(no subject)

So I've been working on the canoe a bit.  Well, rather more than a bit.  Things keep taking longer than I expected, and in an effort not to fall behind I've been pushing myself to work a bit longer than is quite comfortable.  If I want to have the new canoe done by the time my dad and brother visit I will have to start the push to finish now, I think.

( You know you want to read about the canoe )

Album

One of my songs, Ballad of the Valkyries, was written originally without an instrument.  Now I'm perfectly capable of coming back and putting chords on things, but this song was written for Eve Online, a computer game that takes place in space.  And I have an ocarina program on my iPod that I sometimes play around with when I'm playing Eve because it has this pretty, lonely, sound that seems to me to suit the pictures on the screen.  And since the iPod version doesn't require that you blow into it, (there's also a version for iPhone that only makes sound when you blow on the microphone, or so I hear) it's possible to play this ocarina and sing at the same time.

Cool.  Add into that the fact that it has notes in a lower octave that a physical ocarina just can't have (using patterns of closed holes that would just produce an out-of-key squeak in a real ocarina), and it becomes a why isn't everyone using this type instrument.

So I think I'm going to arrange that song with an iOcarina part--as in, I've already written the arrangement, I'm just wondering if I need to change it up so it doesn't become monotonous as it's a rather long song.  The amusing thing is that with the Zoom I could do multipart arrangements so I could play chords if I wanted.  Of course if I did, people would think "synthesizer" rather than "ocarina" and I'm not sure I want to go that route; though I think synthesizers are often paired up with space I really liked the picture of the lonely space miner playing her ocarina.

And a couple of mornings ago I had a doctor's appointment (checkup) and I took my sheet music and my iPod and put in the earbuds and practiced the ocarina in the waiting room, which I would never have done with a real ocarina because I would never inflict my practicing on strangers who weren't free to run away.  But with the earbuds, nobody can hear my mistakes but me.

But I've been letting the practice-with-the-metronome-and-the-Zoom slide a little bit, and I need to stick with it.  Surely I can fit Tuesday and Thursday night recording in around the canoe.

Bum (or Bummer) Ankle

I felt perfectly fine this morning.  I went for a walk, no problems.  I worked on my music some, no problems.  I got up from lying on the floor trying to persuade Finale PrintMusic to play through some repeated music (several verses worth) for the mp3 recorder (which I couldn't do--PrintMusic won't play the repeats for some reason and I can't figure out why) and my ankle felt funny.  Kind of stiff and hurty.

I figured it was just that I'd held it in a funny position while I was wrestling with PrintMusic and ignored it, except that I put on my boots which should support the ankle better, and went in to work on the canoe.  I was planning to do as much carving on the end pieces as my wrists could handle, then put the last four ridge-parts on the forms.

But as I was clamping end pieces to the form and checking with a batten to see how deeply I had to carve, my ankle kept bothering me more and more.  Pretty soon I was limping.  Then I was limping worse.  I ended up giving up well before my wrists gave out, and coming inside to lie down on the couch with my ankle propped up, figuring it would get better soon.  Two hours later I asked Kip to bring me some Tylenol and my cane.  I've spent the remainder of the day inside, lying down or sitting with my feet up.  Kip went out and got me pizza.

I have put in some more time writing music in PrintMusic (but I still haven't solved the playing repeat problem.)  I found a note in You Stand Alone that had unaccountably disappeared and forced it to appear again and fixed it and put its lyric and its chord on.  I entered music for MayDaye and worked out a jig-ish sort of a thing to go with it.

But I really wanted to work on my BOAT dammit, and I can't do it until I can walk and stand without a cane.  And I don't have the faintest idea how I hurt my ankle; it feels positively twisted, but I would have remembered doing that.