Wulf's Webden

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3 November 2023
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Belvoir Castle

Today Jane and I took a trip to Belvoir Castle to explore the gardens. It is a well regarded site and free to us as RHS members (except for parking) but this was our first visit.

Belvoir Castle
Belvoir Castle

The name comes from the French for beautiful view (which it has) although locally the pronunciation is more like ‘beaver’ than anything our Gallic neighbours would recognise. It has beautiful grounds, too, and, being late in the season, it felt like we had them almost to ourselves. We’ll probably take another trip next spring and try the full walk of the perimeter as well as more of the garden coming to life rather than draped in autumn riches.

2 November 2023
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Making the Low Notes: A Life in Music

Making the Low Notes: A Life in Music is an autobiography by Bill Harrison. What grabbed me was a combination of the double bass on the cover and the first part of the title. Even through, as a bassist myself, I’ve probably got an above average-length list of bass players in my head, Harrison’s wasn’t a name that rang any bells. I figured that I’d have a better idea by the end and might even pick up a playing tip or two along the way.

I suppose I did have a little more idea of who the author is at the end, or at least how he has chosen to present himself. However, while it tells a lot about his life and experiences around music, it didn’t teach me a whole lot about the instrument. He’s met and sometimes played with people I’ve heard of but, despite the bass connection, I didn’t click with his account and it didn’t become a compelling read to me.

Autobiographies are often worth a punt but, if the first few chapters fail to grab you, don’t expect any ‘plot twist’ or development in the writing to change your mind.

1 November 2023
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Tidying Tomatoes

I’ve decided that the new door glazing isn’t making it too hot in the polytunnel – just pleasantly warm on days when the sun decides to stay out for a while. The tomato plants, which are lovers of warmth and light are definitely on their way out so I spent some time this afternoon doing some more harvesting and trimming away a lot of the vines.

At this stage in the year, there is little point waiting for green tomatoes to ripen and certainly not for flowers to turn into fruit. Instead, it makes sense to get some space cleared and then some of the plants I have been germinating in pots can get put out to grow on for winter and early spring crops. We’ll still get a few tomatoes but I’ll continue taking out the harvest vines and, probably tomorrow, I’ll get onto some of the new planting too.

31 October 2023
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Getting Ready to Brew Again

It struck me today that I’m falling behind on the homebrewing. I’ve done cider and I’ve tried wine for the first time (still in the demijohns but probably getting ready to bottle) but I need to get some more grains in to get some beer on the go. Consequently, I’ve logged into my current supplier of choice, Crossmyloof Brew, and put in an order. Based up in Glasgow, they aren’t particularly local but they offer free UK delivery and I haven’t yet found suitable local places I can just pop into.

I’ve gone for a selection of ingredients so I don’t know exactly what my first brew of this season will be but I’ll have some options.

30 October 2023
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Door Glazing

When we lived in Oxford, we put a polytunnel in the back garden in the autumn. One of the lessons we quickly learned as the following spring warmed up was just how hot they can get and we had to quickly install some ways to ventilate it without just leaving it wide open. That is why, when we got a polytunnel for our present home, we opted for one with some built in ventilation – net panels on the top part of the front and back doors and a section on the side that can be rolled up, leaving a further net panel.

Now our spring-installed tunnel is coming towards the end of its first autumn, the problem is reversed and we needed a solution to keep it a bit cosier. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been building square frames that I intended to cover with polythene and fit inside the door frames. It turns out that I’ve got a bit rusty at woodworking. Both took a lot longer than I expected and, despite my attempts to measure carefully, only one fitted. In the end, the other one has been fixed to the outside of the far door frame using some L brackets.

Almost immediately, it feels a lot warmer in there. In fact, I’ll need to consider leaving the front panel off for a few more weeks or check frequently to ensure things aren’t going mouldy in the warm humidity. Next time I build a polytunnel, I’ll try to remember to get the winter glazing frames built before the doors go on, which would probably have been a lot simpler than trying to fit and measure in an occluded place. For now, though, job done.

