Fire and Air

That C#m thing

fireandair — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:16:30 +0000

I’ve been wondering if it’s not time to go dig that thing out and see if anything shook loose while I had it stuck in the back of the freezer. Probably not, but it might be interesting, eventually. Still, it was pretty emotionally cold.

Continuing, continuing …

fireandair — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:51:05 +0000

Nice melody, needs accomp … No idea where it’s headed, but I know where I need to wind up in the end. Par for the course. Need to keep the destination in mind so I can “foreshadow” it in this middle section … if it counts as foreshadowing if I know where I want to wind up and hence am doing it in reverse. Rearshadowing?

Looking forward to the weekend.

More pretty

fireandair — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:50:44 +0000

Very nice goal, and a cute little endzone dance to boot:

It’s easier to edit than to write.

fireandair — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:37:03 +0000

At least I keep telling myself that. Just get some stuff down on the page, just write something. Just write something. You can always edit it later. *sigh* I do have to just think about it more — not wait until I’m sitting at the piano to just have an idea. Ideas come when they come, and it’s not at your convenience.

Taking weight off the viola

fireandair — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:56:55 +0000

I really do have to see if I can take some weight off of the thing, up to amputating the scroll if it’s possible. It’s really just too heavy is the thing. The intervals aren’t a big issue for me anymore; I seem to have learned how to reach them without major issues, at least on the top three strings. (Using the pinky on the C string is always nasty on a viola unless you’re Kim Kashkashian.) It’s just the damned weight of the thing anymore.

I know I need to bring it south again, just to have the chinrest properly dealt with. And while it’s there I can ask him about removing weight.

My muse has a sick sense of humor.

fireandair — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:06:59 +0000

It’s 9pm on a Sunday night, I have to get to bed in a half an hour, and I’m getting ideas. Good ones. Humans plan, the gods laugh.

Feminist mansplaining :-)

fireandair — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:10:29 +0000

Okay, so one of the NHL’s farm clubs that I pay attention to had a “Pink in the Rink” promotion recently for breast cancer research, which was nice, given how enthusiastic many of the players probably are about breasts in general. They turned the ice pink and had pink jerseys on, which were then auctioned off for money for BC research after the game.

Now unlike the NHL teams, the farm clubs often have a more family-oriented fan base, including older and middle-aged men, some of whom have seen wives, parents, or sisters come down with BC. As a result, they are much more receptive to this sort of thing than the 20-something cavemen who predominate in the FB pages of the NHL teams — most of whom would whine about it. Oh, they love breasts fine recreationally, but act aggrieved if forced to care when the things go rancid and kill the creatures they come attached to.

Not on the farm team FB pages, though.

However, that’s not to say that the farm club’s middle-aged male fans don’t … put their own unique spin on their brand of feminine support. To wit:

Male Fan #1: “I don’t like those pink jerseys. They look stupid!”

Male Fan #2: “Shut up, they’re for breast cancer, you douche!“

I swear to you, I never laughed so hard while perusing a sports club’s FB page. His heart’s in the right place, bless ‘im. >-D

Disorientation

fireandair — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:46:05 +0000

Man, it really isn’t possible to write and woodshed at the same time — at least not without a winning lottery ticket or a senile oil baron on hand. I am disoriented entirely on the viola as of late, and mostly because I haven’t been playing the damned thing. I’ve been making some slow headway on the Eb/F# thing as well, which means shedding on the piano isn’t happening, either. I’ll start on Hanon and something will come to me, and I just stop dead, fire up MS, and start poking and playing the same 16 measures over and over a thousand times while something stirs up.

I’ve been managing to keep “Pompe vane di morte” and “Dove sei?” in my fingers as well, as much as I can. The “Se fiera belva ha cinto” variations are sort of next on the stack, and I started humming the sinfonia to “V’adoro pupille” last time I watched “Cesare” as well. I can see an entire set of nothing but Haendel aria intros with variations in my distant future, but for now between the six-flat thing and doing the rest of “Dove sei?” I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Where this will leave Hanon and the viola is another matter. I so wish I could have kept going with structured lessons on the viola, but every day that goes by makes it clearer that doing that and writing/arranging at the same time was just not possible, not with a 10+-hour-a-day job unrelated to music.

New chin rest verdict

fireandair — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 00:16:21 +0000

1) It’s much, much better.

2) It’s still not exactly right, no surprise since it’s mostly symmetric but not entirely.

3) I do need to bring him to the luthier to get the throat of the rest dremeled out a bit. It’s baaaaarely clear of the tailpiece, but chin pressure alone would be enough to have them touch, and the cork isn’t quite thick enough on the left side.

Anyhow, I’m happy with it.

That blasted chin rest

fireandair — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:27:26 +0000

I’m going to do it. This weekend. I’m going to do it. I’ve got a three-day weekend coming up, so if I have to, I can go to my local music store and have them get me out of trouble. But I’m going to see if I can’t change out my chin rest and get that Flat Flesch on instead of the Guaneri I’ve got now. Wish I had a dremel so I could do a little tweaking of it, but it’s probably better that I don’t.

And once again, it’s down-periscope and a deep dive into the ocean of flats this weekend … I really do just want to force myself to come up with something, so I can at least feel like I have a foggy idea of the overall structure of something, instead of feeling like I’m flailing at mist. I am beginning to realize that those gorgeous 32 measures of six-flat work that starts in F#M (whatever) and ends in Ebm isn’t the Big Finish that I thought it was, or doesn’t have to be. It does after all, swerve into Ebm at the end, and without anything really telegraphing that. I could work past that point.