| 5 MOST RECENT ENTRIES: |
| 10/26/07: Testing
10/26/07: Friday photo 10/25/07: Doubly strange... 10/24/07: Swift photo 10/24/07: Graphic design |
Archive List
Search entries:
Search entries:
| Journal Archives |
|
August 30, 2007
Time Capsule
Sorry-- been busy for the last few days building a new deck at the Swamp Shack, and I haven't had time to tend to the site. What sweaty, manful work: hammering, power-sawing, striding confidently into the lumberyard to order "Ten pounds of #16 galvanized box nails, 25 2x6x10' grooved cedar decking planks, and eight 12' pressure-treated 4x4's..." Why, it's almost enough to make me forget that in real life I'm a wimpish, androgynously effete bamboo flutemaker! The deck's almost finished, and we've decided to insert a time capsule underneath. The deck should have a useful life of at least twenty to forty years, and who knows what the world will look like when someone finally decides to rip it up and do something else with the space? We've left one plank in the center of the deck un-nailed, and over the next few weeks family and friends are invited to contribute items for our time capsule. More on this coming soon... I'm even considering putting a flute in there, sealed in a length of acrylic tubing. --r.
Posted by Romy
12:15 AM PST
August 27, 2007
Race update
Yesterday I promised to tell the tale of our visit to Portland's 2007 Adult Soapbox Derby. It was pretty tame this year, and for a change we didn't witness any actual bloodshed other than one guy who was proudly sporting a lurid pavement burn on his leg. We arrived somewhat late, just in time to watch the semifinals, quarterfinals, and the ultimate championship run. Most of the cars still competing in these late heats were relatively well-engineered and built for speed, as opposed to the "art cars" which were there mainly to score points for conceptual style. The more elaborate and ungainly art cars generally make just one slow, early run down the course, which is a good thing: if they were required to do so repeatedly, the casualty count would mount alarmingly. If they survive their ride relatively intact, the art cars are then towed to the top of the course for public display and approbation. For example, this year one of those cars was a fully functional taco stand-- and another featured an eight-foot model of the Empire State Building, with riders elaborately costumed as Godzilla and King Kong vying for supremacy throughout the ride. Until this year there was a final mass heat, in which every car involved in the race hurtles down the course at once. This tradition has been abandoned, and when queried one of the race officials put it this way: "We've quit doing the mass run, because we'd often get through the whole day without any injuries, but then after the mass run there'd be ambulances EVERYWHERE." All in all, this event is still much more dangerous than, for example, NASCAR. What a bunch of gas-fueled, pampered pansies... --r.
Posted by Romy
01:13 AM PST
August 25, 2007
Off to the races
Today we're off to Portland's seventh annual Adult Soapbox Derby. In previous years we've witnessed madness, mayhem and gore galore: in fact, the first year we attended we hadn't been there for ten minutes when a 25 to 30-foot-long dragon car with five or six riders careened around a corner, lost control in front of us, skidded right across the spot where we'd been standing two minutes earlier, and crashed into a lamppost. Its driver was taken away by ambulance, having suffered a deep and serious laceration from a broken CD, hundreds of which had been arrayed on that ill-fated dragon-car as "scales." The event is remarkably edgy and crazed, and there have been many such casualties-- even including spectators. It's a miracle that they can still pull this off each year without its being ruined by swarming lawyers. Having observed the dangers firsthand, we now make a point of watching from a safe vantage point on the inside, uphill edge of a tricky curve, so that gravity and centrifugal force will tend to send out-of-control cars AWAY from us. There's a short video of some of the cars being launched at this dorky local newscast site; it's worth watching to get a bit of the event's flavor: http://www.katu.com/news/team2/3887542.html Sorry-- I'm on the Mac right now and can't make a properly embedded link... anyway, it's off to the races now; report coming tomorrow. --r.
Posted by Romy
12:10 PM PST
August 24, 2007
Alto flute surplus-- sale?
I just took a look at the inventory, and there are more alto flutes than usual sitting around for some reason. They're of several scale types, from diatonic to pentatonic, and in the keys of B, Bb, A and G minor... might even be one Ab in there; we haven't done an exact tally yet. Several of these flutes are especially nice instruments, and since there are so many altos available I'm considering a Labor Day Alto Flute Blowout Sale. More on that soon! --r.
