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| 5/28/08: Life is Beautiful
5/25/08: A-OK 5/23/08: Disassembling the Complex 5/20/08: Bee love 5/18/08: Excessive UV radiation |
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May 28, 2008
Life is Beautiful
Quick note for now: most of our downsizing work at the Complex is completed, and it's gonna work! In fact, it's probably good to endure occasional upheavals in order to re-examine True Priorities and prune some deadwood. And the gardens! I may be nuts to tackle two separate gardens this year, but the next three to four months are the peak of Pacific Northwest horticulture. Busy, busy! Pics presently... --
May 25, 2008
A-OK
Got most of the superfluous baggage purged from the larger former Complex space, and you know what? This just might work! I've always been an inefficient tenant, tending to fill every free square inch with frivolous physical ephemera-- junk, that is. In a week or two, our severe spring pruning should spur some new and interesting creative shoots. Well, make that a week or three-- although I'm optimistic about working in this more confined space, many other immediate vernal distractions loom. --r.
May 23, 2008
Disassembling the Complex
Hoo boy. I mentioned a while back that our studio rent had doubled and that downsizing was the only practical solution. That reductive process has been all-encompassing for the last few days, with the job still less than half done. Turns out that sorting through a fifteen-year accumulation of packrat-style flute workins' is an even more monstrous job than I'd anticipated! Somehow, all of this Stuff must be reorganized to enable production to resume in about 40% of the former workspace. At this point I'm still purging the larger room -- the one we're giving up -- and it'll probably be a couple more days before I can even stop to think about how to set up the much smaller space in a reasonably functional array. Needless to say, not much *real* work will get done before June 1st at the earliest. And it's not like I have anything else to do in the meantime... har. --r.
May 20, 2008
Bee love
I love bees. Years ago I maintained several honeybee hives, and I miss the little buggers: what an utterly fascinating hobby! I even sold some surplus honey for a while, mainly to a baker in his 70s at the time (early 1980s) who had coincidentally been born in Bethel, Alaska-- my old hometown. It's been widely publicized that domestic honeybees face serious challenges of late: between varroa mites and "colony collapse disorder" among other things, life is much more problematic for the casual as well as the professional beekeeper. One of these years when fewer distractions loom, perhaps I'll confront such challenges and resume the hobby. Sure hope so! In the meantime, there are many other bee species to be nurtured: hundreds of them. These beneficial insects are critical to our environment, particularly for their tireless and indispensable work pollinating our food crops. We can all do more to invigorate bees by planting a wide variety of flowering plants and avoiding pesticide use, as well as providing suitable habitat in other ways. For instance, you can construct bee houses in much the same manner as birdhouses-- short video of bees using a house here. Many native bees are adapted to nesting in hollow-stemmed plants, and bee houses can be built by bundling tubes of bamboo or other material in rain-sheltered spots, or drilling appropriately-sized holes in blocks of wood and situating them attractively. I've been meaning to build several of these for some time, so imagine my chagrin at the following scenario: I bought a huge pile of bamboo earlier this spring, and stacked it horizontally in the Swamp Shack's open-air garage safe from rainfall. This morning I went out and rummaged in the pile, moving a stack here and a stack there... presently there came a buzzing, and I was aware of several bees hovering in the immediate area, darting this way and that as if searching for... oh no. I suddenly realized that they'd already scouted out spots in the open ends of some of the bamboo poles, and were confused by the rearrangement. --Guilt! These were not honeybees, of course: they're solitary native bees of just the sort that deliberately-built houses might attract. Needless to say, I'm gonna get on the stick (har) and make some dedicated beehouses right away. There's obviously heavy demand in the bees' current real-estate market, unlike some others we could name. In the meantime I actually feel bad about moving any more poles-- what's a bee empath to do? As a postscript, don't get me started about the ridiculous paranoia so many people hold for bees. True bees aren't in the least aggressive toward humans in normal circumstances, and when some idiot is frantically waving his arms at the church picnic while shouting Aaaaugh-- a bee! -- 99% of the time it's actually a yellowjacket of some stripe, to use the common parlance. Rule of thumb: if a single "bee" seems to be deliberately harassing and aggressively buzzing around you, it ain't a bee. They have more constructive things to do. We'll be back with more on this later. --rbee
May 18, 2008
Excessive UV radiation
Good grief: I've spent the last few months complaining about the clammy-gray chilly drizzle here in the verdant Pacific Northwest, and all of a sudden we're hit by an attack of July/August weather-- in mid-May! High temps for the last three days have been close to 40 degrees fahrenheit above the seasonal average, and it's just no fun when the transition is that abrupt. On the other hand, it's quite a luxury to be able to complain about such trivial meteorological phenomena. After all, we're due for an earthquake in the Cascade Subduction Zone that could hit 9 on the Richter scale sometime in the next hundred or three years, but I hope to (barely) predecease that event. Perhaps you should reserve your sympathy for certain other areas of the world with much worse immediate problems. For my part, self-indulgently "suffering" from an overdose of heat and UV inflicted by various yard and garden activities will suffice for now. Send money if you can spare it-- have you seen the recent price stickers on SPF 40 sunscreen? Plus, the surge in energy expenses coupled with an astronomical rise in hop prices have combined to drive the cost of well-chilled microbrews through the bloody roof! --r.
