Category Archives: music

clavichord keyboard and soundbox

March 15, 2010 12:06 am Leave a Comment

Over the weekend, I cut out the keyboard for the clavichord and built the soundbox.

How a clavichord works is that you have strings which are strung between hitch pins and tuning pegs, with a bridge in between. The strings are damped at both ends by cloth called “listing”.

When a key is pressed, a “tangent” is banged up against the string, creating a standing wave between the tangent and the bridge. When the key is released, the tangent loses contact with the string and the wave is then damped.

As I’m building all of this as cheaply as possible, I don’t have proper material, so I’m very interested to see how well it sounds when finished.

I couldn’t find any proper wood to act as a soundboard, so used the side of an old computer case, cut to size. I’ve never heard of a metal soundboard in a clavichord – but then, I’ve also never heard of a plywood clavichord.

My friend Sean dropped over yesterday and gave me a roll of high-tensile wire – the sort of stuff that’s usually used in industry when strength is needed. The wire is made of 15-20 individual wires, each twined to create a single whole.

I haven’t got the tuning pegs created yet, but was able to test the sound of the clavichord by unwrapping a single strand from the wire, and running it from a hitch pin to a screwdriver in one of the tuning peg holes, and tightening it as much as possible by hand, then levering a small piece of plywood under the wire to act as a bridge on the soundboard.

Plucking the string made a clear tone, but hammering and holding the hammer against the string it didn’t make much of a sound. That’s kind of to be expected, though. After all, it’s been said that the clavichord is “the one instrument that can be played by a person on one side of a double-bed without disturbing someone in the other side”.

It will probably sound much better when I’ve made a proper bridge and got proper tangents running.

Filed Under: clavichord, music

plywood clavichord project

March 10, 2010 10:04 pm Leave a Comment

My piano is going out of tune.

The local tuner says it can’t be tuned. but, seeing as he’s also the owner of the local piano shop, I really don’t think I can trust his word on that – especially as another tuner (in Dublin) laughed immediately when that was said to him.

I’m certain that I can tune the piano, but I’ve been told not to, by both the tuner in Dublin, and also by Bronwyn’s mum, who owns it – apparently the slightest mistake can be costly.

And so, I’m going to build my own keyboard, which I can tune if I want to.

Here’s a picture of the end-goal – a well-made clavichord:

To buy a ready-built clavichord would cost 8000 euro or higher. To get a kit version which you put together yourself would cost 3500 or higher.

I feel that’s a little bit high, so I’m trying to make a simple clavichord, where the materials cost 50 euro or less. I’m not counting the cost of the tools.

So far, the materials have cost less than 25 euro – a sheet of 22mm plywood, and some wood glue.

Today’s progress is that I have the basic shell of the thing created. It’s 100cm x 30cm in size, with internal walls of 10cm.

The keyboard will be four-octaves in length. 49 keys, from C two octaves below middle.

I’ll start cutting the keyboard out tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish off all the woodwork by then.

Then it’s time to start thinking about the strings.

Filed Under: clavichord, music

what's up!

January 27, 2010 10:35 am 1 Comment

Short run-down of what I’m doing lately: nothing.

Less short: I’m trying to get work out the door, get a good run at some personal projects, pass grade 2 piano, get organised, and generally improve my lot.

None of this is working. I think the “get organised” bit is the most important, as it will help the rest of it fall into place.

I usually only post about web-development-related topics here, as that’s the only subject where I feel I can contribute something new and interesting, so I tend to not talk about other stuff. But sometimes, rattling off the current state of the head is good for clearing it.

In work, I can’t really complain – we have a number of largish projects which are slowly creeping towards completion. The hardest thing about them is getting information from the clients, and then a week or two later being told that half the information is not required. I guess my main complaint at work is the inexorably slow completion rate.

On the personal projects side:

There are still a number of small bugs in KFM 1.4, and either I don’t have the time to get to them, or there is no enough information to recreate the bug and the submitter doesn’t give me access to their copy so I can’t see it from their side.

KFM 2 has been halted for a while – the idea is huge, but I simply don’t have the time, and no-one is clambering for it. I’ll get to it when I have time, but I might have to approach it by evolving KFM 1.x into meeting what I wanted, instead of the original goal of building KFM 2 from scratch.

