DM 100

April 22, 2006 at 5:10 PM

Is today really Saturday? What happened? Where am I? What is the square root of 1,739,761? I can’t seem to remember anything that happened over the past 36 hours. Boy, and I had the craziest dream, something about a hypnotic red light and 440 A...

So, it looks like the Earth didn’t break out of orbit, and the Enchanting Wizard of Rhythm didn’t come after all. Maybe that sterling performance with Andrew last night wasn’t real, either. I’m confused. I’m feeling dazed and disoriented and strangely... rhythmic.

Hey, look, I have a new digital metronome on my desk. I wonder how that got here.

From Mellisa Nill
Posted on April 22, 2006 at 6:16 PM

Emily,

The performance with Andrew was completely real. It was not sterling, however. It was GOLDEN!!! Fabulous job!

All of a sudden, I am yearning to practice...perhaps the Enchanting Wizard of Rhythm has cast its spell over little old Sterling after all...

Mellisa

From Linda Lerskier
Posted on April 22, 2006 at 8:40 PM

It's 1,319 Emily. How could you not remember that??

From Søren Basbøll
Posted on April 22, 2006 at 8:22 PM

I think that it is an arctic problem. I have been living here in a tiny eastern town for many years playing the cello, and some of the symptoms are:

-you begin to take interest in number theory

-your dreams begin to be more colourfull

-the world becomes at the same time both more and less real than the real world

By the way, you have already had a good influence on my playing as I am now using the metronome systematically. For a long time I have been playing too undisciplined, taking much care of tone and intonation but at the expense of rhytmic precision. That is the price of being musically alone nearly all the time. I am also playing with metronomes based on other principles which maybe have some other advantages.

From Søren Basbøll
Posted on April 22, 2006 at 8:44 PM

Sorry, should have been 'Eastern Greenland' and not only 'eastern'

From Emily Grossman
Posted on April 23, 2006 at 9:21 AM

Mellisa, you better practice! ;)

Soren, I see I need no explanation, then. Glad to hear you're ticking away. Careful, now. Have fun, but be careful.

I bet you didn't know that there are no cellists living in Soldotna. Did you ever think of changing your arctic location? We have a good coffee shop, and one of the best Chinese restaurants in the world, too. Don't forget the world's largest king salmon (a whopping 97 pounds)was caught here. I know you want to come here. :)

From Keith Laurie
Posted on April 24, 2006 at 4:35 AM

Friday's concert was fantastic! Bravo! This was the first time I'd heard the Schumann piece and I really enjoyed it. I loved how your violin and Andrew Cook's cello seemed to merge at several points...

I am a later-in-life beginning cello student (from Kasilof; BTW there are at least two other cello students - far more advanced than I - in the Soldotna/Kenai area; we all have to go to Homer for our lessons.) I am just now discovering how useful my metronome can be...

I look forward to hearing you play again. Again, well done!

From Emily Grossman
Posted on April 24, 2006 at 9:23 AM

Hi Keith, have we met? If not, then introduce yourself if you see me around. Glad to know there's a cellist or two around, after all. It's a shame you have to go all the way to Homer to get a lesson, but I hear there's an excellent teacher down there. Tell the Shallock's hi for me!

From Søren Basbøll
Posted on April 25, 2006 at 8:32 AM

Emily,
I am very temptated both for the musical possibilities and the food but....

No, I think that you should install yourself here, and we can among other things offer a very good health care: Some years ago in the middle of the night in february I heard a terrible sound. Only one thing in the world gives that sound and that is when the string pressure on a Kloz cello from 1741 is loosening the neck from the deck and bottom. So I phoned a nurse and asked if I could borrow her cello during the time of repair in France. And she said yes, I thanked very much and explained how nice she was. She said 'No, we are not at all nice, we are just too lazy to hospitalize you due to cello abstinences!' It lasted a year and a half.

About metronomes: They have two problems:

-they only tell you where you should have been, not where you are here and now. Twenty years ago, I had during five years only played with a (good) pianist. Suddenly I found myself in the capital of Greenland and found out, that we had the combination for Brahms op 18, so we played the first movement. I still remember the shock over how different I felt the rythm! With a piano you have to be on the beat, whith other strings I feel that it is one third in the note, something like the profile of a wing of an aeroplane. It is like being on a wave. I really miss other strings!

-they function through sound and destroys thus the music. I also have an unproven theory that the hearing and brain is heavily overloaded when amateurs are playing and that it would be an advantage to use other senses

I am trying to solve both problems, I like to make electronic constructions.

From Emily Grossman
Posted on April 25, 2006 at 9:26 AM

Like invent something like an electrical impulse transmitted by collar? How about that? You could patent it. I'm sure no one has invented a metronome collar yet. This way, the impulse would not be heard, but felt. ;)

The best thing about playing a stringed instrument is the ability we have to take a note and shape it any which way we please. We do far too much of that airplane wing sound, limiting ourselves just like the piano, which is stuck with that same punctuation mark, the strike and decay, over and over.

The martele stroke reminds me of the piano.

From Linda Lerskier
Posted on April 26, 2006 at 12:36 AM

I don't get 50 points? :(

From Emily Grossman
Posted on April 26, 2006 at 2:14 AM

I'll give you 25, since that only requires a couple of taps on the calculator to find. If you did it mentally, that would be worth a good 200 points, but how can I be sure?

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