May 15, 2008
The Internets are an amazing place...
...Which must be due to their tubular construction. /silly jokes based on clueless Republican utterances. Does this audio ("Soulstice") work for you? I have no idea how it ended up there, but there it is. Need to get back to reeds soon, as I've often remarked: despite the fact that the track has a didgeridoo background and I haven't touched a didge in ages, the reed instrument (clariboo) sounds seriously cool. Dang, who would've thought? I haven't listened to it in years, but whoa... Pardon me for publicly marveling over my own toonz here, but I'm the retiring sort who tends to record something and then not re-listen to it -- or weakly publicize it -- for a decade or two. I was genuinely impressed by my own reed playing on this vintage track, and that's that. --r.
May 13, 2008
Another picture-- shakuflutchi!
OK, here's a shot of the first completed shakuflutchi:  This one is in B minor. I find that a slightly concave lip plate enhances this concept, since it enables the lower lip to smoothly glide forward or back to cover more or less of the hole. As on an endblown shakuhachi, pitch is thus very flexible due to the large opening. The flute has seven primary fingerholes plus a tiny eighth hole for the right-hand pinkie. The extra hole produces a slightly muffled minor second (half-step up from the fundamental). Some very shakuhachi-like effects are readily produced by using this eighth hole to advantage, but the extra hole can also be corked and ignored by players who find it awkward to reach. Optional plugging cork included in eventual sale. More pics illustrating this in a day or two, and there's another one already posted in the Gallery. Also, audio samples in an eon or two. Fun! I can hardly wait to make more of these and will soon experiment with even more radical enlargements of the blowhole. --r.
May 12, 2008
Moving right along
The very first New Generation Shakuflutchi is completed! Pictures coming up sometime in the next few hours or days. What was I thinking, tackling a second garden two miles from the Shack? It's gonna be a horticulturally high-maintenance summer, that's for sure. Anyway, will add to this entry a bit later tonight. Off to mow the Shack grass now while twilight remains... *groan* --r.
May 8, 2008
Auction news
I've been conspiring with a customer to buy this flute on eBay; the auction ends in about two hours at this writing, and bidding has surpassed $300.00 so far: PO_Flute (Someone else's crappy picture) We were planning to pay whatever it took to win the flute, up to $800.00 or so. However, last night I remembered that a dedicated customer of mine also owned several flutes by this maker, and sent a note asking whether he'd be able to loan them to me for analysis and evaluation. Fortunately, he replied this morning saying that he'd be glad to send a few of the best ones and that I shouldn't, um, "waste money" bidding on that eBay flute. Much, much more on this soon-- it's the topic we mentioned earlier that's poised to yield several thousand words in the near future. --rb
May 6, 2008
Mac, shakuflutchi and Anasazi
Sure enough, the entry just below did end up getting triple-posted for a while. It's a little strange switching back and forth between Macs and PCs, which I do quite frequently these days. The Mac in particular seems to have periodic fits when it does completely inscrutable and puzzling things, only to reverse course and respond entirely differently to routine commands on the next day. But perhaps that's merely a consequence of my longer experience on PCs... it's probably good to maintain at least a degree of ambidextrousness between the two platforms. I know we've talked about those blasted utaguchis far too much recently, but after making a dozen or so of them I'm finally tackling the true "shakufluchi" concept as described on January 10th-- that is, an utaguchi-bearing flute with a considerably oversize blowhole to facilitate extreme pitch-bending as on a Japanese shakuhachi. Should have some early results this afternoon, so a report will appear this week! Another new thing I've been messing with is the so-called Anasazi flute. This is an end-blown flute with its mouthpiece cut in a style somewhat similar to both the shakuhachi and to oblique flutes such as the nay and the kaval, but somewhere in between-- although its embouchure technique is probably more similar to that of the shakuhachi. These flutes are based on archaeological finds from the American Southwest, and I became aware of them only two or three weeks ago. Fairly difficult to play, but quite interesting and very unique, so we'll get to more on that subject soon. I've made one so far, in G# as described in the foregoing link. For me, this size/key pushes the boundary of playability in terms of arm and hand position, but other that that it responds amazingly well; I'll be making more of these in somewhat smaller keys soon. But or now, we're off to work on that shakuflutchi.... --r.
