Clara Rockmore — and a wee music lesson

Today’s Google Doodle (you know — the little piece of artwork on Google pages) honors Clara Rockmore, a Theremin artist who lived from 1911 to 1998. A Theremin, of course, is an electronic musical instrument that was invented just over a hundred years ago and that was refined in the decades that followed. Most people recognize Theremin music as providing the eerie warbling music used in early science fiction films.

Clara Rockmore was trained as a violinist. She had perfect pitch. She also had a very refined and sensitive musicality. If you haven’t listened to the YouTube performance above, do that now, and then let’s talk about her Theremin technique, which was much more highly developed than other Theremin players.

First, about the Theremin itself. If you look closely, you’ll see that Rockmore’s right hand is near a vertical metal shaft. That’s called an antenna, but actually it’s the plate of a capacitor. The nearness (or distance) of the hand from the antenna varies the pitch of the Theremin. (The circuit is an oscillator circuit, or LC circuit, in which the varying value of the capacitance against the inductance varies the rate of oscillation.) You’ll see that Rockmore’s right hand is near a horizontal metal loop. That, too, is an antenna. The nearness (or distance) of the left hand varies the volume of the Theremin. So you can see how the Theremin is played and how it is oddly analogous to playing the violin. The rapid wavering of the right hand produces vibrato, with a hand motion similar to what a violinist uses for vibrato.

We need another musical term — portamento. To play (or sing) portamento is to glide from note to note like a slide whistle. Here’s a YouTube video of a slide whistle gliding portamento down in pitch and back up again:

Not all instruments can be played portamento. A piano, obviously, moves precisely from pitch to according to which key is struck. Portamento playing is possible on the violin by just sliding the finger along the fingerboard. Singers can move portamento from note to note, but they’d better watch out, because portamento singing can be in very bad taste. As for the Theremin, most Theremin players always play portamento, because that’s the easy way to play the Theremin.

The piano accompaniment here, by the way, is playing arpeggios — chords in which the notes are not sounded all at once, but rather in a sequence.

What was remarkable about Blackmore’s playing is that she developed those complex movements of the right hand that enabled her to move precisely from pitch to pitch and note to note, the way a violinist changes notes by changing fingers rather than by sliding a single finger. She does “bend” some notes, but it’s always in good taste. I doubt that there will ever be another Theremin player like her.

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Vegetarian surprise pot pie

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Cold weather came back. As a consolation, and to mark the transition off of winter cooking, I made a pot pie.

Pot pies are not something I commonly make. But I am clear on two things on the theory of pot-pie making. For one, the crust must be generous, meaning that you want both a bottom crust and a top crust. And, for two, the crust soaks up a lot of gravy, so it’s tricky keeping the gravy from coming out too thick. I always seem to err on the thick side.

What really gives a pot pie its savory flavor — at least in my near-vegetarian opinion — is not the chicken or some other poor animal. Rather, it’s the savory vegetables, particularly the celery and peas. You can’t have too much celery.

Still, a vegetable pot pie seems to be missing something. For lack of any better options, I cut a Morning Star hot dog into little rounds, browned them lightly, and added them to the filling.

A small convection oven is really handy for pies, especially a pie with a top crust. You can keep a very close watch on the pie to see how it’s browning. I started this pie with a foil covering to keep it from browning too fast. Then, when I was sure it was done inside, I removed the foil and browned the crust with just a touch of broiler.

And yes, my philosophy is that the filling should ooze ever so slightly through the vents in the top crust. You lose points if there is any leakage where the top crust is sealed to the bottom crust. I lost a point on this pie with a one-drop leak.

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I’ll sing for some supper

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The abbey is a great place for bird-watching. I feel guilty that I’m not more systematic about bird watching and that I’m not better at identifying birds.

Just as interesting as watching the birds, though, is listening to and studying bird song, because the abbey is a very quiet place except for bird song. Maybe because I have an ear for music and for language and for accents, I’m very familiar with the bird songs that I commonly hear, although I usually have no idea which species of bird I’m hearing. I tend to hear both words and music in bird song. For sample, the bird that says, “Diaz! Diaz! Diaz!” with a lisping Castilian accent is, I think, a male cardinal. There’s another bird that says “Whip her! Whip her! Whip her!” with a country accent. I don’t know who that is. Another bird (a wren?) says, “Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheeseburger! Cheese!” Another bird (I heard it this very morning) sings, “Beet sugar! Beet sugar! Beet sugar!”

While Googling to make sure that I wasn’t stupidly misidentifying the bird in this photo (is it a sparrow?) and while looking at a page on house wrens, I saw that an old book published around 1921 actually did musical transcriptions for many birds:

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Needless to say, I have ordered that book. Since the book was published before 1923, I believe that it would now be in the public domain.

Here is one of these, a wren song, played on the abbey organ, six flats and all. I apologize for the keyboard clatter. The camera is right over the keyboards. Also, I’m sure that the bird’s actual tempo is a good bit faster than I can play this phrase with only a minute’s practice:

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It doesn’t exactly sound like birdsong, but how easily I could imagine J.S. Bach composing a toccata on that theme! And below, it is an octave higher and twice as fast, thanks to a little tweaking in iMovie. That makes it sound a bit more like birdsong, though I’m afraid I gave that opening triplet only half the time it is owed:

The bird in the photo, by the way, appeared at the deck door to wonder why there is no longer food on the deck. Answer: Because it’s no longer snowing, and I swept up the mess.