I started a new project, OddJobs4Locals two weeks back, and got a good two-day run at it, then time got ahead of me again. I think this will be a good one, when I can complete it. Useful for students, people with a little spare time, or simply people that just want to make a little extra cash. Not yet working, but it will be soon, I hope… This is doubly interesting to me, as it is done purely through AJAX, so it will be easy to do a smart-phone client or a desktop client when the time comes.

I’m in the back/forth stage of working with Packt publishing to see if they want me to do a second book (the first one has no bad reviews at all). We’ve mostly agreed on a table of contents, and I’m just trying to get the time to combine a few of the smaller chapters together.

On the piano, I’ve been ready for the grade 2 exam since November, and am still waiting to see if there will be an exam near me any time soon – I hate the effort that goes into travelling (I have a family, and no car). I was hoping to do a grade every 6 months. It looks like this might not be possible, despite me being ready for it… The tunes I’m doing for it are Beethoven’s Sonatina in G Major, a waltz by Bela Bartok, and Boys And Girls Come Out To Samba, by Terence Greaves – by the way, I don’t like those videos; there are no dynamics in any of them, and I can hear a number of mistakes as well. No video apparently of the Terence Greaves one.

As for organisation… well I guess I’d better start working with Mantis again.

My lot will have to wait – I’ve a load of work to get done before it can improve.

Meh. Depression taking hold again.

Filed Under: ajax, areyoumad, book, depression, general, kfm, life, music, packt, php, piano, programming, web development

Graham Coxon at the Barbican

December 1, 2009 12:54 pm Leave a Comment

Bronwyn and myself went to the Barbican, London, on Saturday to watch Graham Coxon perform.

We both enjoyed the event. Bronwyn was excited to meet friends she had only spoken to online. Well, she’s been excited for the whole of the last week, but it’s all related!

London is big.

The weather was ok for the Friday and Saturday while we were wandering around taking in sights and sounds. We visited the National Gallery, and were handed a sheet saying a candle-lit baroque concert would be happening later, but it clashed with our previous plans.

Arrived at the Barbican. Bronwyn didn’t see any of her friends. We said we’d meet up around the bar, so that’s where we went, and sat opposite it.

We were there about five minutes when I spotted a huge amazing monstrosity of a drum-machine, Felix’s Machines. You have to see the videos of that thing!

As I stood there, Simon from Resigned (also the admin of the Graham Coxon forum) noticed me and waved to get my attention – ah, that’s where they are! We joined a group of Coxon fans.

We had two hours, so we gently infused ourselves thanks to the bar, with some opting for chips and complaining that you shouldn’t need to buy fish&chips just to get some chips (as a vegetarian, I agree wholeheartedly with this, and not just through a hatred of waste).

The show was to start at 8, so we headed down and got our seats.

Simon had thoughtfully gotten us row G (haha – G for Graham. very good. ahem…), which had a walk-space directly in front of us, meaning we could stretch our legs and walk to the toilets without stepping on people’s heads.

Bronwyn decided a new piece of policy was to be created henceforth: when purchasing tickets, people should be measured for height, and really tall people should be confined to the back of the auditorium.

The band came out and the place became loud with cheers.

The sound engineers didn’t do the best job in the world. The band played brilliantly apart from a few minor hiccups, but some of the sound problems were distracting.

When Graham spoke, it was difficult to hear. I was afraid that his singing would be the same, but when he sings, he crouches close to the microphone, and when he talks, it’s like he’s unaware the mic is there.

Some of the songs were technical, involving a lot of finger-picking. An example is Sorrow’s Army. Graham started out on that one, then Robyn Hitchcock joined in a few bars later. Robyn’s guitar, though, was louder, so it drowned out Graham’s playing. This was pointed out independently to me by Simon later on, so it wasn’t just my ears playing tricks.

There was a feedback problem later on at the beginning of one tune, which was quickly and cheerfully quelled and restarted.

One of the three female singers was very loud at points. I didn’t like that – it was like she was stealing the spotlight.

On the far left of the stage, Max Eastley was playing the Arc. At most points in the concert I couldn’t hear anything of what he was doing. Only in quiet songs with only one or two other instruments.

When the songs got loud, they got very loud. Graham was unintelligible at some points as he tried to sing above the sound of the other instruments.

