All Posts By

Angela Korra'ti

Music

My very first Irish session!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a decent Jam Report around here, so I will now make up for it with a new twist on that: a Session Report!

Last night my beloved userinfosolarbird and I had the distinct pleasure of sitting in with our very first Irish session. For those of you not familiar with those, they’re events where musicians gather together to hang out and play traditional Irish music. Last night’s was one starting up for the very first time at a pub called A Terrible Beauty in Renton! Dara found out about it courtesy of someone I believe she said she’d met at the Highland Games a few months back, and Dara relayed it to me.

Since I do of course have a ton of Irish music on my iPhone, I’ve known about the custom for some time; it gets mentioned a lot in lyrics, of course. And you hear about it when you are a fan of the appropriate genre of musicians. But I’d never been to one and so when Dara told me about this one, I leapt at the chance for us to go.

Several of you who follow my blog in whatever form will be familiar with filk circles. A session is kind of like that–but not quite, at least in comparison to the filk circles and housefilks I’ve attended. The main difference, aside from the obvious focus on traditional Irish music, is that the filks I’m used to are situations where one person plays one thing, and then another person takes a turn, etc. At filks, you may or may not get people playing along with the primary performer, depending on how strict a bardic circle you’re conducting. At this session, though, everybody was playing, and focusing on the melody being played in particular.

We had an excellent balance of instruments as well, which helped. As Dara and I were a) new to sessions in general, b) new to these folks in particular, and c) the only ones with rhythm instruments being regularly played (Annie, Dara’s friend, also had a guitar but primarily focused on her fiddle), we hung out over on the side of the group trying to follow along and play accompanying chords. Everyone else drove the melodies, trading off between their instruments. It was very neat to watch and I was very impressed that these folks were all very clearly comfortable with several instruments between them.

Dara, being more heavily practiced the last couple years than I am of course, got fancier with her strumming than I did. Me, I was working very, very hard on trying to pick out the keys of several unfamiliar melodies–just to try to improve my ear. I counted it a victory when I realized a few bars in on one melody that OH HEY THAT’S IN A! But I did also have the quiet satisfaction of figuring out unfamiliar (to me) ways to strum, to try to support the melodies being played. That was a fun learning experience and I want to do more of that.

Also, not ALL of the melodies were unfamiliar. Several of them tugged at my memory just because, these being Irish trad tunes of course, I KNOW I’ve heard a lot of them as part and parcel of the dozen or so albums I have with this material all over them. I just don’t know a lot of the specific tunes by name yet. But I DID very specifically recognize “Si Bheag Si Mhor” and “Road to Lisdoonvarna”–the latter, specifically, because userinfocflute is a big fan of that one and likes playing it at Jam. 😀

I must give props to Annie for a few things. One, I noticed she had a Luna guitar, a lovely green one, and my fellow Drollerie author Heather Ingemar had been plugging those guitars to me before I bought the General. Two, Annie is a fellow GBS fan and it is always, ALWAYS a pleasure to meet another person who loves the B’ys. Three, I was sheepishly relieved that while she was the other guitarist present, she spent most of her time giving love to her fiddle, so I didn’t feel entirely dorky back there playing rhythm on the General. ;D

Props must also be given to Matt, the guy who was hosting the session. Dude can play, and he traded off adroitly between his own fiddle, an Irish flute (I am STILL coveting an Irish flute despite the dozen+ flutes I already own), and a very cool-looking harp decked out in Christmas lights which did wonderful things for lighting him up while pictures were being taken of us. I am very grateful to him for letting Dara and me sit in, and in particular for encouraging us to try to join in more by playing stuff we know.

We admitted that we know more things with vocals than without–in the parlance of a session, that means we know songs rather than tunes. So Dara nudged me in to do “Lukey”! I capoed up 2 so I could get it into a key I could credibly sing, and scooted over to sit on the floor in the middle of the circle so the others could see my changes if they wanted to follow along. And I tried to describe the arrangement I knew before I started playing, hoping to give enough data that if anybody wanted to improv something, they could! That didn’t happen but I strongly suspect that was just a function of the others not knowing the song as I was playing it per se–and even given that, they all followed along very solidly.

There is something heady and magical about whipping out a fairly solid performance of a song with people you have never played with before in your life. Not to mention HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS, I have played AND SUNG “Lukey” in an actual Irish pub. In front of COMPLETE AND TOTAL STRANGERS. *^_^*;; I hope I did my B’ys proud. <3

And I totally want to do this again, in no small part because it'll give me an excuse to play my instruments more often. I say instruments because the opportunity to swap out between the General and my long and sadly neglected zouk and octave mandolin, not to mention my flutes, is too shiny to resist!

