Eliana's First Proper Gig

That was... confusing.

So, despite having Eliana since 2021, I have never really taken her out on an ``official'' gig---I play on her a lot in between as part of the long-standing principle of ``cross-training'' that sifu has taught me nearly two decades ago. But for a proper gig, that has never happened.

The reason is much simpler: alto flutes need their score to be transposed a perfect fourth lower from concert pitch. The reason for this is practical---unlike the crazy recorder players (with all due respect of course), flute players tend to like playing using their ``instrument'' keys, mostly because the music for the flute tends to be very technical, and thus writing in the same ``fingering pattern'' (i.e. the instrument keys) makes it much easier for the regular concert flute (or C-flute) player to adapt accordingly.

But most music isn't transposed, so it becomes hard to just grab an alto flute out to play to scores originally written for concert flute. There's also the issue of ambitus, but that is usually more obvious---the highly technical stuff will span the full three octaves and thus cannot be easily transposed for playing, while most ``singable'' things stay within two octaves.

Which brings us to today.

Aurelia and Stella have traded places with Davie, and are now at MusicGearWindWorks undergoing their annual servicing (clean, oil, & adjust). I could bring out Azumi, and I was trying her out again last night as part of preparation for serving at the music ministry. But I sounded poor on her---and there was something clacky about her keys that made me draw pause. I dropped in some heavy key oil (probably too high a viscosity), and it helped a bit, but that was when I had a thought.

Why not bring out Eliana?

The pieces were in D-key, B♭-key, A♭-key, and C-key. The tempi weren't too drastic (they were hymns, and therefore needed to match up to what your regular church-goer can sing), and were therefore the best pieces to pick up transposing on-the-fly on Eliana.

It all worked fine, except when times I was confused with concert high-C, concert high-D♭ and concert high-E♭.

Oh, and a surprise hymn requested by senior pastor that was in G-key.

The trick, it seems, is to forget all the rubbish theory that people tell you ``oh, it's like reading the bass clef's top space onwards'' and just play the damn thing, remembering that the default scale runs with F♯ that needs to be taken care of. It's about reassociating where in the [treble clef] scale the fingering patterns are located, and just going without thinking too hard.

With enough repetition, it becomes easier. I dare not say that it becomes ``second nature'' until I can hot-swap between C-flutes and alto flute within the same gig without going nuts.

And that's all I wanted to talk about to day. Am still recovering from whatever the hell I had caught on Friday.

Till the next update.

Junker Flute

In response to an anonymous participant on Flute Forum seeking affirmation for using a ``cheap piccolo off Amazon'' for one ensemble class while being a flute major:

Friend, do what you have to specific for your circumstance. I sure as hell won't judge you.

Just because almost everyone condemns "musical instruments off Amazon" here doesn't mean that you cannot buy from there and use it.

``Buy a second hand {insert-flute-brand-here}!'' is also another common call for action.

They aren't wrong, when looked from the perspective of longevity of use of the instrument.

But time is money. Looking for a second hand flute (or piccolo in your case) can take time, and a bit of luck, compared to the guaranteed delivery dates from Amazon. And sometimes, you just need it right now, and you also don't know if it is something you want to spend the extra effort for right in the beginning for commitment.

As long as you are well aware of what you are buying, and the limits of what these instruments can and cannot do, I don't think it matters. Just leave your ego at the door and enjoy the music making process.

If you are playing it often enough that the flaws are more obvious to you, and are hampering you actively, you will know that you definitely need to get a better instrument, and thus should spend that time/effort to get something better.

As some wise person on the 'net once said: ``I'll buy a cheap tool to start with, and if it breaks, it means that I use it often enough that I should get a better one.''

And for the record, I survived two years of marching band in University playing on a 200-dollar Amazon flute. I sat directly in front of the band director, and he has never complained about intonation nor dynamics from me.

Just a little back story---actually true on the bit on playing in the Kiltie Band out in CMU on a 200-dollar Amazon flute. I first bought a C-foot flute, and later on, a B-foot one. The C-foot one went with me to march into the snow and what-not, and it did surprisingly well, given its pedigree.

