8r4d #date night at the #orchestra [read more...]

8r4d Another new year same back at #orchestra again for the second half of our season. No more easy Christmas music, either! [read more...]

8r4d If ever AI will replace me in #orchestra this is probably what it will look like. Oh #japan [read more...]

8r4d #orchestra is back in session, same notes different tunes [read more...]

8r4d Another season of #orchestra is in the books as we sold out the venue for our year end #concert this afternoon. I have a few month of rest and can focus on some more casual and fun music… and doing some #violin maintenance.

8r4d I wanted to post a pic of our new #orchestra rehearsal space with a bit of the #downtown context.

8r4dsfeets Ready to try my new toy at #orchestra — i shouldn’t be this excited about a foot pedal.

8r4d Our new #orchestra rehearsal space is about to rock.

8r4d I finally broke down and bought a foot pedal for my iPad.

A couple years ago I switched to full digital for my #orchestra #sheetmusic which simply mean that rather than printing the multiple pages out and keeping them organized in a binder, I’ve been using forScore and PDFs on my iPad. This isn’t that unusual. About a third of the orchestra, including our conductor, are on tablets of some kind.

Turing the page has rarely been a bother tho. Tap the edge of the screen. But two things have changed this year: a) i’ve been sharing a lot more and b) our music is a bit odd this year in that some of our music has page turns mid-phrase or in confusing points. The solution is in a foot pedal. They are so integral that the box is actually cross branded with the sheet music app logo.

It does one thing. It turns the page with a foot tap… which is important when my hands are busy playing a violin.

8r4d Or new rehearsal space for #orchestra is pretty slick , gotta say.

8r4d Another year another season of #orchestra

8r4d If you’re not a #violin player chances are you’ve never really payed any attention to the intricacies of the parts of the instrument itself.

I’ve been in #orchestra for about five years now and playing for over eight, and it was in about my second year that I upgraded from my student violin to a fancier model. The student model came fully equipped with all the little bits to make it easier to play, including a full set of fine tuners. But when I upgraded, the luthier from whom I bought it said something like “this one doesn’t have them and we can always add them if you want to later…” and I bought it and have been mucking around tuning my violin with the pegs for years.

Which is fine.

But I was sitting there struggling the other day for the thousandth time and it occurred to me that I should probably price out what it would cost me to put on some fine tuners… which of course turned out to be about fifteen bucks via a next day shipping order from Amazon. In other words, I’ve been struggling for years thinking this was a complex problem when it was about as complex sitting in the dark for five years before just ordering fresh light bulbs for a burnt out lamp.

In other other words, my violin now has fine tuners and my tuning is immensely finer.