A little project

Hope you're all having a great week. I just thought I'd share with you something of what I've been doing: this is an audio track I made using Sibelius and Notion 3. Notion, an audio editing program and virtual instrument library, is still very new to me and I have yet to work around such issues as dynamics and phrasing, but I'm very happy with the result of this, one of the first of my finished works. It only took a few minutes to make this track after I'd finished arranging the score in Sibelius. I love the virtual instruments, and while it is apparent that this is not a 'real' performance, it's surprising how real the instruments can sound at times.

So here we go: this is an arrangement of Pavane by Gabriel Faure. Parts have been cut out from the original version to make it easier to play, but other than that I've tried to keep it as close to the original as possible. I hope you enjoy it!

Pavane by Matthew Ventura

Music

So I thought I'd do a post about the thing that takes up so much of my time these days - music. This is the time of year when everything starts happening in Cooma, and the music-scene is no exception. In 3 weeks is the annual Cooma Music Competition which is the highlight of my year. We're not doing much this year, except a piece in the small vocal ensemble section. Our family (namely Mum, Bradley, Emma, Caitlyn, Sarah, and myself) has been getting into singing in 4-part harmony lately, so we thought it might be fun to do a piece in the competition.

The Snowy Mountains Ensemble is also expected to perform in the final concert as guests, so we have been polishing our best piece in preparation. On top of that, the Ensemble has been asked to put on a concert for some U3A Music Appreciation program thing the day before, which has kept us busy. Being a new ensemble with new music, there are only a couple of pieces we can play well, so our family ensemble will be playing some pieces to supplement. Unfortunately Joshua won't be back from Newcastle then, so Emma will be doing her first performance in this ensemble on viola (her main instrument is the violin, but she has taught herself how to play viola so that she can play the much-needed parts in ensemble pieces).

Speaking of ensembles, at MuST last week we had a masterclass with a touring ensemble from Chicago. It was really great to be able to talk to them about life as an ensemble musician and hear them play. They were doing a concert at the Wesley Music Centre that evening, but they played most of the program for us, so we essentially got a free concert!

Finally - and before you get too bored to read the rest of this post - I will announce the Snowy Mountains Ensemble's Christmas Carols. This coming Thursday and every Thursday from November 11 to the end of this school term we will be rehearsing simple, fun arrangements of Christmas carols - the idea is that we will invite as many people to join us for those rehearsals as possible, giving local musicians the opportunity to experience ensemble playing in a relaxed atmosphere, and hopefully, if they enjoy the experience, some of them will stay on as permanent members. Easy arrangements and an open strings violin part mean that musicians of any skill level are welcome, and we now have clarinet parts. After all the work we've put into organizing all this (and trust me, it has been hours upon hours of hard work), it would be very nice to see some people participating in and benefiting from this opportunity. So if you know of anyone around that plays an orchestral string or woodwind instrument, tell them to come! :-)

Apart from that there is not much to report, except that I am preparing for an audition next month and I've started learning the coolest piece ever written for flute (well... maybe not quite) - The Great Train Race by Ian Clarke, which is subtitled "The Flute as you don't usually hear it." Quite aptly so, too, as it employs several extended techniques such as residual fast tonguing, singing while playing (!!), lip bending, explosive harmonics, use of quarter-tones, multiphonics and optional circular breathing! It's very fascinating, but the bit that interests me most is the multiphonic section. Until last week I never knew that it was possible for a flute to play more than 1 note at a time - it turns out that flutes can play 2, or even 3 notes at once (multiphonics). Obviously I am very excited to learn this fascinating new piece...

 

My first attempt...

At creating a piece of music from scratch using only electronic devices. Let me know what you think!

I'm a bassoonist!!!!

No joke, I really am! It's almost as much of a shock to me as it is to you!! If someone had told me 2 weeks ago that I would be playing the bassoon before the month was over, I would never have believed them. But then God started working again, and opened all these doors that made it amazingly clear. Basically, this is what happened:

1) My piccolo which I had been looking forward to learning to play turned out to still have problems. I still haven't had an opportunity to have it fixed.