And oh yeah, it must also be said that A Terrible Beauty is a lovely place, and the food Dara and I ordered was nommable. And served us by a guy who from the sound of him was either Irish or doing a damn good impression of it. 😉

Last but not least, I must plug the photos taken of all of us musicians by one Liz Jackson, a very nice lady who clearly knows the business end of a camera. And the crowning pic of her collection would be this one right here! Please go over and give her some comment love, people!

Thank you Matt and Annie and Liz and everyone else for welcoming us, and I hope we can play with you all some more!

January 6, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Keeping the editing momentum going

Not much in the way of raw word count reduction tonight, but I did make it through roughly six pages, and I am in the final third of Chapter 19 now. The best thing about this effort, I think, is finding one actual typo: a redundant use of a word in a sentence. And I found a couple other places where I used the same descriptive label twice too close together.

But that’s about all I had time for tonight since tonight also involved Irish session goodness! And it’s just after midnight now, and I have to go to bed.

Edited tonight: -138
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,586
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 105,554

January 6, 2011 by
Writing

New character in my brain!

Today my muse decided that it has a mad, mad desire to write an Instrumental Duel with the Fey story–starring a tuba player.

Because here’s the thing, y’all. You pick up a novel where the lead character is a musician, that musician is probably going to be playing one of a set of “sexy” instruments. This isn’t just a fantasy novel thing, though god knows fantasy has its share of fiddle players and guitarists and flautists and harpists–mystery and romance are guilty of this, too! (And yes, I say this fully cognizant of the fact that I’ve got four, count ’em, four musicians in Faerie Blood–a violinist and a bouzouki player as the lead characters, as well as a guitarist and a whistle player in the supporting cast.)

But you know what you don’t get? Books that show love to the less sexy instruments, and do so in a non-comedic fashion. Anybody out there EVER read a serious story about an accordion player? How about the French horn? And I say right now that I will hand over a free copy of Faerie Blood to anybody who can find me a serious novel about a tuba player. Until that happens, I am totally going to write one.

And this will be a serious, actual fantasy novel in which the tuba player gets to save the day. I don’t know yet what the plot will be, other than that I wish to screw around with the Instrumental Duel With the Fey trope–only this time, the guy that’s going to be bringing it is going to bringing it with a tuba.

Once I decided I was going to do this, this guy immediately started taking shape in my brain. Tonight’s writing-related thing was opening a character file about him, to jot down all the thoughts bouncing around about him.

I know this much: his name is Oscar Beck, he is a prototypical gawky nerd type, and the one thing in life he is awesome at is that he can pull music out of a tuba to make an audience weep. He reads like a crazy reading thing as well because music and books are way less scary than interacting with actual people, and so he’s a big, big fan of Lord Peter Wimsey, as an example of a hero who is a) awesomely brilliant, b) a musician, and c) not handsome in the slightest, yet possessed of thermonuclear charisma! He would rather die than admit it to anybody as well, but he has totally nicknamed his tuba the Horn of Helm Hammerhand, because he is an utter Tolkien geek and he loves him some Battle of Helm’s Deep.

Oscar, it’s delightful to meet you. And boy, are YOU going to be surprised when you find out that girl in the last chair of the oboe section is way, WAY more unusual than she seems. Not to mention that you and the Horn are going to have to save the city. And possibly the world.

Props to userinfokathrynt for suggesting some examples of tuba-oriented classical music–because to get a better idea of what Oscar is like, I’m going to want to listen to examples of what an incredibly well played tuba should actually sound like. Anybody out there have recommendations, fling ’em at me! Props as well to userinfotechnoshaman for giving Oscar his last name!

January 5, 2011 by
Short Pieces

No words accomplished tonight…

But that’s okay, because I’ve been doing planning on the Psychic Chick of Size story. Y’all remember that one, right? The one with Elizabeth, the Psychic Chick of Size, and Ross, the brother of a murdered Warder?

The muse demanded I give that story some hardcore thought tonight to see if I can actually get it properly planned out, and figure out whether it’s going to be a short story, a novella, or a proper novel. I also needed to identify the culprit, and nail down what his or her motives are. And I’m pleased to report that while I have to finish writing out the rest of the outline notes, I do actually now have the plot nailed down!

I won’t tell you too much about the story for fear of spoilers, but I will say this: the culprit hasn’t just murdered a Warder. He or she is aiming for bigger prey–and the Sidhe are about to be very, very NOT AMUSED.

Also: I’m pretty sure this is going to wind up novella-length or so, based on the rough notes I’m getting and how much I know about my own tendencies of word count. But I’ll be better able to tell once I get some actual scenes sketched out. I still need a title, though, not to mention some idea of what I’ll want to do with this story once it’s actually finished.

For my own reference, just to remind myself, the current word count on the piece is at 1,981 and I’m not out of the first scene yet. Like I said: this smells like a novella.

And yay, three days in a row of doing Things That Further the Writing!