It's not a good flute in terms of maintenance for sure, with even Chara voicing out when she returned them to me after I loaned it to her to practise flute adjustments as junkers of little consequence (I have Azumi and Aurelia by then, so the Amazon flutes are effectively retired).

But between no flute and cheap ``junker'' flute, sometimes the ``junker'' flute is the better option. I won't say much about dizi, but for concert flutes, the dimensions have been well established for a century by now, and anyone with half a decent manufacturing process who can follow the schema can make a flute that plays... well like a flute.

Not like a good flute for sure, but definitely as a flute.

And I do not disagree with everyone else---junker flutes are not something one wants to hold on to as their ``forever flute'', but they can be a cheaper gamble than tossing three times more plus extra time to get a higher quality starter flute, at a moment in time where either one is desperate to have some flute, or when their commitment to a flute hasn't been confirmed.

That bit of leaving the ego, also true. Musicians are among the most egotistical people on the planet, and that's fine. And sometimes that ego gets in the way of their problem solving abilities. Knowing when to hold that ego, and when to drop it is something that everyone (including musicians) will need to learn at some point.

------

Anyway, now marks the start of ``i'm-forty-bitches'' week. Naturally, it begins with some messed up upper respiratory tract infection.

🥴

Balls.

Till the next update.

A New Gig Bag and Other Diversions

The last weekend before March 2022 goes away into history. What shall I talk about today then?

Let's start with some good news. We are finally starting rehearsals proper---we have actually started meeting up as a group at the beginning of the month, but having not rehearsed together for two years or so, we spent the first three weeks just sorting out our instruments. The cupboards housing them were opened up and aired, the cobwebs were metaphorically (and sometimes literally!) dusted, the mould on some of the old wooden instrument cases were treated with anti-mould and left to air, strings were checked on and replaced/retuned, and the works.

Sifu is now at a stage of his life where he can come back to play with us again, and I am really happy about it.

Of the ``core pillar'' players, we got back about 60% of them or so, the remaining 40% being less able to commit their time due to the changes in their life that have occurred during the past two years of pandemic nonsense. Naturally, the more transient members who were students have attritted away, hopefully just for now, but given the entire drought of actual extra-curricular activities (calling it ``co-curricular activities'' is what I now see as yet another fig-leaf manoeuvre to pretend that the school system in SIN city truly raises people who know how to both play and work hard) involving group activities, I really am not expecting these numbers to return any time soon.

TGCO isn't flashy, it isn't large, and it isn't some award-winning and highly visible organisation compared to some of the other community orchestras (Chinese instruments or otherwise) out there. None of us are true professional musicians, and we definitely lack the resources and the connections that those who do it professionally have, mostly due to our ethos of keeping the orchestra as a place for those who are interested in playing to gather and play to their abilities, without demanding superlative qualifications.

Only time will tell what will happen. For now, we're just putting the band back together so to speak. That thirty-year anniversary concert isn't likely to be happening, and maybe we'll see if we can live up to our fortieth instead.

It's always good to be playing the dizi again in an orchestral setting. Playing alone has its perks, but ultimately music is meant to be played together as a group---no single instrument can sound better alone as compared to being with others in a well-composed piece. And a performance group is not really one if it doesn't perform---that's the immediate goal that I think we are striving for. Maybe once we get our first performance post-pandemic out, we can start to bring in some more members, for however long they choose to play with us.

------

In other news, I had to finally retire my music backpack, the one that I have used since 2015(?) to move the flute/piccolo stands, flute (Azumi and then later on, Aurelia), piccolo (usually Picc, sometimes S.O.S.), and scores. After more than 6 years, the main zipper have finally given way completely. The bag was used extensively over the years, being taken out weekly on rehearsal/performance excursions. A side zipper's slider had failed and was replaced, the pleather handle flaked off and had a new fabric cover sewn on it, one of the two sliders in the main zipper failed the interlocking and was left unused while the other did the rest of the tour, and the elastic that held the flute box had loosened and was recently replaced. And now, finally, even that last slider failed to hold create the interlocks properly, with the only fix left being a complete replacement of the entire zipper, which was... just not going to happen.

