Musician Earplugs

Response to a post on Flute Forum about visiting an ENT for hearing test & exam, and asking about suggestions/thoughts on earplugs:

Since you are going to the ENT, I suggest getting a referral to an audiologist to do a proper mould of your ear canal for your earplugs. At least in my part of the world, the person making those moulds for earplugs and the doctor are not the same people.

Consider getting one where you can change the flat-frequency response filters. I use the -25dB ones when playing piccolo and high dizi, and they work well. I think there's also -10dB and -15dB as well, but I've not used them personally.

Usually only the right ear needs the heavier protection, and that changeable filter set up means that you can tweak what you use on your left ear if you are finding it tough to hear through it with the same -25dB filters.

Speech is always a little harder to understand when people speak normally, because you are attenuating them by at least 10dB, roughly the same difference between whispering and talking normally (apparent loudness).

Hope these help!

That last part is something that I only realised recently, when Elicia (who plays the sheng) was trying to talk to me in a whisper when I had both ears shoved in with my -25dB musician ear plugs---I couldn't hear shit. Because a 25dB difference is akin to the difference between a whisper and a shouting match, and so when she was whispering, I definitely couldn't hear shit.

Interesting how it sometimes takes a little real-world experience and thinking in order to realise something.

Science... Again?

In response to Acoustics Research is Insufficient by Jeff Dening on the flute forums:

My day job is tangential to research, and I appreciate the effort you've gone into trying to explain this so that it is easier to understand/appreciate by the community here. Thank you!

I think the central thesis can be summarised as "confusing the map for the territory".

Science provides a guide into the natural world, but as all guides go, they have specific assumptions (implicit and explicit), and are particularly narrow in what they test, and the definitions they use for certain things.

Science never delivers "truth" with the kind of absolute certainty that people yearn, yet they keep trying to make science say something it really doesn't.

Here was where I wanted to say that people with a wrong map will just shrug and then adapt to the territory they observe, but we've heard of people who just blindly follow their GPSr and drive off half-finished bridges, so... 🤷

That said, the stakes are a tad lower in music (bruised egos and busted wallets notwithstanding), but this phenomenon of misinterpretation of what science does and does not say is a real problem elsewhere in society.

The other thing that I would add is that I am certain that there are definitely very good, well-controlled science going on fo the acoustics of flute. However, it is the makers themselves who have that -- after all, to know the behaviour of a change in one of their parameters for their flute means that they can fine-tune and control the quality of their instruments (part of R&D). But good luck trying to get hold of that information -- it _is_ a trade secret after all.

Maybe having an article written by a respected member of the community might make it more palatable for folks to grok things.

To me, this is an actual problem. Science education back in my day had the following progression (from primary all the way to junior college):

1. List of ``scientific'' facts;
2. List of equations primarily centred around Netwonian Physics;
3. Baby's first quantum mechanics theory equations (photoelectric effect);
4. Special relativity (Lorentz factor corrections)(?).

Now, to be fair, I have a strong physics slant because after secondary school, I didn't touch chemistry nor biology as a whole. But even then, the kind of ``science'' that we learnt was still focused on remembering what was the orthodox (or ``right'') model/equation to use to solve the often classical physics-based problems.

Inequalities hardly play a role. Not as ``certain'' as the way regular equations can yield numbers (first time that an infinite number of solutions can appear). Field equations are a no-no---matrix and tensor math was not part of the syllabus.

But more importantly, to keep within what can be effectively ``taught'', the developmental process from one model to the next was not as heavily emphasised as the ability to read a story problem, pick the right set of equations, and run the algebra to the end.

While it looks like this is a sign of ``good'' education (everyone can cite the four kinematics equations [of classical physics]; huzzah!), I think that it is a central reason why we have this misinformation crisis that is still ongoing.

When science does not have the ``and a new model came up because they found that the existing one couldn't explain everything'' part emphasised, there is a tendency for people to doggedly believe that science is infallible, or more precisely, the scientific ``facts'' that they learnt back in school some twenty or more years ago was the most correct, while being unsystematically suspicious of all the ``new'' science that is showing up that contradicted their previous assumptions.

Spoiler alert: almost all new science must contradict some aspect of the previous assumptions as that is how the old models (and facts derived from said models) are shown to be incomplete (i.e. wrong outside of the original circumstances, but are starting to become important), or downright wrong (i.e. replication attempts failed, or when data fraud is detected).

Math education is a little less susceptible to that, because at the junior college level, proofs are introduced into the picture. And I don't mean the ``trigonometric proof'' style of pattern matching and transformation in between equations---I mean using an actual proof technique, like mathematical induction. But it still fails in some way because these things came about really late in the math pedagogy---most people operating in society are probably stuck with secondary school math (i.e. differential calculus) at the very most.

Tangents aside, all that unwavering faith that the science [``fact''] that one knows is troubling---that's not the mentality of someone who understands that science is merely the current best known approximation of reality, and is not the final word the way the Bible is for spiritual matters.

And that's the battlecry: ``Defund the ${scientific-foundation-of-the-week} because ${pet-peeve-of-the-week} contradicts ${older-scientific-"facts"} and is therefore wrong!''

Frankly, this is just one of those days where maybe having a benevolent dictator instead of giving people the voice is felt as the right thing to do.

Damn. The weekend barely started, and I'm already tired as hell.

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.

See? This is Why You Should Save Your Work, No Matter How Temporary

See, the one time I didn't save an intermediate copy of my blog entry on Q10, was the one time Q10 decided to crash and take away the five hundred words.

Well anyway, I'll just speedrun the contents and skip the nuance.

I am/was down in the dumps; week's been long with having to deal with too many people; I hate myself but seeing that past-me gave present-me a chance to thrive, I will extend the good deed to future-me and not do anything utterly stupid; I think I'm a problem-solver type, and suspect that am not ``lovable'' since there isn't anything seemingly emotionally/relationally related to being a problem-solver; Love Hina is sad and isn't some taboo erotica that ought to be banned back when it was still in circulation.

Okay, and now on to something that wasn't wiped out in the crash.

I just got a carbon fibre instrument stand for The Big Flute. The difference was... it was 0.6 kg for the new stand versus 3.2 kg for the old one, all without feeling unstable as fuck even as the 4.6 kg mass of The Big Flute was resting on it. And that does not take into account the more compact for factor as well (tubes with some seemingly 3D-printed joint-blocks and neodymium magnets for holding things in place).

