Ordinary Day

Fiddle practice geekery post

2017-10-15T22:33:30Z

Put up a fiddle practice report over on my Wordpress blog, here. Notably, I made it a multi-instrument practice today, with both fiddle and winds, because I decided I needed to work on arpeggios not only on the fiddle, but also on the winds, which are the things I'm way more likely to actually play at a session right now. Plus, there's bonus exulting over starting to work out "Ciel d'automne" on the fiddle, since that's arguably one of my top favorite André Brunet tunes.

To this I will add, for those of you who don't follow me on Facebook, and to just put a bit of unique content into this post as well, that our last session was lovely. <3 Dara came with me and noodled around a bit on her own fiddle on the periphery of the circle. But one of my coworkers, Ian, also showed up!

My current team at work is in fact pretty musical. There are two of us who are in actively performing pro bands. There's a third one of us who is more into techno and can do drum beats on suitable equipment. And there's the aforementioned Ian, who is a way better fiddle player than I am, in that he can actually play. ;D

And they'd all been hearing me geek out about Quebecois trad for a while now. But then Ian went to this year's Valley of the Moon, where he got to meet and learn from André, woo! And he came back from that to tell me "so right then about this Quebecois session you go to", because André is awesome like that. So I handed Ian ALL THE DATA, a number of the tunes we are fond of playing, and the appropriate address for this month's session. So Team Venture got to represent. It was great!

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Fun with tunes and whistles

2015-02-25T17:49:52Z

Dusty Strings is a dangerous place!

Any acoustically-oriented musician in the Seattle probably already knows this, of course–and I myself have mentioned this before. But it was driven home to me again this past weekend, when Dara and I went in to get her a proper shoulder strap for the Godin A5 fretless bass we finally got her as a late Solstice present!

This is a sexy, sexy bass, you guys. But also surprisingly heavy! So we wanted to make sure to get a strap that could support its weight and not kill Dara’s shoulder while she plays it. We fully expected Dusty Strings would provide, and they did indeed. We got her a nice leather strap with a padded section for her shoulder.

But what I did not expect was that a blackwood whistle made by Sweetheart would leap into my fingers and go “HI I’M COMING HOME WITH YOU.”
One of these, specifically. Dusty Strings had two of them, one in rosewood and one in blackwood, and since I’ve been more interested in whistles lately I started playing around with them while Dara experimented with straps.

The rosewood didn’t seize me. But the blackwood did, with some surprising clarity and power to its tone. And wow, it carried well in Dusty String’s instrument room. I could see this being an instrument I could use to make myself heard in a room full of fiddlers and accordion players. Maybe not a session cannon–I’m not that powerful a player–but perhaps a session pistol.

Here’s some shots of what the instrument looks like, side by side in a couple of them with my carbon fiber whistle for comparison! You can see these pics directly on Flickr here.

And here’s what the instrument sounds like. I did a few snippets of recording with my phone last night, playing around with bits of “Ciel d’Automne”, one of my favorite tunes by André Brunet, who as I’ve said before writes lovely flute-friendly tunes.

First, this is me doing the tune on my small D carbon fiber flute. Because while I am having fun learning whistles, I’m still way more comfortable on a flute. And I wanted to show this for a comparison of tonality as well.

Second, this is my carbon fiber D whistle.

Last but not least, here’s the blackwood whistle! There’s better clarity here than on the carbon fiber whistle–possibly because this thing is a bit heavier as well as being wider in diameter. So the feel of it in my hands is closer to what I expect with a flute, and I don’t have to work as hard to figure out what amount of air to put through it.

So this is all fun and I’m going to greatly look forward to bringing this new whistle to a session!

And if you want to hear “Ciel d’Automne” in all its full La Bottine Souriante glory, go find their album Xième, which was also released in the States under the name Rock and Reel. This has the distinction of being the first André Brunet tune I ever fell in love with, so it’s got a special place in my heart!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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My thoughts on flutes, let me show you them

2013-11-19T23:55:12Z

Today my friend Aron pinged me on Facebook to ask me my thoughts on flutes, since he’s thinking of getting himself one. He’s a newbie to flute playing as well as to playing tunes in general, but is taking well to whistle and likes flute as well, and wanted to know what my thoughts were on his getting a keyed flute.

