tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6401616723370754022024-03-17T11:07:35.698-07:00Traveling in Dusty Lands"Don't travel futilely to other dusty lands, forsaking your own sitting place. If you mistake the first step, you will stumble immediately."Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger800125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-640161672337075402.post-91507445669620030112024-02-28T23:22:00.000-08:002024-02-28T23:22:53.530-08:00in which musicians look at me funny.I went to Wintergrass last week, in Bellevue, WA, spitting distance from Seattle. My many, many, many trips to Sea-Tac Airport were mostly for work, with only so much free time and energy for going places. So I’d never been to Bellevue. I spent the whole time in the downtown office-buildings-and-hotels kind of area, so arguably I still haven’t been to Bellevue. I hope there’s more to it than that.<div><br /></div><div>Wintergrass is, surprisingly enough, a (mostly) bluegrass-focused festival, in the winter. The days are full of workshops, and the afternoons and nights are full of concerts. I mostly went because the Internet told me <a href="https://leventdunord.com/en/" target="_blank">Le Vent du Nord</a> was performing, and also <a href="https://www.genticorum.com/" target="_blank">Genticorum</a>. The Quebecois bands don’t come to this coast much—who can blame them?—and at this point I’ve met a couple handfuls of people likely to be there, so it seemed promising.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was fun! It’s still depressing to be around such high-level groups and have such a hard time joining in, the same as at Fiddle Tunes in 2019; I found a beginners-friendly subgroup, and eventually realized I should have just been with them all week. I have some perception stuff that makes music extra challenging, and one of them is that I don’t have a strong working memory for audio, and I can have a hard time determining figuring out what note someone else is playing. For example, say I’m trying to suss out a tune a group is playing: I’ll have a hard time figuring out the starting note. I do okay after that, but also I can have a hard time hearing which pitch is higher or lower, and also I have a hard time hearing or singing or playing octaves.</div><div><br /></div><div>I noticed something as I would talk to people. I have 6 violins (I think), and my two favorites are the "actually quite nice but still made in China for a certain price point," and the "absolutely stunning, much more expensive handmade in the U.S. by a master of the craft," both 5-strings. I bought the Very Nice Violin through a guy in SF who I met at Fiddle Tunes 2019, who introduced me to various folks as "the guy who bought the Very Nice Violin." (I have #4 of that model, and I got to play #5, which seemed about the same, but I’d need them next to each other to know.)<br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Then I tell people that I brought the Picnic Violin, because the Very Nice Violin hasn’t left the house yet and I would just be anxious traveling with it. I love the Picnic Violin, but it’s a commodity instrument, easily replaced.</div><div><br /></div><div>And then some people look at me oddly. I think so many of them are professional musicians, they had some difficulty understanding that I would not bring my favorite instrument to this week where I would be learning and sharing music. It’s their companion for expressing themselves. It’s not like mine <i>isn’t</i>, but one of its gifts has been to help me be a better player, so I can get a great sound out of the Picnic Violin, and use it to learn on.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote data-darkreader-inline-border-bottom="" data-darkreader-inline-border-left="" data-darkreader-inline-border-right="" data-darkreader-inline-border-top="" style="--darkreader-inline-border-bottom: initial; --darkreader-inline-border-left: initial; --darkreader-inline-border-right: initial; --darkreader-inline-border-top: initial; border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">(In the beginner-friendly subgroup, one of the coaches said I was getting a really good bluegrass tone out of it. I started to say "Yeah, I like—" and he said, "No, <i>you’re</i> getting a really good sound." I should probably have that embroidered and hung on the wall.)</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>It’s nice to be home, though. The Very Nice Violin just has…<i>more</i>, of whatever quality you’d imagine. Responsiveness, volume, depth, anything. It’s just…more.</div><div><br /></div><div>I’ll leave the house with it someday. But not yet.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type='text/javascript'>
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Occasionally I have non-ADHD desires to hear how something will sound on a different fiddle, but mostly it’s ADHD. Similarly, getting things out of their cases takes up a lot of space and means I don’t play them as much; that, plus the fact they’re pretty, are why we have a house full of display cases. But for sitting down and playing, I want instruments right there, without taking up the square footage needed for all the cases. Just the guitar stand and music stand take up a ton of floor space.</div><div><br /></div><div>…I can just build something. I’m all certified for the woodshop tools at <a href="https://makernexus.com/" target="_blank">the local makerspace</a>. I’d used, and often owned, everything except the jointer, planer, and router. It had been a minute since I used a table saw, and they’re more hazardous than I remember—although they have a <a href="https://www.sawstop.com/" target="_blank">SawStop</a>, an absolutely incredible safety innovation. Few things focus my attention like sharp objects, and the more dangerous, the greater the focus. They have a simple logic to them that makes for straightforward rules:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>It can’t cut anything it’s not touching.</li><li>Edges can only cut along one axis.</li><li>Blades attached to motors are more dangerous.</li></ul><div>So you can roll out corollaries like:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Keep everything about yourself as far away from the cutting action of the blade as you possibly can.</li></ul><div>Anyway. I own a bunch of tools, and have access to a bunch more, and I can probably manage to knock together a stable, rolling furniture…thing. Cubbyholes to safely hold violins. Pegs or a flat drawer for bows. Sheet music storage. Some kind of music stand facility that is not a music stand.</div></div></div><div><br /></div><div>This is a thing that has to be designed, so I went and measured the violins and viola. The 5-string I got over the summer is a <i>beast</i>: the older one is the same length and width (620mm x 220mm), but the height on the newer one is 120mm to the old one’s 90mm. It’s basically a small viola, which is of course why the C string is so delightful. I have a single regular 4-string violin, and it is absolutely <i>adorably</i> tiny by comparison.</div><div><br /></div><div>I’m also working on a mute for 5-strings, since such a thing doesn’t exist. Not that it can’t be done, it’s just been waiting for someone who both plays 5-strings and also knows how to shape metal. Or me, at any rate. I made a dodgy mute years ago by taking two double-stacks of dime-sized magnets, assembled with gaffer’s tape, one on each side of the bridge, and the mass dampens the bridge vibrations. It’s not great to mess around with your bridge if you don’t have to, though, and it’s just so…<i>inelegant</i>. "Crufty," we would say in software development. Sure, it works, but it’s far from the best idea and not exactly something you want to put your name on.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is my favorite mass-damper design:</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhl4WkypiHXa36AnRdlYTE-Wai_tKOvYqdabVNGthmtH2AdPrgOOr8y9M1SWov1mL1bYtkVPUfOLmdkA_VmxH27CczBs9gAGeFzbTkZsAze6OatnVL9xYxhOFGQGjQNhy8F5biKvsOdD9Kj5B_DRxRckcquhT8Wn8KG6qBpaLVqCcfp1BQMie_UWCMVDwOy" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhl4WkypiHXa36AnRdlYTE-Wai_tKOvYqdabVNGthmtH2AdPrgOOr8y9M1SWov1mL1bYtkVPUfOLmdkA_VmxH27CczBs9gAGeFzbTkZsAze6OatnVL9xYxhOFGQGjQNhy8F5biKvsOdD9Kj5B_DRxRckcquhT8Wn8KG6qBpaLVqCcfp1BQMie_UWCMVDwOy" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1hzKppEjgnNJZ7OlpUTLMgblT0QJQJub-UQ-n7Wg2MJ3mpZIRojLEekZYvV6EvWsb78-sfy-7NpxSLWF1O3j3n0BQMwXwnganMP2Clyumhi-5O7lyu2b2Pc-tIlp5VUZtHJn00KgWWS1T8rzVJEZ8YYzEsaME1odLmPKMYV2eULqw8FcBo8mIXL3JPNf9" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="1011" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1hzKppEjgnNJZ7OlpUTLMgblT0QJQJub-UQ-n7Wg2MJ3mpZIRojLEekZYvV6EvWsb78-sfy-7NpxSLWF1O3j3n0BQMwXwnganMP2Clyumhi-5O7lyu2b2Pc-tIlp5VUZtHJn00KgWWS1T8rzVJEZ8YYzEsaME1odLmPKMYV2eULqw8FcBo8mIXL3JPNf9=w270-h226" width="270" /></a></div><br /></div>Besides the charming wood camouflage, it’s identical halves, bolted together. There are a few ways to go about fabricating it, but probably roughing it out on the bandsaw is fastest, drill the holes, then cut the fingers with a mill. I have a 4"x4" brick of aluminum that’s just been waiting for a project, and I can prototype in aluminum with my tools at home, even as neglected and unaligned as they are.</div><div><br /></div><div>Whenever I get motivated to learn 3D modeling, I can share the design out and people can finally make their own…</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type='text/javascript'>
