JimLucas

I think it's a little scary how much attention is being paid to these arbitrary titles and icons. (I can hear the whisper in the background: "He can afford to say that!" ) I have some friends who would say that if you're here, you must be retarded. But we all know that they just have poor taste in musical instruments.

Chris T.: Chris, I think you may be mistaking cause and effect. In my experience, a common purpose of cross-row playing is to *avoid* bellows reversals, to give the music a smooth flow and reduce the "welly". But cross-row playing doesn't have to be that way. E.g., when playing melodies in G, by using both the rows in the right hand you can reverse direction between the e and f#, and in fact by including the left-hand 3rd-row A/G button, you can reverse on every successive note of the scale from G to g. I.e., *more* welly, if that's what you want. Or by exercising your options on those notes which exist on both push and pull, you can emphasize some beats/notes with bellows changes and downplay others by *not* changing direction, with the *difference* helping to give "welly" to the tune as a whole. (Admittedly, if you use a chording style, your options may be reduced in this respect.) This post will now be marked as "edited", but I don't think the system will tell you what was changed. I just corrected an erroneous "right-hand" to read "left-hand", the way it should have.

Chris T.: Well, in America we talking about giving the music some "punch". (Maybe in Ireland, too, but I think "punch" there has a more "spirited" meaning. ) Apparently the Brits prefer to give it some "boot".

It works the same way, Samantha, and you know the Russian proverb: "REPETITION is the mother of learning."

As in "criticize the construction"? Impressive. I wonder if it will last longer than cheap Stagi bellows under heavy use. The little diamonds between the sections appear also to be made of masking tape, and it looks like it may be sticking to itself. I suggest that in the next go you do those with some kind of plastic or impregnated cloth, i.e., something still airtight and flexible but not itself sticky. Maybe a plastic or impregnated cloth tape (but I think not the thin film stuff they use on packages these days) instead of the masking tape, too. IME, masking tape gets stiff after a few months. As for skiving: There are skiving tools available. I have a hand skiver, purchased at a leather supply store, which is a slightly curved tool that holds a single-edge razor blade in a way that holds the handle away from the leather. I think that with most standard knives the handle tends to get in the way of the skiving process. (Of course, it could be that I'm just not adequately skilled.) There are also skiving machines, but they have a different purpose. Tapered edge skiving is what has been talked about so far in this thread, but their is leath known as "skiver", which is split or shaved to be almost paper thin. These machines can be used to "skive" and entire piece of leather to such a thickness (or should I say "thinness"?). I look forward to hearing your next report.

As some of you know, each year the Northeast Squeeze In sponsors a limerick contest. (I'm sure you can guess what the "subject" might be.) Some folks (I'm one of them) think a haiku contest would also be fun. Although I won't make it to this years NESI, I am sending in a couple of absentee entries. Now, if you have squeezebox/free reed limericks -- or even haiku, -- you've composed, you may want to save them for the contest. But maybe you have have something that's in another form (sonnets, anyone?) or with more limited appeal. Why not put them here? (And all the others could show up here after the NESI.) I think everyone must be familiar with the limerick, but for those who don't know, a haiku is a very strict form. It need not rhyme, but it must consist of three lines, of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. E.g., Eyes like shining orbs, Playing her concertina, It's Rhomylly Forbes. But: Bellows in and out, Pumping away like crazy, Irish virtuoso. isn't a haiku, because the last line has too many syllables. Anybody else want to try?

A quick Google search suggests that the "sharks" line -- with some variations, e.g., "at the bottom of the bay" -- may be all there ever was to the parody. I'm working on something more complete, but even my computer doesn't know if I'll ever finish. Seems to me I did once hear a fuller parody of "Pleasant and Delightful", but I don't think it had the sharks in it. Dunno about that. I used to have a set of bagpipes where the reeds kept coming free.

Well, here are a few of measurements. 'Standard' hexagonal instruments seem generally to be 6-1/4" across the flats, give or take 1/8". That's true from the cheap 26-button brass-reeded mahogany Lachenal anglo and 48-button rosewood Englishes, to the 48-button Lachenal New Model English, to the 30-button Morse Ceilidh. The 48-button Rock Chidley English is 6-3/8", but that 'extra' 1/8" is just the thickness of the two layers of amboyna veneer on either side of the end. The exceptions are the Jeffries, which with 38 buttons are only 6 inches across the flats... even the G/D. My treble Æolas (8-sided) are 6-1/2" across the flats. The 55-button hexagonal duets -- both Triumph and MacCann -- are 6-5/8" across the flats. As you see, I'm providing the measurements in the way that I'm used to dealing with them. And only one measurement. As I noted previously, that's all that's needed to compute what you've asked for. I am curious, though, to what use you expect to put the information. Even if it's just to create a histogram/frequency table, you've missed asking for some critical information. Size vs. number of buttons? But a 48-button baritone English will almost certainly be much larger than a 48-button treble English, or even than a 64-button treble, and for good reasons.

I suspect the marks are no extra effort to add, either. Cutters for drilling big holes are just blades (or gouges, or whatever you want to call them) mounted in an arm on the the drill that drills the center of the hole. Add a second one, not so deep, and it will not only score that little circle, it will tell you when to stop with the deeper one.

