Ocarina Month

Posted on 02/03/2010 by chick

I have decided to name this month Ocarina Month. Throughout February, in order to celebrate this remarkable and variable instrument, I will share photos of the ocarinas in my collection.

The Raindrop

Teardrop1

This is a four-hole Raindrop ocarina from clayz.com. A nice thing about Clayz instruments is that they are pretty but also clearly meant to be played. You’d think the very definition of ocarina would require it to be playable, but a lot of them are cheaply made with no consideration for the physics of sound. Some are beautifully crafted but intended for decorative use only. An attractive, playable ocarina is therefore an especially wonderful thing.

Sadly, this particular ocarina just taught me something new about playability. Though the tuning is good, it is only playable for brief periods of time. As I play it, water from my breath condenses inside. This is normal. But in this ocarina, the space in the mouthpiece is so narrow that the water starts to block airflow, making it almost impossible to play after that point. I really think that they try to make their instruments playable, so I’m not holding it against them much, but I sent them an e-mail to let them know about the flaw. It will be interesting to see what they say about it.

Ocarinas come in all shapes and sizes. I wanted to start off big, so I showed you the biggest first, but when it comes to ocarinas, bigger is not always better. The bigger the instrument, the lower the pitch, the larger the holes, and the further away the holes must be. My fingers are barely large enough to cover the holes on the Raindrop, so I wouldn’t want one much bigger. Of course, there’s also a limit to how small an ocarina can be. Tomorrow I will show you the smallest.

Update 1: The Clayz people answered my e-mail on the same day I sent it, and they not only offered to replace the ocarina but also to reimburse me for shipping. They really do want their ocarinas played, and isn’t that great? I’m very impressed.

Update 2: I played the ocarina again the other day and wasn’t able to reproduce the problem. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with the ocarina at all, though I could swear the same thing happened at least one other time. I’ll try again and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.

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The Early Bird Gets the Joke

Posted on 02/03/2010 by chick

Sometimes I write blog posts in advance and schedule them to appear later in the week. When I do that, I always set the post time to 08:00. I chose that time because it had a “start of the day” feel to it and it was a comfortable, even number. It was also a time at which I was unlikely to be awake and blogging. The theory was that in the future, if I cared to look back at my posts, I’d be able to tell which ones were scheduled and which ones weren’t.

Of course, that was before Marshall. Now I get up when he wakes me up, and it seems to happen earlier every day. Today, he woke me up between 6:00 and 6:30, which is why I’m here blogging before 8:00 a.m. So now you know, in spite of the early post time, this was not a scheduled post.

Sure, it’s funny, even ironic, that this infamous bed-hugger has come to a place where she must rise early because of her child. Ha-ha. I got the joke. Now can I please sleep just a little later in the morning? Please? 😛

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Musical Goals: Part III

Posted on 02/02/2010 by chick

Goals require one to be realistic. I have been thinking about my musical goals now for several days, and I think I’ve come to a conclusion. Not only is my time limited, but my hands are already strained by the amount of typing I do every day. First, I should try to reduce the strain. Second, the piano requires a lot of finger movement, so I probably shouldn’t add any other instruments that do the same. This eliminates all but the dulcimer, which is played with hammers.

New tasks:

  • Make my work station more ergonomic.
  • Work on posture. Make sure hands always in a good position when typing.
  • Install voice-recognition software on laptop.
  • Find dulcimer stand and fix it or replace it, then display dulcimer on stand.
  • Restring dulcimer.

As for the other instruments, I will keep them all plus any relevant music books for now. As long as we have young kids in the family, there’s a chance the instruments may be needed. Meanwhile, I may play them if I feel like it, but I accept that I’m never going to play them as well as I would like to. I will not deliberately devote any time to them, nor will I buy any more books on how to play them.

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Musical Goals: Part II

Posted on 02/01/2010 by chick

Yesterday I dug through boxes of music books and instruments and made a big ol’ mess, but now all but one of my instruments are out where they can be played. The missing one is an African stringed instrument that will look nice hanging on a wall, so I’m not worried about it for now. The music books, if not on a shelf, are at least out where they can be used, too, and I have a stack of books to go to charity. This takes care of all the near-term tasks on yesterday’s list except one: decide which instruments I really want to play. Make them a priority. Accept that I will never gain any proficiency with the others.

This is where it gets tough. Continue reading →

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Musical Goals

Posted on 01/31/2010 by chick

On this day, I’m still thinking about old dreams and new goals. Sorry to continue with the introspection, but I need to get this out of my system and I do my best thinking while writing.

One of the things that I’ve noticed since hooking up with old friends on Facebook is how many of them play musical instruments. Continue reading →

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Quick Reviews

Posted on 01/31/2010 by chick

Naked by David Sedaris
Grade: A-

I enjoyed this collection of essays about Sedaris’s childhood and early adult years. Though I would recommend it, I would also suggest that no one approach this book in a bad mood. He wasn’t always such a nice kid, and his family definitely classified as dysfunctional, so it’s no wonder that some of the essays, though funny, are also a little dark and sad. Just to give you an idea of the type of humor to expect, in “Cyclops” Sedaris tells us that his father used to spin tall tales about mutilations caused by everyday items like garbage disposals and lawn mowers. In “Next of Kin,” Sedaris talks about the porno novel he found in the woods, how it ended up being read by everyone in his family, including his younger siblings and his mother, and how it was typos that finally ruined its charm for him.

