Author: Laura Conrad

News from the Cantabile Band

The 5 of us playing the concert this Spring are working hard,
but I wanted to update the rest of you about the concert and the
Cantabile Band’s future plans.

Concert Dates

In addition to the previously announced performance on March 1
at 3 PM at the Loring-Greenough house, we will also be performing
at the ALL (Arts League of Lowell) Art Gallery on Sunday, February
22 at 1 PM.

Please try to make it to one or the other performance. In
addition, here’s the flyer, which has
more information about when and where, and has the program on the
back. It would be helpful if you could distribute it and post
it, especially if you live or work anywhere near the venues.

Future plans

In March, we will resume our dropin meetings on Tuesdays at
7:45 at my place. I hope to see
some of you then.

On May 3, we will be playing our usual Walk for Hunger
performance, for 40,000 or so people on Greenough Boulevard.
Please consider playing with us then, or at least coming by to
listen. Some or all of the April meetings will be reserved for
rehearsing that performance.

Got a New Toy

Santa Claus gave me some money, and I hadn’t bought a new
instrument for a while, so I gave Amazon $300 for an EWI-USB.

It’s a MIDI wind instrument controller that doesn’t have its own
battery or sounds, so it’s cheaper and lighter than serious wind
instrument controllers have been in the past.

My fantasy was that I would plug it in and immediately start
wailing away on Gershwin and Duke Ellington without having to buy
and learn to play a saxaphone or flugelhorn.

This hasn’t happened yet (I got it Wednesday afternoon) for two
reasons:

  • The fingering is called flute fingering, which is
    similar to recorder fingering and I did play modern flute for a
    while in high school. So I expected to just be able to pick it
    up. Within one octave I can, but to go into the next octave,
    you do a different thumb movement than on the recorder, and the
    fingerings, instead of being different for a couple of notes, go
    right back to being the same as the first octave. So using
    recorder fingering notation, and ignoring all the extra keys
    that are used for producing accidentals without forked
    fingerings, c is “2”, and D is “12345”. (With the thumb up on
    the next roller). I’m sure I can learn to do this eventually,
    but not yet.
  • I knew I was going to have to boot windows to run the
    software that came with it; what I didn’t know was that even
    when I did that, the software was going to be useless for
    playing anything. I think the name for what I hear when I load
    an instrument and play is “dropouts”. In any case, what happens
    is that several times a second, whatever sound is playing stops,
    so the effect is something like a vaguely pitched vacuum cleaner
    motor. If you listen real hard, you can tell the saxaphone
    vacuum cleaner from the tuba vacuum cleaner, but I don’t think
    anyone would be able to identify them from scratch. Or enjoy
    listening to Gershwin with those sounds. Note that no other
    MIDI synth I’ve tried, on either Windows or Linux, has this problem.

So what I’ve actually spent pieces of the last two days on is
figuring out how to load a soundfont from hammersounds into a LINUX
synthesizer and play it. I think I have that pretty much solved,
so the next thing is to figure out how to move the fingers. So it
will probably be a couple of weeks before it’s ready to amaze my
friends with. But maybe it will work out some day. And when it
does, it will be something I can join pickup rock bands with, if
the opportunity ever arises.

For the record, the LINUX setup is qjackctl; start jackd; start
qsynth; load soundfont if different from last time; connect qsynth
to EWI-USB in qjackctl connect window, alsa pane; select the
instrument you want in qsynth, and play. If you want to record
what you’re doing, you also start rosegarden. The default
connections may work here, or maybe you have to connect rosegarden
and qsynth. I have made this work, but I’m not yet playing well
enough to want to record it for posterity. But when I am, it will
be an alternate way to input music for transcription in lilypond.
(That’s another post.)

WordPress upgrade

If this blog looks different to you, it’s because I upgraded to
WordPress 2.7 on Sunday, December 21.

It mostly went pretty smoothly, although there were a couple of
scares:

  • Some pictures disappeared. This turned out to be because
    I had ended up deleting wp-content/uploads. Be sure to follow
    the instructions about backing up your blog before doing an
    upgrade (I had), and you will be able to fix this kind of
    problem. I’m still unconvinced that the automatic upgrading is
    going to work on my system, since a bunch of other allegedly
    automagic stuff doesn’t.
  • The silly “>>” bullet style came back. That’s just editing
    the default .css file, but I should get myself a style that has
    a good bullet style to start with.
  • It looked like the raw-html input wasn’t going to work, so I
    tried a plugin called WP Unformatted, which has very little
    documentation and what there is is pretty incomprehensible. It
    seemed like it would work ok for new posts, but would
    necessitate going back to the old posts nad setting a custom
    field in all of them. Also, I have enough trouble remembering
    to set a category, I don’t want to also have to set a custom
    field. In general, anything you can do in emacs (like the
    start-raw comment) is preferable to anything you have to
    remember to do in a GUI.
    So I went back and tested the old raw-html plugin, and
    it seems to be working OK. Let me know if you find any problems
    that matter.
  • One of the good things I did during the upgrade was switch
    to managing my sidebar with widgets instead of editing the
    sidebar.php file. Unfortunately, the “monthchunks” plugin I was
    using doesn’t work for 2.7, and I haven’t found a good
    substitute. Let me know if you have any suggestions.
  • The quotes plugin I was using has been superceded by a newer
    and probably better one. Unfortunately, I was too lazy to write
    a program to convert the database, so I had to spend some time
    putting the quotes into the new database by hand. But you can
    sit on the page and grab a new quote without reloading the whole
    page now. Isn’t Ajax wonderful?

Anyway, let me know about anything you see that you don’t like,
or anything you don’t see that you miss.

In general I recommend staying up to date on important
software, but it is more of a nuisance with software like
WordPress that has a lot of contributions that aren’t integrated
into the core software.

Schedule for the Holiday Season

This is mostly to remind you that we will be taking a rare
Tuesday off meeting tomorrow, December 23.

Please come next Tuesday, December 30, as it will be our last
dropin meeting for a couple of months.

Tuesdays between January 6 and February 24 are restricted to
and compulsory for the performers on the March 1 concert.

Other events

If you’re anywhere near Fall River on New Year’s Eve, there
will be an Early Music Venue from 7:30 to 10:00 PM at the Fall River First Night
celebration: program.

Report on the December 2 meeting

There seems to be an epidemic of plague running through the
Cantabile Band. I hope everybody recovers soon.

We played:

  • Van Eyck recorder solos related to Elizabethan tunes:
    • Daphne
    • Pavaene Lachrimae
    • Comagain
    • Excusemoy
  • Charlton Christmas duets
  • DeLoach Christmas duets
  • Chedeville Christmas duets
  • Praetorius Christmas duets
  • Goldstein Christmas duets

Schedule

The meetings, rehearsals and the party are at my place. The
meetings and rehearsals start at 7:45 PM.

  • Tuesday, December 9, regular meeting
  • Saturday, December 13, 4 PM, Christmas party
  • Tuesday, December 16, regular meeting
  • Tuesday, December 23, no meeting.
  • Tuesday, December 30, regular meeting, unless we end up with
    a New Year’s Eve gig, in which case this will be a rehearsal for
    that.
  • Tuesday, January 6 — Tuesday, February 27, rehearsals for
    March 1 concert, limited to and compulsary for performers in
    that concert.
  • Sunday, March 1, 3 PM, Concert at Loring-Greenough House in
    Jamaica Plain. Please come and bring all your friends and
    relations. It’s a beautiful 18th century house, and in addition
    to the music there will be an elegant
    tea reception following the concert.

Party

I have asked for “consideration” for parking for the party, so
don’t worry about parking in permit only areas on Broadway,
Windsor, and Clark Streets. I haven’t done this in the past, but
we’ve usually had it on a Sunday, when the permit only parking
restrictions don’t apply, and I have the impression they may have
stepped up Saturday enforcement recently.

There will be a vegetarian and a carnivorous main course; side
dishes, appetizers, and deserts are welcome.

Please invite anyone you think would enjoy the party.

Cantabile Christmas Party: December 13, 2008

Come to the Cantabile Renaissance
Band Christmas Party
on December 13, 2008, starting at 4 PM, at Laura
Conrad’s place, 233
Broadway, Cambridge.

Bring any food or drink you want to share, any instruments you
want to play, and a cheerful voice. If there’s music you
want to do, bring 10 copies or so.

This is a tell everybody you know to bring everybody they know
party. Here are some invitations to print and give
the people you want to invite.

The pictures on the invitation are by Hans
Baldung, a contemporary of Durer. The Christmas carol snippet
in the heading is from the West Gallery tune, Shepherds
Rejoice which represents the opposite tradition in
Christmas art:

No gold nor purple royal shining things

Baldung drew lots of gold and purple royal shining things.

I’ve asked for “consideration” for parking, so don’t worry about parking in the permit only spaces on Broadway, Clark St, and Windsor St.

Report on the November 18 meeting

We played:

  • Duets from Thesaurus Musicus
  • Weelkes:
    • Come, sirrah Jack, ho
    • The Nightingale, the organ of delight
    • O now weep now sing
    • Some men desire spouses
  • Dowland:
    • Thinkst thou then by thy fayning
    • Come away, come sweet love
    • Rest awhile, you cruel cares
    • Sleep, wayward thoughts
    • All ye, whom love or fortune hath
      betraid;
    • Wilt thou unkind thus reave me of my heart,}
  • Purcell, Down with Bacchus

Schedule

Our regularly scheduled dropin sessions at my place will
happen on Tuesdays starting at 7:45 PM from now until Christmas.
We’ll have to discuss
December 23; I normally leave town then.

