Number Three

I finished my third instrument (second kit) this past week:  a bowed psaltery. 

I first learned that bowed psalteries were a thing while perusing the kit maker's site looking for something else and was immediately excited by its sound and, frankly, just the idea of it.  It's completely different from any other bowed instrument I've played in several ways.  First, the bow is the only (standard) interface with the instrument; it's not designed to be plucked (although, there's nothing really preventing you from doing so and I'm considering ways of incorporating plucking into playing it).  As a type of psaltery, each pitch has its own string, so to play a tune, one bows different strings.  It's a chromatic instrument, with the notes laid out like a piano keyboard:  the strings corresponding to the white keys are on the right side and the blacks on the left.  That means that the bow jumps around to different strings constantly and, depending on the music, quickly.  Many folks play with two bows, enabling harmony, since the left hand has nothing to do otherwise (unless one is not using a stand and so must hold the instrument).  All Western standard pitches between C4 and G6 are represented, but the strings are all steel and unmarked and so all look the same.  The black dots on the right side just outside the pins notate C and F, but it is still confusing -- a little like playing piano with one finger and no knowledge of the keyboard.  I've been able to get some interesting sounds out of it and even picked out "Sheebeg and Sheemore" and "Over the Rainbow," but I'm a long way off from mastering it.  I'll continue to experiment with it and hope to be able to share some music made with it in the next few weeks.  

About the bow:  having spent my life handling viola (and violin and 'cello) bows, I was dubious about the design of this, expecting it to be a cheap, simple, and coarse version of the more elegant and, presumably, versatile and appropriate violin family bow.  I was completely wrong.  It is less sophisticated, but it turns out that it suits the bowed psaltery far better than a violin or viola bow could, for several reasons.  First, it uses a thin floss of horsehair, rather than a wide, flat band; this is important because the space between pins where the bow engages the strings is not only narrow but varies in width depending on how close to the bridge one is playing.  Second, the strings are very responsive, much more so than a violin or viola, and so require very little excitement.  Indeed, the instrument sounds best (to my ear) when the bow just brushes the string, which is the opposite of a violin family instrument; even with a light touch, using a violin bow on the psaltery easily chokes the sound, rather than enhancing it.  Third, a violin bow is comparatively long and heavy -- it's not made for movement along the strings -- so the psaltery bow's relatively smaller size and weight make it much easier to do the longitudinal leaping about the instrument required to play any kind of melody.  Contrary to my expectations, I've found that my experience as a violist has had, so far anyway, little to no utility for the bowed psaltery beyond general musical knowledge.  

A little about the kit and my experience building it:  I was initially very excited about this and the kalimba kit, which I bought from the same manufacturer, but found the quality control and some of the materials to be poorer than expected in each case.  The milling appeared to be done on good machines, but the fit and guide marks ranged from imperfect to sloppy.  Even the pins were inconsistent in quality -- you may note that there is an empty peg hole for the high G on the right; I'm waiting for a replacement for an incorrectly manufactured pin that came with the kit.  Overall, it had the feel of being based on a tried-and-true template, but hastily put together.  To add to the issues, the instructions were confusing:  they seemed to take a "keep it simple" approach oriented toward a beginner, which would have been fine if the milling had been more accurate, but, given that it wasn't, more details and even adding a few steps would have rendered the imperfect cuts unimportant and thus might help a kit builder end up with a better quality instrument with the materials as they are.  

When I was in my twenties, I spent about five years rebuilding old pianos and so have some experience in woodworking and finishing, as well as some understanding of zither-type instruments (of which the piano is one) but I'm aware that I'm no expert.  There's no question that some of the issues I encountered in building this kit could have been circumvented had I had a more seasoned eye; indeed, I already have ideas for how I would approach it if I could do it over again or if (when?) I decide to attempt making one from scratch.  Too, I bought the kit as a training opportunity and an experiment; by both of these standards, it was time well spent.  In the end, what really matters to me is how the thing sounds and, at least to my inexperienced ear, it sounds quite lovely.  Looking forward, I see myself spending far more time making music with it than grumbling about its flaws.  