BOY HOWDY do I have thoughts on this! (And it was rather a relief to see that I was coherent enough to present a cohesive opinion on the topic. Yay, medical recovery!)

Maybe you’re brand new to instruments and don’t know which one to pick. Or maybe you’re like me, and you’re coming out of a school band background, but you’ve found trad music and you want to see if you can take your previous school flute experience and apply it to playing trad tunes.

Here’s the thing though–that flute you played in school band is perfectly capable of producing tunes. It is not, however, exactly a traditional instrument. And if your eventual goal is to play in a session environment, your chances of getting frowned at if you show up with a Boehm-system keyed flute are sadly pretty good. Your mileage on this will vary depending on the session; some sessions may be more amenable to flexibility in instrument choices. But don’t rely on that. You should default in favor of choosing an instrument which will get you taken seriously if you show up at a session with it.

With that in mind, how should you choose an instrument to play?

Suppose you say to yourself, “Okay, I like having keys. I’m comfortable with those. Good clear accidentals are my friend!” Should you try looking at Irish flutes with keys?

Here’s the problem with that–Irish flutes with keys are super expensive. The reason for this, based on my own research across different makers, is because the keys get made out of silver. And that can run you up a pretty hefty price tag with each additional key you put on there. As a concrete example, Casey Burns sells his basic keyless D flutes for $700 each. And each additional key runs you up another $450.

Do the math, and that means a flute with several keys on it, capable of producing whatever accidentals you may need in whatever key you may want to play in, is going to run you a lot of money really fast. This right here will be THE reason I don’t have a proper Irish flute of my own with keys on it yet. That kind of money is up there with the most expensive Apple laptops!

At this point you may now be boggling and wondering what the hell that kind of pricing is based upon, if you’re coming out of a background like mine–wherein you may have paid a couple hundred bucks at most for a flute played in school. It’s very important to keep in mind though that the vast majority of Boehm-system keyed flutes, the kinds of flutes that do get played in schools, are a) mass-produced, and b) specifically targeted for the student market. By contrast, if you’re looking at Irish flutes, the makers of those are not making mass-produced instruments, and they’re not targeting students with them. They’re putting more individual care in the quality of instrument produced, and they’re going to be working with better materials, all with the goal of producing serious sound.

And if it helps lessen the sticker shock, think of it this way–you wouldn’t want to play that flute you played in school if you were joining a serious orchestra, either. If you wanted to be a professional-level player in, say, the Seattle Symphony or something of that scale, you’d be going for concert-grade instruments. And those are going to be running up the price tag considerably as well. I can assure you that I boggled quite a bit at the pricing on some of the concert-grade piccolos I’ve looked at over the years!

In short, if you want to get into playing trad music, go keyless first. The Casey Burns Folk Flute I have is an excellent starter flute, and he sells them for $375. Similarly, I am VERY happy with the carbon fiber flutes I’ve recently acquired from Carbony Celtic Winds. The big D flute I got from them clocks in at $455, and the two smaller flutes I have from them are proportionally less pricy than that. The carbon fibers have great voices on them, and I’d recommend them as a viable alternative to wood if you have concerns about where the wood in a flute may have come from. Also of important note, I’ve been very happy with the exchanges I’ve had with Rob from Carbony, who was very helpful working with me to get a big D flute suited for the reach of my hands and was willing to do custom hole placements for me if need be.

One more maker you might check out is Sweetheart, who also came highly recommended when I started poking around for session-class flutes for myself. I have one of their Renaissance fifes in high D, which was really cheap at $49, which is pretty awesome for a starter-grade instrument.

You can get by in a session with something in D, either a big flute or a fife-sized instrument, as long as you can get good clear sound out of it in a couple of octaves. That’ll do you fine for a large number of tunes–you can do stuff in D, G, E minor, or E dorian without much effort at all, and with only having to half-hole or cross-finger the C. If you want to get a bit more ambitious, you might consider a large D with a smaller backup instrument in a different key, if you want to increase the range of stuff you can play in a session. (Which is why I got myself the A.)