2) My passion for Woodwinds was reinforced, and I couldn't stop dreaming about the bassoon. Even when I wasn't dreaming, it seemed like there were bassoon reeds following me all around the School of Music.

3) Mum started talking about how much we will need a bass instrument to replace the cello when Bradley goes off to Uni. This was the first time I started thinking that it might actually be a reality, not just one of my dreams.

4) I told Mum (and Dad) about the bassoon and what it could do, and mentioned that it has been my dream to learn to play it. Amazingly, they were both very positive about it. In fact, the idea met absolutely no opposition at all! This convinced me that God was telling me something, because I had been expecting to spend months convincing the parents to let me learn another instrument!

5) Then I had to face the reality - buying a bassoon would cost me about $5,000 to get a decent instrument. I didn't give up hope, though, and kept praying. Then God opened another door when I found out that the Canberra School of Music had a very good bassoon sitting in storage that I could 'rent' for free as a MuST student!! I became convinced that God creates these 'problems' so that we can watch him at work solving them, rather than just take everything for granted.

6) The worst problem of all then presented itself. Playing pretty much any wind instrument can have very bad effects on one's flute playing. I had to give up playing the trumpet, clarinet & oboe for that very reason. However, it turns out that bassoon is the ONLY wind instrument (besides maybe recorder, which is technically a type of flute) that is compatible with flute playing!! To me this is nothing short of a miracle.

So I decided to take the challenge and learn another instrument - and before I knew it my dreams had become reality! I brought home the bassoon (haven't come up with a name for him yet... suggestions welcome! =P) on Tuesday afternoon, and much to my relief it came with a reed (a reed is the bit of cane that vibrates to make the sound - without the reed, you can't play a bassoon). I think I would have died if I had had the bassoon for a whole week without being able to play it. I'm seeing my new bassoon teacher on Tuesday, which, needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to. He is the Principle Bassoonist of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, a position he's held since 1965. He has also received a Canberran of the Year award, as well as an Order of Australia medal for his work in youth orchestras.

And now I've come to the point where I realize that in all my excitement I forget to tell you what a bassoon actually is. Most of you probably wouldn't know, due to its extreme rarity. Well, the Bassoon is the bass of the Woodwind family. It is made of an 8-foot long pipe which is bent double over itself to allow the player to reach all the keys. It has an extremely complicated fingering system - most of the fingers only have to cover 1 hole each, but the thumbs have to control 13-14 levers between the 2 of them. Crazy, I know. Especially when you're the one playing it. But trust me, it's definitely worth it!

Since bassoons are so expensive, hardly anyone plays them, so they are very in demand in ensembles and orchestras. After only playing for 1 day, I've already been asked to play in a beginner orchestra group and possible another ensemble later in the year. This afternoon will be my first experience playing bassoon in an ensemble, so wish me luck!

Finally, here is a picture of the bassoon I'm using. This photo doesn't show the size very well, but standing up it goes up to about the height of my neck. I might add some photos to this post later on if I can manage to take any that aren't as bad quality as this one.

Renovations - Part 9

So here's my excuse for not posting lately (or at least one of the several excuses): Nan and Grandpa came down from Sydney last week to visit and help out while Joseph was in Canberra having his tonsils and adenoids removed. Poor Grandpa was kept working literally the whole time he was here, because we needed to build a retaining wall outside the extension, as well as a little walkway thing with steps leading from the extension to the carport. We got heaps done, but I feel so sorry for Grandpa coming all the way here only to work the whole time!

Here's a photo of part of the retaining wall we made: 

 

More retaining wall:

The walkway thing and steps we made - doesn't it look good? Actually, the builders made the little balcony thing that's directly outside the door, but we made everything to the right of that. :-)

Another view of the same thing, so you can see the steps. Grandpa is a genius: he made all this without even writing down a plan! It looks so professionally done, too. I can't wait until it's stained and finished!

The builders have been working, too. The gyprockers came as well and gyprocked the whole room. You can't see too well from this photo, but 2 windows have been added, and the door has been put in.

A view of the outside - it's going to look so good when the wood is stained and everything! I think it's going to fit in really well with the rest of the house (in looks, that is).

