(Hey look! I'm using this journal again!)
Linguistic Note: This entry contains a heck of a lot of Javanese words. I do not actually speak/understand any Javanese beyond the words contained in this entry and perhaps some other gamelan theory-related words that I did not type here, but at the same time, it'd be much harder to write about this music/concert while trying to describe these things in elaborating English when there are perfectly good succinct Javanese words for them. Also, I feel like going all WHEECONCERTSPAZ! rather than This Is A Lecture On Javanese Music, so I'm just going to make all the words in question link to explanatory pages. Got it? Good.
SO! Last night was the big end of the year gamelan concert! I've been looking forward to it for a long time, and everyone in the group has put a huge number of hours throughout the year and particularly in the last couple of weeks getting ready for this thing. It was an enormous push, but we had a ton of momentum behind it, and even when there were pockets of tension, everything resolved and added up to a freaking awesome concert. There's a real enthusiasm and chemistry in our gamelan, to a level I've felt in only a few other ensembles I've ever played in. I'm very very glad to have found my way into this group!
Pretty much the whole day yesterday was spent on preparations for the concert. Rehearsal started at noon (though some of us showed up earlier to move instruments into position) and went until about 4:30. We ran through everything, and because some of the newer members of the group were late and clueless, we ran some stuff twice. We then had a big picnic for the group members and family and friends, for which there was a ton of really good catered food with entirely too much dessert for our own good. It's fortunate we had to walk back to the hall and then wait another 45 minutes before the concert started, or we would've been too stuffed to play well! But we did play well!
And now, piece by piece! Here come the Javanese words...
We opened the concert with Singa Nebah, a simple lancaran consisting of only three fairly repetitive gongans. We included this both because it's loud and boisterous, but also because we thought the new members of the group (those who joined in the third quarter) would find it easy to play. I was therefore pretty nervous when one of the newbies asked me what the balungan were less than a minute before we went out to play, but nothing collapsed at any rate. Mas Sapto made up a new introduction for this piece, which Kirk and I played on the two gendèr (though played like a saron rather than in the standard idiom and with the padding taken off the beaters). This was a little tricky to coordinate, but I think it was really cool to start the concert with a minute of very quiet playing before the whole thing exploded into noise.
Second was Sembunggilang, one of the pieces we played on the 17 March concert. It's technically a bubaran, but as those are meant to be used to finish a concert and we weren't doing that, René opted to call it a lancaran mlampah instead. While the number of beats per gongan is the same between the two, the drumming is different, and we still did the bubaran version. But who's to know except us? I played demung on this one, and it all went very smoothly.
Swara Suling is a pretty popular song in Java, from what I understand. Phinn found some pretty alarmingly dorky versions of it on Youtube. It started as a traditional song about the sound of the suling as accompanied by the gamelan, and it was adapted into a more well-known version by prominent gamelan composer Ki Nartosabdho in the mid 20th century. Our version included a long improvised suling solo, all of the new people (and some of the older ones, including myself) singing, and Mas Sapto absolutely rocking out on the kendhang. I was playing peking on this and was therefore right next to Mas, so I got to watch him in action. Very awesome.
Lancaran Éling-Éling has apparently been a warhorse in the UCR gamelan for years and years, with different people playing different parts. It's a simple melody, but we enhanced it by doing it Banyumas (a region in south central Java) style rather than the more standard Yogyakarta or Surakarta styles. The imbal for the bonangs is done in octave style rather than interlocking, and the sarons also play imbal. I played bonang barung on this one, and I was a little worried when gong failed to be played after I played the buka, but everyone just kept going anyway. Go us!
Our biggest piece of the year, on which we worked pretty intensely from the start of fall quarter (ie. since before I even got there) was ladrang Sumyar. We performed the ladrang by itself on 17 March, but for this concert, we expanded it to a longer sequence like what might be used in wayang: we went from the ladrang into ayak-ayakan, srepegan, and sampak. Sumyar itself is a beautiful and expansive piece, complete with a lot of singing and made more complicated in that we took it through several irama levels. The ayak-ayakan, srepegan, and sampak get progressively more intense; we enhanced the sampak even further by switching from pélog to sléndro tuning in the middle and adding an elaborating saron solo, which yours truly had much fun playing. This whole sequence went very smoothly (I've included a recording of the dress rehearsal of the ayak-ayakan, srepegan, and sampak with this post), and it's one of those pieces that doesn't feel like a half an hour in length when one is playing it, because it's so wonderfully involving. Sad it's the last time we're playing it!