P.S. Further Googling reveals that, in 2004, NPR did a story on F. Schuyler Mathews’ book and his musical notation: NPR audio

Kill your dryer

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According to an article at grist.org, Americans spend about $9 billion a year on electricity to power their clothes dryers. While appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines have made great strides in energy efficiency, dryers have not. In 2014, the Natural Resources Defense Council published a “call for action” for more-efficient clothes dryers.

It was news to me that dryers sold in Europe, Australia, and Asia use heat-pump technology, which can cut energy use by more than half. Heat-pump dryers have recently come to market in the United States. They’re not exactly cheap, but I’m sure that, over the life of the appliance, they more than pay for themselves in energy savings.

Some people, I realize — for example those who live in cities, or in apartments — pretty much have no choice but to use clothes dryers. Heat-pump dryers could yield considerable savings and avoid a lot of carbon dioxide dumped into the atmosphere.

But when you live in the sticks, like me, and when you’re a cheapskate, like me, a $4.99 clothesline is the way to go. I don’t even have a dryer and don’t want one. Not only do clothes dryers eat your clothes, they give things that dryer smell instead of a fresh-air smell. I even like scratchy towels. Why am I thinking about this now? Because March winds are the best clothes dryer ever.

Double-bump glassware

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I guess I’m just sentimental about how food was served when I was much younger — back before the days in which everything became plastic, disposable, and super-sized. While browsing in a salvage store earlier this week (I love salvage stores — you never know what you might find) I came across a box of new old-stock glasses. The label on the box called them “double bump” glasses, a term that I had never heard.

You’ll remember glasses of this type very well unless, perhaps, you’re of the millennial generation. As I recall, these glasses were used up through the 1970s and even 1980s. You might get a glass of ice water in a glass like this as soon as you sat down in a diner. If you ordered a glass of milk, it might come in a glass like this. I also think I recall that, if you ordered a small Coke at a place like a drug store fountain or the Woolworth’s lunch counter, it might come in a glass like this.

Part of what I like about institutional relics of that era is that, back then, eight ounces was considered a normal serving.

But just look at the classic design of this glass! The bumps, of course, help keep you from dropping it.

I bought only two of these glasses on the grounds that I don’t have cabinet space for more. But something tells me that I’ll probably stop and buy a few more next time I pass that salvage store.

North Carolina barbecue

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I am not strictly a vegetarian, but I seldom eat meat. I pretty much never cook meat at home, partly because I hate looking at and handling raw meat, and I detest the mess it makes in the kitchen. So, if I eat meat, it’s because I’m out and about.

Pork barbecue is one of the few foods that North Carolina is famous for. North Carolina barbecue fits into two regional categories — eastern barbecue, and what we farther west call “Lexington style” barbecue, because Lexington, North Carolina, is ground zero for it.

Michael Pollan, in his 2013 book Cooked — a natural history of food — uses North Carolina barbecue to illustrate cooking with fire. North Carolina barbecue is slow-cooked and smoked over savory woods. It is served sliced or chopped with a sauce that is heavy on vinegar and reddened with tomato. It is frequently served with a slaw in which the cabbage is dressed with a sauce similar to the barbecue sauce.

This barbecue sandwich (Lexington style) is at Fuzzy’s barbecue at Madison, which is in Rockingham County. I stopped at Fuzzy’s and ate what the natives eat while waiting for my Jeep to have its annual safety inspection.

P.S. Note the spoon that came with the side serving of slaw. I am not certain whether it’s a regional thing (with Stokes County as ground zero) or a new, less local element of cultural decline in the past few years brought about by the Republican Party and the rolling back of the Enlightenment. But, increasingly, if you order certain foods in local restaurants (beans, for example), you may get a spoon with it and no fork. When this happens, I am instantly paralyzed. One might eat certain deserts with a spoon, or soup. But everything else is eaten with a fork. I would as soon eat slaw with a spoon as vote for a Republican. 🙂

Tearing the horn off an anvil?

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When I was a young’un, a saying I frequently heard (it was particularly said of children) was that a person who was prone to breaking things could “tear the horn off an anvil.”

Over the years, I have occasionally used this saying. Often I have been met with a blank look. This caused me to realize that many people are not clear on what an anvil is, or why an anvil has a horn.

At the lawn mower shop last week, I noticed a particularly photogenic anvil. I took a picture of it in case I ever needed to illustrate the saying.

An anvil, of course, is used by smiths and other metal workers for hammering a piece of metal into a particular shape.

As for the machine below, which I also photographed because it was photogenic, I’m not exactly sure what it is. My guess, though, is that it’s for crimping metal. Notice the crimped length of stovepipe behind the machine. If my theory is correct, then this machine would let you make a stovepipe out of a piece of sheet metal.

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Variations on an old theme: Banana bread

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Everybody makes banana bread, right? Like me, you probably have a standby basic recipe. Still, it’s good to experiment, especially with ways to make banana bread a little healthier.

Not many years ago, saturated fats such as coconut oil were deemed to be very bad for us. Now some sources, at least, encourage us to eat coconut oil in modest quantities. The problem is, the taste of virgin unrefined coconut oil is not compatible with many baked goods. But with banana bread, it’s a different story. Coconut oil can be substituted for all, or part, of the butter.

Banana bread also works great with heavy flours such as sprouted whole wheat flour. Sprouted whole wheat flour, however, is very thirsty. I added half a cup of milk to the recipe to help moisten two cups of sprouted whole wheat flour.

The glaze is strawberry preserves and honey thinned with a bit of rum. Some of the whipped cream went into the coffee.

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