Way back when

January 15, 2010 at 2:57 AM

Apparently the theme this week on FB is retro - posting an old photo of yourself. When I was digging through my old photos I found a few from my early viola days. There are the ones of me playing viola while my father accompanied me on accordion. This reminded me the odd things I used in the past to tune with - the accordion, an oscilloscope, and finally an "old fashioned" pitch pipe.

I also ran across a few photos from when I went to Sewannee Music Camp back in the early '80's. One was of me playing my dorm-mate's cello, and another of the final concert. The conductor wore all white, I wore a white flowery dress (concert black was apparently not required). But what struck me most was the size of the viola in proportion to me. Then I remembered: my teacher at camp that summer loaned me her viola to perform with at the concert.

I'm sure I have more viola replated photos hidden away if I look. It will be interesting to see what I can dig up from my musical past.

From Bart Meijer
Posted on January 15, 2010 at 7:28 AM

Hi Mendy,

How does one tune with an oscilloscope? The only way I can think of would be Lissajous figures: feed the pitch fork into X, the viola into Y, and draw a stationary figure. Very difficult, and very precise!

How did you do it?

Just curious,

Bart

From Mendy Smith
Posted on January 16, 2010 at 1:01 AM

Bart,

This is stretching my memory a bit, but I think I was judging the distance between the peaks of the wave against the grid that was on the display. Granted, the method wasn't very precise, but it was alot of fun.

From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on January 16, 2010 at 3:59 PM

I love looking at old pictures. That facebook thing is fun . . . but scanning is kind of a pain if you don't have an easy one at home.

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Way back when

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