Plastic wood and brass

This is something I think about occasionally:

I have recorders, right?  They used to be made out of wood (okay, the "good" ones still are), but now they're made out of plastic.

I also have a fife made out of plastic.  Those things used to be metal (okay, the "good" ones still are).

I've seen tin whistles made out of plastic.  Those things used to be made of tin, I think (okay, the "good" ones still are).

And I also own a number of plastic mouthpieces for sundry brass instruments.  And when I say sundry, I mean sundry - I have mouthpieces for French horns, euphoniums and mellophones - I've never played any of these instruments.  Heck, I've never even been in the same room as a mellophone.  Let's just say I'm a sucker for a sale item.

Anyway, the point is I have bits of brass instruments that are made out of plastic which were once made out of brass, or something very much like brass (okay, the "good" ones still are).  The same company that made my plastic mouthpieces are now also selling plastic clarinet barrels - once made of wood, I believe...

And I've just discovered that student level clarinets are almost entirely made out of plastic.  Except for one company which is proudly declaring they make theirs out of rubber.  Ooookay.

So, if cheap but functional wind instruments and brass bits can be made out of plastic, why aren't there more plastic "brass" and "woodwind" instruments in the world?

Well, there kind of are.  You can buy a flute made out of the same ABS plastic as the clarinets, which is cheaper than a flute made out silver-plated metal (ooh, there's an interesting concept - using plastic for a "woodwind" instrument that's normally made out of metal).  You can also get trumpets made of ABS plastic.  And someone is manufacturing plastic trombones.  They come in different colours, so you can get a flute in electric blue or a purple trumpet.  Who wouldn't want one of those?

Good luck finding them in a shop.  The student market for instruments seems to be all stitched up with cheap metal instruments that are still more expensive than the plastic stuff.  And, as someone who owns a cheap metal instrument, I really wish it was made out of plastic - I think it would be better quality.  If my pocket trumpet was made out of the same plastic as my alto recorder, it would be a much better instrument.

So why aren't these being mass-produced by dozens of Chinese companies and sold to children?

And, since we can do it with flutes, trumpets and trombones, why not produce the rest of the woodwind/brass family in moulded plastic?

If I were a parent of school children, I'd much prefer to buy them some plastic thingy to learn with until they've proven they're going to stick with it.  If my idiot kid decides s/he wants a trombone for Christmas, but I know s/he's going to keep it up for about a year and then leave the dang thing in a cupboard for the rest of his/her life, I'm totally going to buy him/her the cheapest trombone I can get.

Heck, I practically am raising one of those idiot kids:  me.  I want the toys, but I know what my attention span is like, so I want to buy myself the cheapest toys.  I have a feeling I'm not alone.

So, Chinese manufactures and British/American designers - get onto this.  I want a plastic French horn to go with my mouthpiece, and I want it reasonably soon...

Windy, brassy things

By Fluteflute CC BY 2.5

At some point in my life I wanted to learn how to play the French Horn - or, as serious musicians call it "the horn".

Then I bought a second hand cornet and thought I'd give that a crack.  It eventually lead to a few months' worth of being in a brass band just so I could get lessons, but the timing of both the band nights and the lessons were both of the "I'm not sure I can keep this up" variety and, as it turned out, I couldn't.

Besides, it turns out that I'm not really suited to such high-pitched instruments as cornets/trumpets.  The baritone horn (not actually related to the French Horn) was more comfortable, but possibly a bit low, really.  I think I should have tried something in the middle of that spectrum - but the club had stacks of baritones to lend, so a baritone is what I borrowed (and what I was learning until the sucky timing of everything just got too bad).

But now I'm thinking about French Horns again.  Even as the brass teacher dude was steering me towards the baritone, I was wondering why I couldn't/shouldn't give French Horns a try.

The appropriate answer at the time: brass bands don't do French Horns.  Apparently they're part of the wind section in a concert band.  Who decides these things, anyway?

