Musical Goals

As is usually the case, I haven't been thinking about posting on my blog. I should create a weekly reminder. But to be honest, I haven't had anything to talk about, at least until I reach some of my short-term goals. So this post will hopefully be a start to a trend. My biggest interest is in music and it is that that I will try to write about on a regular basis.

In 2004 I created a website that time-lined my progress at playing the plectrum banjo. It expressed my enthusiasm towards going to my weekly lessons and it highlighted my favorite banjo players. Slowly, I started to lose interest in updating the site. Then I thought to use some available software to create a new site. The amount of work necessary to update it made it worse for the first site. Then spammers were using it to spam. I put the old site back up and it remained static until the information was so old I had to shut it down.

My love for the plectrum banjo has waned somewhat because the style didn't fit well with music and musicians around me. This year I changed to playing the tin whistle and flute, and started playing Irish traditional music. Now I'm putting my feet into the fire and playing in sessions. I'm cramming the tin whistle practice and fast forwarding my skills, hopefully without crashing. My flute progress is slower but I'm building my lungs and focusing on good tone. The whistle is my head start and my current goal is to play the flute full time in one year. The whistle is my head start program.

Between 2007 and 2008 I became musically depressed. I almost gave up the banjo. I took my annual trek to the BBA St. Valentines Day Banjo Fest and Massacre, but had no interest in participating in the events. Somehow, I felt obligated to go, perhaps because I spent the past four years seriously pursuing the craft. Later in 2008 I participated in a variety show in my community and joined the Clubsiders. This kept me going, but just on a steady course with no goals or desires to further my musical skills. This year the Clubsiders broke up.

2012 is a good year, musically speaking. I wanted to learn how to play a flute, in particular because I was enjoying the music of Jethro Tull and in particular, Ian Anderson's flute. I bought a student flute and spent every day practicing to reach a point where I didn't sound like a student. It was enthusiasm that blocked me from realizing that I was not progressing. For me, lifting my left thumb and using my right pinky insured a shift in the flute's position, losing my embouchure position. I figured in time it would go away but it hindered me from progressing anywhere else.

In the meantime I would listen to a Jethro Tull song called "The Whistler." I thought the instrument he was playing was a fife. That is until I saw the video. "What is that?", I thought as a witnessed an instrument I never noticed before. It was a tin whistle, also known as a pennywhistle. I ordered a Clarke Original (really made out of tin) from Amazon and got several more that month. I discovered a website called Chiff and Fipple and like my old website, the creator hadn't maintained it. It is still a treasure trove of information though, and the forums are the best on the Internet.



The tin whistle was my escape to something new. It was like starting over again. This time I focused on diatonic and modal scales. No chromatic scales to learn. No fingering variations for each key beyond the single flattened note that separates the primary key, in this case D and the secondary key, the G. The G is up one counter-clockwise on the circle of fifths and in the key signature, the C# is flattened to a C, the difference between the key of D and the key of G. As long as I can transpose a song to D or G (with exceptions) I can use the same fingering on whistles in other keys.

In May I started to play the whistle and learn about Irish traditional music. Naturally, the flute was still in consideration and I noticed that a keyless flute allowed for my left thumb and right pinky to remain in place. I made a PVC pipe flute to test out playing one. The decision to switch was almost instant and in August I got a delrin keyless flute made by Walt Sweet called "Shannon."

Two weeks ago I attended my first Irish "session" and am preparing to play the tin whistle in a "set" of jigs. That is jumping into the fire, but if the others are receptive to it, this will take me where I couldn't go on the banjo. If I could have played in weekly four-string banjo sessions, I would have been able to avoid the funk of 2007-2008. I have the enthusiasm to start a new website but this time it will be a static archive. All updates will remain on the blog.

More to come...

Musical Blues

So I walk into a music store that prides itself in buying your used musical instruments. I show them my mint condition Gemeinhardt 2SP flute. The owner (actually the son of the owner) comes over and looks at the flute. He then says that I have a beautiful "student" flute and he hasn't bought any "student" flutes in a year. I wasn't miffed and to be honest I wasn't surprised. This is my life in the world of low-cost musical instruments.

Right now I own too many guitars. I have a plectrum banjo I love and a cheap banjo I keep at a bandmate's house where we practice. I have a ukulele I love and another ukulele with a modified string set. I have one flute and ten tin whistles. I love six of the whistles because they are a set of Generation brass whistles that were tweaked by a professional tweaker. Those instruments I love are the ones that I have no intention of ever selling. I don't have the dreaded acquisition syndrome that wants me to keep buying and buying. I have extra whistles because these are the inexpensive kind (whistles can go for up to over $1k) and I am experimenting with my own tweaking.