I had also sprung for a carbon fibre case for The Big Flute to replace the current wooden one. The mass difference there should be about 2.3 kg versus 5.7 kg. This means that the total mass of things that I need to lug around is now just 6.9 kg, versus 13.5 kg that I am currently doing for instrument + case + stand. It doesn't sound like much, especially considering that the new carbon fibre case + stand costs nearly a quarter of the MSRP of The Big Flute, but when the volume is taken into account, it is just that much more compact that it makes it worth the while.

Because with this new set up, I can move more easily, without ever feeling nor looking clunky. And this can open up new avenues, especially if something else pans out.

But the case isn't coming in till 2025-02 or so, and we'll just have to wait till then.

Meanwhile, I don't really have much else to talk about, so till the next update.

Cleaning dizi

Damn that was tiring, but fulfilling.

Today's a public holiday, and I spent a few hours in the morning till the early afternoon cleaning my dizi. I used a damp microfibre cloth to clean the exterior, then used damped cotton buds to clean the embouchure, tone, and vent holes. For those dizi that had joints, I took them apart at their joints, and cleaned out the old cork grease that I had put on before, rotated the connecting point repeatedly enough for the joints to grind out their non-round parts, cleaned that out, before replacing with a new thin layer of cork grease [from Yamaha].

``But MT, why did you purposefully made the joint grind itself smooth when we don't even do that for any other joints for concert flutes and the like?''

See, the problem with the dizi is that unlike the concert flute, the tolerances of the joints are not as tight. There is also an innate eccentricity due to these joints being attached completely separately from the boring through of the bamboo. These joints are also well-known for seizing up partly due to the eccentricity, and partly due to the corrosion. So, what I just did was to use the joint against itself to attain a more smooth/rounded outcome.

Of course, the proper way is to have a mandrel and shape things up carefully, but considering how many different sized dizi I was working with (around 27), that would be impractical.

As for the [Yamaha] cork grease, I found that it had the right balance of tack (i.e. stickiness), and lubrication that allowed the metallic parts of the joints to smoothly slide past each other. A smooth joint movement is important because it allows ease of performing fine-tuning at the 0.5 mm resolution.

If the joint sticks, tuning is hard, and there may also be leaks, which is bad.

My older dizi had much cleaner joints, since I had done the first deep clean before, while the newer ones had to undergo quite a bit of that grind-clean-repeat process. But the results are often so much worth it, especially that whole ``joints not seizing and are butter smooth for tuning purposes'' aspect.

After I had packed them away, I realised that I didn't do the same for the two or three xiao that I have lying around. Ah well.

The last thing to add about this is that I found that my latex glove size is apparently an S (85±10 mm). In-teresting. The context for the latex glove was for me to protect the broken skin that my fingers have from the occasions where I needed to use 70% Isopropyl Alcohol while doing the joint cleaning.

------

In other news, I got my head shaved again. It was nice.

I restarted Blasphemous from the beginning again, and was doing much better with the rough guide on the sequence of areas to go through, as opposed to the breadth-first search method that I was using earlier, where I did not commit enough to an area to actually clear it completely and gain the necessary benefits.

Cannot remember what I last talked about for my Minecraft adventures, but I have built up a larger platform for my nether hub. I've figured out where the general places of interest in the overworld should be, and need to lay out the new starting points for the rails to follow that. The walls have been built up, but I haven't capped it with a proper roof, which resulted in many zombie pigmen piglins falling in and causing havoc.

I think that's about it for now. I'll probably play a bit more of Blasphemous before turning in for the night.

After all, tomorrow's a work day.

...and Before OP Trashes The [Troll] Post

In re a post on Flute Forum about the difference between the concert flute and the Chinese flute (笛子):

Okay, assuming you are not trolling, both concert flutes and the dizi are from the same general family of edge-blown aerophones.

I won't talk about the concert flute because we're in the [Concert] Flute Forum.

The dizi is a member of the simple system flute, where pitch is controlled through tone holes that are covered by the fingers. Unlike most simple system flutes, the dizi stands out with the addition of a membrane hole that is affixed with a membrane derived from the interior of the reed using a water soluble adhesive.

This membrane, when affixed with the right tension, adds a characteristic buzz to the tone that gives the dizi its robust character as compared to other flutes of comparable size.

The dizi's relative tuning with itself by the tone holes have two main families, one being the diatonic scale, and the other being the traditional one, which is differentiated by the position and size of the fifth tone hole as counted from embouchure hole end first (diatonic has it shifted slightly closer embouchure hole-ward, while traditional has a more even spacing).

Dizi are often made of bamboo, and can come in a wide variety of sizes/pitch ranges, from around alto flute range all the way to garklein recorder range.

No matter the size, the dizi's effective range is usually 2 octaves and a second, and sometimes hitting 2 octaves and a sixth.

The most commonly seen dizi are usually nearer the piccolo range, or the alto recorder range. More modern [Chinese orchestral] pieces may use additional dizi nearer the concert flute range.

The function of the dizi is usually quite different from that of the concert flute -- its strident but sweet tone usually means that it is often one of the leading melody lines in musical pieces.

All flute techniques are applicable to the dizi, with chromatic runs being among the harder things to pull off on the dizi.

Some advanced techniques on the dizi are impossible to play on the concert flute -- like 飞指 (rapid sliding of the the fingers up and down along the tone holes), and using the closest tone hole as an embouchure hole for a haunting effect while using the rest of the tone holes for pitching.

Even though the dizi is usually cheaper than a concert flute by monetary value, finding a high quality concert flute is ironically much eaiser than finding a high quality dizi.

That's because a high quality dizi requires bamboo of high density, and that material is getting increasingly harder to get due to increased global temperatures.

Bamboo is a fast-growing grass, and the higher the overall ambient temperature, the faster it grows, leading to decreased density.

Hope this helps!

First Grab Bag of 2024

(No, I did not write this at the time that this was published. I deliberately delayed the publication to ensure that the quick summary stood alone.)

So the first thing that was on my mind was the realisation and general thankfulness that space is as big as it was. I know that there's a common Internet saying that goes something like:

Born too late for the age of discovery; born too early for the age of space travel.

And to be fair, I used to think like that as well.

Until I actually took the time to sit down and contemplate about the underlying reality.

Space is stupendously large. It's stupendously large to the point that the fastest known object, the photon, still takes a fucking long-ass time to get places. Space is also expanding.

But space has some terrifying as fuck objects that can, as best as we can understand it, obliterate us in as instant as it gets. The only way in which we are safe enough to observe these objects, let alone have the time and wherewithal contemplate about them, is from the sole fact that we are also magnificently far away from them.

