Hugh_C's blog about food, photos, music, video editing & other lesser codologies

My daughter K has been playing the viola for a few years now and since today was the first time it’s been out this year, I thought I’d stick up a little post. It’s a pleasure to hear her play, although I think she finds it uncomfortable playing for me. But we’ll both get over that. I really enjoy what she’s doing. Her technique has come on in leaps and bounds, and the sound she produces out of an admittedly inferior instrument is really warm and mellow. The music (as distinct from technique and tone) is really beginning to happen too. I’m not sure if she’ll come across this post anytime soon, but hopefully if and when she does she’ll realise that I appreciate her (and her music).

The journey hasn’t always been easy though; the early days, when she first started learning the violin, were pretty unpalatable. The sound of a beginner could be likened to a bag of strangled cats, but over the course of a year or two, that developed into something more tuneful. And then came vibrato. For those of you who don’t know, vibrato happens when you see violists, violinists, cellists, bassist and Jimmy Hendrix wobble their wrists round a bit when playing, it changes slightly the pitch that the instrument is producing and for some reason, it sounds great. The modern ear pretty much expects vibrato, so it goes largely unnoticed. Sometimes it’s overdone, like when Shirley Bassey sings, but that’s just a personal thing. I can’t play the viola to save my life (I’m a ukuleleist) but I did try, and I did try to add vibrato. I suppose for the uninitiated it’s a bit like spinning plates while simultaneously rubbing your head and stomach with different hands and reciting the alphabet backwards. It’s seriously hard.

The next big, difficult step was ensemble playing. It’s a big thing for a young person to get landed into a room of other largely unknown other young persons and to play music together. Shyness, timidness and pressure all come into play. But once over that hurdle, it becomes fun, I suppose. I played in an orchestra myself a long time ago and I enjoyed it thoroughly. So the ensemble thing was a bit step, but it builds a person up and the social aspect of being part of a group is really important.

So then, the change of instrument happened. K is a tall girl, taller than her mother easily. Great mileage will be had out of that. Anyway, she’s long-limbed and perhaps this was one of the reasons that her teacher at the time suggested she switch from violin to viola. It’s not something that I’ve regretted, the viola has a deeper, richer tone and the world is short of viola players. If she stays with it, she’ll likely earn pocket money in a year or two playing for cash. Not to be laughed at when you’re a student.

Anyhow, I hope she stays with it. The world will be a richer place.

OK I’m uploading this for no other reason than I seem to be breaking every available rule about blogging, namely: post regularly, keep it simple & keep it focused. I do none of these, but there again I have a very small audience, so it’s mostly just for me. So for those few of you out there: here’s a pretty girl, in blue. I took the photograph.

Pictured above is one Lisa R, an Irish model, with makeup and eye-prosthetics by Danielle Horan, an Irish student from the LA Makeup Academy. This was a fun session to shoot, however I kept on worrying about Lisa’s future health, batting those baby blues in a light breeze would possibly see her aloft, because Lisa is a slightly slight girl.

I agonised over the version above, or a BW conversion, so for those of you who’ve stayed with me this far, here’s another version, you be the judge, you be the jury.

For those of you old enough who might recall a song by Siouxsie & the Banshees called Eve White/Eve Black, you might be aware that I’m being a bit derivative in the title of this post, a little nod to my youth. I used to hang round with a bunch of people who played this song at the wrong speed on the turntable – 33 instead of 45 rpm (that’s a record Kids!) – scared the wits out of ourselves. It’s not the sunniest of songs. For those of you interested or old enough, here’s a link to it on youtube.

Shoot! I’ll just embed it here:

DYO for prospective parents from Hugh_C on Vimeo.

My daughter plays viola in the Intermediate Orchestra of the DYO (Dublin Youth Orchestras) and I was asked to make a short piece about the DYO for prospective parents. The auditions are being held today. The script was written by Brigitte de la Malene and the video/photography/editing by me. For more information, visit the DYO website.