But if you’re just starting out, you should definitely go for a starter-grade instrument, just to make sure that you don’t sink a couple K into an instrument you might ultimately decide you don’t want to play after all. If you keep at it, you can always upgrade to a more serious instrument later. And hi, this’ll be me eventually wanting to commission a serious instrument with keys from Mr. Burns.

Any other flute maker recs out there people want to share? Drop ‘em in the comments!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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Fun things that showed up in the mail yesterday

2013-11-19T17:47:12Z

We received not one, not two, but three packages yesterday, all of which deserve some shoutouts.

First of all, thank you to Scott in Kentucky who sent Dara and me a couple of pretty necklaces that he got from a vendor at a flea market local to him. The stones, he tells us, are unakite, and according to the vendor’s usual pagan/New-Age customers, they are intended for healing. Dara and I could use some healing, and this was a very sweet gesture on Scott’s part.

Unakite Necklace

Secondly, Tiny!Flute has arrived! I am chagrined to discover that the current state of my healing abdomen pretty much dictates that I can’t carry coherent notes more than a few measures at a time so I can’t actually reasonably play this little guy yet. But quick experimentation suggests that he’s got a REAL nice voice on him. Dara tried him as well and smiled and said that he sounds like Popcorn. (Popcorn, y’all may remember, is the bamboo flute Dara lost when we lost her backpack on the way down to Oregon.)

Here is a pic of the new Tiny!Flute next to Rossignolet, for size comparison. Rossignolet is 15 5/8″ in length; the new one is 12 5/8″. Put another way, Rossignolet is just a bit longer than my forearm, while the new flute is just a bit shorter.

Little Flute, Littler Flute

Last but most assuredly not least, my sister’s little girl made a special point of picking out a stuffed animal from her very own personal collection and sent it to Dara and me, after learning from her mommy that we’d both been not feeling very well lately! This is hands down the most adorable thing that has happened to me all year, and so I made a point of asking my sister to ask her daughter what the giraffe’s name was. Because if you’re going to have a giraffe come to live with you in your house, it’s VERY IMPORTANT to address the giraffe by the proper name!

And so, Internets, I’d like to introduce you all to Fluffy the Giraffe, now joining the Murkworks household.

Fluffy

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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One week surgery recovery report

2013-11-18T21:30:49Z

So far so good.

I’ve been very sleepy a lot for the past seven days, as you’d expect with a lot of Percocet in my system. Percocet also kicks my ass harder than Vicodin does–for a lot of my previous medical crap I’ve had, I’ve had Vicodin rather than Percocet, and I’m pretty sure I have to go clear back to when I broke my arm for the last time I was on Percocet. This stuff makes me have very weird, very intense dreams, and sometimes sensory hallucinations as well. I get into a half-dreaming state dozing off, and imagine things like people coughing outside, or somebody tapping my shoulder, or the cats making prolonged, siren-like whining noises.

The dreams have been weird, too. This morning’s involved my dreaming I was Liv Tyler, the actress who played Arwen in The Lord of the Rings, only this was on the set of The Hobbit. (Note: Liv Tyler is not actually in the Hobbit movies, but this was dream logic at work here.) Dream-me (as Liv) was on my way to a scene, only I came across one of the actors playing one of the hobbits in the movie. Somebody had attacked him and stuffed him into the bottom of a remote-controlled barrel on wheels that was out of control on the set. I had to retrieve the poor guy–he was a little person, actually hobbit-sized, as opposed to a more typically-sized actor being shrunk down via CGI for the role–and get him to security. And then get to my scene.

I remember that the set was laid out bizarrely like a cross between a theme park and bits of the Harrison Hot Springs resort that we were in this past July. And that I had to work my way back around to the front of the grounds and go through a VIP line to show them my credentials and demonstrate that I was, in fact, one of the cast. Which is the last thing I remember before I woke up.

So hi yeah, this is my brain on Percocet.

