Of course, baddies make better heroes than goodies, but still: two supervillain 3-D animated features in a row? Can’t they think of anything else? Despicable Me was not terribly original. Now imagine an even less original movie.
So what? It turned out to be unexpectedly good. It could have been better, of course. My main problem is with the soundtrack: I mean, why two AC/DC songs? And Michael Jackson’s Bad — man, that’s what I call evil.
Speaking of Saffron Walden library. A few years ago there was a book sale and I bought this book for something like two quid. (Now, Amazon sells the very same book
It has exactly the right amount of physics — mostly diagrams, a few tables and, refreshingly, no equations; beautiful photographs throughout; and very accessible writing, with occasional gems like this:
Well-chronicled in the (difficult to find) little book Die Dämmerungserscheinungen, the explanation of alpenglow is straightforward.
You just can’t make this stuff up.
I spotted this album (or rather, its cute cardboard sleeve) in the Saffron Walden library. It has a modest CD section; even so, CDs are divided into categories (presumably made up by the music industry). This one was in the “country” section. Frankly, I don’t care that much about country music, it’s just happen to be located over the “folk” and that one is over the “jazz and blues”. I thought it was misplaced. No prizes for guessing why: look at the cover picture, the title, and the name of the band.
What a lucky discovery. Of course Carolina Chocolate Drops ain’t no country act. They are old-time string band. Nominally it consists of Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens (the beauty in the centre) and Justin Robinson, but five tracks on Genuine Negro Jig also feature Sule Greg Wilson. And their permutations. On a beautiful rendition of Why Don’t You Do Right? it is Giddens (vocal) and Flemons (guitar) plus Wilson providing “leg” percussion. On a title track, it is Giddens (fiddle), Robinson (hand clapping and foot percussion), Flemons (bones — wait, bones?) and Wilson (computer hard drive “triangle”). On Reynadine, Giddens sings unaccompanied. And so on. All wonderful through and through, but my favourite song here is an “acoustic hip hop version” of Hit ’Em Up Style.
On trombone, you can take the same note in more than one position. For instance, F3 can be played in both first and sixth positions, C♯4 (D♭4) in both second and fifth positions. Here’s the chart of trombone pedal tones and first five harmonics in seven positions:
The harmonic series go further than that but for a moment I constrain this chart only with those I can play.
Yesterday, I modified my blog template layout to enable the JavaScript-based SyntaxHighlighter by Alex Gorbatchev, with help of these instructions. SyntaxHighlighter does not understand the LilyPond syntax, but it is still useful. For one, it allows you to copy the code to clipboard in one click. Here’s how the LilyPond input for the above harmonic series chart looks like:
% ****************************************************************
% Trombone Harmonic Series / Positions
% ****************************************************************
\version "2.12.3"
\layout {
ragged-right = ##f
}
\header {
title = "Trombone Harmonic Series"
}
\score {
\new Staff
\transpose g bes
{
\clef bass
g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
}
\header {
piece = "1st Position"
}
\layout {
\context {
\Staff
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
}
}
\score {
\new Staff
\transpose g a
{
\clef bass
g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
}
\header {
piece = "2nd Position"
}
\layout {
\context {
\Staff
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
}
}
\score {
\new Staff
\transpose g aes
{
\clef bass
g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
}
\header {
piece = "3rd Position"
}
\layout {
\context {
\Staff
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
}
}
\score {
\new Staff
{
\clef bass
g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
}
\header {
piece = "4th Position"
}
\layout {
\context {
\Staff
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
}
}
\score {
\new Staff
\transpose g ges
{
\clef bass
g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
}
\header {
piece = "5th Position"
}
\layout {
\context {
\Staff
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
}
}
\score {
\new Staff
\transpose g f
{
\clef bass
g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
}
\header {
piece = "6th Position"
}
\layout {
\context {
\Staff
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
}
}
\score {
\new Staff
\transpose g e
{
\clef bass
g,,1 g,1 d1 g1 b1 d'1
}
\header {
piece = "7th Position"
}
\layout {
\context {
\Staff
\remove "Time_signature_engraver"
\remove "Bar_engraver"
}
}
}
As you can see, I simply wrote the pedal tone and first five harmonics for 4th position (lines 065 through 081) and transposed it six times. The only new LilyPond trick here is \layout { ragged-right = ##f } which makes the staff length to be stretched to equal that of the line width.
By now, our kids have grown out from most of Disney/Pixar/DreamWorks and even Studio Ghibli films. Luckily, this underrated pre-Shrek DreamWorks cartoon has endured the test of time. I say “luckily”, because it gives me an excuse to watch it again! Apart from one or two too many Elton John’s songs, it is perfect.
Dear reader,
unless even if you habitually enjoy humourless quasi-spiritual drivel, don’t bother with this book. Possibly the worst book I read in the last forty years.
Timur got Sansa Clip+ 8GB MP3 player as a New Year gift. It is very much like Yuri’s one except there is a plus sign after the word “Clip” and its controls are more squarey. Timur specifically requested Putumayo’s Cajun compilation and Rocky Road to Dublin (as in Sherlock Holmes movie). We copied some more music on it today. Here’s the latest playlist:
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