The gig bag lasted as long as it did for the price I paid for. It did its job well and faithfully, and it was truly time to retire it.

o7

Some might find it dumb that I can get sentimental over things, but well, in a world where no one really knows what each person is thinking (even with letters that were supposed to share what one was thinking), the only things we have left are the things that we exchange and hold on to. And for the things that served as our tools of the trade, for whatever trade it is, there's a certain part of it that has become an extension of ourselves to the point that we unconsciously grow an attachment to it. I can't say that I take the greatest of care for my stuff, but I do generally try to do so. It isn't the fact that I spent my own money on them that makes me treasure what I have, but that having these things working means that I could do what I wanted to do with them more effectively and painlessly that makes me want to treasure them more.

The new music backpack is also from ROI MUSIC, as brought in by MusicGear. It definitely has seen some improvements over the years, with the most obvious being the `X'-stitching pattern on the interior that holds the padding together (compared to the original vertical-only stitches). The material does feel a little stiffer, but it's not clear if it's only because it is new or if there was something that was changed.

I suppose only time will tell.

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The Great Aquarium has its water filled in, and the kelp has all been harvested. I tweaked the deepslate smelter into a kelp smelter by replacing the furnace with a smoker---I didn't realise that the kelp could be treated as a food item and therefore the smoker would smelt it faster (by time) as compared to the furnace. From that tweak, and leaving things to run throughout the day, I have completely smelted all the kelp.

I took part of today searching for a Ocean Monument. I needed to find it to get the materials needed to make that conduit in my Great Aquarium. Well, I found it---it was a ways away from the frozen river where I had dug up my ice to fill the Great Aquarium with. After building a nether-portal in the overworld, I cleared a path towards the nearest minecart station (the frozen river exit) and built a cover over it in the nether to prevent the Magma Cube spawns from clogging up the place.

And that's about it for this post. Till the next one.

Scratching That Aburi Nigiri Itch...

Mmmm. It really is much easier to realise what one has missed once it is gone out of one's life.

And I'm referring to awesome aburi nigiri sushi that I have been missing since my favourite sushi place has wound up.

Today, I scratched that itch again by heading to the Sushi Tei out at Serangoon Gardens Circus at the odd hour of three in the afternoon. It was fairly quiet; I was one of three customers that were present in the restaurant. I had some aburi nigiri sushi, and had me some ootoro.

Mmmm. That was nice.

It was not the same as my favourite sushi place, but it did scratch the itch.

In other news, I have decided on the birthday gift to myself for 2022---a pair of customised musician ear plugs. It's not exactly cheap, but compared to the price of a new instrument, it's about a tenth the price, but with an effect that is probably worth 10× more---a more comfortable and complete protection of my hearing while I play my 笛子. It is something that I have been thinking of getting for a while, but have been delaying for one reason or another. I am currently using some Vic Firth musician's ear plugs; they work well, but I'm just looking for... something more.

It's like Azumi all over again---she works well, but I ended up looking for something more, and thus ended up with Aurelia.

I said that it works well because with all the restrictions that have been in place, test playing of new instruments is not allowed. Apart from that, I also don't have the budget for any new instruments anyway, since my income for this sabbatical year is zero.

Anyway, that customised musician ear plugs require impressions of my ear canals, and so it will be a trip to the audiologist to get it done. Because of that, I am getting myself this gift right now, before the start of work makes it harder to run about meeting appointments.

That's about all I want to write about. Till the next update.

Privacy: Accomplished

What a day!

I went to pick up Aurelia from WW today, and dropped off Azumi for her ``spa'' session. Azumi requires a bit more work than Aurelia---she has started tarnishing(!) after nearly ten years of not having that problem, and I have started to find the D trill lever and D♯ trill levers were sitting a little too high for comfort (check out Jennifer Cluff's flute diagram for nomenclature). It's interesting, because I never used to have that problem before I had Aurelia; Mr Guo of GUO Musical Instruments Company (GMIC) had pointed it out before a few years ago, but it hadn't bothered me then.

