Science Fare

Bridal Veil Falls

Originally uploaded by nakedtram

Spearfish Canyon, SD

… in 17 years.

Scales are important. My assignment is B♭, E and D major scales eighth notes at ♩=96. Full range of instrument, one time slurred, once articulated (but not staccatto: “doo” “doo” as opposed to “dit” “dit”). Then arpeggio including all notes up to high F (!).

While playing scales focus on producing a continuous tone. Open mouth. Focus airstream through the reed. My current problems include uneven tone production. Also, bring the oboe up; not to slouch over; also it doesn’t need to be perpendicular to my face, it can come out at a natural angle.

Barret melody etude #1. We are to try this “formula” for dynamic expression: Overlay four bar phrases ＜＞ with climax on beat 1 of bar 3. Also, delay the completion of the dynamic change so it’s more like ——-< ========>. We didn’t discuss articulation, so I’m sure that will be a surprise for next time. Carrie suggested that uneven dynamic control is disconcerting to listen to, and I concur. Tension in music comes from the unexpected — unexpected time signature, chords, melodies that do the “wrong thing” (Imagine if “Somewhere over the rainbow” went UP on “over” — ick)… so uncontrolled tone production producing variable dynamics isn’t a good foundation for controlling musicality.

Telemann mvt1. This is the bait to tempt me into practicing the above. Although after how much praise Carrie gave Barret, I have more respect for that book. Will endeavor to appreciate it. Once again, Brody was right.

Reeds:

To control a reed that vibrates too much, thin the sides of the tip. We’re talking about a region about 1 mm wide and extending the length of the tip. It is important that this thinning is done evenly — don’t stray into the middle (Fig 1).

The heart on my new batch of reeds was too thick. Probably I over compensated for the advice from Brent?

Must watch the overlap when tying on reeds. The blades of the cane need to overlap so that the torque imparted by wrapping seals the edge together, not pulls it apart. This is a wonderful insight which explains why half of my reeds come apart. (Fig 2).

Ok, I’m late for work…

… is a favorite quote amongst me and my friends, especially John. Re-watching “Princess Bride” last night, I was shocked to realize that it was the source… uttered by none other than Billy Crystal.

Fun.

I drew these two pictures today using Fractal Paths

This first one looks like a silver chain, or bubbles floating to the surface of a pond.

This fractal image is a pretty spiral; in green, of course.

Back in the 80’s, my family owned a campground in the Black Hills. I worked there each summer, and so did my friend John. The resort was a shade of its former glory. In the 60’s it had been a full resort, with cabin rentals, a lodge, olympic sized swimming pool, miniature golf, etc… But by the time we bought it, it was just a campground (but that part was still awesome).

That old pool leaked like a sieve (and I think it’s still there, see the rectangle in this satellite photo?). We had to pump gallons of water into it each day. This wasn’t really all that wasteful, because we pumped it out of the creek, and it just leaked back into the groundwater and ended up in the creek again. It made it difficult to chlorinate, however, so we just gave up on that. Also, it was frigid (this is the Black Hills, after all).

There was also a trout fishing pond just east of the pool. Those fish were stupid easy to catch, as they were trained to eat the food pellets we threw in for them. One day Dad caught a trout and on a whim threw it into the old pool. I don’t think the guests swimming in there ever new it was in there with them. All that summer, we’d catch grasshoppers and feed the trout in the pool. Come fall, when we were closing up the place for the winter, we took a fly rod over to the pool and caught the trout — Ate him that night. He had grown into a huge fish! And was much tastier, having fed on bugs and stuff blowing into the pool, rather than the fish pellets the other trout got. (Pellet-fed fish always ended up tasting mealy in comparison to wild fish).

Here is an arrangement of Bach’s two-part invention #13 for English Horn and Marimba.

Today Lee and I brainstormed some improvements to how roll playing games work. Our biggest beef with D&D these days is that it is entirely focused on battle. And I don’t find that part of the game very compelling. What would be more interesting is a game which promoted roll playing, and discouraged battle. And if a fight must occur, it should be swift and merciless.
Along the way I proposed a widget that might be a useful game mechanic. A quick illustration of it is here:

It provides a way to specify three parameters (here marked kill, retreat and defend) that are linked by an algebraic relationship A + B + C = 0. You specify your choice by placing a marker at the intersection of three lines.
Our idea was that a battle would consist of very few rolls, and that the party would act as a group. To provide the kind of statistical outcome that is favorable, there would be a lookup table to translate the die roll + a reduced number of parameters to battle outcome.
This is all obviously a work in progress.

software

I just reinstalled the Creative Suite on my laptop following the hard disk crash.  I thought I should give Contribute a spin.  So far it’s been relatively intuitive.  I’m writing this blog entry not in the web browser but in a desktop application, and it is previewing the look as it would appear on my blog (which is kind of cool).

You can quit and relaunch and resume where you were (so long as you’re on the same machine — it doesn’t put the post into the drafts folder on wordpress, which seems odd.

I have a craving for donuts.  Too bad Baker’s Wife (home of the twin cities best donuts) is so far away…

Ok, kind of weird.  I went to publish this and I couldn’t find the publish button.  I took a chance and clicked "Connect" and after a pause (with no progress feedback) it turned into the publish button.  A little hidden.

Here is today’s concert. You can download directly into iTunes by adding this URL as a podcast:
http://blog.paddlefish.net/music/hso_may_2009/feed.xml
… or just listen by downloading from here. Mom, you can hear me in the opening bars of the Barber of Seville, and near 4:30 + 5:00 + 5:40 in the Brahms. The balance is really odd — probably because my mic was concealed in a planted shrub.

In case you thought I was to be credited for the current by-line (”little arrows on a piece of paper”), that is actually a quote from Richard Feynman.  He’s kind of a hero of mine.  (Maybe Is should have said him instead of Yousuf Karsh in the Adobe Lightroom publicity video that we shot a few weeks ago.  I’m not sure what the final cut is going to end up looking like.  Fingers crossed.  I can always blame the editing.)

Besides those two, my heroes probably include my entire family, especially my brothers (Becka calls it “brother worship”).  Jim Henson is right up there, and the whole Muppet universe by association.  One or two professors from Augie (Leland Johnson, for one - hey look he’s put our publication on his site “Rahn, A. B., M. A. Cade, and L. G. Johnson. 1996. Parental acclimation and developmental temperature relationships of the Japanese Medaka, Oryzias latipus. Proc. S. D. Acad. Sci. 75:203-204.” Yes, Medaka is a fish, for those who don’t know). Alan Alda also is one of those inspirational fellows; I loved the series “Scientific American Frontiers“, as well as his books.

Nuf rambling.