Gordon's Progress

EDIT: i own page 33!
DBL EDIT: this is my 100th post.

{THREAD HIJACK}
GordonC, you have to try this.
I saw where Edweird mentioned a Neti Pot, so I google it and I’m like WTF?

I’ve had sinus problems for about 15 years, mostly on ClaritinD with a humidifier running in the house keeps me in fair shape.

I’m just getting over a cold and it has settled in my sinus. One day I’m ok, the next day I’ve got a sore throat. This has been going on for the last 10 days.

Today was particularly bad, the inside of my sinus felt like it was rubbed raw and I had to breath through my mouth most of the time. So I spent a good hour reading about this thing today, and the general conscience is once you try it you’re hook for life.

So I stopped by my local drug store tonight cause I’m willing to try anything at this point and picked up a kit for $14.99

I have to say that it did help.

I’m going to try it daily for 2 weeks and see what happens.
If I can become drug free and be able to breath better I will be eternally grateful for stumbling upon this information.

{ / THREAD HIJACK}

The ideal Christmas gift. Buy one for all your friends.

Congrats on your 100th post, Buddy, I forgive you for the thread hijack. Now if we only had an off-topic forum...

Gordon

I was just wondering about this thread of yours.

It is in the theremin NEWcomers section.

Not meaning to be rude but your not realy new any more are you?

Buddy Craig: You sound like you are in the same frame of time that I was two months ago. Just remember to go slow and remember to dry your sinus passages well.
Congrats on the 100th post.

Gordon: The Gods Must Be Crazy is a great movie! I can hear the Bowie influence in the drums. I can see the Kodo thing too. I love Japanese music, particularly for film. I think the next new instrument I pick up to learn will be the shamisen. Once I get my studio up and running I'd love to try and lay some drums down for you. I play an upright kit and plan to add some electronic triggers.

Zakiman: SHHh! Don't tell anyone. We don't want the secret to get out yet. ;-)

Zakiman - I'm 44! Perhaps I'm not really new, but I don't feel all that old either. Thanks a bunch for mentioning it though, stripling.

Edweird - that would be so cool. Got any bongos? (Someone asked me what the Beat in Beat Frequency meant - I put on my best po-face and explained my work was largely influenced by the Beat Generation.)

My Rotacraft RC18 (http://www.shesto.co.uk/acatalog/Rotacraft_Miniature_Power_Tools.html) arrived this morning. I am well pleased with it. In the middle and low pitches it adds a nice little bit of complexity to notes - I can play longer notes without vibrato, without them sounding all dull and characterless. Also it mellows out the tone - the more brassy, insistent settings of the waveform and brightness knobs benefit from this.

As I move towards the higher pitches the tone starts to separate out into two distinct frequencies and becomes a bit screechy. This can be ameliorated a bit by carefully adjusting the speed control, and lessened by moving the hand forwards so that the side of my hand is closer to the antenna during part of the blade's rotation. Having figured out the correct angle at which to hold the tool to do this without changing the tone, I am able to control the extent of the effect throughout the range by moving my hand forwards and backwards.

The device weighs about 175g (just over 6oz US) which is not uncomfortable in use, and adds a reasonable amount of inertia to my hand, stabilising it and making it easier to hold notes. On the downside it makes it harder to make a really fast vibrato by causing the hand to shiver, but as I do this primarily to overcome the dullness of the theremin tone on long notes that is not a problem - the tool provides a better solution anyway.

As an added bonus it provides a pleasantly cooling breeze during use.

It makes a little noise. Louder at higher speeds, but the lower speed settings are just fine for my purposes, and I have two blades to double the effective speed and keep it balanced.

One little incident during initial testing. Having twisted a length of fuse wire into one of the wire brush attachments I ramped it up to 18000 rpm, and the wire unravelled itself and flew across the kitchen like a bullet, pinging against the far wall. The second time I used the plastic covered tie that kept the mains cable rolled up, and twisted it [i]with[/i] the direction of rotation so it would not untie itself during use.

For a safety test I put the tip of the whirling blade against the edge of a sheet of paper and it did not damage it at all.

As I said, I'm very pleased with it. The professional thereminist with an etherwave Pro and a budget might prefer the RC330 (see above link) but the RC18 will do for me. :-)

Over the last few days I have been summarising much of what I have learned or discovered (rediscovered, mostly) over the last year and a bit. While I was doing so, I chanced across an article about Percy Grainger, which pulls a lot of the threads together...

From http://www.rainerlinz.net/NMA/articles/FreeMusic.html

"...Grainger's reference to rhythm is an interesting one, since sustained tones are not usually thought of as having rhythm. It is doubtful that he was referring to articulation or simple dynamic variation. Grainger's own scores were originally notated on graph paper, with an individual trace for both the pitch and dynamic changes of each note. If a conventional rhythm were to be notated in this way, it would mean bringing the dynamics fairly often down to zero - turning off a note in order to begin the next, and so articulate a rhythmic sequence. Yet Grainger's dynamic shapes are aligned more to the phrase than the individual note. How then is a rhythmic pulse achieved?

"One answer lies in the pitch domain. The pitch undulations in a moving line serve to articulate rhythm by their change of direction or by a change in the rate of movement...

"Harmonically, too, Free Music questions the tenets of Western musical practice by assuming a moving tone, precluding any harmonic stability. In this context, a "stable chord" is perhaps one where all parts are moving in a fixed parallel relationship to one another..."

And I would add - such as is produced by a stroke of constant speed played through a delay unit, and in the same context, a "changing chord" is one where the relationship of the notes changes, such as is produced by a stroke of varying speed played through a delay unit.

I felt that little [i]click[/i] of jigsaw pieces falling into place, and rushed to the theremin. More than before, instead of trying things and seeing what the result was, I was improvising with intent - with a result in mind, and making the right moves to acheive that result.

Then yesterday another nudge from elsewhere put me in mind of Philip Glass, and arpeggios. ([i]click[/i]) Today I have been using my echo boxes to make arpeggios, by playing notes at one and a half times the speed of the delay, or one and a third times, or one and a quarter (In increasing order of difficulty. I wonder if I'll ever be able to do one and two fifths!) - adding new notes into the sequence as the old ones fade out. Wandering up and down the scale, hovering around the bass, transitioning from one speed to another.

It's not like Pammy's walking bass line. It's different, but it's still rhythm theremin.

So there's another thing for me to get better at.

Oh, and I've ordered a new secondhand stomp box off eBay. It's a Christmas present from Mrs C, so I can't tell you what it is. It looks like it's going to be whacky fun, though, and they don't make them any more!

I have posted Void Ship on youTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B68bRDzQi8

Play loud!

That's a prety grim video ;-). good stuff man

i was thinking surreal. it was hard to pay attention to the music because of the images

Not half as surreal as the source material...

The images are from "The House In The Middle" 1954, produced by The National Clean Up - Paint Up - Fix Up Bureau with the co-operation of The Federal Civil Defense Administration.

The message of the film was "If you keep your house clean and tidy, and paint it real purty, it will survive a nuclear war."