At some point after that, meetings will be restricted to the
people performing on the March 1 concert at the Loring-Greenough
House.

Party

Based on the small number of people who responded to my
request for feedback about when to have the party, it looks like Saturday,
December 13 will be the best date. If that isn’t good for you
and you want to come, complain soon, or I’ll start
sending out invitations for then.

I’m now open to feedback
about when it should start. In general, I prefer later, which
gives me more time for cooking and cleaning, but of
course the people who turn into pumpkins at 8:30 want to start
in the middle of the afternoon. So tell me your preferred time,
and I’ll decide something based on consensus.

West Gallery music in context

The West Gallery
Quire, whose membership overlaps heavily with this group,
will be performing at St. Mary’s Church in Newton Lower Falls
this Sunday, in the context of their 10 AM service. If you’re
interested in this music and haven’t gotten to the monthly
workshops where you could play and sing it yourself, this would be a good way to find out
what it’s about. It’s also one of the better ways to hear the
way voices sound with a serpent.

The Cambridge Revels is
using a West Gallery theme this year, and has the Mellstock band
(including Phil Humphries on serpent)
performing with them. Bruce Randall and Renni Boy are also
performing. Tickets will probably sell out soon, so if you want
to go, order your tickets now.

Report on the November 11 meeting

We played:

  • Morley, Arise, get up my deere
  • Cavendish, Come, gentle swains,
  • Dowland:
    • Unquiet thoughts your civil slaughter
      stint
    • My thoughts are winged with hopes
    • If my complaints
    • Can she excuse my wrongs
    • Now, o now, I needs must part
    • Burst forth my tears
    • Go, crystall teares
    • Thinkst thou then by thy fayning
    • Come away, come sweet love
  • Rounds:
    • In praise of white wine
    • To Portsmouth

Schedule

Our regularly scheduled dropin sessions at my place will
happen on Tuesdays starting at 7:45 PM from now until Christmas.
We’ll have to discuss
December 23; I normally leave town then.

At some point after that, meetings will be restricted to the
people performing on the March 1 concert at the Loring-Greenough
House.

Party

If you have opinions on the date the Christmas party should be
held, let me know. For me, Saturday December 13, Saturday
December 20, and Sunday December 21 are all possibilities. If
there aren’t lots of conflicts on December 13, I would think it
might result in a bigger turnout of people who leave town to
celebrate Christmas somewhere else.

Report on the October 14 meeting

We played:

  • Métoyen, Serpent duet
  • Goldstein (arr.), Chester
  • The Dark is my delight
  • Farmer:
    • Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone
    • A little, pretty, bonnie Lass
    • You’ll never leave still tossing to and fro
  • When Daphne from fair PhÅ“bus did fly
  • Gibbon, The silver swan
  • Vecchi, Il bianco e dolce cigno
  • Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce cigno
  • Ravenscroft, Well fare the nightingale
  • Ravenscroft, To Portsmouth

Schedule

Next Tuesday, October 21st, the meeting is
restricted to and compulsory for the people who will be performing
on October 26 at the Boston Wort
Processors Ciderfest. At the moment, the performers are me,
Ishmael, Barney, and Sue. If you aren’t on that list and want to perform, let me know immediately.

Tuesday, October 28 will be a regular dropin meeting, except
that I will have to be late, so someone will have to volunteer to
arrive on time and let people in.

Tuesday, November 4, is Election Day, so I
won’t be available for a meeting. So there will be one only if
someone else organizes it.

After that, we will continue our regularly scheduled dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

Report on the September 30 meeting

We played:

  • Susato group:
    • La Morisque
    • Entre du fol
    • Danse du Roy
  • Sermisy, Martin menait son porceau au marché
  • Dowland:
    • Burst forth, my tears
    • Come, ye heavy states of night
    • All ye whom love or fortune hath betrayed
  • Arcadelt, Il bianco e dolce cigno
  • Vecchi, Il bianco e dolce cigno

Schedule

We will continue our regularly scheduled dropin meetings on Tuesdays at 7:45 PM at my place.

The known exception to that is that the October 21st meeting is
restricted to and compulsory for the people who will be performing
on October 26 at the Boston Wort
Processors Ciderfest. At the moment, the performers are me,
Ishmael and Sue. If you aren’t on that list and want to perform, let me know immediately.

Tuesday, November 4, is Election Day, so it’s likely that I
won’t be available for a meeting. So there will be one only if
someone else organizes it.