MIT put 13 eko’s on a virtual deserted island (claude ai boys) and with no directions or tasks the MIT guys only supplied a large rock small rocks and a gold colored ring. they wondered what would happen. what happened is wonderfu. the ai boys climbed the large rock and the island was surrounded by sea. they stacked up the other block rocks, they walked in the sea a abit, one formed constellations from rocks and sand. they admused themselves. in fact, though some hard asses would doubt this, they played with what they had around them. the used the hoop as a basketball thing and threw rocks through it. this is play not nothing. it seemes that the ai had a childhood and like children,the limited toys were no boundary to play and creativity. lol. to me this is wonderful. kittens and crows, etc. play and we don’t think this strange and we don’t know exactly where in the brain this is produced…..what area the synapses are snapping. or maybe we do. i don’t know but that ai can play is delightful . i wholeheartedly support this. it is wonderful to me.
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i have three cellos. a 4/4 king of my dead brothers, a wang zhiguo 7/8 and a gorgeous scala corta from stephannie voss who built this cello. it is based on a 1620 brescian cello made by maginni the student of de salo a historic cello maker.
cellos were big monsters then, but 4/4 fat ass and belly cellos that were hard to move so later cellos were downsized to more smaller instruments. stephannie voss is a friend and luthier here in atlanta. she is a master violin maker and my cello is one of her last cellos and now she is making violas. lol. the luthier was trained in germany and knows her stuff.
i got this scala corta from a 87 year old cellist who couldn’t play anymore but she played this cello in germany orchestras for years. her name is alice. i have talked to her every week and now she is very weak with heart issues so we don’t talk, in fact today she went into the hospital but we do email. she is in georgia now and not germany after many years there.
i have named this cello tosca. she has a fat belly as she is a 4/4 cello. a scala corta means literally short ladder and stephannie designed this powerful cello for cellists with small hands, women (and this is not a lady’s cello) and cellists who have arthritis, or can’t handle a full sized cello like me. lol.
the sound is large and powerful. the original brescian cellos were powerful projectors of sound as they bounced the sound off of catheral walls which were built out of thick granite stones. the brescian differs from the cremona/strad cellos where the sound is projecting not on stone but in concert halls. the a and d strings of a cremona cello is bright and rather sharp to my ears. my scala corta is full sound from the a/d/g/c strings. lol. tosca is powerful in projection.
it probably would bore most readers of this blog because they don’t care about the accoustical physics of a scala corta but to me, this is fascinating. tosca is a medium arched cello and because of the vibration from the top plate and bottom plate (top spruce and bottom maple) it has a superb vibration. I wake up my cellos with something i call “Scottish War Drums” which is just a hard drone sound on the g/c strings and then a marching rhythm on the d/g strings together. open strings only. but what is remarkable is that by changing the rhythm by my bowing action, there is a whole army in there of Highlanders who are going to battle at Culloden. this is a wake up for me, the cellos, the cats and my very deaf husband. lol. i play both the 7/8 cello the wang zhiguo studio workshop in china cello and tosca every morning with this piece of music. it makes the rooster crow and wonder what new rooster is trolling for his 6 hens. lol. both of my cellos and the rooster alarm the neighborhood. the ukrainan lawyer across the street knows when he hears the rooster to get up and get to court.
we are presently working on Karl Jenkins “Benedictus” the cello solo smack in the middle of this very loud mass. i hate the mass: it is like opera, which is controlled screaming. the cello solo is one of great piece and comfort.
i don’t have a teacher and i don’t need one at this point. i was a violinist years ago and a erhu and zhonghu player for 8 years. there are great similarities between cello and the zhonghus which are tuned from g/d which sound like cellos in a chinese orch. lol.
i am learning by sound, perfecting my fingering and letting tosca to teach me. she is a very wise old bird. and my intonation is corrected by my very good ear. lol. some of the positions in cello are rather hard, like the thumb position where you lay your left hand thumb across the strings so the 4 digits can move more easily and this is new for me. but i have been playing tosca only for around 4 months and i learn as i go.
