really need to add some kind of rack to my collection as well.




The main musical adventure of the moment is theory, however. I really need to improve my music theory. I've been listening to podcasts -- maybe not the optimal format, but very efficient for studying during work hours.

I'm realizing I need more theory to do what I want to with my next big composition. I want especially to be more deliberate with harmony, especially harmonic progression. Fumbling around for chords that sound cool kinda works for solo piano stuff, but it becomes a huge pain trying to find which notes to harmonize with, which need emphasis, etc. when working up a full arrangement.

More on that later. I'm strongly contemplating an unrelated sketch just to get back into things.

But, hey, if I do it right, I can work in some violin recording. I'm just about ready to start learning parts.

Hit the Mute

I picked up a metal practice mute for the Pfretzschner. It does cut the sound. In fact, since I have a modicum of bow control by this point, I can play almost as softly as with the electric.

Unfortunately, it also changes the tone and cuts out most of the resonances and interaction that made me turn to an acoustic. I do want to continue working with the tone, so I'm better off at the moment continuing to bring the acoustic to work where I can play loud during my break time (when I get a break, which isn't always). And continue using the electric for late night/home practice sessions. And for those exercises or experiments that no-one really wants to listen to.

(There's definitely something different about an acoustic. It may be a masking effect of the louder sound but it feels more forgiving. Even feels like it "wants" to fall into pitch or find a regular vibrato. Even the bowing is somehow easier -- although I might want to credit the Pfretzschner bow, which to my mind is worth almost as much as the violin itself.)

Lately I've been practicing Korobeiniki (the "Tetris Theme"). It is the perfect challenge at this point in my development as it has that low second finger. And I'm avoiding the open E as much as I can, thus the same string with the low second also has a fourth finger. Basically you are stretching in what looks like the Vulcan hand salute. Tough to keep it all in tune, especially with fat fingers.

After reading up at some violin forums I tried pulling my elbow further forward, with a little more rotation on my hand, and that is making it a little easier to get at the notes. It is also a better position in general; I'm getting closer to the aligned knuckles position (which not so coincidentally also moves the meat of the hand further from the neck allowing easier vibrato.)

I've also assayed Transylvanian Lullaby (the main theme/violin music from Young Frankenstein) which fortunately had sheet music at MuseScore. It is also a good challenge though perhaps not the right direction for me just yet; it is chromatic, with lots of accidentals...well, basically every time I put a finger down, it is in a different position; low second, high third, now high second, now low fourth....

That and of course it is a good piece to be expressive on; slurs, glissandos, lots of vibrato, etc.




So at this point I'm just barely capable of doing a section part. In another three to six months I will be just up to non-exposed accompaniment.  By two years, I might be able to do an exposed part, but I'll still be far from an expressive solo.

Still, means I can think again about working up something to record.

That is, once I get the other stuff off my table and have some me time again! I totaled it up; between the show I'm working and trying to get through the outstanding Holocron orders (I've shipped maybe a quarter of them so far) I'm working a 60+ hour week.

Which actually isn't that bad, but I'm still feeling some kind of long-range health issue which is really knocking my endurance for a loop. More blood tests are scheduled.

VSO's

On Fiddle Talk and similar forums the phrase Violin-Shaped Object (VSO) shows up in certain discussions.

I've understood the term on an intellectual basis. This week I've started renting a Pfretzschner violin in the $400 range. Within minutes I had a new emotional appreciation of what this term means.




I've blogged about this before. In the long scale of musical instrument quality there are concert-quality instruments. There are good instruments. There are student instruments. And then there are things carved out of softwood in the general shape of an instrument and sold online, in non-speciality shops, and (more often than they should be) at Guitar Center.

If you want to be charitable, call these display instruments. Like the Ukuleles you get at a gift shop in the airport flying back from Hawaii. There are pieces of plastic or dyed kite string pretending to be strings, a painted board with some random frets on it, peg-shaped pieces of wood jammed into holes. It looks cute on a wall but there's no point in trying to play it.