May 5, 2008
Bad news and good news
Where does the time go? This week I was supposed to churn out several thousand words about someone else's eBay auction, as was cited and linked a couple of entries down. We'll have to play a serious game of catchup to reach that goal, but who knows-- it may yet happen. For now, it's 9:30 PM and I'm tired out by the demands of Spring, which has finally arrived for real in the Pacific Northwest. Were two separate veggie gardens too much to tackle after all? Well, we'll see... Not to mention that my land-dude at the studio just sprang a 120% rent increase-- what timing, given current macro-economic trends! The upshot is that we'll be forced to downsize radically: I currently rent two different rooms in the building, one about twice the size of the other. The smaller room is devoted to nitty-gritty flute work such as drilling, sawing, sanding, etc., while the larger one is for photography, customer reception, and overflow storage. Since the nitty-gritty grinding room takes priority and I can't afford both at the newly outrageous rates, we'll be forced to give up the larger room-- which merely entails moving about 75% of my 15-year accumulation of Stuff out of the building by the end of May. Besides the trauma of such a massive reorganization, probably the worst aspect of this new reality is the loss of a dedicated photography area-- a big problem, since imagery is so important to this (har) business model. Well, we'll figure it out! You may soon see new flute photos with a background of '70s shag carpet, mossy, dandelion-infested backyards, grimy alleyways, kitchen cabinets or-- ? Come to think of it, that'd bring us more in line with typical bamboo-flute photos featured on the internet. The playing field is being leveled! But hey: there's supposed to be some good news in this entry too. Hmmmm... got it: the good news is that Change is Good, and surely such upheaval will lead to a long-overdue systemic tweaking of this site's overall structure and presentation, including new audio and video! Riiiiighhht. After all, we'll have to do something to compensate for those shag-carpet-backed flute photos. --r.
Posted by Romy
10:12 PM PST
May 1, 2008
Utaguchi Urges
As was described and pictured in a couple of earlier entries, the shakuhachi-style utaguchi blowing edge idea has been hot around here of late, but let's not let it get out of control! A recent correspondent who plans to attend the Oregon Country Fair in July and purchase a flute at that time was asking about utaguchis, indicating a strong interest in the idea. Since he wants to survey a sizable selection of flutes at the Fair and pick what most attracts him, my advice was as follows: So far, those utaguchi flutes have been more impressive than I'd expected-- it really does seem to give them a distinctive tonal bite. Not sure whether the intonation is more stable, but some might find that to be the case since the blowing edge is so sharply defined... having said that, I suggest that you NOT decide in advance that you necessarily want an utaguchi model. That feature in itself won't guarantee an infallibly superior instrument, so if you were thinking in those terms you might miss out on something more personally fulfilling without an utaguchi-- especially since the majority of my instruments don't have one-- I'm not going to start adding an utaguchi to every single flute! It's one thing to decide you want an utaguchi flute and order it outright, and of course I'll do my best to make it an outstanding instrument. But if you're planning to meet me in person and choose from the largest possible array of flutes, it's probably best to keep an open mind and not rule out the non-utaguchi models-- one of those might very well be your best match. Just a thought... hey, here's the newest flute off the conveyer belt. It's an E soprano about 21 inches long; historically this has been my bestselling key, especially in the old craft-show days. It's a big enough size to have a nice warm tone, but still small enough to be managable for most people. Need to get back to making more of these: ESop-Rack --rb
Posted by Romy
05:24 PM PST |