So I have the right banjo, ukulele and tin whistles. The same can't be said about the guitars or the flute. Now these cannot be compared. The student flute is designed so that parents can buy a flute for their kids without breaking the bank before they know whether or not the kids will stick to it. A good flute costs over $1,250 and the low end of that price range is still compromising the quality but with the ability to improve the existing flute for only over another $1,000. On the other hand the market is flooded with cheap guitars to fill the demand of kids who want to be rock stars some day. Finding a low end guitar that a musician can love is purely a matter of luck. And that only applies to electric guitars. Now, I'm content with my electric guitars because I've finally decided that rock music is not my musical destination in life. The Epiphone Les Paul I own is modified for the alternate tuning I play and the neck is stable. The two other guitars have unstable necks.

My acoustic guitars, on the other hand, are okay at best, but not performance-level. Acoustic guitars on the low end aren't loveable as a matter of luck. They just aren't capable of sounding like the better guitars. I hear good thinks about Godin's Seagull guitars but I have never heard their tones come from the audio tracks of noted acoustic players. My Korean-built Songbird guitar sound nice, but I can't play it with the other acoustic players I know (one has a Martin HD-28.)

The music store incident is indicative of the low-cost instrument dilemma. A good musical instrument, especially acoustic, will retain their value after the initial sell. The others won't. A good acoustic instrument will sound better with time. The others won't. Good acoustic instruments can be passed down from generation to generation. The others can't. I may never get a better guitar now that I'm getting away from them. I'll use what I have to make recordings that other instruments will be focused over and will continue to pursue the whistle and flute.

The reason I wanted to sell the flute was to get away from the Boehm-style metal concert flute to play an Irish flute. The fingering of the Irish flute is similar to the tin whistle and I can already play my whistles better than my flute. I wanted the money to get the entry-level flute and if I liked playing it, get a pro-level one for Christmas. A good keyless Irish flute costs less than the concert flutes and acoustic guitars of the same quality. Note I said keyless. Eight-key Irish flutes cost between $3,000 and $5,000. I don't see a need for a keyed flute as long as the songs are in D or G (I can expand using cross-fingering to produce some extra accidentals, thereby playing in more keys.)

I have improved on my attitude over this issue and writing this has helped more. I am making a flute out of PVC to try my hand at making a musical instrument as well as having a flute to try.

Why Watches? Why Now?

After years of not wearing a watch, last fall I started wearing one. It wasn't the one I stopped wearing almost ten years ago. I still have no interest in that watch. Until this week it was a cheap Stauer Chinese-movement automatic mechanical watch that I saw in a SkyMall catalog while flying to Las Vegas. This week I bought an Invicta Swiss-movement copy of a Rolex Submariner. Why did my interest in these watches happen? Why will I not consider other watches?

It has to do with the movement in the watch. When I was a child my father bought me a Caravelle watch. It was a manual mechanical meaning I had to wind it every day. Quartz battery-powered watches were just starting to enter the market. I didn't know anything but that I liked being able to tell the time anywhere I went. I loved my watch. As time went by I bought other watches. I thought I made the big time when I bought a Seiko in the service. The only thing I disliked was the battery. I didn't think that it mattered and after I wore out the Seiko I looked at cheap Swatches, Timex and Casio LCD watches. The complexity of the features made it hard for me to make any adjustments without an instruction book. I just didn't like the watch anymore.

But that was before I realized that my nature as a curious engineer realized while reading the SkyMall ad for the Stauer Meisterzeit watch that the mechanics behind a self-winding watch is fascinating. Springs, gears, levers - I wanted a marvel of old-world technology on my wrist. And that Stauer didn't let me down. The watch has an exhibition back that shows the weighted rotor that moves 360 degrees to wind the watch anytime my arm moves. Now the ad talked about the first patent for the modern automatic in 1923 and how this watch mimicked that first automatic. I googled and wikied for all the information I could find regarding the technology. I discovered that the Chinese movement was not a replica of the bumper automatic but rather the Rolex-patented in 1930, full-rotating automatic movements that are in all automatics today. I also discovered what a hacking watch is. The $100 watch could hack - meaning the second hand stops when the crown is pulled out to adjust the time. That allows the watch to synchronize to another time source.

I didn't expect much accuracy with this watch because an electric signal from a quartz crystal is more accurate than a spring, a gear and a lever. For the first few weeks the watch was off by two minutes a week. But amazingly, it got more accurate as time went by and now it is off by a dozen seconds or so a week. Seeing the balance-wheel move through the exhibition back was another love of mine. This was brought even further by blogs displaying hand-made watches that were designed to show all of the mechanics of that watch. In particular are the Tourbillon movements. Those are found in watches that generally sell for more than $20,000.

This Stauer has a sweeping second hand. Just to show my ignorance, I was taught that a person could spot a fake Rolex watch by looking at the second hand. The fake ones I saw had the kind of second hand that clicks every second. Now I know that it has to do with quartz movements - all automatic mechanical movements have sweeping hands. The Chinese-movement in my Stauer could be in a Rolex-copy and I would be fooled. Never-the-less I still view the sweeping hand a sign of luxury - at any price.