28 October 2023
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Goodbye Summertime

Here is the annual reminder that the UK reverts from ‘British Summer Time’ to standard ‘Greenwich Mean Time’ in the middle of the night. With so many devices automatically updating, it feels almost redundant to mention. And, of course, the weather has had plenty of ‘unsummery’ moments in recent weeks so, in some ways, it feels like a moment abstracted from any sense of time.

Anyway, if nothing else, it gives a bit of extra time in the morning although it will catch up with us in the evening.

27 October 2023
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Hard and Soft Returns

This morning, I’m working on creating large print lyric sheets for visually impaired people in our congregation. It is fairly time-consuming but, once I’ve made sure the results are clear and readable for the people who need them, I will try and find ways to speed things up. For example, having a library of prepared songs, like I do with chord sheets and other resources for the musicians, would mean just pulling a set rather than starting from scratch each time.

I’m using a font called Tiresias LP, an Open Source font with a heavy weight and good clarity, recommended by the Torch Trust, a charity that seeks to help churches provide well for their VIPs (visually impaired persons). With all the text looking bold, how do I break up the block of text into sensible sections. Vertical spacing is recommended but, if I just put a standard return at the end of every line, the songs typically stretch over a single page, creating other issues.

The solution is to use something called soft returns, a directly inserted equivalent of the space between lines in a paragraph rather than the spacing after a paragraph. In MS Word, these can be inserted manually using the Shift-Return keyboard combination. What though if I am starting with a text that already has the hard returns built in? The Find and Replace (Ctrl-H) tool comes in handy. You can search for the hard returns with the character combination ^p and replace them with ^l (lower case L). While the dialog box is open Alt-F will find the next occurrence of the search term and Alt-R will replace it.

I’m not sure if this information will help anyone else but it will assist me when I do another round of songs next week.

26 October 2023
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Sledgehammer?

I realised that I didn’t explain the title of yesterday’s post. It was the idea that, while Audacity is a swiss army knife in the field of audio editing (all sorts of quick and useful functions), sometimes it makes more sense to fire up a full on digital audio workstation (DAW).

For years, Logic Pro has been my DAW of choice but, as my MacBook grows older and I’m not 100% committed to stay in the Apple fold, I’ve been exploring Reaper as a cross platform option and I’m beginning to get to the point where I can wield it effectively. Logic is a brilliant program but so is Reaper and it doesn’t tie you into one operating system platform.

25 October 2023
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Sometimes it is nice to have a sledgehammer…

One of the tunes the concert band has been working on is an arrangement of Joe Zawinul’s Birdland.

Birdland

Many bassists will know the Weather Report version, where Jaco Pastorious jumps straight into “follow me if you dare” territory by playing the main theme using a series of artificial harmonics to step far above the range normally expected from bass guitar. This version is somewhat simpler but that isn’t to suggest that it is easy.

Of particular interest in this recording (and a couple of others of the same arrangement) is a short bass solo at 0:50 which isn’t included in the notation. I know a couple of the other players have ‘solo’ written in and just a series of chords at various points but there’s not even a hint in my score. I’ve chatted with the conductor though and got the go ahead to work up this little featurette but it certainly comes with a learning curve.

I had been using Audacity to loop and slow down the section in question and had scribbled out a first draft but it was somewhat complex to follow. This evening, I decided to load the track up in Reaper, primarily just to play along with it multiple times and try and get it in my ears and fingers. I discovered that Reaper also has the ability to slow down a track without changing the pitch and also to estimate tempo. With those two tools, I got the piece roughly lined up on a beat based grid and used that to help focus in and refine my transcription.

The result? It still looks like about the hardest thing to play out of the entire pad but I’ve found a few spots where it made sense to simplify the notation a little and I’ve done a lot more playing along with it at various tempos. More practise needed but I might be ready to unleash it next week.

24 October 2023
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Back to Bands

October has seen both half-term breaks and a few other weeks when I’ve been away or otherwise busy so it feels like a long time since I’ve had Tuesday evening as a band night. I was back this evening with both the Training Band and Concert Band. The concert band was a little down on number this week (some places are still on half-term and people often also try to book things outside of the local half term break) but we had a couple of new faces in the Training Band on trumpet and alto sax.