Sorry it's been so long since I've been posting regularly. Hopefully that's all changed now, as exams are over, I'm on holiday from MuST, I have no music lessons for 4 weeks, and most of our construction projects have been done. It's a good thing too, as I've got heaps of photos of little bunnies just waiting to be posted and enjoyed! Oh, and I'm going to a rabbit show with Caitlyn on Sunday, and we're hopefully showing our most awesome rabbit - so I'll let you know how that goes!

Until then, enjoy your week, and I hope you're looking forward to the holidays as much as I am!

1 week old kittens

As promised, here are some photos of Pepper's new litter. All 7 kittens are growing healthy and strong, and are due to open their eyes and ears tomorrow or the day after. After that, it won't be long before they start leaving the nest to explore.

To give you an idea of how much they have grown in one week, here are 2 photos of the same kitten, taken only 1 week apart!!

This one has a rex coat, and also a very nice colour called Broken Sooty Fawn. As she does with all Sooty Fawns, Caitlyn has fallen in love with it and named it Francine. We have decided we are definitely going to keep this one, and probably sell all the rest.

This one looks like it has a normal coat, and is Blue. Sorry about the awful quality of the photo. I've re-discovered (as I do every time we have a new litter) that it is simply impossible to take a good quality photo of a baby rabbit sitting still. The only way to get one anywhere near satisfactory is to hold the rabbit still with your hand, take the photo, and jerk your hand away just before the photo is taken. Take your hand away 1 second too soon and the rabbit scrambles out of the way, and take it away too late and you get your hand in the photo. That's why you can see my hand in so many of these photos. In light of that, please excuse the terrible quality and try to focus on the bunnies. ;-)

Not sure about this colour yet... although we're fairly certain it has a long coat. We're praying it will turn out to be a doe (female) because someone has promised to give us a Plush Lop in exchange for a long-haired female rabbit. In case you're not aware, Plush Lops are the breed that we long after the most (besides Silky Lops!), and this one is LILAC! So I can't wait to determine the gender of this kitten (which, unfortunately, won't be for at least 4 weeks).

Caitlyn has adopted this one and named him Arthur. He has a normal coat, so we won't be able to keep him, but hopefully we will be able to find a friend or at least someone we know interested in taking him like we did with her last 2 adopted children (Dora & Winifred) so that we will be still able to visit him after he has left home.

Here's the same photo of my favourite kitten again. She deserves the double-photo. ;-)

She's done it again!

Pepper and Muffin are pleased to announce the arrival their 7 new healthy kittens!! They were born late on Wednesday night. The total litter size was 9, but 2 didn't make it (Pepper was really stubborn and refused to build the nest where I kept telling her to...); but we still have 7 healthy babies to rejoice about! It's a bit early to state the colours accurately yet, but it looks like there is a Broken Black (black + white markings), Blue, a couple of broken Sooty Fawns (orange with black shading + white markings), Beige (fawn with blue shading ), Broken Siamese Sable (Siamese cat colour + white markings) and possibly an Iron Grey or 2 (creamy white with dark grey shading).

AND the best news is that there are 2 rex kittens in this litter!! Getting a rex is the reason I bred this litter, and it's great to have 2 to choose from, so I can select the best. They're also more in demand as pets, and consequently easier to sell. ;-)

I've decided to include a couple of photos of the newborn kittens, even though they look really ugly at this stage. For those of you who haven't seen a newborn rabbit before, yes, it is normal for them to look like this, and no, they won't be this ugly for long! In a week they will have tripled their weight and started growing fur, and in 2 weeks they will have opened their eyes and will be walking about! I'll try and post some photos when they've grown a bit, so you can see how not-ugly they actually are!

 

This one is [what looks like] a Broken Sooty Fawn with the rex coat. (You can tell if it is a rex coat because it has very short, curly whiskers.)

 

Another rex-coated kitten, that looks to be Broken Blue.

All 7 kittens in the nest (I dare you to find them all!). We had to lift up all the fur so you could actually see them, then quickly snap the photo before the wriggled out of sight again! By the way, all these photos were taken by Caitlyn, my loyal assistant.

