No, I did not actually go there. Of course not. In the computer age, and living where I do, I think of travelling as a complete waste of time unless it is absolutely necessary, and it was not at all necessary for me because what I needed from the unique genius of Beijing I already had in Nelson, albeit somewhat shape-shifted because the Oriental half of my medical treatment was primarily Ayurvedic, with a little Chinese phys ed thrown in.
You see, I had a heart attack, or if there is a subtle difference, congestive heart failure, something I had actually never really heard of. As I said to our GP, except for literature on fitness, I've never been fond of medical studies. I thought what I had, after a profoundly unusual and painful physical attack two years ago, was something called bronchiolitis, inflammatiion of the bronchial tubes, a situation that invites water into the bronchial tubes, thus interfering quite substantially with one's oxygen supply. I lost about a third of my habitual efficiency for striding up and down the hills of Nelson. I did not learn this from my doctor, I learned it from the Net, and it seemed to answer my questions even unto its return the next year and again the next. I never even thought of going to my doctor, because as mystic in the seventh and final mansion I assumed that the extreme pain of the two full days' exercise was simply part and parcel of my spiritual life. The 48 hours of agony had immediately followed a lengthy discussion with a young Jehovah's Witness person, dealing with that religion's teaching that the Cross was simply a single stake, and lacking the cross-piece.
Also, I was aware of the stigmata that was given to Francis of Assisi and Padre Pio, from whose order, the Capuchins, comes our present bishop, John Corriveau, once a year at least, a most welcome guest at our dinner table. When I first read Jorgensen's Life of the medieval saint, in the 58-59 winter of my conversion, I totally believed not only in Francis' affliction. but also that there was no problem at all with getting the same thing myself. It was not that I could think of myself as that holy - far from it - but I had only weeks before been given the spiritual experience of being drawn into the spiritual womb of the Blessed Virgin. I prayed mightily that God would leave my hands alone, as I was a guitarist and folk singer and could not see how the stigmata could in any way improve my musicianship. To this day, bless Him, God has listened to my prayers. In fact I am at the moment designing the opening segments for fretted instruments on Microstation Minstrels, simply because I had such a triumphant first lesson ever on the five-string banjo with my grandson Nathan when he was here with his parents last weekend, come down from the Cariboo to see how I was doing. I don't think we're going to see any blood.
It turned out that my oldest and her husband and son were and essential part of what we can now call the Beijing Experience.
About a month ago Marianne had made up her housekeeper's mind that it was high time that the eastern wall of this very study, covered by a very loaded bookshelf, should get the hell out in order to make room for the Concept 2 rowing machine. When she heard that Mon and Matt and Nathan's young adult muscles were showing up the weekend after I got out of KLH, she decided to take the bull by the horns, or the rower by its fly wheel, and have the Concept 2 moved to the study, a much warmer and convenient place than the attic. 'Twas done between breakfast and lunch on the Saturday morning. A ton of books went to the attic, and the rower came into its own. It was on the following Monday morning, after reading from Drs. Michael Murray and Julian Whitaker, that I - and the Holy Spirit - took myself off the prescription drugs.
I do not exagerate the importance of the rower. I had a problem with sporadic irregular heart beat until Thursday night or so. A little scary admittedly, but the rower has definitely been part of the solution. I possibly put on more Henleys than I needed to (a Henley is the rower's equivalent of 2 kilometres, or 105 calories), pushing for four or five Henleys a day, or rather a night, as that is when most of them are done, but the evenings with the radical heartbeat are gone. I am now a nice, steady, 80 at rest, which means I can keep up a modest 100+ on the machine. I row in 15 calorie reps, taking lots of time to read in between segments.
And as the first Chi Gong exercise Marianne showed me as soon as I got home from KLH was basically Looking Back at the Moon, from The Eight Brocades, which is fundamentally a massage for the heart, I was able to realize that rowing is also an excellent, natural, massage for the heart, just like bending foward from the waist while sitting and reading the Summa or MT's spanking new Douai-Rheims Latin/English Bible.
