LAZY BLOGGING

posted by James Reel

    Recycling is the key to making a living as a freelance writer; write an article for one publication, then contrive to sell a modified version of it to another. It works well for lazy bloggers, too. When you’re too lazy to post an original blog entry, link to something you’ve written elsewhere. So here are a couple of items I contributed to the current issue of Strings magazine.
    First, a profile of an unusual string foursome:

The section quartet consists of two violins, a viola, and a cello, but please don’t call it a string quartet. “We’re a rock band,” insists first violinist, arranger, and founder Eric Gorfain, allowing, however, that “we’re playing classical instruments and we’re classically trained, so we kind of straddle the line.” Cellist Richard Dodd is less willing to compromise. “We play electrified instruments, really hard and loud, like a band,” he says. “I try to play with very little vibrato, and I get a solid bite into the string all the time. It’s a very aggressive style that probably wouldn’t go over too well with many orchestras.”

    Then, because you really desperately want to know about the mechanics of getting a bow from one string across to the next, a technical article for beginning and intermediate players on string crossings:

    If you could attach little lights to the frog and the tip of your bow, darken the room, and play in front of a mirror, you’d see that bowing, and especially crossing, is a matter of geometry as well as artistry. If you were playing well, you’d see those lights make precise little circles and arcs, and every motion at the frog would be mimicked in reverse at the tip.
    It’s what William J. Dick and Laurie P. Scott call the geometry of string crossing. Dick teaches at Southwestern University in Texas and Scott is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Their version of geometry doesn’t require you to brush up on Euclid or memorize the value of pi. But it does put bowing and crossing into the context of planes, lines, and arcs. And if your geometry is symmetrical, your string crossings should be clean.

    That’s how it begins. Now go be fascinated by the rest of it, while I retire to some nice, shaded hammock.