I'm not in a charitable mood. When it is being sold as a "student" instrument, with copy boasting about the manufacturing quality and selected endorsements by happy customers, prettily packaged up with the basic accessories desired to play. it is an Instrument-Shaped Object.

And it is a disservice to the student, whether they are a child or an adult beginner who always wanted to try. Because in most cases, the person will struggle to get the instrument to work, at last giving it up (and their dreams of playing this particular instrument family) with the impression that it is all their fault.

At the borderline cases, you can still learn. But the learning will be slower, with more of it learning the work-arounds for that particular ISO's flaws and less of it learning the basic correct postures and gestures. And the results will not be as pretty. If you are good, or lucky, eventually you figure out you
need to transition to an actual student model.




When you graph prices against playability, there's a sharp bend on the lower end of the scale. For the Ukulele, my experience is the bend happens somewhere around $100. Below that, you can luck in to a good, useable instrument. Above that, you will almost always have a decent tone and a good setup. Below around $50 the Uke takes a swan-dive. My own Rogue -- purchased for about $35 -- has an indifferent tone and the fretboard is set just wrong enough so open strings are not in tune with fretted ones. But with a little work it was playable. More on that later!

I have (rather, had) an Aulos recorder in that range that goes from under $50 to the $5 specials made in bright colors. It does not play in tune and has an awful tone. I found a Yamaha sopranino for about $50 and it is much more pleasurable to play.

In fact, even as a self-taught amateur with the equivalent of six months of recorder practice I can still feel quite clearly the difference between a low-number Yamaha student model and a more expensive Yamaha (still-student) model. The more expensive instrument falls into the notes in a more defined way, finds the pitches more easily in half-holes and overblows, and has a nicer tone. It is easier to play, easier to play well, and sounds better across the board.

In the case of violins, I'd be tempted to place the bend at $200-300. You are unlikely to find a sub-$200 violin that doesn't need work. And by $600, you will probably get a decent student violin. And, again, the difference is remarkable.

The most unfortunate thing about picking up my $400-used instrument on a rental is it has made me realize how much is lacking on my slightly-over-$100 internet special (outside of the one being a solid-body electric and the other being a proper acoustic, that is).



Musical instruments are expensive. The precision hand work necessary to make a good violin is mind-boggling. It can't be automated, not and get quality results. And that is largely because a violin is made from organic materials. A violin is a whole series of balancing acts between friction and tensile strength that depends on specific detailed qualities of the actual materials. I mean, think about it; that essential violin sound comes from rubbing a string with hairs from the tail of a Mongolian horse, hairs stretched taut and smeared with tree sap. These are not materials that can be brewed in a vat with some exact proportion of chemicals.

(Another informative tidbit is the most important part of a violin is a tiny spruce peg that is propped up inside and is held in place only by the pressure of the pieces it is trapped between. If you take all the strings off a violin, the sound post can fall over, and it is an expensive and time-consuming task to get it righted again).

So you can't blame the student or would-be student for hoping to find an instrument that costs less than a car. Or even less than a cell phone. And you can't blame the manufacturers for rising to fill that need. Especially because it is so tempting a problem; yes, you can mass-manufacture and CNC and you will, by luck of the draw and some cleverness along the way, get something that approximates the playability of a properly built instrument.

What I find weird is that -- at least from my Yamaha experience -- this even applies to an instrument which is drilled out from a hunk of plastic. You'd think it would be as trivial to machine one right as it is to machine one that is out of tune. But this is not the case. (There is good reason why you can't just dial a CNC cutter to a mathematically derived measurement and expect to get the right results, but that's a subject for another lecture.)

So there's competition for that bottom dollar. An ongoing dialog between customer and manufacturer, but not one that applies to real playing quality. See, there are historically parts that are more expensive. Proper tuners, multiple pick-ups, nice strings, etc. The customers learn to recognize that the cheap Uke (or, let's be honest, the traditional Uke) has pegs. The expensive Uke has tuners.

So the manufacturers find a way to put tuners on. They are probably cheap knock-off tuners, worse than the pegs they replaced, but once again the customer is temporarily fooled into thinking this is a better (read, of the more expensive category) instrument than it is. Until the customers start looking for brand names...and the dialog continues.