Yeah, I'll just be thankful that space is stupid big, and that we don't have a good way of travelling all that distance within a life-time. Considering the amount of stupidity that the average person has given access to technology (see the car, the aeroplane, the computer, the Internet, and the peace engineered from strong international collaboration to actually preserving said peace), I shudder to think what will happen should we ever have such a capability.

------

In other news, Elden Ring was as frustrating as I thought it was, but paradoxically, it was also fairly fun. I suppose the ability to run through most dangers just to do sight-seeing is one of the plus points.

That, and the mindless grinding that one can do to farm enough runes other standard upgrade materials to ensure overwhelming power when going for boss fights. It's a FromSoftware game---I feel no guilt in being over-levelled to take on various big mobs and boss mobs. The world is gorgeous even though it is often quite twisted---there's that sense of forlorness without invoking the weird biomechanical style that is the speciality of H.R. Giger.

I think I have sunk quite a few hours in Elden Ring at this point, and I may switch over to something else just for variety. Maybe a bit of the new DLC for Vampire Survivors, which is still a damn fun game even after so long. HoloCure might be the best in breed, but that is technically a twin-stick auto-shooter, while Vampire Survivors is a single-stick auto-shooter, which means a different kind of fun.

------

I binged-watch the second season of SPY×FAMILY. I liked it. Unlike in the first season, this time the focus is more on Yor's alter-ego than that of Loid's. There was little to no emphasis on Anya's antics in school, which is fine from a pacing perspective. I wonder how the third season (should it come, but let's be real---SPY×FAMILY is too popular to not have a third season, especially when the source materials isn't exhausted yet) will go, and more importantly, I wonder if SPY×FAMILY has an actual ending instead of going on f-o-r-e-v-e-r the way One Piece or DragonBall does.

On another tangent, after delaying for so long, I finally started on Parks and Recreation. I'm still somewhere in the middle of season 2, and while Amy Poehler's character of Leslie Knope can be quite cringeworthy at times, the series sort of started to grow on me. No idea why.

------

In yet another tangent, I spent a couple of hours during stupid o'clock a couple of days ago updating all my Lilypond composition source files to 2.24.3. The astute would realise that Lilypond 2.24.3 has been out since 2023-11-19, so the natural question would be, why the delay?

Well, because the Cygwin version was only available rather recently. While the actual conversion was ``just'' an exercise of loading the relevant files into Frescobaldi and then running the conversion there, I needed the Cygwin version to make it scalable.

It's just much faster to go

find -type f -iname '*.ly' -print0 | xargs -0 convert-ly -e

followed by any manual adjustments needed (like fixing the format function to have #f as the second parameter) than to manually traverse the entire compositions directory and load each file by hand. It is also less error-prone.

Besides, I also have another Python script that allows me to auto-rebuild the output PDF just so that I can update the files available at my compositions page.

------

And I think I'm done with what I want to say for now. Till the next update, and oh, have a happy and blessed 2024.

Getting High in Church, and Elden Ring

Whew... that was something.

So let's start from the beginning. Back in April this year, I got Stella. There were some logistic issues and what-not in getting her, but those were eventually settled. In that same entry, I talked about serving in the Music Ministry. I played a simple hymn in a quick audition on Aurelia, and had a quick chat with the music coordinator, her husband, and the deacon in charge of the music ministry. It was a very casual chat, and they were just trying to see how I could fit in with the current structure of the ensemble, seeing that I was bringing in a flute to a piano-[electric-]organ-violin ensemble. I started playing every other week, then building up towards playing every week. I came in earlier to rehearse with music coordinator to get a better sense of the play style and the repertoire of the hymnals, and that was before we had the usual rehearsal with the playing group before the service itself.

I built up confidence over time with the ``feel'' of the hymns, and got used to the keys that I had not played much of since my Kiltie Band days (hi A♭-major, E♭-major, and D♭-major) on Aurelia. My goal was to play good enough to blend in with the ensemble---the music works with the congregational singing to praise the Lord, and therefore it was not necessary to stand out in any way.

That changed for these couple of days, namely for the Christmas eve service and the Christmas service. I pulled out Stella, and for the carols, just went high as needed, going 15ma as opposed to the usual 8va that I would play with Aurelia (hymns tend to stick within the grand staff, with the main melody staying completely within the treble clef, but largely having middle-C and lower, making it impractical for the concert flute to play as is without the 8va).

Stella was wonderful. I didn't play everything at 15ma---much of the carols were played at the usual 8va, but since Stella is 8va higher than Aurelia, it means playing in the first register. This is where Stella's access to B4 was amazing. I would sneakily play Stella at how I would play Aurelia, before bursting into full technicolour 15ma for that added sparkle and sweetness.

The feedback for the two days' playing this way was positive; the congregation apparently loved it, and had fedback to the music coordinator about it. Even Paul, who is self-declared not musically-inclined, finally made a comment of hearing me play and liking the lilting sparkle that Stella imparted.

Was it vindication? Vindication of what though... that I could control myself and sound sweet at 2 kHz range? That the MINI (not really a piccolo, but I just called it that to avoid a looooooooong discussion point) is the perfect instrument for this range?

Nah... I mean, my personal bar for myself is kinda high. While I have about 12 years of piccolo experience (damn it has been 12 years?!), it is the 31 years of 笛子 playing that is pulling much of the weight. I go ridiculously high all the time with my dizi playing, and I think it has conditioned me to handle the 2 kHz range with greater control than I would normally have without having done that.

But, at the risk of being smug, it is nice to be appreciated.

------

In tangential news, the bag that holds my special music stand finally ripped the seams beyond the 50% mark. I spent part of yesterday afternoon sewing that stitch back, before using fabric glue and some spare fabric salvaged from an old T-shirt to strengthen the seam more. It held out well today, but only time will tell.

Part of the reason why the bag gets ripped at the seam was the way that I'm carrying it. Previously, I would sling it on my right shoulder like normal, but I didn't like it. With the backpack gig-bag, it was always in the way whenever I had to switch the backpack to the front before sitting down at a seat on public transport. So I started to cross sling the music stand bag in the front, with the left shoulder being the higher holding part. And this is where additional stress from the poke-y bits of the folded up stand act on the seam on the bag, which is already supporting the entire mass of the stand (it's heavy) due to the position and design.

Having the bag slung in front allows me to just quickly switch my backpack between the front and back.

------

Aaaaaanyway, I talked about waiting to see if Elden Ring was on sale.