I’ve been listening a lot recently to My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless which, depending on how you measure it, is twenty years old this year. This abstract, noodling record is beloved of shoegazers the world over and I’m still enjoying it after all this time. It suits my current mood, somewhat introspective and a bit concerned about what the immediate future holds. I can’t assimilate how and why our situation has crashed so catastrophically and quickly - it’s time to reassess and figure out what’s next.

I’ve been rabbiting on about how good Photo Booth is elsewhere on this blog so I should also mention that I’ve spent a little time messing round with GarageBand with my kids. The younger the child, the louder the noise, generally speaking. Hugo (3) is fond of the drum instruments. Shona had given me a midi keyboard a few years, and since both my older kids can actually play it, I’ve got them started on composing stuff. Kate is currently investigating 12 bar boogie woogie which is massively contrapuntal to her more classically-based viola studies. This is a good thing.

I learnt the piano a very long time ago and wasn’t very good at it, but with GarageBand’s editing tools, I managed to “record” my own tune and right the wrong ‘uns. There’s a limitation imposed though, you can’t print the sheet music from GarageBand (in an attempt to get you to buy the much more sophisticated and expensive Logic Express software from which you can), so what you’re seeing above is just a screen grab. Which is fine for a few bars, but anything longer is a pain.

Anyhow, here is a tune by Hugh: “Valse Sinistre”.

Protected by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License

My friend and fellow editor Derek Holland emailed me about ten days ago to see if I was going to see Jim White at the Sugar Club on Tuesday last. Needless to say I was blissfully unaware that it was on and immediately thanked my lucky stars and Derek that I had been made aware of the gig. Long-standing friend Klaus Harvey had introduced me to Jim White about three years ago with “Wrong-Eyed Jesus” and I’ve been a fan ever since.

Anyhoo, I ordered up some tickets and rallied the Dublin-based members of d’Squad for a meet at the Sugar Club.

It was flippin’ brilliant. After a good support session from Tadhg Cooke, we were confronted by Jim White and his band – a guitarist named Patrick Hargon [1] and a new sheet-music-reading bassist called Christian who’d only met the other two for the first time the day before.

Jim White’s gigs aren’t so much concerts as a mixture of music, story-telling and being there. A fantastic night’s entertainment altogether, including a few new words in the lexicon like sceptimysticism – you know there’s a 5th dimension out there but you just don’t believe it.

I’m not a reviewer so I won’t try, suffice to say that it was one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve been at for a long time and I hope that those folks going to the Tom Waits gig (I’m not) enjoy that as much with its attendant price tag. Brilliance altogether. I’m so glad that he played Still Waters, my favourite of his songs.

There was a kind of folksy vibe after the gig and Jim patiently greeted and spoke to many of the attending gigsters afterwards, including us. He volunteered that reading Pedro Paramo might be a clue to the lyric:

Yes and there are projects for the dead
And there are projects for the living…
Thought I must confess sometimes
I get confused by that distinction…

from Still Waters.

I’ll let you know after I’ve read it.

[1] Patrick is an interesting guy – he’s a fine guitarist, and he also teaches English to special needs kids in Omaha. We were wondering if the fact that he plays in a band give him exxtra kudos amongst his students. Probably does. He uses the word eschew.

When my monthly emusic downloads refresh I’ll be rushing out to buy this album from Karen Dalton.

I was pottering round the kitchen late one night, listening to the talented (and sadly graveyard-shifted) John Creedon on RTE Radio when this very eerie, nasally-timbred voice came over the airwaves and it turned out to be a song called Are You Leaving for the Country by Karen Dalton. Not sure whether she was male or female when I heard her first.

She was half Cherokee and beautiful with it, played a long necked banjo and hung round with amongst others Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village in the early 60s. Sparse in her recorded output. Favourite singer of all time for Nick Cave, so I suppose that’s an endorsement of sorts.

She died in 1993.