Apart from these gripes (and they’re minor – Bronwyn doesn’t agree with any of the above points), I enjoyed the concert.

I think the only tune I didn’t like was the ending of Caspian Sea, where the band appeared to get stuck in a rut, repeating the same bar over and over and over.

I liked how the music was not perfectly in-tune or perfectly rhythmic, but was just a little off here and there. This gave the music a more natural and “used” feel, like an old rickety piano which is played when the pianist is surrounded by friends – you feel like he’s playing personally to you and it’s not a surgical procedure.

The concert was basically Graham’s latest album, The Spinning Top, with a few extra old songs played at the end.

One of the things I like about this album is the finger-picking. Graham has recently been trying to increase his finger-picking skills, inspired by his love of old blues and folk. His interest in Nick Drake really shines through in the singing, and Bert Jansch (of Pentangle) in the playing.

In a lot of the songs, there is not just one finger-picking “voice”, but two. This could be seen obviously at the concert where Graham was playing one finger-picking riff and Robyn was playing another, yet they meshed nicely.

Overall, I enjoyed this concert and if he does it again with another album, I’m sure we’ll be going over again.

Filed Under: bronwyn, guitar, music

resigned – the band

November 28, 2009 3:52 am

We were sent an invite to come see Resigned play (interesting name – does it mean “gave up”, or “was signed again”? I’ll ask them tomorrow) at the Water Rats Theatre.

Bronwyn commented, on seeing the dance-floor, that it was “very like Fibbers, except for the smell”. ;-) Fibbers (Parnell st) has a bit of a reputation – especially among those of us that have been frequenting the place more than 15 years.

I visited the toilet at one point there and can confirm that it out-fibbers’s fibbers. It was rank.

Having said that, the people that were there were eclectic. There were punks, industrials, grungers, rockers – hard to put a label on the place when everyone is so different!

Anyway – back to the band – I enjoyed it. I was expecting some hard punk, as “resigned” is a very serious name, but the music was actually quite interesting and not as harsh as I expected. There were interesting rhythms (listen to their track “Hangover”) that make you feel like you need to dance or at least admire it, and at no point did I feel they were copying anyone.

Their last track was dedicated to “someone in the audience”, and they played “Advert” by Blur. It was aimed at Bronwyn and a few other Coxon fans.

We spoke to Simon, Gary and John. The playing was perfect – no sign of effort from anyone; everything was “to a tee”. For example, while playing some tunes, I noticed Simon fiddling around with his effect pedals /at the same time/ as playing his part. Very cool. Not a beat dropped – I liked it.

John said that there was a bad gig a few weeks back where there wasn’t enough practice beforehand and it all fell apart, but it didn’t show tonight at all. Solid playing, and I’d love to see them play again.

We were handed a CD of their album which they refused to accept payment for, for reasons which agree almost with my own philosophy.

My belief is that people should be paid for what they do. Royalties are a bonus, but should not be considered as “earned”.

As an author of a book, this might fly in the face of reason, but the thing is – I wrote my book because I wanted to, and I enjoyed the act of its creation. Anything afterwards that I get paid is a bonus, but I don’t feel I’ve earned it (Yes, I’m very grateful for it (thank you!!), but I don’t feel I should demand people pay me if they accidently find my words online).

I suggested this to Simon, in the case that musicians should be paid for the gigs they play, and everything else is a bonus.

This appears to be the same model that large bands such as Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead are following recently – basically, it’s all free, but there’s really nothing that compares to seeing it live.

We haven’t gotten to listen to the CD yet, as this laptop does not have a CD drive, but I’m sure Bronwyn will have it on repeat for the next few weeks.

Well done, Resigned, on providing a very good night out, and we’ll talk to you tomorrow before Graham’s gig!

Filed Under: bronwyn, life, music

notation viewer, day 2

November 1, 2009 2:20 pm 3 Comments

notation-screenie

Spent an hour and added new abilities – you can now view music in the bass clef (and notes will be placed correctly based on that), note stems will be automatically up or down depending on staff position, and you can zoom in or out.

demo (source)

If you want to try it with your own files, create a MusicXML export (I’m using Rosegarden and NoteEdit for my own stuff), and gzip it, then place the gzipped file into the “tests” directory (for example, here).