My oboe

About a year ago I purchased a second-hand oboe from Ebay with intentions of learning to play it. When it arrived I was very surprised to find it had completely different keywork to a modern oboe. My flute teacher (who also teaches the oboe) took it home and studied it, and learned that it was made about 150-200 years ago! I had no idea I would be getting a rare antique oboe when I bought it. Had I known, I probably wouldn't have gone ahead with the purchase. It has a very basic fingering system (which makes tuning difficult and limits the playing range); since it had different keywork to a modern oboe, it meant I had to figure out how to play each note by experimenting with different fingerings until I found the right one. That in itself wouldn't have been too much of a problem (as I do love a good challenge), except that most instruments made several hundred years ago are tuned to a different pitch to instruments today. Of ALL the different instruments, oboe happens to be the one that can't be tuned (well, it can, but only very slightly). That means that I can't play this oboe with any other instruments without it being excruciatingly out of tune.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I haven't got a good use for this oboe, so I've decided to resell it. An experienced oboe player could possibly adjust the reeds to make it play in tune, and I'm hoping that such a person will take an interest and take the instrument off my hands. I spent all afternoon on Wednesday fixing up the oboe, oiling the body, and making sure everything was in working order. This involved taking apart all the keywork, oiling it down, then trying to put the keys back in the right places. I already knew that there was a spring that needed replacing, but other than that everything was in good shape. After a good clean and wipe-down, it looked shiny and new again.

This was my first time taking apart an instrument, and I found it quite fun and interesting, and very educational. Here are some photos I took of before, during, and after the process.

This is the bottom half of the oboe before being dissembled.

Top half before being dissembled:

Top half after having all keys except one removed (the screws were so tight I couldn't budge it - ironically, this was the one key that wasn't working properly and actually needed fixing).

Keys from the top half of the oboe, along with the screwdrivers I used, a small bottle of oil, and the bell from the oboe.

The finished work after being oiled and reassembled.

If anyone knows anyone looking for an antique oboe that plays out of tune, let me know!! =D I'd be most happy to oblige.

My rabbits

I promised to eventually show you my rabbits and tell you about the breeding project I'm doing. Since there's no better time than the present, that is what I have decided to blog about today.

As an introduction, I will tell you what I am aiming for in my breeding project. I started my current project in May '09. Well, if you count the months of research I did before actually beginning the actual breeding, I guess you could say the project's been going since about February '09. Anyway, my ultimate aim is to produce a "line" of rabbits with that have the small, cute dwarf body type, lopped ears, and a very special type of coat. The development of this coat will be by far the biggest achievement when I finally reach my goal. The idea is to develop a coat similar to the rex coat (the rex coat is extremely short, unbelievably soft, and incredibly plush all at the same time) - only longer. So rather than being short and plush, it will be long, silky, but still extremely soft to touch. There used to be several rabbit breeds with this coat, but they have all become virtually extinct. In very recent years, one man in Tasmania has begun to develop a single breed with pretty much the same coat, although it is genetically quite different. Anyway, the point is that the long-haired rex coat is extremely rare, and virtually non-existent outside of Australia. So to have this special coat type on a lop is going to be very exciting.

After less than a year of breeding, and only into the 2'nd generation, I'm am very pleased to announce that we have been fortunate enough to have breed a rabbit with this very coat!! He is one very special rabbit, and we are so proud of his parents for defying all odds and producing him. Well, of course God was the one that lined up all the correct genes that made it possible. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll come back to this rabbit later.

We decided to go about developing our line of "Silky Lops" (that's we we are calling them for now) by hybridising Mini Cashmere Lops with Mini Rex. We already had some excellent quality Mini Cashmere Lops that would be very useful in contributing the dwarf body type, lopped ears, AND long coat. The Mini Rex was used for adding the rex gene into the line.

Below is the original Cashmere we used. Her name is Rosemary, and we bought her from a breeder who acquired her from a friend who in turn purchased her from a pet store. She almost certainly isn't purebred, and she isn't particularly special herself, yet she has amazed us by producing kittens (baby rabbits) of amazing quality!! She is an extraordinary mother, and she has passed on her good maternal instincts to every female she has produced. She is a kind of "matriarch" to our rabbit stud - every single rabbit we have ever bred so far has her as their ancestor.

