Nuts
Today has been nuts even by my standards. Fridays are always nuts because I have both my piano lesson and home tower bell practise . . . and today we had a wedding to ring as well. On Friday? Don’t these people have to work for a living? Maybe they’re all free lance. The merging of two clans of free lancers . . . to produce a regiment of little javelins I suppose. They all looked normal enough. And I’m delighted to report that the bride was not strapless. There was a law passed about two years ago that all bridal gowns must be strapless, whether this suits either the bride or the weather or not. Perhaps it’s been rescinded. I’d vote for that.
The additional nutsifier at present is that the main road at the bottom of my little cul de sac is down to one lane while they rip merry hell out of the other one, for reasons unspecified. There’s a stoplight and everything, and a lot of very cross drivers. We do have a bypass but going through the centre of town is also kind of a rat run for people who fancy their piloting skills.* And they certainly aren’t going to yield any precious ground to a small old beat up red Golf VW.** First time I tried to get through to my turn there was a bus, and there was a large group of motorcycles, all of which had pulled out from behind to beside the bus so they could see what was going on. The second time I was two car-lengths from sanctuary, so I put my turn signal on and moved out . . . whereupon the lead car coming toward me–which was plenty far enough away–suddenly put his foot down and roared up to me because I was obviously trying to get away with something. Uh-huh. It’s called needing to drop hellhounds off at home so I could go ring a wedding. He then had to stop, blocking the mouth of my street. And of course everybody behind him instantly piled up on his tail so he couldn’t back up. Wolfgang, fortunately, has been well trained in difficult cross-country assault courses,*** so we mounted the kerb and up the blasted vertical bank: gecko on wheels. I made it to the wedding.
I got the introduction to Song II written this week, and transposed the third verse up a full step, which nearly killed me, all those C and F sharps to keep the intervals in, ahem, harmony. Fortunately Oisin told me a long time ago that the quality of what ought to be the same note or chord up or down an octave really does change, and once–when I was complaining about why anyone would choose to compose in sixty-seven flats when he† could do the same thing in two sharps–he played a couple of sixty-seven flats pieces in the original and then in two sharps, without telling me what he was doing, but he asked me which sounded better? And it was clearly the sixty-seven flats. So okay. I don’t get it, but there’s some musical truth there somewhere.†† The point here is that I was more or less ready for the transposition to Sound Funny. And it did. So I also spent some time this week jerking it around some more††† to make it sound, I don’t know, the way it sounded when it was one step down. Don’t ask me, I don’t understand any of this, I’m just reinventing the wheel.‡
But the bad news is that Oisin says Song II is pretty well finished, so I have no more excuse not to settle down and learn the sucker properly.‡‡ I’ve been putting this awful prospect off because I learn music so mortifyingly slowly . . . what if the composer changes her dadblatted mind again and rewrites something after I’ve learnt it? I’ll kill the cow. (This is also why I’m dependent on Oisin playing it all the way through for me once a week, so I can hear what the forest sounds like. I always get lost in the trees.)
I said, so, for my next trick, do I go back to Money Spider, or should I try resetting a folk song? –I’m bashing on, trying to learn a few more folk songs as part of my singing education, and it’s pretty funny, once you’re composing, suddenly all music becomes fluid and mutable and you’re playing something and you think, wait a minute, that would be better like that . . . I mean things like folk song arrangements, not Mozart. ‡‡‡ Oisin said, it’s up to you really, because it has to be what you want to do, but if you wanted to do it, I think you might add some of your weird chords to a folk song. McKinleyfy it.
I become a verb.
* * *
* I’ve already frothed at the mouth here about satnav, which sends trucks only slightly smaller than Rhode Island through here, so they can get stuck at the T intersection at the top of the hill in the precise centre of town, which vehicles slightly smaller than Rhode Island cannot get round, and block traffic in all directions for miles. The time it takes for the current behemoth to edge around the corner is frequently enhanced by the way people park. There flatly isn’t enough parking space in this town, so people get creative about how ‘enough room to put a car’ may be defined under urgent need. Further enhanced by the number of people who can’t parallel park to save their lives but by the gods that’s a parking space and they saw it first and it’s THEIRS. Oh and not to forget all the pedestrians that stroll across the street without looking right or left. . . .
** Although they should. I manifestly don’t care that much about the state of my fenders.
*** And has the fenders to prove it. Not to mention the undercarriage.
† Well, it was a he. I just forget which one. Someone who specialises in sixty-seven flats rather than two sharps.