January 3, 2011 by
Valor of the Healer

Accountability, I has it

Two days in a row getting writing-related things done! So far, so good.

Today’s effort, scattered across several hours through the course of the day, was editing about eight pages in Chapter 19 of Lament. This puts me just shy of halfway through the chapter, and so far I haven’t lost much significant word count. We’ll see what the rest of the chapter does for me, though it may just be that I don’t need to whittle this one down all that much.

Which’d be nice, since it has some of my favorite Julian and Faanshi mileage in it:

Before Julian could say more, Faanshi stirred and whimpered, horror flickering across her countenance. All at once he grew conscious of the shape of her, of the press of her slight form against his own, and that at some point during their headlong rush her hat had gone missing. Her hair, uncovered, smelled of sweat and leather and pine needles.

“Carefully, girl,” he warned when her eyes opened.

“Julian?” Her voice was small and broken, and as her gaze shot up to his face she said his name again, with prayerful relief. “Julian!” Then she threw her arms around him, buried her face against his shoulder, and sobbed.

In consternation he froze, aware of something going loose and tender within him. After a moment his arms eased their grasp and shifted, as if of their own accord, to better hold her. “Tykhe,” he muttered. “Don’t cry.”

“I don’t mean to be a burden! Please don’t leave me!”

Hadn’t he promised to do just that on the run past Tolton, if she slowed him and Rab down or proved a danger? “I won’t,” said Julian nonetheless, that loose place within him broadening, threatening to rise into his throat, to cut off his speech. “I won’t leave you, Faanshi. It’s all right.”

When had he changed his mind?

That’s me, a sucker for making life difficult for the Rook!

Edited today and tonight: -91 (but that’s across eight pages)
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,724
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 105,692

January 2, 2011 by
Bone Walker, Child of Ocean Child of Stars, Mirror's Gate, Queen of Souls, Shards of Recollection, Short Pieces, Valor of the Healer, Vengeance of the Hunter

2011 says HIYA! And also, bring it

So by and large, 2010 went pretty well for me on a personal level–but not quite so much on a writing level. I’d like to change that this year, and that means getting Seriously Back on the Stick. Here are various goals I’m going to aim for this year. Sooner is better, but I’m not going to nail time frames down to these because really, the overall goal boils down to this: Get Back My Writing Discipline. Anything above and beyond that will be cake.

In general order of priority, these are the main goals:

  1. First and foremost: finish the edit pass on Lament of the Dove and get the revised manuscript back to Carina Press. Current status: Chapter 19 of the word count reduction pass.
  2. userinfoupstart_crow has given me an anthology invite, so I need to plan out what I’ll be writing for that. This is higher priority right now than either Bone Walker or Queen of Souls, since it’s a solid invite and will mean Actual Albeit Small Cashy Money, assuming the piece is accepted. More on this as events warrant; right now I don’t even have a story idea, and the antho in question is quite a bit far out yet.
  3. Follow up with Drollerie as to whether Bone Walker will actually be feasible for Drollerie to pursue this year, and if so, what they need from me to make it happen. Either way, I should go ahead and finish it. Current status: still in chapter 11, and I’m about to the point where I need to plan out what’s going to happen for the rest of the book.
  4. Review where I left off with editing Queen of Souls and get that into queryable shape. Current status: still pretty much on Chapter 2 of the second draft.

Everything above and beyond these things is a stretch goal, right now. This includes all of the current notable works in progress, which are:

  1. Shadow of the Rook. Current status: Made it into Chapter 4 before serious edits to Lament made it clear the beginning of Shadow will have to be heavily reworked as well. Therefore, Shadow will remain on hold until Lament‘s edits are done.
  2. Mirror’s Gate. Current status: Chapter 2.
  3. Child of Ocean, Child of Stars. Current status: Interlude between Chapters 3 and 4.
  4. Shards of Recollection. Current status: Chapter 1.
  5. Still-untitled Faerie Blood-universe piece starring Elizabeth the psychic, and Ross the brother of a murdered Warder. It’s still not clear to me whether this piece is going to be a novella or a novel in its own right. Review of it must occur.

And oh yes: I DO still intend to do the last couple of How to Read Ebooks posts, as well as any further ones that occur to me. If anyone has specific requests about ebook-related things you’d like to see me post, please let me know!

Tonight, I can safely say that editing of Lament has happened. I doublechecked Chapter 18 and realized there was another minor scene with Celoren that I could completely nuke–partly because it didn’t really advance the plot much, and partly because removing it also addressed one of the various issues from Carina’s editor. And I’ve headed into Chapter 19, where I’ve re-discovered that I did leave this chapter in a bit of a mess after cleaning up the tail end of 17. Now I get to clean that mess up.

It’s also become clear that I will indeed be swinging back around for a sixth draft once the word count reduction draft is done. It’ll have to be the sixth draft where I go back in and put in significant new content.