However, I don't want to spend over $1000 on an instrument that might end up languishing in the instrument graveyard that is my spare room (currently residing in the graveyard:  a cornet, a pocket trumpet, a melodeon, three recorders of various sizes, a fife, a mouthorgan, a kazoo and a concertina that occasionally sees the light of day.  Technically there's an electric keyboard in there, too, but I've managed to con someone else into keeping that in their own spare room).

So I really want to borrow one or buy a second hand model that is functional but very, very cheap.

I could probably borrow one if I joined a concert band, but I'm reluctant to join anything else, quite frankly - even if the local concert band happens to be located in my old school.

Anyone know of a spare French Horn I could have?  I'd be willing to swap it for something from the graveyard, if that sweetens the deal (as long as it's not the recorders or the concertina - they're keepies, even if they are mostly unused).

Pah! Humbug!

It's official, I hate music.

I had a strange desire to listen to wind quintet music today.  I couldn't remember if I'd heard any before.  Brass quintet, yes, but not necessarily wind.

So, I live in a library, right?  When you live in a library and you think "I wouldn't mind exploring X", you are in a particularly ideal place to do that.

To the catalogue!  To the AV collection!

Up the stairs I sprang (walking up stairs is for wusses) to fetch a cluster of CDs.

Put in the first CD - hated it.

Put in the second CD - hated it.

Put in the third CD - hated it.

Put in the fourth CD - hated it.

Tuneless tonal meanderings don't float my boat.  I want something with melody.  Something I can whistle along with, once I've picked up the general theme.

And, as a friend of mine often points out, if I can't appreciate the non-"conservative" stuff in art, I clearly can't appreciate the art.  Or my appreciation is limited.  Or something like that.

Free-style Sabre -- Or... Rapier?

If I were the boss of fencing (which, alas, I am not), one of things I would do is bring in a new discipline to join the ranks of epee, foil and sabre.

Every time I interact with sabre, I'm left feeling:  "This is so very nearly wonderful, but unfortunately it's really just such a pain in the gluteus maximus".

(Not literally, of course.  You very rarely get any serious butt pain as a result of sabre.  Arm pain, yes.  It's almost exactly like someone whips you across the arm with a thin metal rod.  Possibly because someone whips you across the arm with a thin metal rod...)

But it's just so hard wrapping my head around the idea that the first clear hit is not necessarily the winning hit.  I don't frelling care what my opponent is doing with his/her gorram feet.  I don't even care what I'm doing with my feet.  I also don't care if s/he moved his/her arm first.  We have swords!  Swords, I tell you!

If I hit that person with my sword before that person hit me, I should get the point.  When dealing with swords, the only thing that should trump "first cut" should be "most lethal cut".  If I tap them on the elbow and they stab me in the neck, that's different.

If sabre is, as I have read, as silly and convoluted as it is because of the problem with simultaneous hits, then we should just invent a free-style version of sabre in which simultaneous hits don't count, and we ditch the whole right-of-way thing in favour of first-in-best-dressed.

But, then...

I read recently that epee basically evolved out of people finding the foil of the day too restrictive.  I can see that - epee is kind of like foil, only with more freedom of movement and simpler rules of engagement.

You see, what I really want is for there to be a discipline of fencing like epee but with the cutting edge of the blade brought back into play.

So maybe the better option is to bring another sword into the fold and make another discipline entirely - one that can be to sabre what epee is to foil?

The rapier hasn't been doing much lately, and it has two edges!  What would fencing look like if we brought in a double sided sword?

And maybe it wouldn't be impossible to wire up a sword to register a hit on anything except another sword or the piste?  That would enable the entire body to become a target without the use of a full-body lame...

It could be a brilliant addition to the sport.  And all we need to do is convince enough people to agree to make it a thing, and it will be a thing.

If only I were the boss of fencing...

Eternal Winters

Tallinn cityview CC BY-SA 3.0

 Zigomar - Own work

So, Disney's been doing this thing lately where they give their films one-word titles with a lot of nuances and multiple meanings:  Tangled, Brave, Frozen...

When those movies are switched into different languages, the new movie is often given a new title to fit the new market.  For example, Tangled was retitled "Rapunzel" in many non-English versions.