Not too much pain to deal with, thankfully. I’m sure most of this has to do with the aforementioned Percocet, though there are bits of me suggesting that they’re still tender enough that once I slack off on the painkillers, they’re going to be crankier at me. Which suggests that I’m probably going to need at least one more round of pain meds to finish up recovering; this is consistent with my recovery patterns with previous medical adventures.

Also, working from home was the exact correct plan here. I’m getting coherent enough that I can actually accomplish stuff on the computer but I am not physically up to my usual commute patterns of bus + four miles of walking in a day. I’m barely managing to make it through a full day without needing a long nap in mid-afternoon, and even with a long nap, I’m going to bed rather earlier than is normal for me as well.

Still not letting George on the lap, either, which bemuses the poor kitty. But he’s 14 pounds of cat and periodically pointy on five of his six ends, so if he gets on the lap at all right now, it’s with the buffer of the largest pillow we have in the house.

I have at least gotten to the point where I can work from home and will be working on automation updates for my team this week. And I’ve also managed to do a lot of operating system upgrades on my personal computers as well as on my work laptop. Put Mavericks on my main Mac laptop, and it did not explode, so I figure this is an accomplishment on my part.

Session happened this past Wednesday and my session peeps actually played a song for me. (heart) They did “La Fée des Dents”, which I’ve posted about before, being partial to that one as one of the ones I can actually play. Looking forward to having enough physical strength back so I can actually stand to play my various flutes. Not too sanguine about wanting to strain my stomach with necessary breath control quite yet. But I do have the small carbon fiber flute on the way! Hope to be able to show y’all pics of that real soon.

Be another couple weeks before I can start pulling words out of my brain again, but starting in December, come hell or high water, I will be editing Bone Walker. And also starting planning for Victory of the Hawk. Somewhere in there will be a copyedit round on Vengeance of the Hunter, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to show y’all some cover art for that.

More news as it happens, and as I continue to get my brain back.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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New big carbon fiber flute!

2013-10-20T22:02:01Z

The first of my two new flutes has arrived from Carbony Celtic Winds! This is the bigger one in D, since they aren’t going to send me the fife in D until next month. But that’s TOTALLY okay, since this one will be fun to play with until then.

The new flute is just about 23 inches in length, about 58.4 centimeters–just a scooch longer than Norouet, my wooden flute in D. I can’t weigh them both but unsurprisingly, the carbon fiber one feels slightly lighter than Norouet does. Norouet has a slightly wider inner diameter, at just over half an inch; new!flute is just about half an inch.

However, and this is a big however–the spacing on the holes, at least for my left hand, is a bit wider than I’m used to. Not out of the question, but it’s a bit of a stretch; I’m going to play around with it for a few more days and see whether I can comfortably play this instrument. But there are concerns here, I think. I’m okay on this instrument if I try to play something slow, like, say, “La Fée des Dents”. But if I go to something fast, like “Manteau d’hiver”, I start missing holes because I have to stretch to hit them and my hand may not be able to do that for long. This will require some experimentation.

The nice gentleman at Carbony who acknowledged my order in email says that they have another model in D with holes slightly closer together, but which sacrifices a bit of power. So worst case scenario is, I send this one back and he sends me the replacement when he sends me up the fife.

Check out the hole spacing in this comparison pic. This is the new carbon fiber next to Norouet.

Fingerholes on Flutes

This is, I suppose, the risk I take when ordering instruments online–I couldn’t have handled this particular flute beforehand, so I had no way of knowing until it got here if I was going to be able to play it. But hopefully this will be a solvable problem. I’ve sent the above pic to the guy at Carbony and asked him to tell me what the hole spacing is like on the other D model they have. It’d be a shame to lose power but that’s an acceptable tradeoff if it means I don’t risk my hand cramping up when I’m trying to play.

(The tone’s REAL nice on this one, though. Somebody with bigger hands than me could probably rock the hell out of this flute! And even given the uncomfortable hand stretch for me, I can get a cleaner and crisper tone out of it than I can out of Norouet.)

