Minute Control Over Dynamics

My new alto recorder came in today. As stated in yesterday's entry, it is the Yamaha YRA-302BIII.

As expected, it definitely gave me much finer control over the tone, with soft dynamics working much better than my previous Yamaha YRA-28BIII. I also did my usual thing of weighing it, and it weighed in at 196.0±0.1 g, compared to the 211.1±0.1 g that is the YRA-28BIII. So, despite it having less mass, it plays much better, which suggests that for woodwind instruments, geometry plays the larger role of determining the quality of the tone that comes out of it.

That said though, I really cannot bring myself to getting a wood version of the recorder, or of any instrument that I don't play as often as my dizi. While wood and its allies are traditional woodwind instrument materials, their dimensional stability has always been something to worry greatly overr. Unlike sufficiently dense plastic and metal, wood will change its shape due to the combined effects of both heat and humidity. The geometry of woodwind instruments' air column bore is extremely sensitive to these minute changes, so they really require more care to ensure that their timbre does not get overly affected by it.

``But MT, you play the dizi---it's wood-like. Isn't that contradictory?''

Ah, but I play the dizi more often than I play some of my other alternate instruments, and so I am more aware of the changes when they occur. Also, unlike the western instruments, the dizi does not have as much ``work'' done on them that can exacerbate any of these ambient environment issues. What I mean is, dizi do not have screw holes to mount posts on (compare with piccolo, and clarinet), nor do they have mixed woods of different behaviour under the same ambient conditions (compare with the recorder where the block is often made of a different wood compared to the rest of the instrument). They do have a stopper that used to be cork and thus potentially problematic, but most modern-made dizi use a synthetic plastic-rubber one instead. The joint separating the head joint from the body is another potential source of issues, but it tends to be problematic only if is sufficiently cold and dry.

So, for instruments that I don't play as often, I'm more likely to look for something that is more consistent in its dimensions. And high density plastics tend to fit this role very well. Sure, it might lose out a little on the visual aesthetics, but come on, it's a musical instrument---how it sounds is more important than how it looks. And since these instruments aren't played as often as my dizi, cost can become a factor to consider too. The cost we are talking about is more than just the initial sunk cost of purchase---it also includes the upkeep cost as well. A hard-wearing high density plastic music instrument built with the right geometry can go pretty far without much upkeep beyond the basics, and that is usually good enough.

I'm up to p500/803 of Mathematics for Engineers (2nd Edition), and despite the author's name of Dull, is anything but. I might want to take a break from reading tomorrow and just play something, either a first person shooter like Serious Sam 3: BFE, or restarting Cthulhu Saves the World; I don't think that I have actually completed that game. I do remember that I liked the humour in it though.

Maybe I'll work a little on LED2-20 on getting that parallax background working. I am starting to think that splitting into vertical strips isn't sufficient... parallax scrolling should also include some minor up/down movements as well, which means that the far background should have dimensions that are both wider and higher than the width and height of the screen respectively. My current partial bitmap code limits the bitmaps in place to being no more than 320×200, which was why I decided to decompose the background image into vertical strips. But needing this vertical parallax as well makes me think that maybe I need to further sub-divide each vertical strip into two to ensure that I don't break anything.

Eh, we'll see.

That's all I want to write for now. Till the next update then.