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ravencallscrows... or, life with the wrong instrument case.
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damashita's two massage clients in Oak Harbour who were scheduled for appointments today, one rescheduled, meaning the amount of time i had to kill around the area was cut from over an hour and a half to about forty minutes.
Since we found out about this last night, plans got adjusted accordingly. Rather than taking the 12-string and the bagpipe case (which has the pipes and the whistles), i opted just for the latter.
Wrong answer.
Although it was in the forties in Seattle, at Deception Pass it was 31 degrees, and i'd guess about the same at Rosario Beach. It wasn't the temperature that was as much a problem as the side effects of the temperatures. Yesterday i'd gone through and cleaned the pipes and tuned them. The chanter reed needed a little thread to tune properly, so i'd added a little to the base.
That was in my house, where the temperatures were in the sixties.
Remember Physics class in school? A little thing called the coefficient of expansion?
Although the chanter tuned properly at home, when the temperatures were thirty degrees cooler, it was loose enough in the socket that air flowed around it rather than through it.
As a result, i had three working drones, nicely tuned together (these reeds are more substantial in design), and a chanter which made absolutely no sound at all. So, after standing around on the bluffs for fifteen minutes mucking around trying to get this fixed, i gave it up as a lost cause, and went back to get the whistles.
Big problem. I had bagpipe fingering in my head, which is very different than the whistles use- the pipes have a chanter which has eight holes- one for the left thumb in the back, seven on the front- for the first three fingers of the left hand and the four of the right hand; the whistles have six holes, all on the same side- three for each hand, so the two are just different enough to require different technique. Oh yeah- they're in different keys, too. Bagpipes are in A mixolydian (although since pipers have notoriously bad music theory, pipe music is generally written as if they were just simply keyed B flat), the whistles are in D and C, so unless you're a damn good sight-reader and can transpose on the fly, stuff written for one doesn't 'automagically' play on the other. I'm a horrible sight-reader. Accordingly, since the only sheet music in the pipe case was some stuff for the Zetland smallpipes (like my parlour pipes, smaller than Great Highland pipes, but keyed a bit differently, and designed to be played near lightspeed- think a la Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or Jennifer Batten, but on pipes rather than electric guitar), it was improvisational time, so i just did some noodling around for the time left. Came up with a few little airs in G (D whistles play in G by substituting C-natural for C#), but nothing memorable enough to try reproducing to writing down.
One more thing. Wet driftwood logs are damned slippery, even after the ice formed by condensation on them melts. Thank the Gods for mil-spec Altama combat boots- my general footwear of choice, or i'd have fallen a couple of times.
Oh, yeah- and it was frelling gorgeous from the tops of the bluffs.
Of
damashita's two massage clients in Oak Harbour who were scheduled for appointments today, one rescheduled, meaning the amount of time i had to kill around the area was cut from over an hour and a half to about forty minutes.Since we found out about this last night, plans got adjusted accordingly. Rather than taking the 12-string and the bagpipe case (which has the pipes and the whistles), i opted just for the latter.
Wrong answer.
Although it was in the forties in Seattle, at Deception Pass it was 31 degrees, and i'd guess about the same at Rosario Beach. It wasn't the temperature that was as much a problem as the side effects of the temperatures. Yesterday i'd gone through and cleaned the pipes and tuned them. The chanter reed needed a little thread to tune properly, so i'd added a little to the base.
That was in my house, where the temperatures were in the sixties.
Remember Physics class in school? A little thing called the coefficient of expansion?
Although the chanter tuned properly at home, when the temperatures were thirty degrees cooler, it was loose enough in the socket that air flowed around it rather than through it.
As a result, i had three working drones, nicely tuned together (these reeds are more substantial in design), and a chanter which made absolutely no sound at all. So, after standing around on the bluffs for fifteen minutes mucking around trying to get this fixed, i gave it up as a lost cause, and went back to get the whistles.
Big problem. I had bagpipe fingering in my head, which is very different than the whistles use- the pipes have a chanter which has eight holes- one for the left thumb in the back, seven on the front- for the first three fingers of the left hand and the four of the right hand; the whistles have six holes, all on the same side- three for each hand, so the two are just different enough to require different technique. Oh yeah- they're in different keys, too. Bagpipes are in A mixolydian (although since pipers have notoriously bad music theory, pipe music is generally written as if they were just simply keyed B flat), the whistles are in D and C, so unless you're a damn good sight-reader and can transpose on the fly, stuff written for one doesn't 'automagically' play on the other. I'm a horrible sight-reader. Accordingly, since the only sheet music in the pipe case was some stuff for the Zetland smallpipes (like my parlour pipes, smaller than Great Highland pipes, but keyed a bit differently, and designed to be played near lightspeed- think a la Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or Jennifer Batten, but on pipes rather than electric guitar), it was improvisational time, so i just did some noodling around for the time left. Came up with a few little airs in G (D whistles play in G by substituting C-natural for C#), but nothing memorable enough to try reproducing to writing down.
One more thing. Wet driftwood logs are damned slippery, even after the ice formed by condensation on them melts. Thank the Gods for mil-spec Altama combat boots- my general footwear of choice, or i'd have fallen a couple of times.
Oh, yeah- and it was frelling gorgeous from the tops of the bluffs.
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no subject
Date: 2003-02-05 05:02 am (UTC)Alas. I have the problem if it's too damn windy, our medieval group can't play outside. The wind whips through the fingering holes and cuts off the sound.
no subject
Date: 2003-02-05 07:12 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2003-02-05 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-02-06 01:34 pm (UTC)hmmm.. I have a few wet cats yowling for food out on the porch. No sack needed!