†† Like the tritone. What arbiter of absoluteness declared that it’s unresolved and therefore a Wicked Noise? I like the way West Side Story sounds.
††† Muttering to myself. Doing it once was enough.
‡ And possibly the gecko. Writing music is very like a very tough cross country assault course.
‡‡ Toward this end I spent most of an hour after I got back to my piano doing the fingering. Good grief. However I see better now (and with considerable relief) what Oisin meant when I was fretting about playability some weeks back. If the music, you know, progresses, then apparently the way to play it–the fingering–will too.
‡‡‡ Although I do not entirely reject the possibility of doing variations on a theme by some day. Mmmmmmmmm.
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1. Yay finished!
2. Yay verb!
:D
******** However I see better now (and with considerable relief) what Oisin meant when I was fretting about playability some weeks back. If the music, you know, progresses, then apparently the way to play it–the fingering–will too.
sounds like glades are coming into focus, if not the entire wood yet. Congratulations on song II :)
Well I’ll feel better when I can PLAY it properly. (I say NOTHING about singing . . . )
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This is the star entertainment in that village hall which you are hiring so that we (your fans) may assist you to avoid a book tour. We come to you and in return you provide all singing all playing all composing entertainment
(Mwahahaha back at you LOL)
******EEEEEEEEP******
Yay verb! You’ve been McKinleying our libraries for a while now *grin*.
Parking *sigh*, if you think they are bad in rural England you should see how bad they are in urban Athens. This is the place where the Smart car is popular because you can bottom park it instead of parallel parking. Double parking, parking on kerbs, all over the pavement, all over crossings… you name it, we have it. God forbid you should want to get across, be blind, in a wheelchair, with a pushchair or with crutches. Able bodied individual view Athens pedestrian ways as assault courses. I have armed myself with guerilla stickers that are extremely hard to remove that show a donkey and state “I am an ass and I park wherever I want”. You stick them right over the driver side windscreen when their parking is particularly eggregious. My stock is running low and I need to gain more supplies. Summer makes them worse.
I am glad that your composing is progressing (I daren’t say “going well”). We expect a Jodi Meadows type recital. Don’t worry, you can just focus the camera on your hands. But we want audio… Something to work towards. *smirk* (I say this from the comfort zone of one who plays nothing else but her mp3 player and CD player). If forced to I can knit on camera or cook, but both these pursuits are relentlessly boring to watch.
Snork! Warhol never did KNITTING!!!! No, I’m going to focus the camera on the PIANO! The part of the piano I’m NOT PLAYING!!!!! –I still have to learn to load video. I probably have LOTS of time to learn my Song. (Then I have to learn to use the video on my camera . . . or maybe the webcam on my new itty bitty in-your-knapsack computer. Speaking of gadgets. This one MAY FINALLY BE the point of equilibrium between a keyboard big enough to use and a thing small enough to fling in a knapsack. I am STILL mourning my Psion 7 most of a decade after both it and its company died.)
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If it is let us know.
I’m not so sure that the transposed one sounds all that different from the normal one (unless you have perfect pitch), but I guess I will trust Oisin and extrapolate from there.
I bet that the better/worse keys for a piece of music has something to do with the fact that A# and Bb are actually different notes. Not on the piano, I mean, but an A# and a Bb sound different on a violin. Piano strings are just tempered somehow to make it possible to play songs in different keys without having to retune the whole insrument between every song. I don’t quite understand how the tempering works, but I bet that’s why.
I got Dragonhaven today. More to come when I finish reading it.
Yes. Tempering opened not merely a can but an entire barrel of worms. It’s practical and all that, but . . .
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You know you’re famous when you become a verb. Now all we have to do is start a petition to get it added to the next version of the dictionary.
LOL! Good luck! And you should probably keep in mind that blackbear’s pointed out that to McKinley also means to have more footnotes than document text. :)
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Oh, please tell me you are dressing up Leslie Fish’s filk song, “Carmen Miranda’s Ghost is Haunting Space Station Three.” And I would *so* like another verse! That is the song that motivated the collection of SF short stories edited by Esther Friesner (the “Chicks in Chain Mail” lady).
The last wedding I recall was the one in “Love Actually.” The dress was modest and lovely, and I liked the Beatles recessional.
Good work on Song II, congratulations. Hopefully the learn-to-play-well part of the program will not set off the revise-this-NOW reflex.