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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Things I really didn’t need to know about my student instruments

2013-09-14T21:25:50Z

Back in the day, there was Mystery Science Theater 3000. And when MST3K was no more, lo, there came unto us RiffTrax, but also Cinematic Titanic! And the brains behind RiffTrax (all hallowed be the name of Mike Nelson) said unto the people, “We shall have a Kickstarter, for lo, Twilight in an unriffed state makes us sore afraid.” And the people looked upon this Kickstarter and gave unto it their moneys, and even though they could not riff Twilight and had to riff Starship Troopers instead, they pronounced it GOOD.

And now, RiffTrax has started handing out the shiny rewards for the Kickstarter backers. Among these is a brand new riff treatment of “Mr. B Natural”–which is a short all you diehard MST3K fans out there should remember (and shudder at). I cannot provide you the pointer to the riffed version of this, because hey, it’s a Kickstarter reward and I donated good money for that. But I CAN point you at this–the entirely uncut, unriffed, 26-minute-long original version of the short. Brace yourselves, people.

What’s REALLY scary about this (well, aside from the androgynous music demon appearing in a 12-year-old boy’s room, that is) is that Dara started googling around for the music instrument company so prominently plugged all throughout this thing. She determined that they are the originators of a whole bunch of various brands of student-grade band and orchestra instruments, and from that, we learned that my original flute (the Yamaha that I played from fourth grade clear up into high school), my current silver flute (the Artley that I got at a pawn shop in college), and my piccolo (an Armstrong) are all brands originated by these people.

Which means MY INSTRUMENTS CAME FROM THE PEOPLE WHO DID MR. B NATURAL AUGH.

I would also like to note categorically and for the record that at no point in fourth grade, when I was deciding to be a flute player, did this chick appear to me. I make no guarantees however about the boys who were in my school’s music classes at the time.

And here’s another thing that never happened to me when I was in band, either! In the uncut short you can see the band teacher consulting a chart to try to figure out what instrument Buzz should play. Dara and I both boggled at that, so Dara googled for that too and found this thing, which is apparently a later iteration of the same chart.

Me, I just got handed a checklist and was told to tick off my first, second, and third choices of instruments! One presumes we were not actually a Conn-Selmer school. On the whole, though, I think I still came out ahead.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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Some tunes practice tonight

2013-06-11T04:30:03Z

Rossignolet is rapidly becoming my practice flute of choice–at least, as long as I’m not trying to play along with any recording that isn’t actually in A. If I pretend I’m playing a D flute and ignore how I’m actually a fourth up, this flute’s responsiveness is wonderful for just trying to get fingering patterns down into my muscle memory.

Plus, I just love the way Rossignolet sounds. I posted these to Facebook but for giggles and grins and posterity, here are sound samples of me playing Swallowtail Jig on my three primary flutes of the moment, including the new one!

Anna Plays Swallowtail Jig on New Flute (Rossignolet in A)

Anna Plays Swallowtail Jig on Norouet (Big Flute in D)

Anna Plays Swallowtail Jig on Shine (Piccolo in D)

Tonight, I went through all seven of the Quebec tunes I know so far and then through most of the non-Quebec ones, including Swallowtail. I didn’t hit Si Bheag Si Mhor or Da Slockit Light, but only because my embouchure started getting a bit wibbly and I wanted to work on Pigeon on the Gate, which I need for the Bone Walker soundtrack.

Fun observation of the evening #1: on Rossignolet, trying the embouchure exercise described in Grey Larsen’s Irish Flute and Whistle book, I was able to get three octaves of A as well as the intermediate E between the second and third A’s. That’s hard, people. And leaves me a bit swimmy-headed in a way I rather clearly remember from when I was first learning how to play piccolo!

Fun observation of the evening #2: TunePal can play tunes for you if you bring up the sheet music for one in it. You tap the play button and it’ll start playing through the tune on the screen in MIDI piano, and you can adjust the tempo too. So I fired up Pigeon on the Gate and went through it slowly several times, trying to follow the sheet music. Then I did it a few times more with my eyes closed, to see if I had it in muscle memory yet and if I could play along by ear. Then, I shut up TunePal entirely and tried to play it through slowly by myself.