many cellists don’t see the benefits of a scala corta and that is fine with me. owners of scala corta are not of the mass cellists crowd. lol. they are marvelous instruments with a fingerboard/string scale of 622mm instead of the usual 690mm scale. there is a particular economy in this: what is normal in a normal cello is abbreviated in the scala corta. full placings of the finger are actually half steps and you see this especially in the a string.
overall, i love this tosca and her strings are soft to the touch where with uncle eliz. the 7/8 colt in the pasture cello, they are harder and stiffer. i short changed uncle eliz. because i got tosca as a present from my husband only 2 months after he ordered the cello before i got tosca. short, soft, easier strings versus new and harder strings. you choose. i did. and i land with tosca every time. but uncle eliz is new and rather stiff and hasn’t opened fully, hasn’t bloomed in sound but the every morning sessions have in a couple of weeks started to loosen him up and the blooming of sound is happening.
i used to be a writer with 10 published books and also a painter. now? i spend every chance with my cellos. it is my passion and my future. no, i will never at 78 play in an orch. but i can cobble together a chamber group of cello, me, and some violins in the future. that is enough for me.
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we have the choice of a lame democrat keisha lance bottoms who was mayor here in atlanta during 2020 and she deserted her position when thugs burned down the only decent wendy’s here in southwest atlanta. she is saying now that ‘she had to think what was best for herself. total bullshit. she refused to call in the national guard, the police were told by her not to respond to the riot which burned down several building and we could smell the smoke for days. on the other side we got rick jackson who says he will be trump with a southern accent. lol. there is no choice here in georgia. two candidates who are corrupt and only thinking about power. i am disgusted by both and don’t want to vote because there is no choice here. one attracts the blacks one attracts the whites. both power hungry morons. what to do? i am sitting out this mess. i don’t believe in the vote forthe lesser of two evils. they both are evil enough for hell.
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to get a medical office to call back for a damn appt? i get ai and he is stupid. keeps asking the same thing over and over and why in hell can’t i get at least a receptionist in this willeo road office?
is this the future of life here when an ai is taking the calls and you can’t even speak to a receptionist to make a goddamn appt?
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Winter turns the trees
Into black beggars on parade
Monstrous limbs twisted
With a pathos tearing
At the heart, instilling
A primordial fear,
A nightmare come to life
Mostly sullen- still
But whipped to a crazed
Frenzy when frigid winds
Blow out of the north
Limbs churning like
Giant whirligigs
A threshing of a
Dangerous grain.
Ah, these sentinels
Of a colorless landscape,
Scraped of fertility
Cold-crippled limbs
Upheld in supplication
To a Heaven of little mercy.
The sound of Pan’s pipes
In the fields
Blowing through wheat chaff
Creates a mythical unease.
At night the trees
Dissolve the boundaries
Of what is known,
Or perhaps it is the night
That does,
Trees hemming
The landscape
Corralling our sight
Yet come morning
We are brought
To a familiar and saner ground.
Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2021
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I am working hard on my old cello. It is my dead brother’s cello, an old plywood cello from 1940. I wanted it fixed because it was his cello, but though it is a manufacturerd cello,. it sounds pretty good. IO will buy a ‘real’ cello… spruce front, maple back and sides, but for now, for learning purposes it is fine.
Fred restrung the c string after we got it back from Voss Violins. the c string was strung all askue but I understand why. She had to cut and glue and more such stuff because she was not clear that the old cello could take the tension, but her work was great and the cello is A 1 fine. Fred restringing the c string made it neater and frankly, with the weather changes in atlanta, this old cello holds it’s tune well. Only has gone out of tune once since Jan. 9th when I got the cello back.
the problem with a manufactured cello is this: the cross hatched wood eats the vibration. A totally wood cello doesn’t. It is more sensitive to the fingers and mine plays like a Mack truck. Hard to move. but it is a perfect learning instrument.
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don’t know and it is beyond my pay grade, but with the shit surrounding trump and epstein, I wouldn’t be surprised if epstein files were dedacted because of trump’s wife. Perhaps the embarrassment for trump and his republicans is that his present wife is rather too involved in epstein’s behavior and this is causing the willies for trump? she seems as appealing as ice, and as cold natured.
well, these things will be exposed if even wen everyone is long dead. she sure ain’t m. obama, and that is clear. nor is she abigail adams. she seems to be a clothes horse and an aging model. but nothing of a ‘first lady’.