How do we know about that hospital in Beijing, where they have the western medicine side-by-side with the Traditional Chinese? Because it so happens that the aunt of The Economist's Beijing correspondent is a business woman in Nelson and mother of a former girlfriend of another grandson. Ted's wife own's the hospital combo.
As I said, living here, I don't need to travel.
I'll deal with MT's wonderful herbal medicine and diet solutions in Part Two.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Music Instruction Bulletin
I desperately need to inform those good souls who read both the Ranger and Mr. Cameron's Conservatory that there have been some radical changes made to chapter seven of MCC. The old version has been much chopped at the end. Much too much information for starters, and worse, the real simplicity now available in the rewrite was much obscured. Part of this complication and confusion is due to my too great a reliance on triads as a discipline in themselves in one piano hand, as I had not yet applied number theory to converting the triad into a pair of intervals, one for each hand, and certainly had not yet realized in myself that sort of study in all its applications, thus enabling me to become didactic with the most basic basics.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
The Launch
So, this Wednesday I did not have to scoot downtown after my afternoon nap to buy a new flapper, or drain valve, for the toilet. A week ago we were set to film some keyboard method, but the bathroom emergency blew that intention out the window, and it looked like my hope of getting some of the scheme out to the children and other beginners of the universe before Christmas was not going to be fulfilled. A household primarily given over to the prayer life simply cannot get creative just any old time it feels like it. It's not easy to find a time slot that works as well as Wednesday afternoon. Oh, well. Patience, jackass, patience, as the old joke says. And anyway there was still some consolidating to do with the busted triads, as I call them, which are turning out to be the most mellifluous and meaningful "arpeggio" studies I have ever seen and heard. It's taken 23 years to get there, but the journey was worth the trouble. Just imagine being able to contemplate the Trinity and practice your scales and harmonies at the same time. On this earth, you don't get much closer to heaven. But there were no surprises today, and at two p.m. I was summoned to the studio by Madame Producer/Director, and everything went reasonably smoothly for a beginning.
There's nothing like arpeggios or indeed any kind of harmony on the first episode of Microstation Minstrels. Just the D mode, mode one, in its 11 note range, in four segments, with some historical chatter by myself, the first words of which actually came to me as I was walking back up the hill with the new flapper in my pocket. (Two days later I bought a back up. There is no negotiating with a malfunctioning toilet.) MT, of course, valiantly, oversaw the raconteur and handled all the controls. I realized recently that on and off, she and I have worked together in a variety of performances for 40 years. We always wondered about a time when we would record the old Bluemantle Trio, but never thought about putting the music scheme on the Net until this summer, when Garry Waldie told me he would film the keyboard segments and send them privately, on YouTube, to a journalist at the Vancouver Sun, my old employer. Thus the spark of the ultimate connection was born, and the ultimate technoklutz realized he'd have to acquire some sophistication with the audio-visual aspects of cyber world. Then came the equipment I have mentioned before, some trial runs, and finally, this afternoon.
And then the good clean fun of sending the message to family, friends, selected media, and even a well-placed soul in the American film business.
There's nothing like arpeggios or indeed any kind of harmony on the first episode of Microstation Minstrels. Just the D mode, mode one, in its 11 note range, in four segments, with some historical chatter by myself, the first words of which actually came to me as I was walking back up the hill with the new flapper in my pocket. (Two days later I bought a back up. There is no negotiating with a malfunctioning toilet.) MT, of course, valiantly, oversaw the raconteur and handled all the controls. I realized recently that on and off, she and I have worked together in a variety of performances for 40 years. We always wondered about a time when we would record the old Bluemantle Trio, but never thought about putting the music scheme on the Net until this summer, when Garry Waldie told me he would film the keyboard segments and send them privately, on YouTube, to a journalist at the Vancouver Sun, my old employer. Thus the spark of the ultimate connection was born, and the ultimate technoklutz realized he'd have to acquire some sophistication with the audio-visual aspects of cyber world. Then came the equipment I have mentioned before, some trial runs, and finally, this afternoon.
