Thanks to everyone who came to our open day and first concert in the mill, and made it so special! Keep an eye out for the next one…

Have fun at Le Son Continu, everyone! Wish I could be there. Hopefully again next year.

Put a new set of strings on my guitar (built in 2011!) and it sounds goood. Now I just have to learn to play it, finally.

Video: Erik and Anna from Dråm playing some of the Swedish dance tunes they taught in their workshop at Vaka in Akureyri:

Spent this morning doing maintenance work on this very old hurdy gurdy with a very interesting history, which I shall be writing more about soon:

Spent this morning meeting a very interesting old hurdy gurdy owned by some very interesting people. Tomorrow we’re off to find a lathe with which to fix it.

Video: Benjamin Bech playing Icelandic dance tunes at VAKA 2015:

https://youtu.be/bBxX0JYgnq4

These tunes are three of the pieces of music Benjamin has discovered whilst researching old dance music known to have been played in Iceland. All three feel to me like polkas, although the second (“ræll”) could probably be played as a schottish too.

Back in Reykjavík after the thoroughly enjoyable Vaka festival! Many new friends made, tunes and dances learned. Thanks to everyone involved for putting on such a great event!

Now to catch up on four days of no German practice…

Last minute reminder: VAKA is in Akureyri from this Wednesday! Join us for four days of Northern European folk music, dancing, workshops and crafts.

Visualising music with a spreadsheet:

There’s some fascinating discussion of absolute pitch in this old article+comment thread on languagelog: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1450

#puredata is so amazing! Recreated one of my favourite @solarference effects in about 20 minutes:

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG https://solarference.bandcamp.com/track/three-sisters

#wikipedia article of the week: List of nontraditional bagpipe usage

Anyone know who the #gurdy player heard but not seen in this Light in Babylon video is?

https://youtu.be/1GMFE1qriAE

#TIL there’s a crater on Mercury named after Turlough O’Carolan as of yesterday! http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/details.php?id=283

Last year’s Tradition for Tomorrow in Akureyri was a fun festival, and this June it’s being re-born as Vaka. There’s a bunch of awesome artists playing including Jackie Oates, SANS and Dråm. I will be going! You should too.

A short recording of Gregory Jolivet’s beautiful 5-time waltz “Main Dans La Main” played in C on my Vio gurdy, after a post-travel maintenance session and string change:

I’m now using a steel core, stainless steel wound low G chanter. It has a slightly harsher sound than the synthetic+silver strings I was using before, and is prone to attacks with lots of high partials, but is much more durable.

Just found out about Vicente Parrilla, a rather excellent early recorder player with a focus on improv: