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  1. Practice Notes 2014-09-25

    By chance, I have access to a piano in my apartment for the first time… ever, actually. Trying to work through sight-reading some of J.S. Bach’s two-part inventions (score, warning: PDF). Inventio 4 in D minor is a favourite, and I can get through either part on its own without too much trouble, or both together VERY slowly.

    Also put simple chords to De Montford and played along with a rather excellent video by Starymonetti, who I met half of in Vienna this summer:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVXgsgGT0gI

    Also: explained the inner workings of the hurdy gurdies’ mysterious buzzing sound to my roommate. It’s not actually effectively explained anywhere on the web as far as I can tell, so if you’re curious:

    One (or more) of the strings rest on bridges which are not adhered to the instrument but rather sit in a slot and can pivot. A string (the “tirant” en Français) applies force to the non-vibrating part of the string, pulling the pivoting bridge down firmly against the soundboard. The amount of tension on the tirant sets the threshold of energy with which the string must be vibrating in order to pivot the bridge, at which point a slip-stick cycle starts to happen, repeatedly pivoting the bridge before it slips back, hammering against the soundboard.

  4. I love @allofbach but the website is not at all optimised for actually listening to/learning about the music. A potential redesign removes extraneous clicks and puts the focus completely on the music and performance:

    Additional possible improvements: link to wikipedia article, IMSLP page (e.g. BWV243)

  6. tradition.is was thoroughly enjoyable and filled with excellent music+dancing — met new friends, learned new tunes+dances+singing styles and generally had a good time. Longer blog post upcoming, for now here’s my post-festival :

    Not all necessarily related to the festival, but learned about in the duration. Amusingly, last.fm/music/BLM has a big photo of the BLM which performed at tradition.is, but is about someone completely different!

  8. Had a wonderful time playing at Stóri Eyglóar-dagurinn — thanks to all who came and supported Eygló! Played my new tunes The Taste of Words and Jellyfish 500 (not yet notated), and accompanied Eygló singing Vísur Vatnsenda Rósu and Sofðu unga ástin mín.

    I didn’t video it myself but hope to have one to link to in a week or so.

  10. I love that feeling when you play music with someone/some people and it just works, straight away. It feels like cheating but it’s not, it means you’re doing something right.

  11. My first puredata patch: Canoner! A cross between a delay and a looper, this patch allows you to play canons solo.

    Hit Start/Round as you start playing, then again at a round point, and the patch will continue to play what you played with that delay until you hit Stop.

    Extending the canoner to support n>2 part canons is left as an exercise for the reader.

    Patch code:

    #N canvas 405 217 363 240 10;
#X obj 26 34 tgl 40 0 empty empty empty 17 7 0 10 -204786 -1 -1 0 1
;
#X obj 26 84 route 1 0;
#X obj 214 201 delwrite~ round 10000;
#X obj 214 176 adc~;
#X obj 26 117 timer;
#X obj 26 148 delread~ round;
#X obj 26 198 dac~;
#X floatatom 165 149 5 0 0 0 - - -;
#X floatatom 129 149 5 0 0 0 - - -;
#X obj 26 174 *~ 0;
#X obj 101 34 bng 40 250 50 0 empty empty empty 17 7 0 10 -260097 -1
-1;
#X text 13 15 Start/Round;
#X text 106 14 Stop;
#X text 249 176 Input Stage;
#X connect 0 0 1 0;
#X connect 1 0 4 0;
#X connect 1 1 4 1;
#X connect 1 1 8 0;
#X connect 3 0 2 0;
#X connect 4 0 5 0;
#X connect 5 0 9 0;
#X connect 7 0 9 1;
#X connect 8 0 9 1;
#X connect 9 0 6 0;
#X connect 9 0 6 1;
#X connect 10 0 7 0;

  12. At first this page on the bagpipe society website looks like a perfectly normal webpage.

    But take a closer look:

    That woman has SHAUN THE SHEEP BAGPIPES

    OBJECTIVELY BEST BAGPIPES EVER

    WHY ARE ALL BAGPIPES NOT LIKE THIS

    I HEREBY DECREE THAT ALL NON-SHAUN BAGPIPES ARE INFERIOR AND MUST BE CONVERTED

    NON-SHAUN BAGPIPE PLAYERS, REPORT TO YOUR NEAREST CONVERSION FACILITY FOR UPGRADE

  13. Musicians+bands: please put a paypal donate button or similar on your site so that when it’s easier for people to torrent your music rather than buying copies (physically or digitally) we can still give you money. We want to give you money!

  15. After almost two years of mainly playing the gurdy and recorder, I can feel the accordion calling me again. It’s saying “Remember all that stuff you miss, like chords, polyphony and 4 octaves range? I can do that! Pick me! Pick meeeeee!”

  17. Yesterday I dug out this rather odd track from January:

    It was recorded after a visit to Hayling Island, wherein we found an assortment of sea creatures, all of whom, according to tradition, were called Gordon. One was alive, and thus the tune was named.

  19. yiddishsong.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/di-gantse-velt-iz-hevl-havolim-performed-by-lillian-manuel has some interesting background about the song “Hevl iz Havolim”, and one of the comments has what appears to be a quite extensive translation, but of a different version — it doesn’t translate the two longer verses in the middle of the version the Klezmatics sing.

    That version is covered by this klesmer-musik.de/hevl_iz_havolim.htm German version, which seems to line up better with the sung lyrics, but Google-translated the middle verses are still rather vague. I suspect they’re using idioms and imagery which does not easily translate word-for-word.

  20. Trying to buy MP3s off Amazon and seeing unfriendly errors like “Important Message There was a problem with your address submission. Please fix all the areas below and try again.”?

    It’s probably because the Amazon MP3 service only works in the US, despite this information not being displayed anywhere or reported as an error. The billing information form even lets you choose countries which it knows will not work!

    This is an excellent example of terrible form design, and to communicate exactly why, I redesigned the form with some improvements:

    Important credit card number:

    Date it stops working:

    LEAVE THIS BOX UNCHECKED TO BUY MUSIC:

    Select a next step:

    (If anyone from Amazon is reading, feel free to use this design on amazon.com/gp/dmusic/verification/addCreditCardMP3 — it would be orders of magnitude more helpful than the current one)

    Source: chat with amazon support staff:

    Update: follow-up email clarified that Amazon music is actually available in the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Spain and Italy — so not just the US, but also no love yet for Iceland :( In their defence: Amazon’s support channels are excellent. Polite, helpful, quick chat and genuinely useful follow-up email.