Category Archives: music

Things you can do with vegetables

Posted on Aug 16, 2008 | Leave a comment

Music

Well, one thing you can do is make musical instruments out of them.

Recently I heard a piece on the radio about an orchestra who do this. After the concert they cook their home-made instruments into a tasty vegetable stew or soup which the audience are invited to experience as well as the music.

They are the Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, and you can hear some samples on their website.

The samples are mostly quite avant-garde, maybe with elements of free jazz, and there’s definitely no attempt at anything which requires beautifully tuned harmony — but it’s worth listening to. As suggested on the site, the music is certainly very vegetable in nature; some of it sounds as if it’s meant to be played or heard by triffids. One of the longer samples has some impressively saxophone-like sounds, which I think are actually produced by an instrument using a red or green pepper as its bell.

Apparently they do a Kraftwerk cover version, but I think I’d need to hear that to be convinced of the similarity

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s actually experience one of this orchestra’s performances (and subsequent soup).

Art

Or: you can make art out of them. And quite impressive art, at that. I recently discovered this photo album of watermelon sculptures on Rachel Vo‘s page and I’m impressed. I wasn’t aware that such things existed. Do have a look. (Warning: once you’ve finished enjoying them as art, you may well start feeling hungry and craving fresh fruit.)

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Opening the Envelope

Posted on Aug 13, 2008 | Leave a comment

Sitting in a nice nearly empty and quiet library. People still seem to insist on using the computers in pairs who then sit next to me, but at least the pair next to me is a quiet one.

Anyway: yesterday I finally got round to Opening The Envelope…

What envelope? The one with the music in which needs to be practised by Friday.

Sorry, what music for Friday? What are you on about? Talk sense, man!

The event

Friday is interesting: I’m leading a small orchestra, for a conducting course. It’s part of a week-long event for singers and choir conductors. Both the singers and the conductors come in three flavours: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced.

On the last day of the course, the Advanced conductors have the scary task of conducting a piece for choir and orchestra. Bear in mind that these are choir conductors and that conducting an orchestra is a substantially different skill. So, we’re here for them to practise on. And we’re allowed to abandon usual orchestral etiquette and answer the conductors back, tell them why their beat was difficult to follow…

For an orchestral player it’s all quite fascinating, because usually, we simply follow the conductor with more or less success and play accordingly. At the conducting course we get to discover why some conductors are easier to follow than others, and we get to compare and contrast different conducting styles. And we discover that sometimes the things that go wrong in our own orchestras are actually the conductor’s fault. It’s brilliant! And what’s more, they pay us for it!

But we have to be nice to the victims conducting students because for most of them it’s their first experience of conducting an orchestra, especially one that answers back, and they’re quite nervous. Get it right and great fun is had by all, including the students.

The envelope

Anyway, I opened the envelope. Looked at the music. Sightread most of the music. Took 20 minutes. It’s all pretty straightforward and it looks as though all I really need to do is to write a few fingerings in one of the pieces.

I was worried about having to do this after six weeks of non-playing (see earlier entry), but it was obvious that any deficiences in my playing were the result of needing to get warmed up a bit rather than any Nasties in the music. My right arm seems to have made friends with the violin bow again, but my left hand was tensing up a bit. So I spent the rest of the practice session doing some Sevcik finger exercises and practising keeping my fingers as relaxed as possible.

I suppose I now need to include a health warning post about how to practise finger exercises, but that can wait until I feel like writing it. In the meantime: Don’t practise them incessantly and with tense fingers, since that’s the opposite of what they’re for and has the potential to give you RSI and the like if you keep it up.

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Violin practice

Posted on Aug 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

I really must do some. As you can see, I’ve procrastinated by putting up a blog post about procrastination 😉

Haven’t really played for about six weeks and I have to lead a small orchestra on Friday. Hope I still know how a violin works!

Later: Well the first thing that happened was an unpleasant surprise. I’d evidently put the violin away in a hurry the last time I played–which was at a friend’s leaving party–forgetting to wipe the rosin from the strings. And then six weeks’ hot weather had stuck it on very firmly. I can’t say how unpleasant it is trying to play with sticky strings.

So, out with the surgical spirit. This cleans rosin off amazingly well, using up a chunk of practice time, but see warnings

Finally, practised some three-octave scales, on a very medical-smelling violin, to try to calibrate my fingers. Reassured that my left hand still knows how to play; a bit disappointed that my right arm seems to have forgotten that it’s supposed to be friends with the bow. But that’s fine. I’m sure they’ll have made friends again by Friday.

Warning 1: surgical spirit may be good for removing rosin but it’s also good for removing violin varnish; I’ve met several teachers who have at one time or another had a pupil get the wrong idea and make the discovery. Keep it well away from the body of the violin. It’s OK to use it to use it on an ebony fingerboard; that’s unvarnished to start with. Not sure about cheaper fingerboards; I think they’re stained to look like ebony, and the surgical spirit might dissolve the staining.

Warning 2, which is less obvious: surgical spirit should just contain methanol and ethanol. So several months ago I assumed that if I went to buy some, that’s what I would get. Well, It Ain’t Necessarily So: I had a choice between Surgical Spirit Ph. Eur. from Boots, and Superdrug Surgical Spirit from Superdrug, where I went first. Out of curiosity, I checked the ingredients, and saw: “Castor oil 2.5%” in the Superdrug version. Castor oil!!!. Definitely not what you want on your violin strings. So check the ingredients.

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