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I’m sure I would have sucked at football. I was dropped into a gymnastics class that was unable to help me. Martial arts were off the table, because that was fighting. (Or something. It’s complicated, and I'm not 100% sure what the problem was. My life would have unfolded differently, for sure.)</div><div><br /></div><div>It emerged that I <i>was</i> pretty good at tennis. In the violent, traumatic time of 7th and 8th grades, I carved out some space for myself by being good at the ersatz handball played between the two classroom buildings. (We used a racquetball and no gloves, so you needed a baseline pain tolerance.) My boarding school requires you to do some sort of sporty thing every term, so I did tennis, volleyball, softball, soccer, and weights. I was still good at tennis, and I turned out to be quite good at volleyball. (Softball and soccer were still a bit of a waste, but with nobody pretending the game is anything more than a curriculum requirement, who cares?)</div><div><br /></div><div>For some reason, I joined the swim team as a diver. I wish I remembered why. It was appalling. Incredibly anxiety-provoking. When you dive, failure is painful. I was bad at it. Senior year, a kid broke his ankle, and I was on the varsity team. I did really poorly. I hit my head on the board at an away meet. Clearly I was gawky and uncoordinated.</div><div><br /></div><div>Except...I'm not, actually. Even before aikido got me inhabiting my body properly, I was naturally good at a whole bunch of stuff:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>tennis</li><li>racquetball</li><li>handball</li><li>volleyball</li><li>sharp objects</li><li>hitting people with sticks</li><li>climbing</li><li>not falling down cliffs</li></ul><div>Ben and I used to have these crappy dart launchers, the kind of rubber suction-cup darts that often don't quite fit and are never really straight, and even if they were, they have the aerodynamics of a handful of wet sand. I was pretty consistently able to hit the outside of Ben's ear, from 15 feet away. I knew how the launcher worked, I knew how the shape of the dart affected its flight. Straightforward enough, but my therapist assures me it's atypical, as is being able to grab an insect out of the air. (Even if all I can do is crush it. Not flies, but mosquitos, gnats, and moths.)</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Remember <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/640161672337075402/2989594014592153432" target="_blank">that time I made friends by flawlessly throwing a hatchet</a>? I had literally never thrown a hatchet before.</div><div><br /></div><blockquote data-darkreader-inline-border-bottom="" data-darkreader-inline-border-left="" data-darkreader-inline-border-right="" data-darkreader-inline-border-top="" style="--darkreader-inline-border-bottom: initial; --darkreader-inline-border-left: initial; --darkreader-inline-border-right: initial; --darkreader-inline-border-top: initial; border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">(It's vastly easier and safer than throwing knives, which is why people have been opening axe-throwing franchises for parties, not knife-throwing. I think the difference is in how closely a hatchet's mass is concentrated around its axis of rotation, meaning the blade is not going as fast as a knife blade does. The mass's inertia keeps it in alignment in flight. And, finally, the blade is heavier and has a lot more energy behind it, which knives don't, which is why just getting knives to stick in a target—never mind hitting what you were aiming at—is an achievement.)</div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>So it's not that I didn't get my share of the sporty genes, as though to compensate for getting more than my share of the bookish genes; it's just that, as happens, my growth was asymmetrical, and it took a long time to find the body stuff I'm good at. Oddly, this excludes dancing, which is so hard for me it's not fun at all. Same with video games.</div><div><br /></div><div>And now I can read and play viola music, leaving me no wiggle room to doubt that I am, <i>inter alia</i>, a viola player. One of the violin challenges is knowing—<i>feeling</i>—where the notes are on the fingerboard.</div><div>One of the viola challenges is that the notes are in a different place from the violin.</div><div><br /></div><div>Guess who doesn’t have a ton of trouble playing in tune on a viola.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><script type='text/javascript'>
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