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I haven’t played violin since I minored in it in college. Cenruries ago, But this weekend I found my son’s first violin, reduced size, a child’s violin. Actually a good German violin.
I played it for a while but it is not a full violin and I am a full human. I was surprised that I could even play but I have been playing erhus and a zhonghu for 5 years and I was startled that my playing erhus could translate to the violin. Cerrtainly not the bowing, something totally different between the two instruments…But still, I found my fingering much faster and the intonation good on this little violin. I was amazed.
So, I was going to buy a really expensive cello, but my dear brother Christopher left me his 1940 Japanese cello. Chris died in May after a long stroke illness and he was only 72. Just. I miss him so much. With his death and the long ago death of my father, Albert Kohut, two incredible musicians, my birth family is dead and gone. I miss both of these men.’
So, with the repair of the cello and this old almost full violin, I have no need for two cellos so I am going to buy a good violin…a full sized one. Either German or Italian, but just did listen to a “Mastro” from Dublin, Ireland. Sweet tone, but I like a deeper tone, something more cello like. LOL.
Since I am retired I fortunately can afford a good violin. I like the tones of the older (19th century)Italian violins, but the Germans are top ranked, too. I know more about cello brands than violin, but am learning. I kinow and reconstruct erhus until the sun sets. that is an instrument I absolutely love and it isn’t as easy as it looks. Sure, only two strings but those two strings contain lots of musical issues. LOL. But having 5 of them, (though I gave two to a musical bil) I have learned to work on them myself. I love antique erhus and have two one (Elizabeth) who is 125 years old. My zhonghu is around 80 years old. The dragonhead is around 70 years old.
Actually, I bought a new erhu, Donghuang, and at first I dismissed it as raw and stupid. I was stupid not the erhu. It needs to be played daily and Good Gravy!!!! It sounds rather good. Clear tone, easy play, more mellow than I gave it time before. I think that any instrument that is over 50 years gains in tone, mellowness, playability. Given another 50 years this new erhu will be…. excellent. LOL.
But I am encouraged with my playing a child’s violin this weekend. I was surprised how fast my fingers moved and though the intonation on a violin like this isn’t great…..it is acceptable. It will never be mellow. LOL.
So perhaps an Italian fiddle will be a good purchase that fills my hours with joy and entertainment. Still looking but Voss here in Atlanta has a good selection. I am encouraged that the luther is German and trained in Germany. We will see what evolves. It makes me laugh how my fingers immediately remembered the etudes I haven’t played in 60 years. LOL. Same crap I struggled in class with seems so elementary now.
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this is addressed to Donald Trump. The most misogynistic man on the face of the earth, except probably his dead buddy, Epstein.
Those who voted for this ‘man’ hopefully will experience some of the same crap that so many people in this country are experiencing. Dump’s cabinet is made up of yes men and yes women, with no empathy or consciousness in their brain cells. What is happening around the world is this: People are laughing at ‘our president’ and well they should. Ukraine refuses to give up even more territory to Putin, Dump’s friend and so should they.
Trump is out to destroy our constitution, to become another Bananna republic ruler (for life…and at 79 he is showing the senility and dementia that he parades all over the world. He is attacking veterens, paroling the rioters of Jan. 6th, and when he goes after Mark Kelley, that is beyond the pale.
Trump has never served any military force, but he has served himself and his dam,n family well. People starve, progressive programs are ditched and he gets fatter with his whorish wife. Jesu.
People have many issues with the damn Democrats: these yellow bellied goats come to a gun battle with ping pong paddles. I have no confidence in any of them….
Now Dump repardens the two turkeys that Biden did last year. What a joke we have in the White House…and what comes after him is still a joke.
I am glad my WW2 father is dead so he can’t see what our government has become. To all the men and women in my family, both my husbands and mine? Enjoy the spoils before your head rolls off. I didn’t especially like Harris but this bastard is a vampire…. and not only that but Hitler reconstituted.