I think it's just my getting used to the sleeker set up that is on Aurelia.

Anyway, after sorting out my flutes, I dropped by MusicGear to shoot the breeze a little with them, and bought some thicker mouthpiece pads. And some discussions of perhaps getting a cor anglais came to play... It is on my shopping list, but the damnable reed is always going to be a problem. All my other single reed instruments are using synthetic reeds, which suit me just fine because they are virtually immutable for the long periods of time that I might not be touching them. Double reed instruments are finicky---I have played the 管 before, and it is horrible to get right.

So... while the offer stands, I might need to do a serious rain check.

Now, much of the afternoon was spent running around looking for the laptop webcam privacy sliding sticker, or as they call it in Amazon.com, ``webcam cover slides''. I thought this would be the easiest item to find, having remembered seeing them freely around, but boy was I wrong. No one sold it.

My only lead was from the Challenger store at Waterway Point when I dejectedly purchased my compressed air twin-pack---the cashier suggested checking out the larger Challenger stores as they were likely to have stock. That lead told me two things:

1. I wasn't hallucinating---they were sold by a chain store (i.e. ubiquity exists); and
2. I could just be plain unlikely with stocks being drained from the massive work from home stuff.

And so, I tried my luck by heading out to NEX's Challenger.

I couldn't find it. I asked for help, the bro was like ``ah, I think I might have seen it, but I'm not too sure''. He went to get another bro (nicknamed ``the Professional'' for some reason), who was like ``Yeah! I remember seeing it also... it was like a stack of them (emphasis mine)''. Lo and behold, it was found in a corner of a small and low rack facing the cashier counter closest to the exit.

🤦‍♂️

And there were only two 3-packs left. I bought both---this is going to be something that will remain useful for a long while. I have not had a need to use my webcams on my laptops for a long time, so I usually use the lo-tech method of just taping a piece of paper with cellotape. But, two things:

1. The cellotape was getting more useless with all the stupid dust around, or the quality of the ones we had stank. I breathed on the bloody thing, and it would float off. Unacceptable!
2. I have many more teleconference calls these days from care group meetings and baptismal classes, and having the lo-tech solution (with shitty grade cellotape) was just not working out. And this was before going for interviews in the near future while searching for jobs.

And with that, I've got to get them. And boy am I glad to have gotten them.

I also bought replacement ear cups for my QC35 wireless headphones too. At this point, I'm just filing that SGD39 as an annual consumable. Buying stuff of a good enough quality is one thing, ensuring that it stays at that quality with regular maintenance is another. But the cost of such maintenance is still cheaper in the long run as compared to having to frequently replace the entire item each time the low quality version fails.

------

I wondered why did I not learn of lock lacing earlier. That would have solved my ``beat up toe'' problem, where my pinky toe was always bruised, with the latest saga leading to the nails peeling off. The lock lacing technique stops slippage of the foot in the hiking boot, and thus despite being on my feet for the whole day, my toes were completely fine.

Hurrah!

I did a little extra with the prescribed lock lacing technique though---I tied just enough to secure the position before running the boot laces around the groove of my hiking boots back to the front, where I finally actually complete the tie with a knot. It makes hold much more snug, and solves the problem of the excessively long laces that often come with boot laces.

And that's about it for today. I'm bushed. Gonna lay out some blocks in Minecraft in the nether to create an overworld ``quarantine zone'' for future Wither fighting while watching some of Calli's playthrough of Earthbound. Till the next update.

Like She Was New!

What an eventful day.

The Dell on-site engineer came down to replace the fan and heatsink assembly, and I learnt a few things.

1. Dust was the true killer;
2. The heat pipes ran keyboard side up, in total inversion from most other systems, explaining the finger frying;
3. The fans were really integrated with the heat sinks;
4. The replacement of this assembly was as good as having a repaste job;
5. Most of the upper half of the flat-laying part of Eileen-II are just vents, so air blowing through all of them has no risk of clogging the way old laptops were; and
6. Daughter boards everywhere despite the motherboard being more complicated than I had ever seen.