This actually appeared to work. I cannot play this tune at speed yet but it may actually be getting into my fingers. Even though it’ll take me a bit to polish it up, just because those jumps in the first couple of measures from B down to E then up to D and down to E again are a bit of a bitch on the flute.

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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So apparently my brain wants to write tunes now!

2013-06-01T04:24:18Z

Those of you who roleplayed with me back in the day on AetherMUSH may remember that Faanshi wrote a song called “Ride Upon the Wyvern” in memory of her lost first love, Lyre Talespinner. Not only did I have lyrics for that, I also had a melody, even though I never actually wrote it down or generated chords for it.

Last night the melody to that song bubbled up from the back of my brain and said to me, “Hi, you’re going to make me be a tune now.”

And I went WAIT WAIT WHUT? And promptly had what I’m thinking is going to be called “Talespinner’s Reel” or perhaps “Le reel du raconteur” pop into my head. It’s in G. It can be played either as a straight-up reel OR as a hornpipe, and as soon as I have the notes down, I am totally transcribing this thing and sharing it with you all.

But that wasn’t even it with the part of my brain that’s suddenly up and decided that learning tunes isn’t sufficient–apparently I’m going to have to write them now! Because my AetherMUSH buds will doubtless also remember another aspect of Faanshi’s roleplay that never made it into Valor of the Healer: i.e., her great big dog Kosha, the hundred-pound guard dog who was fiercely loyal to Faanshi and who had the heart of a puppy. Kosha is still in my brain and he is now totally demanding his own reel. The Big Dog Reel, or perhaps Le reel du grand chien. Because there are call-and-response turlutte bits in this thing, because it’s all about Faanshi trying to teach the dog and he’s having none of this because he TOTALLY wants to play. And there is absolutely a very steady podorythmie component to this, to capture that rhythm of a happy dog trotting along, which I was known to try to put into words when I RPed that dog on the game: dog dog dog doggie dog dog dog!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE. Not to be outdone by fictional animals, the real animals in my life, Fred and George, apparently are going to eventually have to get their own entire set. It will be called We Are Such Good Cats. The first tune will be Run Around Go Crazy Time, the second tune will be No YOU’RE a Butthead, and the last one, We Didn’t Do That That Was Other Cats. This set will involve a great deal of interplay between whatever instrument represents George and whatever one represents Fred as they chase each other around the house. There will be slower rhythms for George because he’s bigger, and defter, higher-pitched stuff for Fred. And LOTS of stomping to represent all the things they’re knocking off counters!

So um YEAH. Who turned on this part of my brain? Did I just hit some sort of critical mass what with going to session and trying to learn a bunch of other people’s tunes, so that I want to start writing ones of my own?

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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Musical adventures at Folklife!

2013-05-27T08:03:01Z

Those of you local to the Seattle area know that Memorial Day weekend is Folklife, and solarbird and I being well, us, of course we’re hitting the festival as much as possible this weekend!

Yesterday’s adventures started off with an Irish session, apparently the first one at Folklife in four years, and which turned out to be hosted by a flute player named Ming Chen. (He was an excellent flute player, it must be noted.) I saw oodles of flute players besides him as well, and each and every one of them had more Serious Business flutes than my Norouet–which only strengthens my resolve to save up for a Serious Business flute from Casey Burns.

Ming described the session as being intended to welcome newbies who aren’t necessarily brave enough to lead a tune in session, and/or who know only a few tunes, in which category I definitely qualify. So I said HI I’M ANNA and told everybody I knew “Blarney Pilgrim” and “Morrison’s” and “Swallowtail”, and got encouraged to try to play something. So I started playing, which was all very well and good except for the part where I was aiming for “Blarney Pilgrim” and what popped out of my fingers instead was “6/8 d’André Alain”! Because um hi yeah, guess what tune’s stuck at the top of my queue of Jigs I Know In D. *^_^*;;

I went “oh shit sorry” and everybody was understanding (Ming found me later on Facebook and said ‘yeah this happens to all of us’, hee, which is reassuring), and I asked for somebody else to start “Blarney” since I was sure I’d remember it once I heard it. Which I did. “Morrison’s” was also played, which I kept up with more or less. And “Swallowtail Jig”, which I also knew. We did NOT do a couple of the other tunes I know–”Road to Lisdoonvarna” or “Banish Misfortune”. But I did more or less recognize “Butterfly Jig” from it having been played in the now-defunct Renton session. And I tried to actively listen to unfamiliar tunes as well to see if I could at least TRY to piece together any of them by ear. It was hard since everybody blazed through about eighty million tunes.