Hmm.  Calling a movie about Rapunzel "Rapunzel".  Who would have thought of such a thing?

Anyway, "Frozen", being loosely based on "The Snow Queen" is being called (you guessed it)  "The Snow Queen" in various translations.

The Estonian version (which I'll probably end up buying - I do like my Disney in Estonian) is called "Lumekuninganna ja Igavene Talv" - which translates as "The Snow Queen and the Eternal Winter".

The Eternal Winter?

Last I checked, "eternal" meant more than "two days - possibly three, max".

This is why I wanted the story to play out over a longer time period.  Okay, so the summer suddenly turns into the deepest, most snow-filled winter you've ever seen.  Day one, you'll be all "my, this is unexpected!"  Day two might see you crank up to "I haven't darned my socks since last winter, but fortunately I live near the Arctic so I've got plenty of blankets".  If you're agriculturally minded you may be thinking "but the crops!  They won't like this at all!"  Day three you may make it to "Do we have enough food if this lasts?"

At some point that week you'll be thinking "we should find the queen and tell her to knock it off."

Personally, I don't think you'll get to "we must stop this Eternal Winter no matter what it takes" until after at least a week.

But then, maybe I have more patience than most...

Ingredients

This amuses me no end.

The following are the complete ingredients listed on the back of a packet.  See if you can guess what the product is:

Ingredients:

When reconstituted: Maize Starch, Onion (26%), Maltodextrin (from Wheat), Flavours (contain Wheat, Milk Derivatives), Salt, Parsley (3%), Flavour Enhancers (621, 635), Creamer [Vegetable Oil (Contains Soybean Derivative), Glucose Syrup, Milk, Protein, Mineral Salts (339, 450)], Mineral Salt (Potassium Chloride), Hydrolysed Soy Protein, Colour (Caramel lV), Sunflower Oil, Spice Extract.

Allergen:

May Be Present Crustacea, Contains Soy, May Be Present Egg, Contains Wheat, May Be Present Sesame, May Be Present Fish, Contains Milk, May Be Present Peanuts

Can you guess?  The answer is here.

I just love looking at all of the things that "may be present", while thinking about the one thing that definitely isn't.

Let the storm rage on... a little bit longer

So, I finally caught up with Disney's Frozen.

As a Disney fan, I felt it was a bit flat compared with Tangled, but I thought it grows on you on a second viewing.

It needed more time.  Not in terms of being a longer film, but in terms of letting the story play out over a few more days.

Disney seems to be doing a thing lately where everything happens so quickly that most of the events of the film end up occurring over one or two days.

Maybe I've just been brainwashed by things like the Narnia books, but I like to think an "infernal, unnatural Winter" should last for more than a couple of hours before people start panicking and talking about saving the kingdom.

And a "quest" to find a missing ice queen with magical powers could potentially take more than 24 hours.

And did anyone else noticed that Anna basically fell in love with someone she just met (two different 'someones') twice in less than 48 hours - even though the second guy made a point of stating that love doesn't actually work that way?

All I'm saying is:  give it a week.  Maybe even two.

Give the ice queen a day or so of running off into the woods before deciding This Winter Must Be Stopped!  I'd like a bit longer, actually, but a couple of days is better than a couple of hours.

Give the questing heroes a few days together to get to know each other before the trolls try to marry them.

Let the devious prince have a bit longer to convince the kingdom he's a good substitute for their own royals.

It's not too much to ask, is it?

On an unrelated note:

Okay, I know I've spent too long as an undergrad studying literature and media studies, where they force you to notice and comment on these sorts of things, but...

That "Let it Go" musical number, where the frigid ice queen sings about trying to control her emotions and be a "good girl", but now she's just going to let the storm inside her rage - letting down her hair, changing into a slinky dress and sashaying around the place?

Seriously, dude, if no one has written a book about the symbolic representation of women's sexuality in Disney's film already - they will now.  I'd be very surprised if this movie doesn't end up being a staple of undergraduate film studies, purely for this reason.