And then the good clean fun of sending the message to family, friends, selected media, and even a well-placed soul in the American film business.
Friday, December 13, 2013
King Korg
The Korg microstation is now in place, picked up from the music store this morning while I was at Tim's, watching him growing so nimble with the numbers that he is now charging into solfa. The ladies handled the purchase, and the list of instructions that are the sort of items I have hitherto studiously avoided, happy to leave the technical side of things to those better qualified to deal with it. And it was Marianne of course, not I, who handled installing the device in the studio.
Until I actually have to come to grips with something, I very often make mistakes about the thing. Margaret Mitchell, I got it into my head at some point long ago after I had seen the movie of Gone With the Wind, was a spinster school teacher. (She was in fact a married woman, and a veteran journalist, as I discovered after I researched her history in the course of draughting songs for an opera based on her novel.)) And the first time I ran into the Korg name, some eight years ago when I bought an little electronic tuner, I picked up the idea that it was Swedish. Not so, as everyone but me has always known; it's a name from Japan, made up from the first letters of the founders of the company in 1962, the year I learned, as a classroom teacher, that there had come into middle school math classes a system for reorganizing the numerals so they could be used for the simple on/off calculators at the heart of computer technology. Arithmetic when I was a child had been all about base 10, suddenly it was just as interested, in some cases more so, in base 2.
So now we have a recording and film studio, compared to the normal facilities of the industry at its grandest, about the size of a microchip. But you know what they say about small packages. And it's that time of the year, when the Infinite came down as a very small package indeed, considering what He really was.
For once in my pitta/vata determined life, I'm not in a hurry to put the Korg into the ultimate performance mode. Experiment and research, trial and error, rehearsals in blue jeans and street shoes, yes; but the final version of the opening presentation on YouTube is waiting on a number of factors, probably some of them not even known to me.
# # # # #
For example, since I wrote the above, Tim has acquired a determination to start mastering Gregorian, now that he can read a bass staff as well as waltz around the modes via the numbers. So he and I together will start charting, beginning with the Kyrie from Mass VIII. We have our choice of melody lines. The Parish Book of Chant has it in old notation, in Mode V. Adoremus contains a three voice version in C - a single line of melody with two voice intervals in the bass staff - and Achille Bragers Vatican Kyriale, carries the ball with four voices, in Eflat. As Tim is not a little adroit with the numbers, we'll ramble about in all three, perhaps transposing as low as A, just to have the exercise of growling a bit, pretending we're Tibetan Buddhist monks.
But that will be for horsing around and general exercise. The serious work, as we're both only STUDENTS of composition, will be to create an entire first harmony of thirds and fourths only. That, of course, will be done in C, inasmuch as C is most normal pitch for that Kyrie.
The other surprise, which happened on the same day as Tim announced his new ambition, was that of running into someone, from the very heart of the ordinary music education establishment, who has expressed an initial interest in learning more about my ideas.
Until I actually have to come to grips with something, I very often make mistakes about the thing. Margaret Mitchell, I got it into my head at some point long ago after I had seen the movie of Gone With the Wind, was a spinster school teacher. (She was in fact a married woman, and a veteran journalist, as I discovered after I researched her history in the course of draughting songs for an opera based on her novel.)) And the first time I ran into the Korg name, some eight years ago when I bought an little electronic tuner, I picked up the idea that it was Swedish. Not so, as everyone but me has always known; it's a name from Japan, made up from the first letters of the founders of the company in 1962, the year I learned, as a classroom teacher, that there had come into middle school math classes a system for reorganizing the numerals so they could be used for the simple on/off calculators at the heart of computer technology. Arithmetic when I was a child had been all about base 10, suddenly it was just as interested, in some cases more so, in base 2.
So now we have a recording and film studio, compared to the normal facilities of the industry at its grandest, about the size of a microchip. But you know what they say about small packages. And it's that time of the year, when the Infinite came down as a very small package indeed, considering what He really was.