Several familiar faces were in attendance as well, Jason and Miki and Marilyn from the Renton session as well as Valerie and her husband from the current Quebec session I was going to. Saying hi to all of them was definitely satisfying!

And speaking of my Quebec session crowd, there was later on the great satisfaction of seeing La Famille Leger perform, immediately followed by a group called Podorythmie–which contains no fewer than four of the session crowd. Between both performances there were four, count ‘em, four different stepdancers (Dejah with her family, and the three others with the Podorythmie group), and Podorythmie brought along a crankie as well since Sue Truman and Dejah both are really big into those. (If you don’t know what a crankie is, click over to The Crankie Factory, where Sue Truman will tell you all about this old art form!)

Today, Dara and I actually opted to go down for the evening on the grounds that our aforementioned session pal Miki has joined Piper Stock Hill (Facebook link–they don’t have an off-Facebook or off-Myspace website), Seattle’s only band dedicated to the music of Newfoundland. It pleases me DEEPLY that we have such a band, and so Dara and I kinda had to make a point to stop and see them.

Plus, we’d never been down to Folklife during the evening and we wanted to see what it was like. Survey says: a bit more relaxed and groovy, with a thinner crowd. Dara and I scoped out the various craft tents to kill time, at which point we came across a booth FULL OF FLUTES AND WHISTLES. I immediately had to stop, because I’d been highly curious about whether I could play a better whistle, well, better, than the cheap toy one I have now. This particular flute maker had flutes and whistles made out of carbon fiber, in fact, and ZOMG they were pretty.

I was quite impressed by the D whistle they had, and did in fact note that I was able to play it significantly more cleanly than the toy one I’ve got. And I might well have walked off with that whistle as a purchase if I hadn’t then picked up their A flute. Which immediately informed me HI I WANT TO BE YOUR NEW SECONDARY SESSION INSTRUMENT SO YOU CAN PLAY THINGS IN A.

So I went “OKAY!” and promptly bought it. Internets, meet my new flute, shown next to my piccolo for scale!

I Do Not In Fact Have Enough Flutes Yet

After that, Dara and I wandered around some more and wound up finding another bouzouki player–which necessitated stopping to say hi, because HOLY CRAP SOMEBODY ELSE IN SEATTLE WHO KNOWS WHAT A BOUZOUKI IS. And, like we do because we’re US, we wound up improv-busking a bit of Great Big Sea. I destroyed not one but TWO different thin picks banging on Ti-Jéan, reminding myself to my chagrin that when playing ANYTHING by Great Big Sea, um, yeah, I need the medium picks. I think we can declare this guitar well and throughly broken in now, anyway. And that set us up with the perfect frame of mind to go see Piper Stock Hill have their act!

Last but not least, there was Piper Stock Hill! We’d seen them perform at Folklife before, but this time they had Miki! And this time we stopped to say hi to their leader singer after, so that a) I could buy their CD, and b) I could identify myself and Dara as raving Great Big Sea fangirls. We had a lovely conversation with said lead singer and his wife, and his wife particularly charmed me when she was trying to remember Alan Doyle’s name and couldn’t, so she did a hair flip instead. Because OH MY YES, that’s a gesture universally understood by ALL raving Great Big Sea fans. ;D

So all in all, a great time at Folklife so far! We’re going back down tomorrow for the French-Canadian jam/session that the Legers will be hosting. Maybe we’ll see some of you there!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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Music transcription is hard!