This is "Charmed" Peter. (All rabbits that have been bred at a registered stud carry the stud prefix as their first name. Peter's breeders had "Charmed" as their stud prefix, so every rabbit they ever bred carried "Charmed" as their first name.) He is a purebred Mini Rex, and very handsome one at that. He won Best Rex at an Online Rabbit Show, which was the first and only show we ever exhibited him at. Quite an achievement for an old fellow - he was already about 3 years old when we purchased him.

Below are the 2 rabbits we retained from Rosemary and Peter's litter. These rabbits are the 1'st generation of our breeding project - also known as F1's (F = generation... don't ask me why, that's just the way things are with Biology). The black one is Pepper (female), and the fawn coloured one is called Muffin (male). Pepper is not looking very good in the photo because she was very pregnant at the time the shot was taken. Pepper turned out to be an AMAZING mother, producing 10 kittens for her first litter. 4 or 5 would have been normal, but 10 is incredible. 1 of them had some birth defect and died on the first day, but Pepper did an excellent job of raising the remaining 9.

Muffin, not to be outdone by any of his accomplished family members, was a miracle in himself. His colour, the official name of which is "Lilac Tort Butterfly", is one of the rarest, hardest-to-breed colours in existence. And the fact that we had no idea that both his parents happened to be carrying the same, rare colour genes made it THAT much more exciting. On top of that, I'm pretty sure that he is the cuddliest, sweetest, most docile, affectionate rabbit ever to have walked the planet. You have to hold him for yourself to understand.

That brings us to the 2'nd generation. Of the 9 kittens raised, only 1 had the rex coat we were looking for. But what a coat! As well as being rexed just like we wanted, this rabbit happened to inherit a long-haired gene from each parent, giving it the extremely rare long-haired rex coat!!! Another bonus is that this rabbit has longer guard hairs than usual. Although this has the undesirable effect of making the coat feel slightly harsher, and less soft to touch, it also keeps the coat matt-free. This is just great for us, because the breeds that used to have this coat used to have a tendency to become permanently matted, which was a real problem. This is what eventually led to their extinction. So we're very glad to be able to start with a matt-free coat, because it means we'll have a lot less to worry about later on. By the way, this rabbit's name is Opus. "Opossum" is a name for the long-haired rex coat, so Opus seemed like a fitting shortening of the word. As well as that, Opus is an Italian word which translates roughly to "an artistic creation."

Opus's brother, Basil, deserves a mention, too. As a bit of background, we weren't expecting to be producing any rabbits with lopped ears until at least the 3'rd or 4'th generation. That would be 1½ - 2 years of breeding... quite a while to have to wait. But then one day when the F2's were about 7 weeks old, I noticed that one of the kittens (Basil), and one ear lopped. I was amazed, and thought I must be seeing things. Maybe he was just hot, and had droopy ears. I pushed the thought aside, dismissing it as too unlikely to be true. But the next day I noticed that BOTH ears were down, and had the most pleasant shock of my year!! We had a lop in the 2'nd generation!! That pretty much meant that we had been saved a whole year's worth of breeding. We had an F2 with the long-haired rex coat. We had an F2 with lopped ears. That means that it is perfectly possible to remate the same parents to each other, and produce another litter which might have a true Silky Lop, with the correct coat AND lopped ears!! Progress is a lot faster than was initially expected. Praise the Lord!!

We will be expecting another F2 litter sometime soon, a repeat breeding of the last litter, but for now that is all there is to report. "That's ALL?!", I hear you say. Okay, I'm sorry I raved on like that so much today. I have trouble controlling myself when it comes to talking about my rabbits. Thank you for bearing with me, and if you have read my blog post all the way down to here, you deserve a medal. *Gives you a forbearance medal*

If you're lucky, it'll be a while before I decide to blog about the rest of my rabbits... *wink*. Any suggestions as to what else you would like me to blog about would be most welcome.

God bless.

Matthew.