Posted by Romy
04:21 PM PST
August 21, 2007
Bats in the Chimney
For the last two or three summers bats have roosted and raised young in the Swamp Shack chimney. They were especially noisy this year, and we could even hear daytime squeaking in the chimney from outdoors, 'way across the yard. Now that the brood's raised the bats seem to have moved on, and all's been quiet for a couple of weeks. At this time of year the bat population is at its peak, and it's fun to paddle out in the canoe at dusk: bats are everywhere, swooping and darting above the river in pursuit of the abundant midsummer insects. It's impossible to imagine the astounding acuity of a bat's hearing: they build an incredibly detailed three-dimensional image of their surroundings via echolocation, by intercepting sound waves bouncing off objects as small as a mosquito, for heaven's sake! Not only that, but they can calculate the flight trajectory of that mosquito by interpreting the doppler shift of the reflected sound: that is, if the mosquito is moving toward them, the bounced-back sound will be slightly higher in frequency, and if it's moving away, the sound-waves will be "stretched" a bit, thereby lowering their reflected pitch. Somehow, they process all of this feedback and make angular adjustments, following a precise vector map as they close in on the target. They're capable of doing all this while also navigating past any other nearby obstacles: tree branches, houses, what have you. I'm full of admiration for bats: if only my hearing could be a tenth so acute! A bat's echolocation sonar is far higher-pitched than we humans can hear, so the squeaks overheard in our chimney this summer were strictly social chat, not business. All of the above is amazing enough, but consider this: bats often live in cave colonies of hundreds to many thousands of individuals-- and as far as we can tell with our primitive human technology, for a given species their sonar signals are virtually identical from one bat to another. In fact, scientists can now rig a cave with "sophisticated" audio-detection devices and determine what types of bats reside there by analyzing their sonic output and comparing it to the characteristic frequencies of various bat species. But here's the kicker: if conspecific bats emit essentially the same echolocation sounds -- and if there are thousands of them flying in or out of the cave -- how on earth does each bat differentiate its own navigational signals from the thousands of nearby individuals doing the same thing at the same time? Somehow they manage to do so, despite the "identical" nature of their echolocation sounds in our crude reckoning. I've seen this factoid mentioned casually on a couple of bat sites: "Amazingly, an individual bat can still use its echolocation while surrounded by many other bats!" But there's never an attempted explanation of HOW they do so-- and somehow, I don't think we'll ever really know. Hail to the astounding bats: Earth's supreme sonic sculptors! --r.
Posted by Romy
11:43 PM PST
August 20, 2007
Performance Art
Last Friday and Saturday nights we took part in an interesting event as part of the Richard Foreman mini-festival. My group contributed a bizarre and inscrutable outdoor tableau to bemuse festival attendees as they arrived, broke for intermission, and finally departed from the theater. We had several musicians, all on woodwind instruments: for the first night there were bassoon, oboe, alto sax, baritone sax, and my assorted flutes. The ten or twelve additional company members were assigned to strike statuesque poses within several defined areas which shifted throughout the night. They'd been instructed to remain mostly immobile, but were at liberty to change their positions and locations at occasional intervals throughout the performance. Likewise, the musicians were to remain largely immobile but could change position periodically. Each musician contributed a short melodic fragment which served as a theme for the different areas in which the performance took place, but once the basic leitmotif for each area had been stated we were free to improvise at will using the basic theme as a very loose template. The director stressed that we were to give silence and space the *starring* role, interjecting our improvisations very sparingly. This ultimately amounted to a strikingly constrained form of free improvisation, since once the basic theme for each performance area had been played all harmonic bets were off. It was quite interesting to play in a situation where no key center and no rhythmic framework existed-- and in which silence was the dominant aesthetic. Long silences were punctuated by abstract, random bursts of sound from the various players, and in several moments when most or all of us played simultaneously, some pretty astounding sonorities appeared. I spent much of the evening experimenting with just how softly and imperceptibly I could play, and also with what are called extended techniques: multiphonics, singing into the instrument, whistle tones, and other stuff that hasn't been properly explored on this site yet... So, more on this soon. --r.
Posted by Romy
11:18 PM PST
August 16, 2007
Crickets Chirping
On the 'net, "crickets chirping" is an expression of emptiness or a void, as in "where is everyone?" The phrase is often used when a particular faction's pet contention has been proven wrong and its formerly fervent supporters suddenly melt away. It's also employed when something especially startling and revealing (at least in the poster's own mind) appears online with scant response. Let's extend this metaphor a bit to the romyb.com blog, since crickets have been chirping mightily here of late. But first, a word about literal cricket-chirping: The maritime Pacific Northwest is a marginal cricket habitat since our summers are relatively brief, with cool nights. We hear crickets for just a few short weeks yearly, and those literal crickets have been serenading us for the past few days. They'll be gone soon as August yields to September, and it's somehow apt that the recent online inactivity here at the Complex coincides with actual cricket activity in this region. --Take it, crickets! I'm glad that those mellifluous insects have been filling in lately, since we're still distracted with summery pursuits rather than website stuff. September will surely inspire a resurgence, a renaissance, a flowering of brilliantly innovative, cutting-edge, fascinating, informative... naaaaah. Whatever, dude. (chirp, chirp.) --r.
