Category Archives: Music

Rule 5: Natalie MacMaster

Posted on January 14, 2013 | Comments Off on Rule 5: Natalie MacMaster

Cape Breton-style fiddler and, by the by, married mother of three, but who’s counting? Yes, it’s the shiny boots that got me. Her playing ain’t bad either.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Rule 5

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Fiddle tyranny

Posted on January 6, 2013 | Comments Off on Fiddle tyranny

The ever-present conundrum of learning a musical instrument: do you play what you want, i.e. favorite pieces and new additions to your repertoire?

Or must you (as you hear over and over again that you absolutely must) play scales, whole tones, double-stops, chords, etc. in order to keep fiddle fit?

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Posted in Music, Obsessions, Rancho Roly Poly

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Lingering obsessions

Posted on January 4, 2013 | Comments Off on Lingering obsessions

So I was shelling a boiled egg under the tap water before getting on to practicing scales, whole tones and double-stops. And a name, a face and a moment snapped into mind: Lani Irwin, 1964, on a train ride to Naples, Italy. Strange how the mind works—especially the aging mind. The past, always the past.

We were students at the University of Maryland in Munich and she and I and half a dozen others were sharing a train compartment on a holiday trip to Italy, close to Easter. I was quite taken with her, even obsessed, but she paid me no mind at all.

I did, however, join a few of the others in staying at her Navy family’s villa above the harbor for a few nights before some of us continued on to Rome. In June I went back to the States and lost track of her forever.

And so this little memoir would end, with just another strange obsession called to mind on its own accord, but for the Web and Google. I was surprised and delighted to find Lani is now a rather famous artist. Most modern art irritates me; her enigmatic paintings do not, for they are of people, seemingly real and striking women mostly, in surreal settings.

I’m glad for her success, and longevity. Some other old obsessions played out via the Internet have led to unhappier findings. Will this one now expire? I expect so. It certainly has changed.

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Posted in Music, Obsessions

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For that special fiddle gig

Posted on January 2, 2013 | Comments Off on For that special fiddle gig

The Thompson submachine gun was a fully automatic piece of work whose extensive use by gangsters during Prohibition, and mobsters subsequently, led to a federal ban on automatic guns about 1936. The law has been in force ever since.

Which you might not know if you watch the Rube Tube. Its supposedly sophisticated commentators often contend that automatic guns are freely available. When corrected they turn (somehow) to the notion that semiautomatic guns are just as bad. Which may be why some of our more dimwitted politicos are out to ban semiautomatic weapons.

Nothing about semiautos, however, equals the firehose effect of a one-trigger-pull full auto. Especially not a Tommy gun, with or without a concealing fiddle case. Rat-a-tat-tat.

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Posted in Music, Science/Engineering, Texana

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My new fiddle

Posted on December 27, 2012 | Comments Off on My new fiddle

I’m almost a month into playing my new (and first) fiddle, a $1,500 Owens & Parkley Chinese-made 4/4 dubbed by its maker Cantus Dubois, which I have freely translated from the Latin and French as “singing wood.”

My teacher was somewhat bemused by the fact that Singing Wood is Chinese, having an old prejudice against such as being more like VSOs (Violin Shaped Objects) than worthy instruments. But I’m not worried because I bought it from a reputable violin shop and he also praised its volume and warmth in the upper register, which he said was unusual.

The volume has diminished somewhat as SW is no longer new, which is normal, and it is settling in to realizing (I say mystically of this most mystical of musical instruments) that it is no longer part of a tree, a spruce-maple-boxwood-ebony combination. I only wish I was a better player to be worthy of its warm upper register which continues. But I’ll get there.

Five months ago I decided to abandon the Suzuki One book after getting hung up on trying to learn its first Bach minuet. I decided to be a Celtic/Old Time/Bluegrass/Irish/Klezmer/Country fiddler instead and was recently rewarded when my teacher (who plays such himself) pronounced me having arrived by finally “getting” the all-important rhythms involved.

He even gave me the names and addresses of two local fiddle “jams” for beginners. I’m not quite ready for them, though, as I have only one or two pieces memorized and they generally require twenty or more. Bringing sheet music to a jam, even a beginners one, is considered rude.

Besides, I’m still enjoying doing this for myself, or as Aaron Smith put it so succinctly at Violinist dot com, for the sake of the music itself:

“I will practice. I will improve. I will play for the sake of the music again this week–even if it is for God’s ears alone. It is a gift to be able to play. It is a gift to play on despite the effort and focus required. The wood will sing this new year with its sweetest song yet.”

Indeed it will, and that, for me, as for Mr. Smith, is more than enough. And, I should add, I will very happily go on practicing and playing in the blessed absence of the wolf tone (C natural on the A string in first position) that I struggled with on my $500 student rental. I don’t miss it.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Rancho Roly Poly

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There’s a wolf in my fiddle

Posted on October 29, 2012 | Comments Off on There’s a wolf in my fiddle

Not a live wolf. No more than the bow’s “frog” is a live frog. How could one possibly fit a real wolf inside something with no more depth than a cigar box? No, I mean a wolf tone, so called because it’s supposed to remind you of the animal howling.

Well, not exactly. Not even a crying Israeli jackal, actually. Mine, which occurs on my $500 rental beginner’s violin when I bow a C natural in first position on the A string, is more wispy. Like an intermittent breeze ruffling tree leaves if I were to sustain it past four beats, which I try not to. It’s become a phobia of mine now.

I’d noticed the wispy breeze for months, no matter what corrective I made to bow speed, fingering, shoulder movement, thumb-on-the-frog, etc. So, the other day while trying out some new $500 bows to replace my chunky $30 student fiberglass, which I seem to have outgrown, I asked the shop pro to check it out.

He did, including in a higher position. He said it was a probable wolf, i.e. a sympathetic artificial overtone which could be due to the string or to the spruce-maple combination of the wooden violin itself.

Which cements my previous intention to return this Eastman beginner’s instrument around my one-year beginner’s anniversary in December and buy a new step-up one. I’ll probably get another Eastman, a 405 for around $1,200. And new strings, maybe expensive Dominants. But, first, I’ll be sure to check that C natural. And hope I can say adieu to the wolf. Forever.

UPDATE:  Well, now, this fellow says: “On a good violin with the traditional bass bar you tend to have a wolf tone on the B natural or C natural above A 440.” And he adds that’s especially so on the A string. I’m not sure my rental qualifies as “good,” but the wolf is right there.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Music, Rancho Roly Poly, Science/Engineering

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Montana Young: Rule 5

Posted on October 11, 2012 | Comments Off on Montana Young: Rule 5

Another ace fiddler, who just happens to also be a babe.

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Posted in Music, Rule 5

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