It was.

It had a 40% price drop, which was pretty large. I took the opportunity to get the Deluxe edition just so that I would have the soundtrack as well.

And since I was already buying something, I bought a few more other games from the Steam sale. But you probably don't care about this.

Elden Ring. Oh yes, fucker's hard... but it is actually still fun. There's just so much to see and do, and each fight is like a timed puzzle.

Don't get me wrong, this fucking game is hard, and there were some bullshit moments [when fighting the Tree Sentinel in the beginning area] that I thought was unfair (got trapped in the scenery, for crying out loud). Runes are used for everything, and dying does make one drop it all. Hollow Knight does that as well, but what Elden Ring made better was to allow that dropped runes be persistent between gaming sessions until either one picks up their dropped runes, or when one dies again.

The routing to the Boss that one died to in Elden Ring also tends to be straightforward, allowing resets to happen faster and not overly punishing the player to redo the entire dungeon to get back there.

The levelling up system is slow as molasses, but then I realised that it would be exactly like how I would want to create a game that tried its best to mimic reality while keeping the fantasy moments. The action RPG nature of Elden Ring means that apart from just the numbers, there is still that meta-game of actually being skilled at the mechanics.

And I like it. It scratches the kind of itch that rogue-likes have, but without the perma-death that can frustrate one who is a little more time-sensitive. The use of the numbers to replace the skill meta-game is interesting without taking the fun of mastering a gamme completely, and I like it.

A lot.

And anyway, that's enough for now. Till the next update.

Am Getting Drinks

Another [work] day has ended. And this year, this 2023 CE, is now in its penultimate week.

I finally left last.fm after being there for nearly twenty years. The reason was simple: they were withholding interesting information based on my submitted data... yeah, fuck'em. My only regret was that it took me this many years to finally pull the trigger and leave.

Moving on, I've recently been introduced to the solo hotpot & BBQ concept by YT. The hotpot part, I am used to, while that BBQ bit was something new. I think that calling it a BBQ is a bit of a misnomer---it was much closer to having a hot plate as opposed to a barbeque grill in terms of execution. But that aside, the concept was interesting, and it awakened that latent caveman that had been hiding within me all these while; there was just something that was so satisfying about watching (and smelling) what was originally red raw meat turning into a delicious brown cooked form.

Magnifique.

Recently, I have finally achieved something cool---I have managed to obtain good quality playable representatives for all usable keys of the 笛子. Was that always my intention? Not really... but ever since I discovered a contact who had makers willing to be commissioned to build the so-called odd key 笛子, it was something that did not stray too far from my mind.

``But MT, why do you need so many 笛子 in the first place?''

It's about extending the possibilities of expression. Each and every 笛子 has its own specific timbre, and armed with all the 27 possible representatives as at now, it is possible to tackle anything, including the possibility of ``going rogue'' in the sense of moving away from traditional Chinese music and into band (concert/marching/five-man) and beyond.

And that 倍大 C♯笛子 is a special one too. I won't brag about it (not worth it), but if you know, you know. It also plays beautifully.

So a while back, Peace Centre was sold. The twist was that after the original tenants had moved out, the entire place was given a year of partial anarchy, where graffiti was allowed, and various pop-up stalls appeared. I checked it out with YT that day, and I found it pretty cool. It reminded me a little of the old New Year events in Pittsburgh City back in the day for some reason, even though I might not share the same kind of jive as the much younger folk were.

Hmmm. What else is there to say for today's entry?

Ah, perhaps a little Minecraft news. I continued clearing out the forests nearest to my hill-top base, and replaced the haphazardly placed torches on the ground with the four-iron-bar-one-lantern ``lamp-post'' that I came up with. It looks so much neater. I cleaned up my mob farm a little, removing the original chunk-delimiter ring of blocks, replaced the ground blocks for the sea-level entry-way while adding detailing in the form of cobblestone wall ``pillars'' that drove down to some kind of hard-rock on the sea floor. I also patched up some of the ravine/rifts that were in the land around my hill-top base, using smooth stone as a shovel-resistant stop-block, before laying on stacks of dirt to make the patch look like it was part of the original landscape.

This weekend will see me get involved in quite a few pieces as part of the music ministry. I'll have to practise the pieces beforehand (as always), and am looking forward to it.

I am also waiting for 2023-12-22T02:00+08 to see if Elden Ring would be on sale. Something about the SGD80.00 price point just did not sit right with me, even though I would hardly blink spending that amount at a single meal of just having myself. I suppose if there was no sale, I'd probably just buy it at full price---I had finally convinced myself that it was time to try it.

Ah. What else to say, what else to say?

I suppose that's about it for now. I think I have a rant or two, but I have been drinking like a fish over the weekend for two weekends now, hanging out with different friends. There's one more session coming up this weekend, and I suppose that I can get all my ranting going, thus leaving almost nothing for here.

But then again, why would that ever be a problem?

Control and Another Experiment

So I completed the main story of Control. The end-run was a little unexpected---I thought there was going to be a major fight with some end-boss, but it ended up being a gauntlet followed by another gauntlet instead.

Don't get me wrong---the bosses in Control are bullet sponges, but judicious use of a maxed out Launch skill trivialises many (not all!) of them. In many ways, the gauntlet fights of the Hiss are much more aggravating, with each type of Hiss having their own ways of defeating them over and beyond just blasting away at them with Shatter (Control's name for the shotgun). It doesn't matter if the Launch skill is maxed out---some of the mobs have enough dodge that the Launch skill is completely mitigated, requiring some careful gun play to take them out.

But perhaps Control's true end isn't at the end of the main story; I have started on the other DLC, aptly titled Foundation (I've completed the other DLC ``by accident'' as part of the exploration phase before advancing the latter parts of the main story). I'll probably continue that some time later this week as I have other things that I'd like to work on in the meanwhile.

------

Today it was cool and humid, well, cooler than what one might expect from what SIN city has to offer. It rained heavily in the morning as I was making my way to PPCC, and it rained intermittently thereafter. I find that it really isn't the temperature that annoys me, but the humidity.

In other words, cool but humid is still terrible. It took me a good 15 minutes just to cool off enough to stop perspiring all over Aurelia and screwing up my embouchure.