For once in my pitta/vata determined life, I'm not in a hurry to put the Korg into the ultimate performance mode. Experiment and research, trial and error, rehearsals in blue jeans and street shoes, yes; but the final version of the opening presentation on YouTube is waiting on a number of factors, probably some of them not even known to me.
# # # # #
For example, since I wrote the above, Tim has acquired a determination to start mastering Gregorian, now that he can read a bass staff as well as waltz around the modes via the numbers. So he and I together will start charting, beginning with the Kyrie from Mass VIII. We have our choice of melody lines. The Parish Book of Chant has it in old notation, in Mode V. Adoremus contains a three voice version in C - a single line of melody with two voice intervals in the bass staff - and Achille Bragers Vatican Kyriale, carries the ball with four voices, in Eflat. As Tim is not a little adroit with the numbers, we'll ramble about in all three, perhaps transposing as low as A, just to have the exercise of growling a bit, pretending we're Tibetan Buddhist monks.
But that will be for horsing around and general exercise. The serious work, as we're both only STUDENTS of composition, will be to create an entire first harmony of thirds and fourths only. That, of course, will be done in C, inasmuch as C is most normal pitch for that Kyrie.
The other surprise, which happened on the same day as Tim announced his new ambition, was that of running into someone, from the very heart of the ordinary music education establishment, who has expressed an initial interest in learning more about my ideas.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Retiring the Roller
Well, the old faithful rubber keyboard, the Roller, has been retired. Not from my armchair, where resting on a small plank it has been my study device for years in the wee small hours, but from the recording studio. The Roller, insists Madame Director and Producer, has a few too many limitations by comparison with a Korg sequencer/sampler/synthesizer we spotted last week in Donny Stewart's music store. Once we had been instructed by Don on the remarkable virtues of this masterpiece of technology, I realized that it would make the perfect packaged chamber orchestra to back up the songs from the opera. Marianne had already moved into the studio the Edirol powered speakers we bought some years ago, when we thought we might be recording music on an Edirol Roland MP3 digital recorder. The MP3 did get some work with some historical sketches recorded for the museum, but no music was involved with the recorder, while the speakers only functioned on my behalf, so I could listen to the television on earphones.
The Korg first caught my eye not because of its abilities with sound, but because of its size. It is made with narrower keys, and produces five octaves of music with about the same length as the Roller uses to render four. This gives more scope and a pretty complete two-handed picture under the webcam. This will provide the maximum opportunity to present the method in all its simplicity, order, and completeness.
Talk about having all your ducks in a row!
We would have zipped down to the music store and picked up the Korg right after this afternoon's session in the studio, but it happens to be Sunday, and that part of Baker Street is pretty quiet.
I really did want to present the method on the dear old Roller, so kids and other beginners could see how much could be learned about essentials on an inexpensive and very portable device, but music is, after all, all about the sound, so we have to take the opportunity that shows itself. And I suspect that the Korg will offer much to confidence and inspiration. Just imagine Christopher Columbus setting off to discover India in the battleship Missouri.
The Korg first caught my eye not because of its abilities with sound, but because of its size. It is made with narrower keys, and produces five octaves of music with about the same length as the Roller uses to render four. This gives more scope and a pretty complete two-handed picture under the webcam. This will provide the maximum opportunity to present the method in all its simplicity, order, and completeness.
Talk about having all your ducks in a row!
We would have zipped down to the music store and picked up the Korg right after this afternoon's session in the studio, but it happens to be Sunday, and that part of Baker Street is pretty quiet.
I really did want to present the method on the dear old Roller, so kids and other beginners could see how much could be learned about essentials on an inexpensive and very portable device, but music is, after all, all about the sound, so we have to take the opportunity that shows itself. And I suspect that the Korg will offer much to confidence and inspiration. Just imagine Christopher Columbus setting off to discover India in the battleship Missouri.
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