I’m still scrubbing bird-poop stains off my keyboards. There’s 2 knobs that have been missing for several years — Quark pulled them off and flew away with them. Maybe someday I’ll find them…

I dusted off a book I’ve had in my library, Keyboard Musician for the Adult Beginner. It’s a little confusing. What are the numbers over certain notes? Do they want me to play RH or LH depending on if stems are up or down? I guess these questions will be answered in Keyboard Lab!

My husband was out of the house for about 1.5 hrs, so I used the alone time to do some improvising. I set up my digi recorder and used the Korg Karma (play a chord and it just burbles away). I used my simple system flutes in G, D, and C. My tone is best on the G; I can’t hit the lowest notes on the C yet. Then I  tried the Boehm flute. I don’t know the fingering so I was just messing around, and came up with something based on a whole-tone scale. Also did some singing, clapping and stomping.

Something I really like about the bamboo flutes is, say you start an improvisation on “re” or “mi” (and set up the Karma to use that note as a drone), right away you’re off in modal territory (Dorian, Phrygian).

Now I have the craving to buy a new bamboo flute in the hideous key of C# / Db. Patrick Olwell isn’t making bamboo flutes anymore (because he is so far behind on his blackwood ones), but supposedly there is someone now who is following in his footsteps. I think he has a booth at the Renn Fest. I HATE the key of C# — getting a flute in that key might help me to get over my resistance. Playing the flute in its home key would be easy enough, it’s improvising along on the keyboard that would be horrible.

I also played around with my Dixon pennywhistle and my 2 ocarinas. All of those would be good for making bird calls. I think my “Home Planet” piece could start off with slightly off-key bird calls and wind rushing through the grass. Then this could solidify into a theme. Maybe this is being too literal, but the next thing that happened in the game was Neochadwickia (and the Lunatoucans) were destroyed; then I wandered around a while and eventually found a new home planet. No birds on that one, but it did have Gervays. So could overlay the Gervay theme on the Lunatoucan theme (or develop the one into the other)?

Thinking out loud. So, I guess LOT300W will have a storyline.

Intro

(Travel — first voyage)
Empty Planet (peaceful, simple)
Ice Planet (more complex, sparkly)
Home Planet 1 (birds, folk tune-like)

(Travel — second voyage)
Toxic Planet (discordant, weird, funny)
Desert Planet (austere, awe-inspiring)
Gervays (comical, charming)
Home Planet + Death

(Travel — third voyage)
Broken Planet (unpleasant, spare)
Paradise Planet (complete opposite)
Ocean Planet (simple, waves)
Home Planet 2
includes oceans, home, Paradise, gervays

Home Planet 2 + Death
Might be able to indicate in some way — death all the things?*
Gervay death, ocean death, toxic death, broken death, empty death
fragments, hints of all the previous themes
as if you are remembering your travels
intro / extro

*”death all the things”

I was in the house and noticed a new, strange sound coming from the back yard. It sounded like a cicada, but more metallic. I picked up my digital recorder and went to check it out. It was our neighbor, Josh, in his shed working with a  rotary blade sharpener. It reminded me of a circular saw, but was scraping at a lawnmower blade rather than cutting through wood. I got Josh’s attention and asked him if I could record the sound for a music project. He said “Certainly!!” with such enthusiasm and good humor that I was taken aback.

It is a distinctive sound that is mildly caustic and unpleasant. Could definitely use it for the Broken World. I want to have a collection of more-or-less atonal sounds for that one, almost like a flower arrangement of them — some more spare and some more thick. This particular sound is “thick”, with a lot of harmonics, and a repeating rhythmic structure. It did have a recognizable pitch buried in the noise.

To extend the metaphor — not so much a “flower arrangement” as one of those dried arrangements that my mother-in-law used to make, with the bulky bulgy milkweed pods, spiky teazel, cylindrical cattails, and the airy skeletal remains of flowers such as baby’s breath, chamomile and asters. Dry, crunchy, stiff, unbending, fragile, and relatively monochromatic.

Here’s the other half of the Green Room

Cables, Tascam Audio Interface, small microphone, big microphone, flash cards of the bass clef and chord inversions, 2 computers (old and new), Korg Karma (on the new stand!). Also Bonnie the dog, and a trash can holding a colony of mealworm beetles. The art hanging on the wall is a poster of Earthsea, given to me by another musician friend. I met him during my Irish flute days at Chiff and Fipple.

I have some new equipment on the way. I ordered a long power strip that has the openings aligned and spaced better. Right now the pile of the cables and cords looks like a nest of snakes. I also ordered a rolling cart…

to put the Korg Karma on. That thing weighs a ton. With a cart I can roll it to where I need it — ex. to connect it to my computer and record the sounds using Audacity.

Here’s a great description of the beast. I got this one around 2003.

http://www.vintagesynth.com/korg/karma.php

Another piece of equipment I have on the way is a new pair of glasses. I have been avoiding bifocals for 10 years, but because of my upcoming classes I decided it was important to be able to see things distant and close without sliding my glasses up and down my nose (which is what I do currently). The new glasses are “progressives”, which means there is a continuous gradation of focal lengths. My husband says that he likes his; you just have to tilt your chin up and down to find the right area for what you want to do. Another friend said that hers made her nauseated at first. Walking up stairs was especially freaky.

Earlier this summer I went on a trip to Florida and we took a charter boat to go snorkeling. I am very nearsighted (can’t see the E on the eye chart) and would not have been able to see any fish unless they were close enough to bite me. So I took apart one of my old pairs of glasses and super-glued the lenses into the scuba mask. That is how I’m picturing these new progressive glasses. A scuba mask for classes and reading music.

I made good progress setting my keyboards up yesterday. Earlier this year we had all our aviary birds living in my office (the Green Room) while we made renovations in the aviary (a remodeled garage). When I brought the birds in, I packed away all my instruments, cables, power cords, user’s guides, music interface, etc. We moved the birds back out to the aviary in June and the Green Room was cleaned up and ready for our house-sitters to use. But I didn’t unpack the boxes of music equipment til now.

I tried connecting the Fatar 88 key controller to my newest Korg, the Microarranger. This has a wonderful array of patches and “band in a box” type accompaniment settings, and so lightweight you can sit it on your lap, but has very small keys.

When I connected them, sound came out, but I was unable to change the patch. No matter how I manipulated the Microarranger, midi signals from the Fatar only produced sounds from the piano patch. However if I played the Microarranger directly, the different patches were available as usual. This is annoying, but not a big deal. I guess I don’t have the midi input set up properly on the Microarranger.

Next I connected the Fatar to my oldest Korg, a little sound module called the 05R/W.

It is a half-size rackmount and we purchased this (and the Fatar) with money we received after my husband’s mom passed away. This was right after I graduated from college (1995) but before my son was born. When I plugged it in and turned everything on, the sounds took me back 23 years.

Cool, part synth part Tardis.