I ran another experiment today---instead of keeping Aurelia fully assembled on the stand and waiting for 45 minutes (or however long it takes for the sermon to complete before the closing hymn is needed), I took the headjoint off when I went to sit among the pews, having it wrapped up on the microfibre cloth and held it close to me to keep the whole headjoint warm. The reason for this odd behaviour was to reduce the amount of condensation that would gather within the headjoint when my humid and warm breath contacts the cold metal walls when playing that last hymn after having Aurelia sitting out in the cold. Condensation within the headjoint near the embouchure hole made controlling the intonation at least twice as hard, and that was something I didn't want to have to deal with.

The experiment was a success---the condensation occurred nearer the C♯ vent hole, and I found that I retained control of the intonation much better than when I didn't do that.

So that's something new that I learnt.

I suppose that's about all for now. Till the next update.

Experiment: Success!

The scraper that lives on Amazon is back, and there's nothing that I can do about that. I just hope that they aren't using what they scraped for nefarious reasons.

Anyway, I ran an experiment earlier today while playing during worship service. Instead of playing Aurelia, I switched over to the AF-1 Grenser one-key traverso. Three of the hymns we played were ``simple'' keys (C, & F), with the only problematic one being A♭. Since its a one-key flute, the single toughest note on the simple flute system, E♭/D♯, is easily handled with the single key. As for the other chromatic notes (A♭, B♭, and D♭) are ``easily'' handled with cross-fingering patterns similar to the ones I put up for the AF-3 Stanesby Jr.

Note that the word is ``similar'', not the same. Have a look at the PDF of the fingering chart. Due to the different tuning (A440 vs A415) and possibly different geometry (AF-1 is based on the Grenser, hence the name, while AF-3 is based on the Stanesby Jr., hence that name), the cross-fingering patterns for the AF-1 Grenser is much simpler and systematic as compared to the AF-3 Stanesby Jr. I actually derived quite a bit of inspiration from the one-key flute fingering patterns while building my own 12-tone fingering chart for the 笛子.

Now, the reason to raise all that allegedly diversionary tangents is just to point out that I was really in my element when doing all the funny chromatic stuff on my AF-1 Grenser, even for the A♭-key hymn.

The experiment was a success. No one complained about intonation and other issues, and I found that even without the much louder set up that was Aurelia (and other modern concert flutes), I could still play the upper envelope without being drowned out by the four violins, one piano, and one electic organ. I suspect that was due to the other instruments staying out of the upper octave that I was in than how the AF-1 Grenser was ``loud enough''. In fact, the music coordinator remarked that when I was doing my runs for warm-up before the quick group rehearsal sounded much smoother than when I was with Aurelia.

I think that smoothness just came about because the reaction time of a simple system flute was always faster than that of any keyed ones.

I was really afraid of intonation, but thanks to what I have realised to be non-broken ears, that was within control. And therein lies on of the reasons why the one-key flute isn't as well used these days as compared to the concert flute. The music ministry group that is playing at the worship service is sufficiently small that I could still control the intonation carefully, and I can see how it can get progressively harder to do so as the number of players increase.

All in all, this just means that I have other options to bring to the table whenever I'm rostered to play.

Till the next update.

Saturday...

Ah... Saturday.

I love Saturdays.

I love Saturdays because they are mostly the days where I actually get to relax, on leave or otherwise.

Generally speaking, I spend my Saturdays just sitting about the room, reading, playing some games, or rehearsing some music. If I'm slated to play for church service on that Sunday, then the Saturday before was often when I spent some time rehearsing the pieces, annotating [in pencil] on the score problematic areas that I need to pay closer attention to. That occurs often for Hymns of Praise for rhythm because for some reason, none of the eighth/sixteenth notes have connecting beams. This meant that the usual visual cues of how the rhythm look like are pretty wonky. Thankfully, there's 简谱 at the top, and it allowed me to ``cheat'' and grok the necessary rhythms as needed. As for The Wilds Songbook, the problematic areas proved to be some of the more unfamiliar interval progressions that seemingly defied what my inner music voice was telling me, where I ``knew'' that the next note should be this, but the score laughs at me with a ``Nope!'' and makes it that.

There's TGCO rehearsal in the evening, and I usually turn up about 30 min earlier to ``warm up'' outside of the music room, mostly because my 笛子 is literally powerful enough that warming up indoors while the other folks may want to do their warm up is not a good idea.

Well, I call it ``warm up'', but it really depends on my mood in terms of what I would play. Most times it was an actual warm up in the sense of playing etudes to set up my embouchure and limber up my fingers. Sometimes I would take the time to play through some repertoire pieces. Or maybe I would do like what I did earlier today, where I sight-read a new piece (《月夜》by 胡结续). There are also times where I just noodled on my 笛子 in a ``head empty no thoughts'' sort of way.

Today's rehearsal was fun in a couple of ways. We finally have something that resembles a proper 二胡 section, which is remarkable because our 二胡 section had been decimated when most of the regulars disappeared after COVID-19 (some got married, some developed different interests; it's the usual attrition issues that got accelerated by the pandemic nonsense). Granted, the section was made up of really new and really green players, it was definitely better than nothing. Hopefully this first performance gives them enough of an interest to stay around, level up their skills, and continue playing.

The other fun thing was that I finally had a reason to learn the E₇ fingering on the concert flute. I mean, I have consistently used D₇ on Aurelia before (it's basically the 5′ in 筒音 as 5͵ for when I'm playing the part of the 梆笛 while on concert flute), but have not really had the need to go for E₇ until today (because I needed to play a 6′ in 筒音 as 5͵).

Of course Aurelia can have that note appear---she's a well-made Muramatsu flute after all. It's really more on my getting used to the specific embouchure, air stream direction, and the amount of force to push, transiting smoothly from the prior B₆ to the E₇.

And that's about all I want to talk about for now. The other thing that happened this day was more progression in Halls of Torment, but I suppose it's getting a little too repetitive to keep talking about that.

Till the next update then.

On Hitting the Top Notes on the Piccolo

In response to a post on Flute Forum where the OP wanted some tips on hitting high B♭ and other notes higher than high G for a show next week:

Well, next week can mean anything from three to seven days. Your window to get successful is very small. Just want to ground you a little before helping.

To start with, is your piccolo's headjoint pulled out very far? If yes, you may want to consider pushing it back in more and adjust how you are covering the embouchure hole/blowing to play in tune. Reason: the sizes of the tone holes are way smaller than a flute, so that extra 3mm that you pull out does make a very big difference in comparison with the concert flute. The inner taper of the piccolo is very different from the concert flute, which makes this extra length a bigger problem than you might expect.