The dust was of a very uniform fineness that looked awfully like the kind of concrete dust one would see from a construction site, and not the kind of skin-dust that is the more normal.

Armed with the new knowledge and assurance from the on-site engineer, I now have a better way of preventing all that weird frictional vibration thing from fans that were dust-imbalanced.

The difference was pretty dramatic, before and after the assembly change. I am getting 40--46× multipliers even on full load with the PROCHOT limit of 83°C that I had set. The idle temperature is now roughly 40°C at an ambient temperature of about 27°C, which is about 4--7°C lower than before.

There was little throttling when I was running Minecraft at 32 chunk rendering distance (just for fun), and the lag spikes that I was seeing before even with Iris Shaders (on 12 chunks rendering) was much lower.

It's like Eileen-II was brand new all over again. And now, to monitor things before I confirm the closure of the ticket.

------

I also managed to set up a servicing date next week for Aurelia, my artisan-quality concert flute. She's doing well, just that she has missed her annual Clean, Oil, and Adjust (COA) session. I was tempted to bring S.O.S. and maybe Azumi down too, but I just wanted to keep it simple. Those two (and maybe Picc) can go for their COA next year instead.

I might need to bring Davie down for a look-see by Sean though... one of the pads looked like its bladder had ripped. Still need to arrange a date with him for that.

If you are bloody confused, do not be afraid.

I can't believe that Aurelia is already 2 years old, and that Azumi has been with me for more than a decade. Time does seem to fly along.

------

I'm thinking I might want to go for some sushi tomorrow for late lunch/early dinner; I've been craving for sushi for a while, so it might be time to satisfy that craving.

NaNoWriMo has been going well; I've already busted the 25k milestone, and have ``only'' written 23/50 ways to die. It's very cathartic despite its macabre nature; it really puts things into perspective.

Anyway, that's about it for now. Ironically, I am in the middle of replaying Cthulhu Saves the World, which does not need the higher powered computational powers that the refreshed heat sink+fan assembly provides.

Till the next update.

The Tirade of the Twenty-Six

If you see this post, it means that I have aged by a year. Note that I have written this post about 2 days earlier, since I'm foreseeing that the things that I need to deal with over the next two days will probably preclude me from actually having the time to write an entry.

So, 26 years have passed since I first came to this planet. It can be said as a miracle, in a certain sense, due to the circumstances surrounding my eventual appearance on this earth. Then of course, there's the whole chunk of thing called life that I had to deal with, including having to fight off all those derogatory comments from the many strangers who think it is their god-given right to pinpoint and criticise things that they have little understanding about.

I suppose it is due to these largely negative experiences that I have learnt to not give a rat's ass to what people say, particularly when they trigger those warning flags that almost unambiguously label them as douchebags. But then again, based on my upbringing, I have somehow cultivated that philanthropic nature, so I end up in the most paradoxical position of a misanthropic humanist.

But why am I wasting precious writing time here bitching about those people? Let's talk about more happy things, since this is an anniversary in celebration of my birth.

I've long gotten myself a gift for my birthday; I just didn't think it appropriate to talk about it any earlier. It is probably the most expensive thing I have gotten myself, and the more I use it, the more I find it worth my while. I've gone ahead and gotten myself an Altus-Azumi concert flute (model number AZ3000). It's a lovely flute, whose headjoint and body are made of 95.8% ``Britannia'' silver, and whose lip plate and key work are made of 92.4% ``Sterling'' silver. The sound of my AZ3000 is really sweet---she reaches the high pitches without cracking, and it just sounds brighter than the budget flutes that I have been playing thus far. Of course she comes in French style (i.e. open holed), with a B-foot, offset G, split-E mechanism and gizmo key---these are all the very basic that I look for in a concert flute. The responsiveness of my AZ3000 is phenomenal; it has gotten to the point that I would just play sixteenth notes at high speed just to mess around with the quick reaction of the flute. I love instruments that are this nimble, since the numbleness provides the unparallelled ability to convery very subtle emotional cues via ornamentation---if the instrument is sluggish, then the ornamentation will not be easily articulated and thus the whole sound will be rather muddy and have a distinct lack of crispness and freshness that is so important. I expect the AZ3000 to serve me well in the years to come---a good concert flute (much like a good 笛子) can last for a very, very long time with good care and use. For anyone who is interested in getting one (and you happen to be in Singapore), contact The Flute Studio---they are the official distributors of the Altus-Azumi flute series.