I suggest you think a little more about the geometry before asking for all these numbers. E.g., if the end is a regular hexagon, the measure Z will *always* be twice X, and the angle Y will *always* be 120 degrees. If it's a regular polygon with other than 6 sides, the angle Y and the ratio between Z and X will again be fixed. E.g., The angle on an 8-sided instrument will be 135 degrees and that on a 12-sided instrument 150 degrees. (I'm in too much of a hurry to figure out those Z/X ratios at the moment.) But some instruments -- mainly low ones like my contrabass -- are *irregular*, longer in one direction than in the other directions (sometimes referred to as "stretched"). For these you'll need more than one number for X or Z, and even the angles may differ, though they could still all be equal. On my contrabass the "long" Z (it *looks longer, but it isn't) is 11-3/8", while the other two Z's are 12". Angles are also different, but will have to wait, as I haven't seen my protractor in years, and though they could be calculated from the lengths, I don't have time to do the trigonometry right now. By the way, it seems most common in the discussions I've seen to refer to the distance "across the flats" (from flat side to opposite flate side), rather than "across the points", which is your Z. But conversion isn't too hard. On a regular hexagon the "flats" measurement is .866 times the "points" measurement. The ratio can be calculated on other instruments, too; but later for that.

*Organize* practice? Sorry. Can't help you there. (Actually, I wish I could.)

Hmm. Not necessarily a joke. i remember one winter a woman in my mother's home town was complaining to the local coal company about the increased number of coal trucks screeching around the curve by her house. They claimed there had been no increase. That's when she discovered that her mynah bird had learned to imiitate the screeching of the brakes.

Not sure I understand that comment. Newspaper inside has to have been earlier than when it was put in the instrument, but that could be anything from earlier the same day to decades before the instrument was made, no? Even if it was put in some time after the instrument was made.

Hi Alan, Be careful you don't hit the golf ball too hard. It might cause a change in your office wall. Oh, and are you one of those who still doesn't like the change to the new forum format? Finally, I do suppose the quoting experiments should have been done in the Test forum, but it's too late, now.

Dave Elliott asked: But Dave Weinstein began with: I suppose it could still be a valve that catches on something where it's halfway open. Catching in both directions, it might eventually break free in the one direction from half open to full open and in the other direction from half closed to fully closed. But that's theoretical; I've never seen it, and I have no reason to assume that result as far as sound is concerned would be the same in both directions. Two valves -- or reeds -- with the same problem... that just happen to be in the same chamber? Well, I've experienced stranger coincidences.

Well, so far -- with 90 posts (this will make 91) -- I'm still only an Advanced Member, and Samantha -- with 29 -- is only a Member. Did somebody say 30 was the threshhold for Advanced? C'mon, Samantha, you can do it!

As you've probably noticed by now, yes. I was composing a message while you posted two of your own (including the one I'm replying to here). Now, can everybody tell which post each new post is responding to? (Then again, does anybody care?)

A clickable link to another message? I didn't know one could do that. Of course, in the old system the "link" was simply there to see, without needing an explicit action on the part of the responder, who might not know (s)he should or even could do so.

The way to build the banter is to use the "quote" button (as I just have). I hope that as people get used to the new forum this'll become second nature. Samantha But how deeply can you nest the quotes before they become unreadable? Well, here's another level just for fun, but I have other things to do, so I'll leave it to others to conduct further research. In the old format, trees could get *very* deep, but were easy to backtrack. Here one can quote and quote, but I don't see any easy way to get to the original message being quoted, much less the one it was a response to, etc. We tried this nesting thing on another thread. I'll add a layer or two ... Samantha And another thing: If somebody quotes only part of someone else's post, it's nearly impossible to backtrack and determine whether or not it was out of context. Then again, you can edit anything that you quote, so I guess you can't be sure that a quote is accurate either way. Of course, you couldn't in the old system, either, except that it was usually easy to determine what the quoted post was supposed to be, then open it and see what it actually said. Then again, again, in this system a post can be edited, and I think that's true even after it's been quoted. Opens up a whole new range of possibilities for misunderstanding.

The way to build the banter is to use the "quote" button (as I just have). I hope that as people get used to the new forum this'll become second nature. Samantha But how deeply can you nest the quotes before they become unreadable? Well, here's another level just for fun, but I have other things to do, so I'll leave it to others to conduct further research. In the old format, trees could get *very* deep, but were easy to backtrack. Here one can quote and quote, but I don't see any easy way to get to the original message being quoted, much less the one it was a response to, etc.

The way to build the banter is to use the "quote" button (as I just have). I hope that as people get used to the new forum this'll become second nature. Samantha But how deeply can you nest the quotes before they become unreadable?

E.g., it's possible that the reed is actually rubbing against the side of the slot in the wood of the reed pan. I've seen that more than once.

We hope you'll have it for more than just one day! Wouldn't want its arrival to give you a heart attack.

When I started dancing (in NYC) CDSS was in charge, the main group was older than me (40's & 50's?), but there were a few from an older generation and also a strong college crowd (mostly from one school). There were a couple of periods when few new young folks came on the scene, but also a couple of significant influxes of high school students. Some independent contra dances were started, with majorities I think in their 20's and 30's, though a few both older and younger. Dances outside New York varied, with younger crowds at some, older at others, and some fairly well mixed. This was also the time when contra dancing exploded in New England. In New York I don't think a lot of new dancers were attracted during the late 80's and 90's, but that wasn't the case everywhere. There are changes -- call them ups and downs, if you like -- in many places, but they're not all synchronized, and I think it's misleading to try to generalize to the entire country what is happening in a particular area.

Well, 22 is 11x2, and 11+2 is 13, which is considered a number as magical and mysterious as how people come up with such stretched connections. For some reason, I don't normally consider a 15% time difference to be synchronous. By the way, have you picked up any other instruments. And if so, when? I can't do your horoscope without full data. (Actually, I couldn't do it even *with* full data, but why fret over details. )