Next, assuming you have the headjoint at the right place, start with a high G and see how you are playing it. Are your lips feeling tight? Are your cheeks squished? You need a smaller embouchure, yes, but your lips shouldn't be strained that badly -- you should open up your mouth cavity more. Higher notes does not mean ever shrinking embouchures -- it does mean faster moving air, which can be done without squeezing the lips tighter and tighter.

By the time you reach this paragraph, the only other thing to try is look for a website for piccolo fingering charts, and try the alternate fingerings for the notes that you need above that high G. Again due to the tapering, tone hole sizes, and a myriad of other things, high A, B♭, B, and C may respond better to some fingering patterns than others, and this includes even the "standard" flute fingerings. Try them all out and note which ones are firstly more responsive, then in tune -- I'm assuming that it is more important for your playing to "hit" the high notes as a transient than to do anything particularly harmonic up there.

Oh, have plenty of rest in between to relax those lip muscles, and good luck!

That first point was a personal revelation when I was messing with the GUO Grenaditte piccolo---for a long time, the high B was not sounding at all, before I finally realised that I had pulled the headjoint out for just a tad too much at around 3 mm. Once I did not bother pulling out the headjoint and just adjust the way I blow to keep things in tune, the high B miraculously showed up, clean and beautiful.

That's it for now. Till the next update.

Stella [Nagahara]

It has been a while since the last entry. Things are progressing well enough in life, and I thank the Lord for that. That said though, with this month (and thus the second quarter) finally starting, the road ahead is likely to see even more things that are happening that will strain and stress every fabric of my being.

But first, for something happy. After thinking and saving for nearly eight years, I finally got ahold of a Nagahara MINI in African blackwood, with the basic M1 headjoint.

I call her ``Stella [Nagahara]'', named after Stella Chang, better known as 张清芳, a Taiwanese songstress active in the 1980s/1990s who is well-known for her clear vocals and ability to hit the high notes. She is contemporaneous with Teresa Teng, but I decided to name my new MINI after her instead of Teresa because I find that Stella uses high notes more frequently than Teresa does, and that they always sound so clear.

That's what my MINI's timbre is like.

I will just copy wholesale what I had written in my email correspondence with Nagahara Flutes:

In terms of first impressions for the sound, it sits between the conical bore set up of a regular piccolo, and the cylindrical bore set up of the all-metal ``marching'' piccolo. For the repertoire I play (more relating to the Chinese orchestra than regular piccolo/flute music), it is of the right timbre. The added range on the low side definitely helps, though I definitely need to get used to the different resistance needed for the high notes -- almost all my flutes (used generally here to include the piccolo and dizi) vent out much earlier than the extended tube. General responsiveness across the three main registers are quite high, and the mechanisms were nimble enough to make me forget that I was playing a keyed flute as opposed to the simple one often found in the dizi (my primary instrument).

After taking Stella into rehearsal on Saturday, I have a bit more to add: she can really go high without sounding shrill, hitting concert C8 and C♯8 quite nicely, and not displaying any of the usual problems of intonation for piccolo with respect to the concert B7 note.

I would say that Master Kanichi Nagahara has achieved his exact aim of making a miniature flute with the MINI, as opposed to ``just'' a piccolo with extensions for concert C♯5, C5, and B4. The resistance (used here as a catch-all for amount of effort required to change the embouchure + air stream to sound a note at mf) is very consistent, similar to that of my S.O.S., which shares a similar geometry as it is an Armstrong 204 that has a cylindrical body bore. It is actually easier to play on Stella than the equivalent G 梆笛 for the same set of high notes, but this is hardly new since almost all piccolos play easier for the high notes once one goes beyond concert C6.

``But MT, why did you suddenly decide to pull the trigger and buy now? I thought you were `scouting around to learn more on getting a better piccolo'. What changed?''

It's hard to really say what was the big trigger. Part of it was definitely about the recollection of a statement that Sean made some time back about how Kanichi isn't exactly getting any younger, and my realisation that throughout these eight years, there was still only Nagahara Flutes that made an instrument just like the MINI. My shopping list did posit the option of either the MINI or the Braun ``small flute''. I had tried the Braun small flute and liked it, but it went down to concert C4 only. It's subtle, but if I really wanted a viable option to cover the 梆笛 range comfortably, it had to go do the concert B4 (this is the lowest note of the lowest dizi that ``counts'' as a 梆笛---the E 梆笛).

And thank the Lord for that quick thought of just pulling the trigger---I initiated the email conversation near the end of February 2023, and managed to commit to an order before the most recent price revision that saw an increase in prices across the board.

That said, I should really remove all the other piccolo options now that I have my End Piccolo, but I'll just leave them there for now as a record of high-end piccolo makers/marks.

------

With the something happy said, we'll progress to something a bit more serious. After two plus years of following Christ, and a year and change after baptism, it's finally time to actually serve instead of just being served. I don't have the kind of easy-friendliness that many long-time Christians have (I wonder if I still have trauma that I haven't sorted out, or if I'm just not good enough yet), and therefore can serve only in capacities that deal with people but in an abstract way. I have indicated interest in serving the music ministry at church, and will be going for a simple audition and a chat with the deacon in charge soon. I did send the music ministry folks my battered-ass performance resume---I'm no professional by any measure, and much of my experience comes from the Chinese orchestra tradition at an amateur level.

If God is willing, I will pass the audition and serve as a musician in the music ministry. That's the least that I can do to contribute back to the church community, seeing that I'm not good/willing to work with children, not friendly enough to be part of the greeters' ministry, and not street-wise/savvy enough to support any of the many professional skills-related ministries (why would the church want a computer scientist who has machine learning background serve using the aforementioned ``professional skill''?).

I could write more, but I suppose some 900+ words are sufficient for now. Till the next update then.

Getting Regulation Over Materials Used to Make Flute?

In response to a forum post asking if there should be FDA oversight over the materials used in making flutes, considering that it is in close contact with the mouth area, with a trend of experimenting on newer materials, and having a tendency to cause bad allergic reactions:

I know where you are coming from, but getting these FDA approved seems a bit of a stretch, considering that no one is really using flutes to work with food, nor is it related to medicine/drugs in general.

CPSC seems like a better fit, though all these regulations are only applicable to the US.

That said, considering that the flute purchasing population is vastly smaller compared to regular consumer products, perhaps such regulatory control might be too much to ask for in general.

From some of the anecdotes here (as in the forum at large), it seems that the underlying problem is incomplete/incorrect knowledge on allied fields not directly related to music-making. From material safety, mitigations to such materials, sustainability of certain exotic organic materials, to the care/maintenance, folklore often passes as facts, with emotional reactions often dominating.