I love the Stauer watch and recommend it to those with a low budget but I needed to move on to what I hope to be my final watch. My friend Larry wears a Rolex. It's not that he could afford one as much as it is that he always wanted one. I can't say the same so it's smart that my wife has no intention of getting me one. I would not appreciate it. But I do appreciate having a Swiss-made automatic movement on a nicer watch. I was considering getting a Hamilton watch someday. But I came across Invicta and found some really wonderful options. Invicta has a series called "Pro Diver." In the series are a half-dozen or so watches that look just like a Rolex Submariner. All of them are automatics and cost between $90 and $300.

I was opting for the Invicta model 8626 with a Japanese Miyota movement. But like my guitars, buying the inexpensive one would not satisfy me. The fact that the back display shows a plain movement and a plain rotor along with the fact that it's not a Swiss movement and it is non-hacking, with a mineral (scratchable) crystal would not have satisfied me. Fortunately I got a bonus from my boss and was able to get the $300 model 9937 with everything I want in a watch. I don't want a Rolex or anything costing close to that much. I hope that this watch will last me because the Sellita SW200 Swiss movement isn't proven yet and I'm not sure what Invicta means by calling the crystal "Flame-Fusion." I know what it means but the name is used as a trademark. Supposedly it is more durable than a straight sapphire crystal but it may only be a cost saver. Time will tell. The bottom line is that the watch looks great and already someone mistook it for a Rolex.

Why now? I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking back to when I was a kid with my Caravelle watch. Maybe it was discovering that I could afford a watch that looks like a Rolex. Maybe it's the marvel of the engineering. But I'm happy to own this watch and I will wear one from now on.

Portrait of My Cameras

I wanted to get a picture of all of my cameras. Since I was a kid I had cameras. I recall having a plastic camera with a fixed lens that shot 127 roll film (for remembering this detail I thank my dad.) When I was a pre-teen I was allowed to shoot picture with my dad's Mamiya C330 Twin Lens Reflex. My high school graduation present was a Minolta SRT-201, all black from Ritz Camera (In Wilmington Delaware in 1977, Ritz was the big camera store downtown.) I took that camera with me into the Army where the light meter broke. I sold it and bought one of my favorite cameras, a Yashica Electro 35 GSN.

Throughout my adult life I owned a Minolta Maxxum 7000, Pentax K1000, various point-and-shoot 35mm and digital, a Yashica (FX-7?), Contax RTS II, Yashica Mat-124G, Mamiya C330, Nikon F, Soviet-era Lubitel 166B, Nikon D50, Minox EC, Canon EOS 60D and HTC Inspire 4G (okay, the last one is a cellphone.) Today I have many of these cameras. I have my third Electro 35, a GS model (I love these cameras) plus six other cameras for my portrait. I used my cellphone to take the picture with a program called Night Camera. Night Camera brackets three shots to make the final picture and unlike a good DSLR, there is a major lag between shots.

I couldn't hold the camera steady enough to get a good alignment with the shots (my Canon 60D has a nice grip and a much better weight and bracketing three shots hand-held is no problem.) I needed to brace the phone in order to get the picture.

So first, here's the picture:

Now here's my cellphone on my tripod:

I used a clamp made by Cullman that I purchased in the 80s to mount lights to my tripod. This provided the perfect stillness for the three shots that resulted in the final image. I'm not sure but clamps like this one should still be available to mount on your tripod.

Use HDR Without Making It Look Like It

Okay digital photographers, have you produced HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos? When I first saw HDR back around 2006, I thought of how wonderful the images were but I didn't want my images to necessarily look like a 'HDR image.' Today I was going over photos I shot on my trip to Las Vegas with my wife in September. I came across a photo I shot of the Beverly Hills City Hall on a day trip we took to California.

To get the perfect exposure of City Hall I lost a lot of detail of the trees. The old days of making prints meant I would have to dodge and burn to get more detail and film didn't necessarily capture the detail in underexposed sections. Digital sensors do capture details in under or overexposed sections better making dodging and burning details produce better results. But that's still a pain in the butt to me. Another method would have been to shoot a series of bracketed shots and mask sections to blend together the different sections where the details show. That's exactly what HDR software does - bracket  a high contrast image and it merges them together.

But I only shot this image one time. No problem. I used Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro software and going through a series of preset samples I found the image that gave me all the detail in one image.

As you can see it did so without making it look like a 'HDR Image.' The only problem I had with the final image was that the added detail brought out a lot of chromatic noise. I didn't save the noisy example. I recommend using commercial noise rection software to eliminate as much noise as possible. I used Nik Software's Dfine 2.0 to produce this almost noise-free final image.

On occasion, making HDR images with bright colors and surreal contrast work very well. But don't overlook HDR software to correct shooting images in high contrast situations.