Apart from the ``official'' gift that I got myself, I went into a splurge of some sort and bought other useful and semi-useful stuff. There's a student piccolo that I got (the Prelude PC710 Piccolo, a sub-company of the Conn-Selmer group) just to mess around with. Contrary to popular belief, I found that the piccolo was remarkably easy to play in tune, with a deviation of about 5 to 10 cents when playing to A4=442Hz. I attribute this to the fact that the 梆笛 is of a similar range as the piccolo, and that the necessary embouchre and lung power has already been trained for a long time, which makes it much easier for me than for someone who has been playing the concert flute all the while (the embouchre on the concert flute is much looser than that of the piccolo). In fact, I think it is for the same reason that I don't find the upper register of the concert flute that tough as compared to other concert flute players.

Remember Eirian? Well, some things have happened since I got her slightly more than 2 years back. First off, her e-ink display was starting to lose contrast, possibly due to aging/wear and tear. Secondly, the company that built her (iRex Technologies), is no longer doing the consumer business due to the delay caused by the FCC in certifying the DR800---iRex missed the holiday season and went belly-up due to cashflow problems (one story link can be found here). Talking about tough luck. Having said that, I found that the e-reader is something that I cannot seem to live without since it can fuel my bookworm nature without having to lug the associated kilogrammes worth of actual dead tree offerings. And I scouted about for Eirian's replacement. The iPad was obviously out of the equation; apart from the high price point, the display that it uses is hardly suitable for ``all terrain'' reading. Thankfully, Amazon had the Kindle DX, which satisfied the three conditions of an excellent e-reader: good contrast, large screen and long battery life. One click and some time later, I am the proud owner of Eirian II, a worthy successor of Eirian. Eirian II is not without her faults of course, but I think those faults are pretty minor considering everything else that she has. I will not go into a long narrative about the pros and cons of using a Kindle DX---I think that's what review sites are for.

Anyway, enough talk about the stuff I spent money on. Time to talk about more mundane issues. I think for this upcoming year (year 27, if you have been counting and/or not get sidetracked by what I have been saying thus far) I will be focusing even more deeply into myself. I'm already getting sick of having to deal with people as a whole, and I have found that I am losing what I know about myself---it is going to be a major year to remake myself for the next decade or so. Much has happened, as always, and I think that my current policy of isolationism is a sound one, since it gives me the space that I need to look deeper into myself and understand the forces that drive me to do what I do. Distractions of all sorts have to be culled away mercilessly---that is the law of the land, and is probably the best way to ensure that I have the most efficient way of handling things as possible. I'm not saying that I am abandoning my friends and going solo all the way, but that I will remove all those people who have either a negative or no impact on me from my life just to reduce the overall complexity. If I claim that I am in love with my mind, and that I am as misanthropic as I claim to be, then it would not matter if I excise the useless people that surround me.

Cold-hearted? Ruthless? I don't care. It's my life and my choice---if others can excise me from their lives when I prove to be ``not useful anymore'', why can't I do the same? I am still human after all, not some saint of some sort. I don't have to be popular with everyone---I just need to count when I need to count, other than that, why do I even bother wasting any effort? It is time to pull out that utilitarian hat that I have kept away for a while and to put it on, letting my rational side rule supreme once more.

J'ai besoin d'être plus grave et la conquête du monde à ma façon.

Oh, and happy birthday to me! =D