I'm not asking for musicians to be expert physicists/chemists/biologists, but to at least know when to put aside the qualities that make them excellent musicians and to bring out the other "hard" side to examine the material (heheh) realities with a more critical eye to better educate themselves in the fields that are periphery to their primary world of music-making.

It is sort of the same reason why we make STEM-field students study humanities as well. We don't expect the same level of excellence in these periphery fields as compared to their primary concerns, but to at least be at a level where they can apply critical thinking to assess and decide on things that can directly affect their primary concerns.

Singapore Flute Fair 2023, and What I Did There

A week ago today was the Singapore Flute Fair 2023 hosted by MusicGear, with her sister companies. The draw of the Flute Fair was the assembly of flute and accessories sellers/distributors from around the region, together with the appearance of Muramatsu and Miyazawa flute technicians to do light servicing on concert flutes, either in-brand for the respective company flute technicians, or out-brand, as long as the flute itself is not made of inferior materials. That last bit might sound a little elitist, but the reality is the these light services are more akin to fine-tuning than performing major correction, and many of the lower-valued flutes are made of materials that do not subject themselves to fine adjustments, and more importantly, do not keep said fine adjustments should they be somehow applied.

There was also a recital, but since it was to happen in the evening of Saturday when I had my rehearsals with the TGCO, I bowed out from attending it.

This year was the first time in as many years of COVID-19 being the obsession of the world that it has been held. The scale was small-ish, but it still managed to attract a healthy number of participants, based solely on my now third-party observation.

I had fun over the two-day exhibition, trying all kinds of piccolos, and playing with various flutes. I'm not really in the market for buying a new flute (Aurelia is my End Flute anyway), but I am definitely scouting around to learn more on getting a better piccolo. I've tried a Powell Signature, the Burkart Resona and Elite samples, one Bulgheroni Piccolo, and a couple of Haynes piccolos.

Conclusion thus far: the traditional embouchure cut is excellent for wailing like I wanna completely emulate the dizi, but trying to get soft dynamics out of it for the high notes tend to be tougher, compared to wave cut. The wave cut ensured that the air stream was well targetted to provide that sweet sweet pianissimo dynamics for concert pitch G7 and higher. As for low notes, both cuts across all the piccolos were alright---that old problem I faced with a somewhat non-projecting concert pitch D5 was due to me not angling enough of the air-stream towards the embouchure hole to bring it out. There are some slight differences in the timbre, but they tend to be a bit more minor compared to just getting the fullness of the right-hand low notes (i.e. concert pitch F♯5 and lower) out in the first place. Again, the wave cut has a tendency to bring out a more centred (i.e. purer) tone, while the traditional cut allowed a little more noise surrounding it, which does make the tone seem fuller without necessarily contributing to the harmonic content.

Piccolo trying aside, I met a few new people, as well as caught up with some old ones. It was definitely different from before---I was running around as myself, as compared to the past flute fairs where I was running around essentially as her plus one. She was there at the fair, unexpected but unsurprising to me, helping out with being the minder of the Muramatsu technicians and generally being involved with the logistics of the light repair service. That is my guess, based on what I saw.

We exchanged no words. What was there to say, anyway?

Two days of standing about, talking to many people, playing piccolo using dizi repertoire to tease out the compatibility between me and the instrument while keeping the dynamics soft enough to not incur a warning from Brando... it was a very tiring yet very fulfilling weekend. Musospace, the location for this year's edition of the Flute Fair, was an interesting location, to say the least. Good to learn of yet another cool place that I may end up wanting to consider, should I ever decide to put together a personal recital as a private celebration of more than three decades of actively playing on the dizi.

A man can dream, can't he?

On Flute Stands...

In reference to a post on Flute Forum by someone who was seeking advice on making their own wooden flute stand for piccolo, concert flute, alto flute, and bass flute:

I'm in no position to dictate specifics that way, but here're my thoughts:

1. Ensure your dowel lengths extend past the foot joint tenon to relieve stress, especially for your alto and bass flutes. The longer the dowel lengths, the more stable you can hold your flute, but the more annoying it is to "load" the flutes on.

2. The diameter of your dowels should be close to the ID of the flute that it needs to hold to keep the flute's centre of mass centred over the axis of the dowel as possible to use the longitudinal strength of the tube to hold its weight as much as possible while vertical. In other words, don't have too much wiggle room built in -- just enough to slip the flute body on and off with some (but not complete) focus.

2. Whatever material is in contact with the inner tube of the flute should be softer than the material of the flute itself to avoid scratching the finish of the inner walls. You might need to consult some surface hardness scales for details on this. Geometry can help a little (i.e. tapering of the end that points upwards), but you need to take the whole centre of mass aspect (points 1 and 2) into account when you do that. From my observation, the main points of contact that you need to worry about are the upper edge of the dowel, and perhaps the lower edge. The rest of the body of the dowel does not really contact any point of the flute body at rest, and to really affect that would require a particular effort by the user to "scrape" the dowel.

3. The base of the dowel (where the end edge of the foot joint is supported) should dampen the inevitable drop when one releases the flute upon the dowel, i.e. make sure it is thick enough.

4. I don't think that moisture control is that big a deal, mostly because I don't think that the amount of moisture (from condensation) within the flutes is sufficient to swell your unsealed wood enough to get past the wiggle room. The metal flutes do not change their ID from humidity, while the wooden ones might. The range of the ambient humidity of where you use the pegs are probably the bigger issue for this.

5. This probably goes without saying, but do ensure that your base is sufficiently massive (either in absolute mass or in the amount of moments generated relative to the centre of masses of the mounted flutes) to support the protuding tubes of flutes to keep things in stable equilibrium. Since it sounds like you are intending to do a combination stand, this might not be as straightforward as it seems.

I'm sure someone else will have much more specific information, but I hope what I have here can help you.

Does There Exist a Trade Off In Bore Geometry for [Concert] Flutes?

As a reply to a post on Flute Forum that segued from how a flute played easier in the altissimo range compared to the regular, with the poster musing about conical versus cylindrical bores, and asking if there is generally a trade-off between ease of play in low and high register:

Short answer: yes.

Less short answer: it's not "just" about cylindrical bores versus conical bores -- the bore's inner diameter, the stopper position, tone hole positions, the size of tone holes, and the relative outer dimension at the tone hole (or tone hole height for the Boehm flute) matter as well. Acoustic models often simplify the flute to an open pipe ideal, with a column of massless air molecules that instantaneously form stationary [longitudinal] waves when a suitable energy source is provided.