And this isn't entirely semiotics. A few quality parts can make a big difference. Setup makes a bigger one. This in particular is one of the places where mass manufacturing can not economically go. A VSO is setup on the assembly line, or swiftly by a technician. It can be made more playable if it is hand-adjusted.

In the case of my Uke, I replaced the strings and shaved the nut. That made it instantly much easier to play, slightly more in tune with itself, and sound much prettier. For a while there, the rule was, replace the strings. No questions ask, strings are a place that is easy for manufacturers to skimp on in order to place their product at $10 less than the competitor (or, in the increasing consolidation of everything into a few monopolies, to grab one or two more of the customers who are balancing this impulse buy against the impulse for a new computer game or a couple of cocktails that weekend).

Now every Uke I see hanging up at my usual suspects have Aquilla strings (or at least a decent knock-off). So that one's gone. New manufacturers have also moved into the violin business with remarkably cheap yet decent-performing strings, so even the VSO's have started shipping with okay strings on them.

Setup on a violin, however, is not for the faint of heart. And this entire idea of set-up; of taking a cheap instrument and doing the tweaks and adjustments the manufacturer could not afford for that price point, and swapping out the hardware that similarly would have driven up the price, presumes that the person undertaking this has some basic crafts skills, musical ability, and confidence.

I mean, how are you going to make even a Uke more playable if you have no idea how to play one?




The Pfretzschner has been informative in ways that are almost too subtle for me to verbalize. Some of that, again, is acoustic. And it is extremely good I made this move when I did. There are, indeed, basic elements of performance that were getting masked by the electric violin. Fortunately, despite the dire warnings I saw around various forums and music shops, these aren't sudden insurmountable hurdles, not hills I should have been already climbing for months.

But then I have unfair advantage over the child student. I have some moderate musical knowledge and skill, and have been attempting various instruments for quite some time. I also am a craftsperson -- I've done a bit of sculpting and painting and so forth and I have the fine motor control to be able to swiftly learn the nuances of a new gesture.

I never had a real problem with bowing at right angles to the strings, for instance. A little work with a mirror to make sure, and it is within the margins of where it should be at my present level of skill.

In any case, tone is suddenly a thing. Heck, this might also be the strings and rosin I have on the electric. In any case, on the electric I really can't get a bad tone. I actually have to struggle to get a whisper-squeak or a good grank. On the acoustic, it is much different. There is indeed a Kreisler Highway of tone as well, a range of pressure and speed in which acceptable tones are produced. And a variety of tone color within that band.

See, there's a coupling of resonance between string and body. On the electric, as long as the string is actually vibrating in the correct Helmholz z-shape (look it up) then you have the note. You have to fall entirely outside, either to the non-linear regime of chaotic movement (too much pressure/speed), or fail to set the string into regular motion in the first place (the whisper of too little pressure or a lack of rosin).

On the acoustic, a narrower range within this larger range of "actually vibrating" is when it couples with the body to develop the full rich tone that, honestly, is what was driving me to move from the electric in the first place.

And fortunately for my progress as a beginner, it isn't really much effort to stay within that band. The only downside is this is also the louder side of the band -- I can't both practice softly and try to get a decent tone. It also changes subtly when vibrato is introduced. Vibrato on the electric is less obvious and you can do it with less precision. On the acoustic, again, there is a sweet spot. Conversely and usefully, it also seems to "talk back" making the gesture a little easier to get right in the first place.




So the lesson for the student? The electric is still a great idea. I don't know yet about how well a practice mute works (had to order one online, as well as some peg drops), but the electric allowed and still allows me to experiment and make all the horrible noises that no-one but me can hear. It gave me and gives me more freedom to mess up. Being afraid of what others think of your playing is the greatest block I can think of to learning.

At the same time, the acoustic has opened up my understanding of what is going on as I play. It is developing skills not just required for acoustic play, but skills that translate back to the electric. (Among other things, the intense loud sound of the acoustic has made me more comfortable with getting really loose and experimental on the electric. I'm more willing to make bad noises on the one that, honestly, even I can barely hear).