After intermission, we picked back up with ladrang Gati Brangta. This is a somewhat militaristic piece that was used for the Sultan's guards in Yogyakarta. It's often played with a snare drum now, probably because of the Dutch colonizers, but it sounds really cool and so we used one. For some reason, the people playing the balungan thought this piece was really hard, but I guess I had it easy by playing kenong and kethuk. I did hit one wrong note near the end, but there were no evil eyes given, and it wasn't an obvious mistake on the video recording, so I did not break the piece!
One of the main advertising points on this concert was that we played more than just traditional music. We had those adaptations of old pieces, but we also did some newer composed pieces as well. One of those was Menthit, which Mas Sapto wrote along with a guy called Alex Grillo, and our performance last night was the United States premiere. It's a simple piece - small fragments of material that get layered thicker and thicker through different instruments (though not so much the high elaborating instruments - I played regular saron on this one) as the piece goes on, then runs into a huge accelerando and ending in a yell of triumph. Mas ended up taking the tempo a few notches faster than usual in the heat of the moment, but that made the end all more fun once we finished it and realized we didn't collapse.
Up to this point, most of the playing had been by the longer-standing members of the group, but the new people got a chance to play again on lancaran Ricik-Ricik, another longtime standard of the UCR gamelan repertoire. This was a little bit shaky because the people playing bonang were pretty tentative and nobody seemed inclined to follow the drummer's speed, but it was pretty much together the whole time and they did all know to end after I hit the gong, so that counts as coming together, I think!
I suppose that on a program of twelve pieces, the odds of having one trainwreck are pretty good. And, unfortunately, we hit those odds. The piece in question is by Renée Coulombe, one of UCR's composition faculty, and the crazy hyper theory teacher I've mentioned in previous posts. The piece, 1x2x3=nem! uses gamelan, prepared piano, and vocal improvisation. The general structure was that there were three sections of written material, to be played six times each ("nem" is Javanese for "six"), adding an instrument each time, then transitioning to the next section by Mas Sapto playing a drum solo, then ending in six cycles of everyone improvising. We had the gong, kenong, kethuk, and kempul on a computer loop to keep the tempo steady and allow people to improvise on those instruments without losing the pulse, but almost as soon as it started, the automated gong sound set off this horrible feedback loop with the stage mikes and house speakers. We had to start over, but then the gong didn't actually make noise and nobody knew where to come in. People were just sitting there and looking blank while Renée played the piano; finally, the four of us playing bonang decided, with some spoken deliberation that I hope doesn't end up on the recording, that we were just going to play, the heck with timing. And that's pretty much how the rest of the piece ended up going. Mas Sapto's solos ended up being the only thing that marked the different sections, and he's what marked the end of the piece as well. Renée was supposed to have a piano cue for that, but she managed to slice one of her fingers open on a piano string in the last section and was bleeding all over the inside of the piano (which looked really scary!), so it was up to Sapto alone. Definite definite trainwreck! But fortunately, Renée said there was more blood than pain, and she also said that improv was the imp
Despite the stresses of premiering experimental new pieces, I think I was most nervous about ladrang Bribil, which is another traditional piece. These nerves came from the fact that I had to sing a whole lot in this piece. I also played the saron, but I could autopilot that pretty well by this point. The singing was different story. During the fast gobyog (village-style) section of the piece, all the newbies and myself sang a cakapan (chorus) part that has two stanzas. This is how it should be in terms of vocal parts to music. for the irama 3 section, though, there's supposed to be both a gèrong and a sindhèn part, but we simply didn't have the forces for both or the time to teach them. Unorthodox treatment though it may be, I sang the first verse of the gèrongan straight, and then for the second verse, did this mutant hybridization of the gèrongan and sindhèn parts. This involved a pause in the music occupied only by a few sparse notes on the gendèr and by the pesindhèn singing a melismatic part that ends up cueing everyone to come back in. It wasn't a big melisma, but it was still very exposed and nervousmaking. I know I got the timing correct, but I'm also sure I had an obvious look of relief when we got back to the gobyog section and the other singers joined me on the cakapan again.
