I have always adored the sound of the cello (remember this? Even though it’s more clarinet like, I use it to play a cello). The rich, sonorous tones fill the air with a commanding and moving presence capable of evoking profound emotion. Last Christmas I picked up a cheap one to start learning myself (no sense in investing in a Ferrari if I’m going to slap training wheels on it and putter around the neighborhood). The internet obliged, and in a couple of weeks it arrived on my doorstep (not pictured here is the soft case and abominable pitch pipes that came with it):

Click for rear view (decal of my own making)

Full size (“4/4” in string instrument parlance), slightly sparkly (they called it “metallic” in the listing) glossy sheen, and only some assembly required (bridge setup – and apparently I’m fond of parentheses today).

I brought it up to tune and spent a few weeks conditioning the strings – tuning, playing, cleaning, repeating, etc. – until they came into temper and can hold their pitch. Only, as I was going through my scales and exercises I noticed there were a couple of notes that for whatever reason, I could not get to come out without a horrible sound. It would be either a scratchy rattle, a dry reedy sound, or in one case a harmonic (meaning, at an offset from the base expressed note – not “in harmony” in a melodic sense) squeak. Careful study and experimentation determined that, while I was still definitely amateur, these horrible sounds were not actually my fault.

The fingerboard (area beneath the strings used for altering pitch) is supposed to fall away from the fingered position of the string rapidly, having a uniform (though subtle) concave curvature along its entire length. Only, for this one, that’s only true for about the last 2/3 of it. The first 1/3 is inconsistent and almost convex in a couple places – I tried taking a few shots looking down the board from the perspective of the nut (where the strings enter the peg box) but they just didn’t turn out; apparently a longer depth of field and stereoscopy are required to appreciate the dimensionality.

Anyway, this meant that the string was staying in contact with the fingerboard for a couple inches in some cases, and it was that flush positioning that was causing the rattle and most of the pitch effects. To compound that, the C string (lowest of the bunch) was almost 2x the height from the board that it should have been. Taking measurements across the length I determined 2 major corrections were in order:

First, file down the nut under the C string to bring it closer to the fingerboard (making it possible to play a C#). I did this with a jeweler’s saw (since I didn’t have any rounded files), and as evident from the picture didn’t bother to re-stain the wood after my handy work – I wasn’t sure if more changes would be necessary. This changed it from almost 4mm down to about 2mm, making the fingering a little easier and the sound much better.

The second problem was the string height relative to the fingerboard for almost the entire length. In fact, at the end of the fingerboard where the strings are supposed to be considerably higher (usually about 2x their starting height as measured at the nut, as I understand it), they were all basically level and in the case of the A string, which had given me the most trouble, was actually closer. I wasn’t about to replace the fingerboard (and/or neck), and I have neither the tools nor the expertise to sand it to shape and re-finish it, so I had to change the relative height a different way.

The answer this time was to raise the bridge itself – which meant carefully dropping the tension on all the strings again, ensuring the sound post stayed positioned, and finding a good way to increase the height of the bridge while still keeping good contact with the face matching curvature and transmitting sound effectively).

I used some chipboard salvaged from the backing of a pad a parchment Rachelle was using for some projects. It was 2mm thick, had a consistency similar to wood, and was able to conform to the surface and footing. I took my measurements and cut several thicknesses which I layered under each foot of the bridge, raising the C side 6mm and the A side 4mm (although I’m still thinking about upping that to a full 6mm, but it hasn’t needed it yet).

Brought the strings back up to pitch and restored the temper (much faster this time), and the timbre has been much approved across the entire range. Fingered C string notes still don’t have as much resonance as those played on other strings, but at least they sound clearly. Dramatic improvements could also be made by putting decent strings on it instead of those it shipped with, but I’m not about to drop $240-$300 in strings onto a $190 cello.

It’s still a student grade instrument, but decently playable now and I’ve been having lots of fun with it the last few months. I’m getting more comfortable moving beyond first position, and will be picking up some instruction books with progressive exercises to hone those basics into something presentable (one may notice the lack of audio evidence presented along with this post). For now I can play along with Rachelle and Ashley on their violins, and make OK work of a hymnal, and most importantly enjoy myself.

It’s a day late because I’ve been celebrating Christmas instead of visiting the blog (and didn’t stage a post in advance because I was making ready for celebrations).  Rachelle posted this year’s Christmas Card on her blog, so I’ll just add a musical flourish to round it out (simple 4-part hymn, “The First Noel”, played as a chamber quartet piece):

Sorry it’s synth-ish.  I played each layer individually on my Akai EWI USB, but the Garriton sound fonts it comes with leave something to be desired.  I’ll try to fix this with real performances when my cello arrives in a week or so (so it’s a Merry Christmas to me, too!).