I wrestled with the grade, going back and forth between a B+ and an A-, but ultimately gave it the higher grade because so many of the stories reminded me of my own youth. He captured some of the essence of childhood and growing up, and that makes it worth reading.

Basilisk by N.M. Browne
Grade: C-

I became interested in this book while reading online reviews and when the price hit $1.66, I decided to pick it up as part of a larger order. Frankly, I’m not sure I got my money’s worth.

The story is about Rej, who dreams of dragons in flight but who lives below ground and has never seen the sky, and Donna, who lives above ground in a city of war and oppression yet has the same dream. Circumstances bring them together and together they search for the meaning of their shared dream.

The author spent far too much time on the thoughts and fears of the main characters. Rej and Donna seemed to spend the whole novel worrying over one threat or another, which was tedious, and so my reading experience was one of tense boredom. The world of Basilisk was menacing, gloomy, violent, even disgusting in some ways, and totally inappropriate for the marketed age group. The last things teenagers need to dwell upon are drug use, murder, rape, and torture.

Death in Berlin by M.M. Kaye
Grade: B

Okay, I probably should have given up on Kaye’s “Death in . . .” series by now, but I already own several of them, so why not give them a chance? This one isn’t great, but it’s not bad. It is, after all, a mystery romance, and you just can’t expect a lot from one of those. It proceeds exactly as you’d expect: a young woman travels to Berlin, finds herself involved in a series of murders, and nearly gets herself killed, but don’t worry because the mystery is solved just in time for her to fall in love and have a happily-ever-after. The real star of the story is Berlin, just after the end of WWII, all rubble and ruin. So if you like a mystery romance with an interesting setting, this might be worth your while, but don’t for a second believe that Kaye’s mysteries are comparable to Christie’s, no matter what anyone says, because they’re nothing alike. Apples and oranges, etc.

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So Determined

Posted on 01/30/2010 by chick

Dear Marshall,

You’re at a stage now where you like to crawl around on the ground to explore. You’re so determined, not to mention fast, and it’s getting harder every day to keep you out of trouble. Today you insisted on playing with one of your board books (Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?). First I read it to you, then I let you hold the book for a few minutes, thinking what a relief it was to have found something safe to interest you for a while. Well, it was safe for you, but not so much for the book. I turned away for a few minutes, and by the time I looked back, you had managed to bend the front cover and coat it with milk chuck. Bravo! That’s OK. I’m not so fond of that book anyway.

Love,

Mom

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Sad but Excited

Posted on 01/30/2010 by chick

J.D. Salinger died on Wednesday, January 27. I hadn’t even realized that he was still alive. Since he was a recluse and hadn’t published anything since 1965, he may as well have been dead for all the difference it made to his readers. But now, as the news of his death spreads, so too does the rumor of unpublished stories. They say he continued to write for his own enjoyment. They say there may be more masterpieces. So I’m sorry that he’s dead of course, because it’s sad when anyone goes, especially someone with so much talent, but I’m excited about the possibility of more of his work being published.

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A Time for Goals

Posted on 01/29/2010 by chick

I didn’t mean to leave yesterday’s post on such a downbeat note, but I only have so much time for posting each day and I had run out.

My younger self might be disappointed about how my life has turned out, but that’s something I can fix.

When we were young we had dreams. As we grew older, we either lived our dreams, clung to them determinedly without doing anything to make them a reality, or gave them up. I clung to mine for years, but now I find that some of them just don’t suit me anymore, and I also realize how much better it would be to replace them with goals. Like they say, a goal is a dream with a deadline. A goal is something that you can actually achieve by taking a series of planned steps, while a dream is just a nebulous vision for which you have no means of approach. Having an unrealized dream means living in a perpetual state of procrastination, and that’s just not good for anyone.

So I’m sweeping all my old, cobwebby dreams out the door. I don’t need them anymore and they’re taking up space in my already too-cluttered brain. From now on, I have goals.

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Disappointed in Myself

Posted on 01/28/2010 by chick

On this day…

I have been thinking about the past. Joining Facebook brought me back in contact with people I hadn’t talked to in 15-20 years. One of those people recently posted some pictures from our teen years. That got me interested in looking at my own photo albums and while hunting for them I found my old diaries. I leafed through one of them. The entries were painful to read.  If I could, I would tell my old self, “There’s more to life than boys. Stop obsessing about getting a boyfriend and go do something. Then maybe you won’t be so damned depressed!”

But what would the teenage me think of my current life?

I’m sure she would be relieved to know that I finally got a boyfriend. And given the difficulties I had in school, she would be glad that I earned a degree from a good university. But some aspects of my life would puzzle her.  “Why,” she would say, “do you live in Rhode Island? I mean, if you had to leave CT, couldn’t you at least have gone somewhere more interesting? And if you were going to have a kid, why the heck did you wait so long?” I used to think I’d get married in my early twenties and have my first child around 26!

Would she be disappointed in me? I haven’t written any music or books or done anything terribly inventive. My life is average. She never thought she was average. She may have felt inferior in some ways but she also believed herself to be special. So yes, I think she’d be disappointed.

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