Next step is multiple staffs, to show left and right hands simultaneously.

Filed Under: javascript, jquery, music, notation viewer, php, piano, programming, web development

music notation through JavaScript

October 31, 2009 8:29 pm 6 Comments

I’m working on a project which will hopefully make me rich (mwuahahaha!).

The idea is that I build an application, where people with MIDI keyboards can test their sight-reading online.

The program will judge your playing objectively, according to whether you hit the right notes, what your timing was like, whether you got the dynamics right, etc.

But anyway – in order to do that, some technical hurdles needed to be cleared:

  • 1. how do you read from a MIDI keyboard in JavaScript?
  • 2. how do you render notation online in JavaScript?

Before you ask – I’m using JavaScript because that’s what I’m good at. JavaScript for the front end, and PHP for the back.

The first part already has a solution – not too long ago, Daniel created a Java applet which reads from the keyboard and passes the key events to Flash, by way of JavaScript.

So all I need to do there is to hijack the middle part, which is not difficult.

On the rendering side, though, there does not appear to be any existing music notation rendering software for JavaScript.

One solution might be to pre-render the notation with a console app and save them as images. That’s not perfect, though, because I want to be able to highlight wrong notes, and render the sheet in different ways according to how the reader’s screen is set up.

So – I need to write a renderer in JavaScript.

Here’s the beginning of it (source).

notation-screenie

To work on this, I will be going through my piano books and picking out pieces that are gradually more difficult for the notation renderer to try to render. Soon enough, it will be good enough for use.

Its current features:

  • reads from compressed MusicXML files.
  • renders crochets and minims, with appropriate padding between all notation symbols.
  • will wrap onto a second line of staff (or further if need be) if there is not enough room in just one.

Short-term upcoming features:

  • render two staves (bass and treble) to show left and right hands.
  • render semi-breves</li
  • show fingering on notes
  • dotted notes
  • quavers
  • tied quavers

The big idea with the application is that the site will be able to gradually increase the difficulty of the pieces, according to how well the player performs.

It’s not confined to sight-reading either – there’s no reason why this idea could not also be used to teach full songs.

Filed Under: java, javascript, music, php, piano, programming, web development

grade 1 piano results

September 26, 2009 11:58 am 4 Comments

Last week, I went to Dublin to attend the OSS BarCamp in DIT, and to meet up with friends and to do a piano exam.

Bronwyn and myself have been learning piano for a few months, and I wanted to have some evidence that I was progressing.

piano exam results

I was nervous going in. In the exam, what happens is that you play a few scales and other little things, you play 3 songs from a selection of 8, and then you answer some questions.

The major scales were pretty easy – I was asked to play a few major scales, only one octave, and only one hand. Wasn’t asked to use the left hand at all.

I started out on the minors a bit wrong – the examiner asked my to play “A Minor Harmonic”, and I accidentally played “A Minor Melodic” (the difference is that the leading note, before the tonic, is sharp when ascending and natural when descending, in Melodic, and sharp in both directions in Harmonic).

I apologised and played the requested version. To be honest, I think the examiner made a mistake there, because the examinee is supposed to play /either/ harmonic or melodic, personal choice.

I made another mistake when asked to play triads. A triad is a group of arpeggios which start on a different note of the chord each time. For example, C triad is C E G E G A G A C A G A G E G E C. But, my teacher learned in the London School of Music, and the triads I learned ended on the dominant note – C E G E G A G A C A C A G A G E G E C G.

I corrected myself there as well. These were honest mistakes, but I think knowing the difference and being able to play them, helped with the score.

I had chosen three songs to play.

First, I played Menuet in F, by Leopold Mozart. I really like this piece – it’s light and airy, and there are a few stacatto bits that really fit well into the rhythm of it. I fumbled a bit on the first arpeggio, and wasn’t able to get the dynamics correct on the piano – the piano sounded weird compared to my own (tinny, maybe), and the keys didn’t have much “feel” to them – pressing the keys, I didn’t feel any “power” under them. Very hard to do piano forte when you can’t feel the difference between piano and forte ;-) .

The second song, a waltz by Breslaur (Op. 46, No. 25), went perfectly – that’s another airy one, and I tried to play it as if it was being danced to, not as if it was being examined. Again, the dynamics were difficult to put n, but the fact that is a dance, and had a load of stacatto to it, helped get around that problem.