Thanks to everyone for an awesome year!

A while ago I lucked into some telescopes that were being discarded as trash – the weren’t being kept up, and the owner had moved on to what he termed “professional grade” equipment.  His trash was something hopelessly beyond my budget to pick up as a first order product, so I was more than happy to piece them back together, clean them up, and generally invest some sweat equity bringing them back on line.

The result?  Moby Dick & Ol’ Blue, pictured here (please forgive the mess, lots of the home organization is in remodeling flux):

Moby Dick - 10" Newtonian Reflector Telescope

Ol' Blue - 8" Newtonian Reflector Telescope

Cat included for size reference (she was a good sport about it too, especially considering I had to wake her from a nap; please note that she is a large cat, too).

The barrel on Ol’ Blue is 48″ end to end, housing an 8″ diameter primary mirror.  Moby Dick is a hair shorter at 44.5″ in length, with a 10″ primary mirror, but on account of its equatorial mount with counterweight is WAY heavier and thus harder to cart about for simple experimentation.

They did take some work to get functional again, and there were no objective lenses (eyepieces) with them, so I’ve borrowed some Plössl type lenses (25mm & 10mm) from a friend to practice with and give me a good baseline for shopping around. All told it’s been a good experience, I’ve learned a ton about Newtonian telescopes, and have thoroughly enjoyed the views they afford.

Enough so that I want to share those views.  My eventual goal is to get a good camera mounting kit for Rachelle’s EOS 5D Mark II, and haul Moby Dick out to the west dessert to do some awesome astrophotography.  Before making that kind of investment (especially regarding time) I figure I should practice a little bit and get used to the variables involved.  This morning marks my first attempts, which I will generously label “encouraging.”

My setup was about as handicapped as it could possibly be.  It was a cool gray (rather than sunny) morning, and my home and yard are poorly situated to see anything at a distance – and I felt like staying indoors, which compounded things by constraining what I could shoot even further: would need to be a distant object through windows that have not been maintained on a particular cleaning schedule.  In order to get the telescope positioned correctly to see some mountains (and be pointed far enough away from the sun so as not to risk damage to self or equipment if it happened to come from behind its clouds) I had to mount it on a stool, and then put the camera on its tripod on top of a card table to position it for my first attempts at afocal telescopic photography. (more…)

I don’t know if it’s because of junk journalism, junk science, or small-minded scientists being the vocal minority in every article pertaining to the subject (probably while all the real scientists are off science-ing), but the most commonly reported views on the probability/frequency of extraterrestrial life are absurd.

I’m not talking in terms of intelligent life per se, and especially not with regard to interplanetary civilizations – most certainly not the bug-eyed probe happy “grays” that are the contemporary lore – but regarding life of any kind in its spontaneous origination on any celestial body distinct from Earth as we know it.  Microbes on Mars, or under the ice on Europa, or on one of the dozens of exoplanets now being discovered, or anything of the like.

The views and notions bandied about most often in anything approaching mainstream are something along the lines of, “if there are signs of life there, then it must be incredibly abundant throughout the universe!”  Balanced with a similar illogical assumption that, “if there are no signs of life there, then it must be tremendously precious and we are so very alone.”

This is like rolling a billion-sided die and looking for it to come up with the same number twice.  In sequence.  And giving up if it doesn’t happen after 2 tries.

In all truth we have so few places to look (in terms of gross numbers of bodies), and so few means to examine those (due to proximity, risk, and simple logistics), that we’re not even making consistent assessments of those resources which are available to us humans.  Projecting from this immensely small set of incomplete samples into some trend line or tangent as a predictor of the universe at large is ludicrously bad science all around.  And they – documentary producers, journalists, scientists (in context or otherwise, who knows) – keep repeatedly taking the same view of immediate doom or glory without really examining the numbers.

The reality?  It’s closer to that billion-sided die, with a not-insignificant portion of it harboring a probability for life-sustaining conditions, and opportunities to roll it millions or even hundreds of millions of times.  We’re not even up to half a dozen, yet.  Heck, I only spot us 2 tries because we’re OK at making it to our biggest natural satellite, and we had some pretty cool probes make it to Mars (and then rounding up generously from those slivers of experience).

Let’s take a decent and level view, mkay?  Life?  It’s probably rare, but there are so many opportunities for it in the universe it’s bound to be out there somewhere (scales of distance just making it hard to assess that).  We should get a statistically relevant sampling before plotting conclusions.

Or attach some dynamometers to Carl Sagan’s final resting ground and use that to power major metropolitan areas every time someone re-publishes the same ignorant coin-flip perspective.