Posted by Romy
10:12 PM PST
August 13, 2007
Double-post glitch
Hmm-- thought I'd deleted yesterday's redundant post, but it's still hanging around. What's up with that? C'mon, Department of Redundancy Department: step up to the plate and do your freekin' job! (Update) OK, done at last. Sheesh, about time! --r.
Posted by Romy
11:08 PM PST
I have a website?
I've just been informed that the dozen or two peeps who actually return to this site on a semi-regular basis expecting new material might eventually drift away if we don't diligently nurture their modest expectations. Sorry-- it's high summer here in the temperate Northern Hemisphere, and right after I finish picking these here berries and planting the autumn and winter garden crops, we'll return to the flute business with a vengeance. I'm sure you understand... right? --r.
Posted by Romy
01:55 AM PST
August 7, 2007
Piccolo D
Recently received an inquiry from someone who's visiting an Irish-music camp with his son soon. The son's an avid pennywhistle player and is keen to learn the transverse flute, but a standard D major Irish flute is still too unwieldy for him. I suggested that a "piccolo D" might be the answer: that is, a small D major flute half the size and an octave higher than the standard model. Over the years I've generally neglected small flutes, being hopelessly enamored with the deep, rich tones of altos and beyond. However, small flutes do have several advantages, including the capacity to project above the din of a large loud ensemble such as a salsa band. Standard Boehm piccolos are commonly featured in salsa ensembles due to their ability to cut through a dense thicket of sound, and piccolo-size D flutes could effectively be employed in Irish music as well. It's actually much harder to make a really good instrument in the piccolo range; every possible acoustical glitch is magnified exponentially, and they're a lot more sensitive in terms of bore profile and whatnot. With such small flutes it's generally easier to work with single internodes of bamboo-- that is, long-jointed pieces which contain no nodes within the flute's acoustical length. I have a stash of appropriate Hawaiian bamboo which has been curing for several years, and an exploratory foray into small flutes is on the near-term agenda. More... when it shows up. --rb
Posted by Romy
03:06 PM PST
August 6, 2007
Cherries and berries and bamboo
Just returned from my first backpacking trip of the season; we got a woefully late start on this summer's hiking and camping due to other distractions. It's actually a good thing that 98% of the American "camping" population is content to roll into developed campgrounds and set up elbow to elbow with hundreds of other folks "roughing it" out there in the "wilds." --Well, that's enough "scare quotes" for one entry. Anyway, we pulled into one such swarming site by a picturesque mountain lake, and asked the "campground host"... er, we asked the site supervisor whether it'd be possible to park there and backpack around to the undeveloped, roadless side of the lake. He said that was fine, and an hour's hike along the shore brought us to a relatively pristine spot with a magnificent view of Mount Hood across the lake-- a view that was totally absent from the developed side. Despite the fact that sound carries extraordinarily well across water -- bringing the hoots and hollers of twilight revelers on the opposite shore well within earshot -- our chosen site felt relatively remote and serene. To be fair, we did hear quite a few nearby owl hoots to balance the distant Between the aforementioned hoots and hollers I managed to squeeze in some nocturnal alpine-lake fluting; there's really nothing like the sound of a flute echoing across a still alpine lake after dark. It may even have soothed a savage breast or two, since the human hoots did die down noticeably after this impromptu concert. After breaking camp in the morning we continued driving around the Eastern side of Mt. Hood and visited the Hood River Valley, a noted fruit production area with endless acres of pears, berries and cherries. Last summer we'd discovered some insanely tasty cherries in a ramshackle produce market in the small hamlet of Parkdale, and sure enough there they were again! Truly transcendent. There's nothing like a really, really good cherry to top a summer's feast. The local summertime abundance of prime fruits and berries provides a breather from greens; although our garden still holds plenty of green stuff, the brief seasonal berry bounty affords a sweetly succulent alternative source of freshly plucked vitamins and antioxidants. We'll return to extolling the virtues of green leafy veggies soon enough, as late summer's cooling trend brings them back into their seasonal prime. Bamboo was in that title too, but we'll get to that tomorrow. Or tomorrow's tomorrow. Grandtomorrow! --r.
Posted by Romy
05:09 PM PST
August 1, 2007
Random Image
Not much productive activity going on here today, so let's just throw in a random picture for funsies. We'll return to more tortuous analysis of flute scales in another day or two. --HEY, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU! 
Posted by Romy
07:10 PM PST |
