flute – Page 3 – To Infinity & Beyond Forever

Living in the Past Performance Video Released …Finally.

Posted on November 19, 2017January 29, 2021 by D. L. Keur

I actually started this a LONG time ago, but…. Heck! You know. Life, and all that. Mom deciding to up and head off the planet didn’t help matters. Well, by the time I got back around to this, the file had somehow corrupted, the visuals squeegeeing faster and slower than they were supposed to in chaotic, no formulaic, and, therefore, not easily fixable ways. Wound up having to start all over, something I’m never good at. I rarely procrastinate. Ever. But, when it comes to re-making something already done, then, yeah, I postpone, avoid, defer. But, a promise is a promise, so I beat myself over the head until I sat down and spent the two weeks necessary to redo the editing and splicing. So, here you have it. Jethro Tull’s Living in the Past, performed by zentao Music, namely me and Forrest. As ever, this arrangement is Forrest’s, who somehow manages to capture the essence of any piece he sets his hand to.

If you want to read about the flute playing in this piece, I talk about it here, in “Playing Tull’s Living in the Past“. That’s how I do it, but (…and here’s the biggy) it’s because I can’t get that airy sound that comes easy to Ian Anderson and to beginner flutists. I’ve tired every which way to try to make myself sound airy, but, to no avail. I guess I spent too many hours working very hard not to sound airy. I suppose I could sabotage my flute’s pads, but I won’t. 😀

[arve url=”https://youtu.be/WL0Ui8u0Eco” /]

My Morning Funny

Posted on July 21, 2017 by D. L. Keur

So, husband texts, asking which pieces I’d like to rehearse when he gets home. I give him a rather extensive list of well over a dozen difficult pieces. An hour-and-a-half later, when I’m working through number four on the list, he texts to tell me that he’s hit all of them, so we’re good to go, and he’s heading out …which means he’s starting his assigned heavy-haul KW semi- and heading toward customs to get back into the U.S.

I sit there staring at that text, thinking, ‘You hit that entire list? In an hour-and-a-half? Wow!’ Then comes my sigh of frustration.

Music is so totally in his hand, and so is his instrument. What I have to work weeks at, he manages in a few minutes, or, at most, a few run-throughs during his practice sessions.

Laughter strikes me. It’s only fitting, I think, that me, who spent decades in formal study, grilled and drilled, has to work very hard to come up to speed, while he, who had no formal education in music or his instrument, can toss off really, really intricate, difficult riffs like it’s nothing and hit them every time.

I used to be that good, but with a qualifier: only after years and years of determined practice and only by continuing daily practice, practicing every day, at least four hours a day, could I be that adept and agile, my sight-reading top-notch, my ability to toss off brand new pieces superb, and my repertoire flawless — four hours of practice a day. And that, my friends, is the difference between a virtuoso musician (him) and somebody who’s just talented.

When the POG2 and the Digitech Throw Tantrums

Posted on July 19, 2017January 29, 2021 by D. L. Keur

Like I mentioned previously, there’s a lag between playing a note and it sounding through the PA. It’s not much. It’s usually not that noticeable …unless I’m playing under heavy distortion or using the stomp loop to bring up the POG2’s multiple voicing to go along with some of the Digitech RP1000’s distortion or flanger or …whatever makes the sound ‘happen’. Then, it can be noticeable milliseconds of lag, requiring me to really lead the beat. Occasionally, though, the units actually throw tantrums.

I was practicing some difficult foot switching between patches on a piece where I’m playing some fast, upper register lines. As I switch between patches, I’m hearing wobbles the moment I bring the parts up to speed …which, admittedly, really gallop along. I slow the tempo down, and the wobbling disappears. Bring the tempo back up, and there are the wobbles, again.

I’m one of those people who looks, first, to themselves as creating or causing the problem. A check with effects off, though, showed that, I was playing the part accurately. Bringing the effects units back online, I tried again, only to find that, sure enough, at speed, the wobbles happened. Now, I knew that neither the Digitech nor the POG2 like the flute’s third register’s upper high notes played at speed, but this particular glitch hadn’t ever exposed itself to my hearing before …maybe because, stressed out about just getting the switches hit when I should, I wasn’t listening — all too possible. Now I was listening, though.

Trying the line without the POG2 didn’t improve things. Trying the line with only the POG2 on and bypassing the Digitech, also didn’t make things go smoother. I began trying various other patches on the Digitech with the POG2 off. Okay. That worked. I tried other voicing on the POG2. Okay, too. It was both the Digitech’s patch and the voicing being asked of the POG2 that were throwing problems, and isolating one, the other, or having them both working together didn’t make any difference. They did not, either of them, like that line played at speed and were vehemently voicing their objections through the PA.

It made me laugh out loud to hear the machines in their grumbles. They were both having a devil’s time hitting the pitches that swiftly. Slow it down just a tad, and everything stabilized. Turn it up to burn speed, though, and both of them threw fits.

The funny things you have to deal with playing power-driven flute!

The Upbeat Man and the Downbeat Woman

Posted on June 30, 2017 by D. L. Keur

(link to lossless flac file is below)

My husband is a rock musician. Through and through. Ask him to play anything ‘rock’, blues, even jazz, and he’s all over it. Ask him to play something more folk or classical, and he begins to suffer. He’s an upbeat man. I’m a downbeat woman. I look for the beat. He looks for the ‘and’ between the beats. Trouble brews. Always.

Most of what we play …because that’s what he arranges …is classic rock — stuff written to emphasize the upbeat. And, of course, I play it like the downbeat woman I am …which makes for lively sessions with husband waving his hands in the air, singing out the upbeats. (I’d love to catch him on video doing that, but, well, that’s not going to fly. He’d be giving me his Beethoven impersonation. You know, stormy eyebrows?!)

Anyway, we did manage to get In Memory of Elizabeth Reed laid down, so, here, in all its upbeat glory, despite the downbeat woman on flute, is the audio of the culmination of today’s efforts.

For those who have the capability to play flac files, which are better sounding than .mp3s because they’re lossless, here’s that file:

For those only capable of handling .mp3s, here’s that one:

Latest Audio Release – Hold Your Head Up

Posted on May 31, 2017 by D. L. Keur

This last weekend, two recording sessions produced two new covers to release. Video won’t be available for awhile, because, honestly, with one of me, I can’t keep up with the processing. Tuesday last, I posted he audio of Nothing Else Matters, a very special piece to Forrest and me, but, while I uploaded the audio of Hold Your Head Up, I didn’t have enough time allotted to get it linked in and properly labelled. I did manage to get it up on SoundCloud, but barely. There’s no cover art, yet, so I’m using one of our defaults. Again, just not enough of me to go around. Enjoy.