Sat, 07 Apr 2012
New toy
A while back, I was thinking. Playing the flute or whistling on a bottle is the exact same technique; but, in my opinion, the sound that comes from a bottle has some interesting overtones, making for a nice sound. Since the material of which an instrument is made is in large part responsible for the overtones that it produces (apart from the technique used by the musician), I wondered if nobody had ever come up with the idea of making a flute in glass.
Turns out that, of course, this has already happened. In fact, the modern concert flute wouldn't have been possible without one Claude Laurent, a Parisian instrument maker who received a patent for "a new [method of] making flutes from crystal"; part of his patent described a method of attaching the valves to the instrument. It was this method which was used by Theobald Boehm when he invented the fingering system that defines the modern concert flute.
The price of an intact Laurent flute today is, of course, beyond my budget; and it doesn't look like there are any glass flutes being made that use the Boehm system. But that doesn't mean there aren't any glass flutes being made anymore; indeed, a short look around the Internet quickly turned up Hall Crystal Flutes, a family-owned business from Rochester in the US state of Washington. As the price was not too insane (49 USD for the instrument, plus almost the same amount for shipping it to Belgium), I ordered one of their piccolos in C.
Last wednesday, a woman from the post office rang my doorbell, with a pakage containing the new instrument. Unfortunately, however, it had a customs tax of slightly more than what was in my wallet at the time, which meant I could only fetch it from the post office the next day. At least I could pay in plastic there.
After having had it for a few days, I can make a few observations:
- For someone who's been used to the Boehm system for as long as I have been, I thought the fingering system would be very confusing, but it's not too bad.
- As I bought a piccolo and not a flute, the sound is fairly sharp, and not entirely what I expected of it. Having said that, it's certainly not too bad, and I expect I'll be able to improve with time.
- Playing the highest notes on the fingering chart is challenging, and I've thus far not been able to produce the very highest note on that chart. Since playing a piccolo (any piccolo) is always slightly more difficult than playing a regular flute, however, especially in the higher octaves, that's not too unexpected.
- Playing sharp or flat notes requires me to open one of the holes slightly. Getting a correct sharp or flat requires, obviously, to open the hole to the exact correct amount, which will require quite some practice to do well. But I'm sure I'll get there, eventually.
I've been playing a few diddlies on it for the past few days, and it's been fun so far. We'll see where this leads us.
Tue, 28 Dec 2010
On moving pianos
John Goerzen blogs about moving pianos complete with outdoors music. While I don't have a similar story, my dad does. It doesn't involve a pickup (what with that being the standard american car type) but instead a piano which—at an angle—is stuck through the roof of a 2CV. I wasn't there (my parents hadn't even met yet), but I'm told it was great fun.
In the not so distant future, however, I may have another story to tell about moving pianos. Currently, I live right above my office. Due mainly to bureaucratic reasons, this will change in the near future (it's a long story). Now when I moved into the apartment, moving the piano involved several people, a ladderlift, and some extra helping hands from another apartment a few blocks down the road where they just happened to be moving, too, just to lift it 10 cm up and over the window sill. Then, we just tried to avoid dropping it to the floor, about a meter down. Now if me, my three brothers, a friend, and an extra hand were only just enough to lift it for just 10 cm, I'm a bit worried as to how we'll be moving it out again, which would involve moving it up about a meter.
To be continued, I'm sure.
Tue, 23 Dec 2008
Cantilene "Jeugdkoor van het jaar"
or, "Youth choir of the year"
Between my 16th and 25th birthday, I was a happy member of this particular choir; and today, five years later, there are still many members of this choir that I know personally—including, of course, their conductor.
It's not the first time Cantilene joined the race for "Choir of the year". The first two times, I was still a member. However, it is the first time they won in the category "youth choirs"; the first time, Cantilene came up second; the second time, we unfortunately did not make it to the finals. The fact that they did make it this time around, gives me mixed feelings; of course I'm happy that they won, but I'm sad that I couldn't be part of it this time. Well, that's part of getting older, I guess.
In any case, here's a big contratulations to Cantilene!
For those who care, if you do a search on youtube for "Cantilene", "Koor van het jaar", or "Luc Anthonis" (the conductor), you'll find a number of films—most of them from the Canvas belgian TV station.
