Chiff and Fipple Forums

The obvious question is "in tune with what?" Being "in tune" with a chromatic tuner set on equal tempered tuning will help you if you ever play sustained notes with a similarly "tuned" instrument. But such an instrument (like a piano) is literally out of tune with itsel...

The bodhrán really made it from household implement to wrenboy noisemaker to musical instrument. O'Riada is usually given the credit for reviving/introducing it to the mainstream but there was an undercurrent of 'tambourine' players, with bells and all during the middle of the 20th century at least...

The pipes are gorgeous sounding, and it's hard to understand why they would fade relative to other instruments. One word: Reeds. If you can't get good reeds then you don't have pipes. In WWII, the reed cane was all used for camouflage netting, and it took generations to recover (with clarinets and ...

So, is there a big advantage (soundwise or otherwise) to the really deep drums? They seem to be very popular these days, and I'm wondering why. Physics: more volume = lower frequency of resonance. Whether that's an advantage depends on a lot of things. In many cases, additional low frequency materi...

Neat. I had no idea there were finger-lever harps.

My buddy, who is a Scottish Harp Society of America judge, has carbon fibre strings. They sound incredible. Totally unrelated to the subject of ditals, obviously, but another example of technology applied to harp.

I've been working on learning mandolin on-and-off for a few years. Mostly off. I've just picked it up again. My background includes Highland Bagpipes (i.e., Scottish, not ITM). My wife, a good violinist, has been working on fiddle, on-and-off, for decades. Since she retired, fiddle is getting more e...

Just one question: I find it very hard to switch the head from one tube to the other - would adding a little grease help or does it risk attacking the plastic? I have a choice of: plastic recorder joint grease, olive oil, WD40, 3 in one precision machinery oil, and I could probably find a few other...

leearn2turn wrote:[Thread revival. - Mod]

My understanding is there is a quite a German influence on Mexican music and much of it does indeed have a polka sound. Google "música norteña".

-l2t

German and Czech via Texas:

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/11/39214107 ... d-to-polka

And obviously if you bought a mixer (like the $80 Mackie Mix8) you could just use the headphone out for your personal monitoring needs.

Answers based on my experiences. A) For $50 you can buy a Rolls Personal Monitor Amp. You plug your mic into it and either a headphone or a powered speaker. If you use Etymotic Earbuds, you can use them to partly block out the other noises around you and hear yourself really well. B) You can only us...

I've had a chrome Generation since the 90s. I finally got a Freeman tweeked Generation. The Freeman is vastly better for me. There are two main differences. First, he makes the tone sweeter and less breathy. It's also a little less bright. Second, and more important to me, he cuts about 1/8 inch off...

Before long this thread will be four years old ;-) I find Sonic Visualizer to be really good. It has less artifacts than anything else I've been able to compare it to. Plus it has all the different visualization layers and harmonic analyzers. It's original purpose was linguistics, but it supports pl...

We have a zoom H2, and H4n and an H5. The H4n and the H5 both have 4 track recorders built in that work basically like 4 track cassette recorders. You can record a stereo pair of tracks with the built in mics, then play it back through headphones and record a stereo pair to the other two tracks. The...

swizzlestick wrote:Take a look at https://bretpimentel.com/flexible-ewi-fingerings/ for an in depth overview of the EWI key design.

Thanks! It makes perfect sense when explained that way.

Anyone play EWI? If found some really old threads, but none seem to get at what I'm interested in. First off, I'm interested in the EWI primarily to use it to control a Moog synth. I'm primarily interested in using it for blues and prog rock, so having 8 octaves of chromatic notes is appealing (once...