Sunny Saturday Mornings

 

Sunny Saturday mornings are nice. I thought the light patterns reflected from my ceramic bowl were beautiful, so I photographed them. That book is the fifth in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It is also the last in the series for me. The first four were very good, although there were too many elements which annoyed me. I heard that the quality dropped off after that point, and I found that to be very true. Oh, well.

Snow Sculpture

Since I have been recovering from a sinus infection this last week, I haven't had the energy to go out cross country skiing or winter running. I started to catch the cabin fever, and was feeling ready to beat down my walls. So, today I ran over to the church parking lot to jump on the snow piles a bit. It was fun, and I started to feel better right away. Thanks to the cold, the snow was crusted in a way that I have rarely seen. It was really thick on the opposite side of the snow mounds. I tried punching through it and hurt my hand a bit. After that I just kicked through it. I threw some chunks for Maya, and she glady lunged and chomped on them. One large plate stuck into the snow standing straight up, and I got the idea to make a formation of them, emulating Andy Goldsworthy to a small degree. After about ten minutes, I decided that I wanted to get a picture of it before the sun set, so I ran back home and grabbed my camera. I made it in time to get a few good shots. Next time I'll make something more elaborate. Maybe a chain going across the whole parking lot, or a spiral. I'd need something to cut them more precisely, too. It would look neat contrasting with the black of the asphalt.

A Song

Once I had gotten fairly proficient at playing by ear using my three recorders, I decided that I wanted to be able to read music for them. I wrote a song for my soprano, alto and tenor recorders using Finale, and then set about to learn to read and play it. I got through the tenor part, and then the soprano with less difficulty, since they use the same mappings. The Alto part threw me for a loop, since it is all shifted. It's like having all the cardinal directions rotated 90 degrees on every map, and then having to follow a series of directions while driving. Not easy. But I got through it eventually. It is an interesting mental exercise, so I'm sure I'll do it more often. I used my camera, which has a stereo microphone, to make the audio recordings. This added a step, but otherwise worked fine. I then combined, lined everything up, and did the editing using Audacity, which is a very nice freeware program. You can download the song from my website here:

Recorder Trio Exp.mp3

Well, enjoy, and please let me know what you think of it!

Also, MIDI.