Minnesota is frequently described (by its residents, anyway) as a place with two seasons, Winter and Road Construction. (Although last winter generated such a terrific crop of frost heaves that no one will wonder why any stretch of road gets ripped up this summer.) Road Construction is going great guns. I feel your pain.
They need a road surface that won’t frost-heave. However as the price of oil skyrockets we’re all going to give up our cars anyway.
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The merging of two clans of free lancers . . . to produce a regiment of little javelins I suppose.
*snrk*
I thought the verb “to McKinley” meant to add footnotes such that they exceed the length of the original document. :)
Yes, I believe that’s the *first* definition. :)
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I too often think that sleeveless bridal gowns are a bit odd conceptually- it tends to make me react to some unspoken notion of “look what a nice deal the groom is getting”- I mean why show off how sexy the bride is, when she is now formally specifically Not looking for someone else?
On the other hand, these may be my funny religious ideas popping out again.
I kind of agree. It seems to me it’s about the uniting of two people, not the lush flesh of one of them. The way I react to it is ‘here we go again, reducing woman to sex object’. You can have beautiful clothing that ISN’T about sex, it seems to me. (And I do think it’s a terrible waste that the ONLY time in your life you–probably–can get away with satin, lace, and a train, is at your wedding. :))
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*****Like the tritone. What arbiter of absoluteness declared that it’s unresolved and therefore a Wicked Noise? I like the way West Side Story sounds.*****
Is THAT why the tritone was declared verboten? I never knew the reason. Obviously it was thrown out the window by the twentieth century. I always thought of the Britten War Requiem’s first movement when I wanted to call a tritone to mind quickly. It was around the time I had heard the piece for the first time and was liking it enough to keep playing it that I learned what tritones were.
You are inspiring me with your continuing music stories. I may have bought a house (should know later today if offer was accepted). This particular one has room for a grand piano. My intention is to place my spinet where I would place a grand and see if, now that the piano is somewhere that I can play it more often instead of tucked away in a remote corner of the house, I actually start playing more often. If I do, I may just upgrade to a Steinway grand. It’s always been my dream to own one, and once I can manage to afford one considering what we will spend to buy the house and put in a master bathroom, I may well do it.
Judith
If it’s a room that would do well for a Steinway grand it’s going to be pretty cruel to your poor spinet. I hope you’ll be keeping that in mind. When the reissued SUNSHINE is a best seller I want a Steinway grand TOO. But my upright is a member of the family. :)
Oisin says that the wicked noise thing comes from the stranglehold the (Catholic) church had on music for centuries. I’ve already forgotten again, but first you have the single (melody) line and then you start putting notes (harmony) with it, at which point there were the Okay Notes and the Not Okay Notes. Well, the Catholic Church was like that about a lot of things several hundred years ago. And I’m still a limb of Satan in the 21st century to certain extremist Christians because I write fantasy, which is lies.
Good luck on the house!
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*****If it’s a room that would do well for a Steinway grand it’s going to be pretty cruel to your poor spinet. I hope you’ll be keeping that in mind.*****
(*wince*) Hadn’t thought of that. It’s a standard something-like 16′x20′ room. What do you think? I was going to block out the grand space by placing the spinet where a grand would ordinarily go. Maybe not the best placement since spinets are generally designed to go against walls, but then again if the sound board faces out, it would certainly be louder….
*****And I’m still a limb of Satan in the 21st century to certain extremist Christians because I write fantasy, which is lies.*****
Good. :-) Keep it up — we all love you for it.
*****Good luck on the house!*****
Offer was accepted. All now pending on engineering inspection, etc.
Judith
I’d put it where IT wants to be. You know the trick about lifting the lid for more sound? I know, it’s ‘duh’ but I hadn’t thought of it till my piano tuner mentioned it. Just like on a grand, only, uh, *smaller*. But . . . I don’t know your spinet, but I’d be inclined to have as much carpeting as poss and maybe a couple of big pieces of furniture to give it a chance. But I’m not clever about sound, so that may be exactly the opposite of what’s best.
Keep us posted on the house. :)
And I’m delighted to report that the bride was not strapless.
If/when I have to think about this, I refuse to be strapless. Hey, I want SLEEVES. (My church also tends to cast an askance eye on sleevelessness while in church.)
It is a waste of a rare opportunity for long lacy or similar sleeves. :)
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