Days of the Virus: Six Months

Nothing is sacred
The ceremony sinks
Innocence is drowned
In anarchy
The best lack conviction
Given some time to think
And the worst are full of passion without mercy

-- Joni Mitchell, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" from the album Night Ride Home and based on the poem "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats

On Saturday, March 14th, not quite a quarter of the way into this year, my wife, my mom, and I began quarantine from the COVID-19 pandemic and I wrote my first post about the experience.  Now, 184 days and nearly a million deaths later, almost three quarters of 2020 has passed through us and the only thing that feels notably different from six months ago is how accustomed we have become to the drumbeat of mortality and the chaos that, at least in the United States, has grown out of the combined willful ignorance and entitlement that seems to be the foundation of our contemporary culture.  Indeed, as we slouch toward Election Day, it seems very likely that the thickest part of the spear impaling us is still to arrive.  

To my family and to my few dozen patients, I peddle optimism.  I am not a purveyor of falsehoods:  I do believe that that essential thing that makes us human -- our mutual interdependence and the compassion that arises from it -- will carry the day in the long run.  A vaccine will be developed and disseminated and communities will reconvene, dazed and bedraggled but ready to be whole again, as after a great storm.  However, just how long that "long run" will be I cannot reliably guess.  From the perspective of a private practitioner, I cautiously anticipate that on or about the anniversary of our quarantine we will be able to break it and I can return to my regular work.  As a father, husband, and son, as a friend, as a citizen, these days any trek off of my property -- "the compound," as a rural friend calls my suburban home -- is accompanied by such anxiety that it's sometimes difficult for me to imagine ever re-entering the world again.  

Like many, I've found "COVID projects" to keep myself occupied and for self-care; some are very satisfying and rewarding and I plan to continue them long after the pandemic is an awful memory.  I attend to my relationships and do my best to care for those around me.  Although not abstinent, I do minimize my news intake -- which is, as Brené Brown points out, "the definition of privilege" -- but I cannot lament what I am exposed to:  I believe it is my responsibility to know and care about the lives and suffering of others, even as I must curate my resources for responding.  Indeed, that is the name of the game for all of us these days:  to feed and protect ourselves enough that we survive and can remain of service.  

If my imperfectly informed guess is right, we're at about the halfway mark of our quarantine.  If my equally imperfect other guesses are even in the ballpark, the second half of our quarantine will be the more challenging.  May we all have what we need to make it through.  

The Long and Long of It

When I first learned of ambient music -- some 35 years after Brian Eno's Music for Airports -- one aspect that fascinated me was how composers could simultaneously create a sense of dynamic changelessness that evolves over time.  Of course, not all ambient music does evolves that way; some of Eno's earliest experiments were musically static, built with asymmetric loops that created a texture that never repeated, but any one section more than a few moments long nonetheless contained the same elements as any other.  The works that I have been most drawn to are those in which one can "drop the needle" and no section sounds the same as any other, yet the changes are hard to identify as one listens to the piece across its length.  Of course, one might argue that ambient music isn't meant to be that way -- it's purpose-built background sound, creating a space, an ambience -- but I find the boundary between the indirect and passive, on the on hand, and the purposeful and directed, on the other, to be rich and enticing.  

So, my forays into ambient music have all been aimed at straddling this line, creating something into and out of which the attention can wander, but that nonetheless remains interesting enough to hold a sufficiently curious attention.  Sustaining that over time into longer forms has proven to be a significant challenge, and one that I am only beginning to feel that I'm having any success with.  It is from those efforts that this, my first album of music, has come.   

I've included brief descriptions/explanations on the pages for individual tracks.  The second and third tracks were created over the last two months, while the first is a re-release from a collection I participated in back in January of 2019.  If anyone has any questions about any of them, please feel free to ask in the comments and I'll do my best to respond in a timely way.  Meanwhile, I have ideas for several new instruments that will likely be well-suited to ambient music and I hope to produce more in the coming months.