2013-02-24T09:31:18Z

My new task to contribute to the soundtrack for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker: transcribing some of the more challenging sets that Dara’s putting together! In particular, the one that goes along with the fight scene in Chapter 7 of Bone Walker. That’s got some fun, fun Japanese stuff going on in it along with a heavily mutated version of “Road to Lisdoonvarna”–and Dara’s also doing some fun almost orchestral things here as well, with interlocking themes representing Christopher and Kendis fighting with the nogitsune.

It sounds really bitchin’ cool in Dara’s work track, especially given the drums she’s laid in!

But Dara doesn’t read sheet music; she learns music by ear. I am pretty much exactly the opposite. I’ve been trying to improve my ability to learn by ear, but I am still very, very much better at learning something if there’s sheet music for it in front of me. That said? It was challenging and FUN to take Dara’s track, slow it down to half speed in my Tempo Slow app, and try to get all the notes and rhythms right on my piccolo so that I could transcribe them into actual musical notation.

My head is very full of notes now and I cannot brain any more tonight. I’m here to tell ya, it’s almost easier writing the book. Well, almost! ;D Not to mention that this is only the first part of the fun with this piece–now I have to actually learn to play it properly. And I’m actually going to have to break out my seldom-played flute with keys, since I don’t have a proper Irish flute with keys on it yet, and this bastard is changing keys WAY too often and into way too annoying keys for me to handle on Norouet at my skill level. (Read: my generally sucking at half-holing.) The piccolo’s too high and perky for this, so it’ll have to be the flute.

I’ve flung the PDF as well as the original Finale Songwriter file over to the others who’ll be playing on the soundtrack with us, and have shared the PDF with the Kickstarter backers as well. Really looking forward to doing my part for the recording–even if it means YIKES Dara’s going to record me! This won’t be the first time my flute playing’s been recorded; there are still the old MP3s from our Three Good Measures days. But this’ll definitely be the first time for something as formal as a soundtrack album, with studio work on it and everything! YIKES! *^_^*;;

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

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Tune work tonight

2011-12-03T07:11:24Z

With two brand new flutes to break in, I’ve found myself wanting to practice as well as write for the last couple of nights, and so tonight I’m doing active tune work. This means trying out all previously learned tunes on both the new instruments, as well as seeing which of the next ones work better on which instrument.

Here are an assortment of things I have thus learned.

One, there is a certain pure, clear tone that a properly played piccolo can make. I’m NOT good enough to do it consistently, but I can get there. It requires not only a good embouchure, but also that you make sure and drink enough water, which is a problem in our fairly dry, cold house! I’m learning from Chirp, though, that if I play Chirp correctly, I can in fact approach a piccolo-like tone on it. Which is pretty impressive given that Chirp is made of applewood.

Two, I like the Lisdoonvarna/Swallow Tail Jig/Morrison’s set better on Chirp than I do on the new big flute. But I like Blarney Pilgrim better on the big flute, and will probably also like Da Slockit Light and Si Bheag Si Mhor better on that one as well.

Three, I am more nimble on Chirp, unsurprisingly, since Chirp is piccolo-sized. Even though the big flute is intended for “small hands”, it’s still a bigger instrument than I’ve been used to playing for a while, and it’ll take me a bit to work back up into it. I cannot yet achieve that purity of tone I was talking about above on the big flute, not yet, not while I’m trying to also play quickly.

Four, I’m playing with Apples in Winter and Cliffs of Moher tonight, and am learning from both of these tunes that I’m trying to punch their primary beats too hard. They both want to flow better than I’m letting them do. I need to work on that. I can pick out both tunes fairly easily on the sheet music, but that’s not the same thing. Reading off the sheet music is for purposes of just learning the tunes. Finding their music, i.e., making them actually sound good, is another question entirely. I’m still working on a lot of that with all of these tunes I’m trying to learn.

Fifth, I’m also playing with Jig of Slurs, in no small part due to my interest in the “Fortierville” set on La Volée d’Castors’ so very awesome live album–and while I’m starting to get Jig of Slurs down at least as a tune, again, it’s going to be a bit before I can whip through this thing as music. Especially if I want to play along with the La Volée recording. Which I DO. Relatedly, I have also observed that at least based on comparison to that recording, I’ve been playing Chirp kind of flat.

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

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