But the reality is that real flutes have real air molecules with real mass/inertia, and we don't excite the end of the "open" pipe directly (we do it transversely), relying on the stopper to "bounce" our real energy source through with losses from all the air molecules' inertia, whether they are moving longitudinally down the pipe or venting through a tone hole. This means that the kinetic energy received from the air molecules farther from the embouchure hole is significantly less than the air molecules closer to the embouchure hole where the driving force (our air stream) is. Not to mention that sometimes, if the energy imparted is high enough (like playing high register notes), the air molecules farther away may still have enough energy to continue on beyond where they are "supposed" to "stop".

Long story short, without suitable engineering compensation, your flute will be horribly out of tune when you don't take into account all these real losses that the models simplify away when they are trying to explain things. "Cylindrical" bores and "conical" bores are just simplifications of the two broad compromises in flute design -- "cylindrical" bores have slight tapers nearer the head joint while the majority of the flute (i.e. the body + foot) are true cylinders; while "conical" bores have their tapers towards the foot of the flute body, with the head joint retaining a more or less cylindrical shape.

The ease of playing in low and high registers with respect to these two design choices is subjective. Humans are highly adaptable, so the real question is which of these two designs results in a flute that is more in tune with itself. A flute that is more in-tune with itself (i.e. when you overblow the pipe to select the appropriate standing wave mode, they form integer multiples of the fundamental frequency) will be easier to play across the registers. As to whether you can REACH the high notes, it depends on how easy it is to force anti-nodes at places where you WANT the wave length to be shorter (i.e. where you open your tone holes, and their sizes).

That said, I'm not the most knowledgeable about this. 😅

To add on a little for things that I didn't have the chance to write more about because it is, after all, still a Facebook post despite the length, real-world instrument making has many musical/artistic expression considerations that need to be taken into account even before the specific engineering trade-offs are chosen. The concert flute, for instance, had its shaped drastically adjusted and its first register flattened just so that its ambitus can be raised from the traditional 2 octaves and a fifth to a full 3 octaves, while overtone flutes like the fujara has the ratio of its inner diameter to bore length reduced greatly to facilitate the production of overtones instead.

I would go as far as to say that in many cases, any differences in musical/artistic expression considerations end up with that particularly designed/made flute being designated differently---you can see this even in the Wikipedia list of flutes.

But for my internal learning reasons, I tend to group them differently to facilitate cross-system training, keeping close mind to how to express the actual music with the particular flute, while also observing the subtle differences in choices for the positions of the tone holes. That latter bit usually does not affect the lowest register of the flute in question (it's usually a diatonic major scale, or rarely, some minor scale like the shakuhachi's pentatonic minor scale), but it does affect what kind of middle/high register pitches we can attain.

In the end though, as what sifu said before: we adapt to the instrument; the instrument does not adapt to us---that is the very fundamental fact. It is after our experience from adapting to the instrument that we eventually learn of its limitations, and then decide if those limitations are truly stumbling blocks for our expression (in which case it is time for a ``better'' version of the instrument), or if they were deliberate artistic choices.

Playing High Notes Requires Blowing Edge Angle Changes, Not More Volumes of Air

In response to the poster replying ``It's a wooden bamboo flute brand new.. (sic)'' when the suggestion of leaks/bent keys was proposed in response to the poster's original complaint about inconsistency in sounding out the low notes while in scale with the knowledge that ``high notes have to be blown harder and the lower notes softer'', and the observation that when the poster focuses on just getting the right tone for these notes, it was effortless. The poster's original question was if more practice with breath work was required, stating an experience of about a year:

OP, no offense, but that doesn't mean anything.

If it has keys and associated pads, leakages are possible. Doesn't matter if it is metal, plastic, wood, or bamboo.

If it is a simple flute system with no keys/pads, leakages are still possible, except this time it is your fingers that aren't covering the holes properly. Again, it doesn't matter if it is metal, stone, plastic, wood, or bamboo.

It is only half correct that high notes need to be "blown on harder". You need a higher air speed, but you need it at a shallower angle (relative to directly across the embouchure hole) as compared to the low notes. So blowing "harder" but with the wrong angle does NOT cause the higher frequency harmonics of the standing wave to sound.

Air stream angle of attack on the blowing edge changes as the register of the flute being used changes, with the lower registers have steeper angles compared to the higher registers.

Air steam angles of attack are also affected by how you seat your flute's embouchure hole relative to your embouchure. Assuming that your flute is of a decent playable quality, you will need to find that sweet spot.

If you haven't had lessons with a teacher, you might want to consider having one to more accurately and quickly diagnose and fix any issues that you are facing as they can observe how you are playing. Often times when people are facing trouble in playing and they try to describe it in words, they tend to miss out quite a few very important points, because they aren't aware of what it is to look out for since there are so many minor things that can stack into a major problem. A good teacher can help with the awareness bit and can lead to geometric improvements in playing ability.

You have also asked the correct rhetoric question: everyone can always benefit from more practice, provided they are practicing CORRECTLY.

~48 Hours After mRNA-1273 Booster...

Okay, we're more than 48 hours since the booster jab, and frankly, I'm fine. I'm probably going to take one more dose of paracetamol, but then switch back to a more normal set up of... nothing.

This means that by the time I am done, I would have consumed 16× 500 mg of paracetamol for pain/fever relief. This also means that I am not doing any drinking to celebrate the upcoming new year.

That's not really that big of a problem, I suppose.

By my estimates, I think I will be completely fine by tomorrow.

That will be all for now. I'm going to continue putting together more fingering charts specific for the piccolo---I realised that the charts that I had set up for the regular concert flute are not that applicable for the piccolo due to the different acoustics. For one, the concert flute has a longer pipe with vent holes (C-foot/B-foot), which allows higher harmonics to be energised more easily. This means that the higher notes (instrument third register) require slightly different venting set ups on the piccolo (which cuts off at the end for register #1 D) to enable the higher notes to come out more correctly.

I can't make use of the chart for the one-keyed flute for the same reason why I cannot use the piccolo's fingering charts for the the dizi---the addition of two more ``trill key holes'' beyond the C♯ hole means that the piccolo can force new anti-nodes that are of a shorter wavelength than what the dizi and the one-keyed flute can.

Anyway, that last bit is a big tangent over what I wanted to report---the post 48-hour mark of the booster shot.

My point still stands: take the damn booster shot if one is eligible and able to. The cost-benefit analysis should weight outrageously towards being more beneficial than otherwise.