In related news, with Caljenté (the choir that I am a member of, today) we had two concerts last weekend. They were a success, but unfortunately no thanks to me; I lost my voice somewhere during the evening of the 20th, and thus was quite unable to sing most of what we were going to sing. That did not stop me from being on stage and singing anyway, but I had to playback about half that time...
Here's for hoping that my voice will be better on christmas, since we're singing in mass then... I'm mostly there, but not quite entirely yet.
Sun, 27 Jan 2008
White Zombie: Astro-Creep: 2000 -- Songs of Love, Destruction, and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head
I've had that record since late high school, over a decade ago, and loved it at the time. This was my metal period, when I would go for the heaviest metal you could find, and loved it. I should still have a Sepultura album somewhere, a number of Metallica ones, and similar stuff.
I haven't put them on in years, though. These days, I much more like easier music, such as jazz, blues, and similar things. Not that I ever started to hate metal or something; it's just that it went a bit back to "things I used to love, but now just appreciate".
Today, I stumbled upon this White Zombie record, and put it on again. Even though it's been ages, and even though I don't dig metal as much as I used to anymore, I still appreciate it. Astro-Creep: 2000 is just one hell of an album...
... even if I know a few people who would vehemently disagree. But that aside :)
Tue, 23 Aug 2005
Solo!?
Yesterday, the ensemble played a concert on a plaza in Bratislava. A few minutes before the concert would start, I had a look at the list of pieces we'd be playing, in order to take my scores and put them in the right order.
Big surprise: the second piece was the Concerto Grosso by William Boyce that we play. This in itself is no big deal, except that I play solo in that piece.
Well, that and the fact that I didn't realize this, and hadn't had a look at it for about 2 months.
blink. Whoops.
All in all, it went quite well—only made one (little) error—as did the rest of the concert. But I was panicking there for a little while.
Sun, 05 Jun 2005
No Woman, No Cry
That song is one of the most famous Bob Marley And The Wailers songs ever, which appears on every 'Best of' collection I've seen, both when on CD and when on vinyl.
What's strange about this song, however, is that there appears to be only one version of that song (at least I've never heard of a different version), which is a recording of a live performance. This wouldn't be strange, except that the audience at the time exhibits behaviour that one does not generally associate with people who have never heard a song before (cheering upon hearing the first notes, singing along, etc). There are a few possibilities that would explain this:
- The song 'No Woman, No Cry' is not originally by Bob Marley, but was a well-known song by someone else at the time, of which they made their own version that they performed at this concert, and never on another occasion (in other words: this is the only recording that ever existed). While it would not entirely explain the audience's reaction, this would make sense.
- The original studio version that they made was nice, but The Wailers changed it sufficiently on that concert, and this version was deemed much better; as a result, people keep putting the live version on Best Of collections, and collectively forget about the original studio version.
- Something happened to the original studio version, and nobody has it anymore. The live version isn't the only version ever, but it is the only version that still exists today. I would find that unlikely, but it's of course not impossible.
- I'm simply not enough of a Bob Marley fan, and need to look harder. That, of course, is quite likely as all I know about Bob Marley is the few CDs I've seen in CD record shops and the one CD I bought while on a trip to .au.
And the odd documentary I've seen about him, of course.
Mysteries are fun, sometimes...
Sun, 22 May 2005
BB King rocks!
I bought a CD of BB King ("Live in Japan") the other day, for only €10 (well, €9.99). Boy, this guy's good. I knew him by name, and I had a general idea of the type of music he does, but I had no idea it was that good. For only €10? People are giving away treasures these days.
Tue, 03 May 2005
Google is my friend... or it should be.
I've received quite some mails regarding my post about Bob Marley's infamous song. So much of them, in fact, that I've come to two conclusions:
- I should STFW a bit more often.
- I should start writing that comments thingy for my blog that I've been wanting to write since quite a while now.
In any case, the answer appears to have been number 2: "The original studio version that they made was nice, but The Wailers changed it sufficiently on that concert, and this version was deemed much better; as a result, people keep putting the live version on Best Of collections, and collectively forget about the original studio version." Or something similar, at least.
Considering the fact that between the release of the original studio version and the following live concerts tour, the band lost some members and gained some others (and changed its name as a result), it is quite obvious that the sound of the band (and, thus, the sound of this particular song) changed. Still, I'd like to hear that one version of the song. If only just once...
Some mail is welcome in /dev/null. Real mail, however, is welcome at my email address
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