Bach to Bach

So, i'm Bach to learning my Bach piece (see what I did there?) It's the first one in his book of "twelve little preludes". My teacher advises that I don't add the ornaments yet, and I also play legato as stated on the music; yet every recording I have listened to on youtube has been short and detached.
In no way am I trying to say my teacher is wrong, just that it might be a difference in my version of the sheet music.

Overall the piece is going rather well, it should have been memorised well before now but due to me being rather lazy on the practise front it's really quite behind. On top of this he also requested I learn Mozart's sonata in C major, a rather daunting task for me at the moment.

If I had to assess why my practise of the classical pieces has been falling behind, it's probably because I get greatly frustrated that I can't play a simple piece, but can play much more advanced when improvising and playing music of a different style. I guess the easy route never pays off.

Anyway, back to the shed.

Faster! Faster!

So, today I decided I would try and "swap" the top rotor in my Leslie so it would spin the opposite direction to the bottom rotor. Things didn't quite exactly go to plan, but I made my Leslie speed up quicker; which is a good thing for me.

Inside of my Leslie.

So, heres the view inside the Leslie. You can see the top motor roughly halfway up and on the lefthand side. It has its own little box. The idea would be to remove this and swap the stator around (as mentioned on organ forum) thus reversing the direction of the motor.

Upper motor.

Here you can see the disconnected belt and the butterfly nuts used to move the motor and thus tighten the belt. You can't see in the picture but theres three screws on that metal plate which hold the motor onto it.

Upper motor outside of cabinet.

Heres the motor outside of the Leslie cabinet, on closer inspection once I had taken it out, I don't think a reversal can be done with this motor. The fast and slow are controlled by two different motors, the small one on the bottom and the big one on the top. However I did notice the nut which controlled the amount of contact the pin had in relation to the fast motor. I tweaked this untill the pin fell away fairly quickly when the fast speed was selected, making sure it wasn't loose enough that things started slipping.

The nut I was talking about.

A quick tip I can give for putting in the motor is to prop it up with something while screwing the plate back on, makes it much easier than trying to hold the motor up and screw at the same time. A few turns on each screw is enough to hold the motor once the box is removed so you can tighten them properly.

I knew I would find a use for that old lightbulb box on my desk.

So overall I would call this a success, I definitely prefer the fast motor engaging faster. I am also enjoing my increased motivation to practise more often, as i'm currently working on Green onions and one of Bach's little preludes, info on those to follow.

Leech's and punctuation.

Early this afternoon, my girlfriend came down to see me. After around twenty minutes (more like an hour) of complaining to each other about the fact we never really go out anymore, we decided to go for walk. After yet another ten minutes we decided to go for a walk through the local valley, Sandwell Valley. If i had to sum the place up in a few words I would mention that it's in the midlands and surrounded by Motorways; but still a nice area for a quick walk.

Around halfway through our walk we ended up alongside a wide stream, me being the turtle lover I am I mentioned numerous times to Naomi that it would be awesome if i could get some of the aquatic plants to take home for my tank. Next thing I know, my shoes and socks are off and i'm knee deep in water furiously trying to scrape the gravel from around this plant, all the time being weary that people could have been watching me making a fool out of myself. 

After a long walk back to the car and with Naomi repeatedly reminding me how much of a nutjob I am, we arrived back home; ready for the next crazy experience.

Me being the expert I am, seemed to neglect the fact that a wild plant in a wild environment would actually have wildlife contained within it, afterall I gave it a quick rinse in the stream right? Wrong. The second I put the plant inside my turtle tank there was an explosion of life darting from every direction out of the tangled stems. So now, instead of having two turtles, I now have two turtles and probably enough other Fauna to start a small nature reserve.

Oh, and Naomi was shocked about the size of the Leslie. She still doesn't see what all the fuss is about though! Time to bombard her with Jimmy Smith.

New family member.

Today marks a turning point in my life... I experienced first hand the wonders of the Leslie speaker.

Words can't explain how overjoyed I was when I saw an add for a Leslie HL-822 for £75 in my local area. All in, this badboy cost £100 with the cable.
Aside from the slight cosmetic wear there was one problem, it crackled...

 The gentleman I purchased the speaker from explained it could possibly be due to the Mercotac needing to be replaced, this was the likely culprit but it could have also been the capacitors. never the less I decided to pull the trigger.

After a few hours of playing this morning after I received the speaker, my urge to tinker took over. I had the back off the Leslie beholding the wonders inside and by chance I knocked the Merotac connector cap from the top of the Merotac (at the time before I done any reading I thought I had broken the speaker.) On closer inspection the connections were covered in grime, something had to be done!

After cleaning the contacts I can safely say that the Leslie has been crackle free for four hours now, not only has this speaker motivated me to play more; but also given me the urge to write more on my blog.

In the coming weeks I hope to chronicle more of my musical adventures and any more DIY work I do.
(Diy laptop stand incoming!)

I understand i don't get many blog views at the moment, but I hope some day people can look back to these posts and realise how much better my punctuation has gotten.

Al, over and out

New Beginnings.

So, my last post was in 2011.

pretty bleak huh?

Today has been a strange day, it's had all the potential to be the worst day this week. but strangely isn't.
I woke up late, had some bad news from my girlfriend regarding weekend plans and generally just felt like crap.
On a brighter note I decided over breakfast (more like lunch at 11Am) to read a book, so I wen't trawling through my bookcase to find the last book I had started to read. I vaguely remembered it had a catchy title (shut up and move on) and a picture of a Sumo wrestler on the cover. After about five minutes I had the book in hand.

To cut a very long story short (around six hours of nearly constantly interrupted reading) I'm filled with enthusiasm. I intend to keep this blog updated with my daily activities, goals and shortcomings with the hopes of sharing my successes and my failures with other people. Part of this motivation came from the book and part came from reading another blog which I found through a forum I frequent. Reading and seeing someone else progress, the ups and the downs over a period of time gave me hope about my own situations and prompted me to take action.

Also I think i'm going to leave the first post, nostalgia sucks right?

thanks for reading,
Al

November 28th 2011

Hello, im going to be creating a free database of piano lessons which will be made available to everyone from their home pc, I am doing this because on my journey to learn how to play piano and keyboard I have faced multiple scams offering to make me a piano god in 10 minutes which have not worked, I feel very sorry for people who are lured into thinking that a skill such as music can be so easy, yes it can be easy but there is also a flip side, nothing in life comes without dedication.
so what can be expected?
im hoping to give weekly lessons and realistic practice timetables, I wont ask you to practice 50 hours a week, I will simply ask you to commit  of however much time you can spare, and to stick to it.

All the best
Allister Whiteside