But VSO's? And ISO's in general? They still make me angry. All we can do is educate, however. There is still a place for them. The marginal ones can still be played, or tinkered with until they are playable, thus they are an affordable alternative to what otherwise can be a somewhat elitist endeavor.

But, really? Rentals make more sense. Rent a decent student instrument. Use that to find out if that instrument is for you, and to gain the basic skills in recognizing what is necessary to make a playable instrument. Then even if you want to purchase a cheap knock-off, you will have the skills, and more importantly, the confidence to work with it.

How Strange the Change...

It is so nice not to have a show to work twice a week and two shows on weekends. I feel so relaxed -- even with putting holocrons in boxes (I spent five hours last night at the laser, getting home too late to even eat diner) I feel relaxed.  I feel like I can finally finish some of these dangling chores and clear the work table a little.

So, of course, I'm yanked off in a new direction. Started this morning. See, I've been bringing my

violin to work to practice during my break time.

Which is coming along well. Messed with the theme from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica (fingering is straight-forward enough I could almost play through on the first attempt) and the "usual snippet" from Polovtsian Dances (rather less so). By ear, that is. I've got my music stand back and I'm a member at MuseScore now but my sight-reading still needs a lot of work.

Anyhow, carrying an instrument on your back as you approach the time clock will start a conversation here and there. One of my co-workers is buying a keyboard soon, another is trying to spend more time with his (a familiar problem).

I don't spend a lot of time with my keyboard partly because it is a Behringer controller; no internal sounds, no external speakers. To run it I have to connect it to the laptop, boot up Reaper, then stretch a headphone cord across the room. Every now and then I think I should throw a speaker and some kind of synth module in a box so I just have to throw a single switch and the piano is playable. Right now the only impulse instrument I have is a ukulele I keep on a hook by my chair.

So today I opened my Maker's Notebook and scribbled ideas for a simpler keyboard setup. I still have
a couple rack-mount synths, but 19" is large for the "box with a speaker" I was envisioning.  I do have a Korg P3, but there's a lot to be said for having other than a basic piano sound. An even smaller box would fit a Kurtzweil micropiano, which has some of the best keyboard sounds in a book-sized synth (and really nice piano). But the things are still $200 American on the used market. Hrm. Keep scribbling.

Plus the Behringer keyboard requires external power when using a MIDI cable, so that's more wires to play with. A USB box would be just one cable...  Say; a Raspberry Pi can handle software synthesis and even be trained to handle MIDI-over-USB. So could throw that in a box and...

But by now I'm thinking of the sounds I spent so many years practicing keyboard with. The sounds of the Yamaha DX21 (a cut-down version of the DX7; no velocity, only four operators instead of six...and that's all Geek to you, right?)

So I hunted and yes there is a free multi-platform FM synthesizer pre-loaded with those great old
DX7 patches. Called DEXED and you can find it with a short Google. By this time, as you can gather, I'm pretty far from my original starting point. (Incidentally, the pi-in-a-box is totally doable but requires some hairy programming steps to boot into musicality without having to hassle around with passwords and so forth every time).

But by this time I was off-track. Found myself listening to samples of DEXED on YouTube, then DX7 samples, then reproductions and homages of some of the synth-heavy 80's hits. And that leads me to some clever videos explaining the chord sequences used by many Hollywood composers (as well as the familiar discussions of orchestration and so forth that somehow never seem to show up on my YouTube "you may also like" page no matter how many I watch.)

And, yeah, this seems completely out in the woods now, but one of the things I was intending with the violin was to get back into composing a little. And that instrument is now close to the point where I can actually make use of it.

And probably I'll just prop a rack module and powered monitor under the Behringer and gaff-tape a power strip to the keyboard stand. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and a fancy box with a Pi-based FM synth and a scratch-built speaker system at some point in the indeterminable future must fall to the utility of having a keyboard I can go to now when I hear a musical motif in my head and want to try it out.