And since I’ve made it a couple of pages into Chapter 19, about 20 minutes shy of midnight, I’ll call that today’s writing-related activity. More tomorrow. DAMMIT.

Edited tonight: Quite a bit, actually
Chapter 18 revised total: 3,750
Chapter 19 revised total: 5,815
Lament of the Dove revised total (fifth draft): 105,783

January 1, 2011 by
About Me, Movies, Television, The Murkworks

Vacation in review

I’ve got to say, two weeks of just hanging out at home has been one of the nicest vacations I’ve had for a while. It hasn’t been fancy or exciting or expensive, but it sure has been relaxing. The last few times I’ve had this much time at home have been surgery recovery–and by comparison, this has been more like the Longest Weekend Ever. All things considered, an excellent way to round out 2010.

In brief, here’s what I’ve been doing the last couple of weeks:

  • Saw and enjoyed both Tron: Legacy and Tangled. Both were quite pretty, and while T: L had less plot than one might have liked, it actually had more plot and emotional weight to it than the first one did. And I say this as a fan of the first one, which I rewatched during this downtime, too! As for Tangled, I liked it more than I expected it would, given my prior fear that it’d screw up my favorite fairy tale. It was Disney by the numbers, but then, Disney does do awfully catchy numbers.
  • Did Longest Night with userinfosolarbird, in which we did what seems to be becoming my yearly tradition of rewatching The Lord of the Rings. We are sure you’ve noticed by now that the sun did, in fact, come back up.
  • Speaking of Solstice, and Christmas by extension, I didn’t really want much loot this year thanks to having gotten the Awesome Guitar of Awesomeness. But a few lovely bits of loot were had nonetheless! Most notably, Dara gave me a really clever little capo that lets you capo individual strings and therefore simulate different tunings. I also got Peter Jackson’s King Kong on Blu-Ray from userinfomamishka, Matt Smith’s just-concluded series of Doctor Who from userinfospazzkat, a B&N ebook card from userinfojennygriffee, a lovely hardbound copy of a Norwegian graphic novel from userinforavyngyngvar, and the obligatory pile of stocking stuffer candy.
  • The Thursday before Christmas, Dara and I went downtown and spent a lovely afternoon at Ummelina, the spa on 4th. We did their two-person Pacific Rim package, and mmmm relaxing. This was redeeming the gift card I got Dara back in April for her birthday, since we’d decided that “while I am on vacation” was an excellent time to do so. After the spa, I did a lightning-quick raid on the marketboys, catching them JUST as they were closing up shop and surprising them by my arrival. They looked pleased to see me! Or at least pleased to sell me literally last-minute raspberries. 😉
  • Christmas Day itself was fairly quiet. Dara and I went back downtown for the aforementioned viewing of Tangled, and afterwards had Chinese at a place downtown we hadn’t tried before. We didn’t care for the place much, but they were awfully overworked that night so we couldn’t quite hold it against them. And the food, while mediocre, was revived by Dara later for two more meals’ worth of nomming. So it was a win in the end.
  • Have been doing a lot of trying to fill out all the achievements on Plants Vs. Zombies, as well as trying to play through the new levels in Angry Birds. Raise your hand if you’re surprised.
  • The high point of Christmas Day was definitely the Doctor Who Christmas Special, and big kudos to BBC America for having actually broadcast it in a timely fashion and uncut, as I previously posted!
  • Also as previously posted, Dara and I had an almost impromptu totally blottoed viewing of “Spock’s Brain”!
  • Also watched a lot of MST3K as I was seriously in the mood. Bought one of the DVD box sets we hadn’t owned before and watched all of those, as well as The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (PERFECT followup to “Spock’s Brain”) and Hercules Against the Moon Men via YouTube, streamed over the Blu-Ray player. (Which worked amazingly well, I might add, and way better than playing those same videos over any of the computers in the house would have done. Even given that it’s on the exact same network!)
  • Some light reading was done, and way less writing or editing than should have been (read: none to speak of).
  • Caught a cold, which was NOT so fun. But really, it didn’t change much of what I was doing anyway, except while I was shaking it off, I was doing the same things with added blankets, Nyquil, and sneezing. George was very, very happy to occupy my lap the whole time regardless.
  • And last night, we finished off the year with a lovely visit from Jenny as well as userinfollachglin, userinfokathrynt, and their children, for consumption of homemade pizza, some more boozahol and snacks, and playing of Rock Band 3. Jenny stayed overnight with us so she wouldn’t have to drive all the way back to Issaquah with a bunch of drunk New Year’s Eve partiers out on icy roads, and we got up to have tasty breakfast cooked by Paul. A great way to finish off the old year, and start a new one, indeed.

So yeah. Feeling ready and rested if not tanned, and rather looking forward to getting back into the swing of normal things on Monday. Bring it on, 2011!

January 1, 2011 by