The third song, Study No. 1 by Felix Le Couppey, wasn’t too good. I chose this song because it was totally different in feel to the others – this was going to be the one that showed off the dynamics. I really should have practiced it on a few different pianos, so I knew how to approach the exam one.

I’ve been beating myself up all week over these mistakes, so was very surprised to find I’d passed the exam, “with first class honours”.

Yay me!

I’m choosing songs now for grade 2.

Filed Under: music, piano

formula for figuring out keys

August 22, 2009 12:22 pm 1 Comment

I was just looking at scales and trying to memorise how many sharps and flats each key has.

In short: count the sharps. multiply by 7. divide by 12. add the remainder in semi-tones to C. that’s the key. For flats, subtract the remainder from C.

The usual way to do this is to use the “circle of fifths” diagram:

In that, you count clockwise from C to find keys with sharps in them, and anti-clockwise for flats.

For example:

This key has 3 sharps, so you count three keys to the right of C, and that makes it A major.

If you want the minor key, then do the same, but then subtract 3 semi-tones from it, and you get F#m.

Now, what if you’ve a crap memory like me? There’s no bloody way I could remember a complex diagram like that.

Simple – let’s look at another variant of the diagram:

In this diagram, in order to figure out the key, you follow the lines; anti-clockwise for sharps, and clockwise for flats. For a key with 3 sharps, you start on C, then follow the lines 3 times, through G and D to A.

Yes, it’s another diagram, but look at the lines – they’re perfectly regular, which means that a formula can be built from it.

The formula is simply this: sharps * 7 % 12. Then add the result in semi-tones to C and you get the answer.

Examples:

C C#
D♭		 D D#
E♭		 E F F#
G♭		 G G#
A♭		 A A#
B♭		 B C
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
  • 1 sharp: 1*7=7. 7%12=7. 7 is G
  • 2 sharps: 2*7=14. 14%12=2. 2 is D
  • 3 sharps: 3*7=21. 21%12=9. 9 is A

For flats, subtract the result from 12 to get the answer:

  • 1 flat: 1*7=7. 7%12=7. 12-7=5. 5 is F
  • 2 flats: 2*7=14. 14%12=2. 12-2=10. 10 is B♭
  • 3 flats: 3*7=21. 21%12=9. 12-9=3. 3 is E♭
Filed Under: math tricks, music, piano

a few piano pieces

July 19, 2009 10:26 am 3 Comments

I started learning piano a few months ago. I’ll be going for the Grade 1 exam in September.

There are a few reasons I wanted to learn. Partly, it’s because there was an upright piano in my sitting-room, just looking at me as if waiting. But mostly, it was because I want to understand music.

I mean really, what the hell is music? Why does some music sound good and other music sound awful? Why is it that some people have different opinions about what is good music?

In order to figure it out, I’ve been trying my hand at writing little pieces and learning to play them.

These can in no way be considered professional attempts. They are amateur at best, and just my way of feeling along and figuring out what I’m doing.

I’ve no way of recording myself (an iphone’s camera is just not good enough), so I’ve supplied midi, and mp3 renderings of the midi, as well as the sheet in PDF form.

tune 6 – baroqueish

This one’s from this morning. I was lying in bed trying to sleep while the kids and Bronwyn did there best to not disturb me while jumping on the bed beside me, and this came to me. I rolled out of bed and turned on the computer to write it down.

It feels to me like a light-hearted baroque piece. I hesitate to even use that word because I’m not certain what it means, but I think it’s right.

midi rosegarden pdf mp3

tune 2 – the sad one

I can’t remember when this one came to me. It’s been floating in my head for a few years. It’s a bit more “modern” than my usual stuff.

midi rosegarden pdf mp3

tune 3 – icecream!

I originally wrote this one years ago and didn’t like it at the time. I like it now. It reminds me of ice-cream vans and the excitement we’d all feel as a kid when the ice-cream van would come around.

midi rosegarden pdf mp3

tune 5 – fall and rise

This one’s more of an exercise than a tune, although I suppose maybe something could be made of it. It’s a few arpeggio triplets over a slow descending then rising scale.

midi rosegarden pdf mp3

Filed Under: music, piano
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