Kembang Pacar is another bubaran that we renamed lancaran mlampah despite its drumming pattern. I drummed this one, and while that's still a very important position to keep in the ensemble, it was far less stressful than the singing in Bribil! We'd been working on this piece for a while and it went very smoothly.
We closed off the concert with what we correctly assumed would be a real crowd pleaser, another one of Mas Sapto's pieces called Soré-Soré. This was written for a festival of gamelan rock music, basically, and with it he intended to show that amps are entirely unnecessary for rocking out. The piece is for gamelan and drumset, and Sapto took the latter role while we hammered it out on the real heavy metal. I was whacking the peking so hard that the whole thing was shaking. We didn't need amps because it was electrifying on its own! And the audience did roar with approval. What a way to end!
And then it was over. Hard to believe! A whole year of work, and then over after two wonderful and intense hours. It's almost unfair how that works, though. It took me longer to write this entry about the concert (though I admittedly had plenty of distractions with the LJ entry!) than it took to play it. There's the euphoria after the show, sure, but then the letdown a little later's pretty bad. And yet part of it's heartening, since post-concert letdown means the music and the ensemble alike are awesome, whereas post-concert relief means there's something not all there. At least there's another one next year, a whole new set of pieces to learn and develop. (Now all I need is to play a Mahler symphony performance next year and things will be perfect!)
We went back to René's place after the concert and watched the video of the show. It's pretty awesome, even though we all hate how we look on screen. He seemed pleased. Mas Sapto seemed pleased and was very giggly. Most of us ended up sprawled on the floor as we watched, energy gone but spirits good. It'll be good next year as well, but it's also sad in that Mario's going to a different school next year, Kenny and Marisa are moving away, and Mas Sapto has to go back to Java in about ten days. It'll be good, but different.
I finally had the weather and the instructor to try the stinking fam checkride today. I flew with the squadron XO, who I had briefed with on one of my previous attempts. Since he'd already been pretty thorough and he knew I'd done about 20 of these things, we pretty much just hit conduct of flight. Frankly, I was flying like crap. I didn't have much of any feel for the jet during aerobatics, I lost a lot of altitude in the stalls, and my basic airwork for keeping altitude and airspeed really was not so solid.
We were using runway 17, which I had never done before. My approach turn was pretty crappy. I had to make a lot of corrections, but I was getting to a start with a ball on the lens most of the time. My landings were safe, and one or two were even Fair. My PA's weren't as good as usual. I floated it past the wire both times.
So, with my flying not seeming all that great to me (although understandable considering this was my second time in the airplane in three weeks), I worriedly asked the XO how I did.
"Oh yeah, you passed. I mean, unless you'd like some more ET's before you solo..."
No sir, appreciate the offer, but I'll just take it out on my own. :-)
I soloed this afternoon. I'd love to tell you how amazing and moving it was to finally have the jet on my own, but I was kind of tired, didn't really go nuts pulling g out in the area, and truthfully, it was exactly like all the other fam flights I've had. Well, not exactly. The aircraft was 200 lb lighter and that loud, annoying autopilot in the back seemed to be inoperative. Good thing, too. My landings were safe, but probably nothing to write home about. I had to wave myself off twice. Oh well. Done is done, and apparently even on a bad day after being out of the loop for quite awhile, I can safely operate this airplane. That's a good feeling.
What is your home decorating style, and how has it changed over time? Do you have plans to redecorate?
Submitted by enSue.
1. Messy.
2. Slightly less messy.
3. Muss it up a bit more again.
Today, I was reminded why I'm actually doing all this crap. It was my first flight in the airplane from the front seat. We went out to the operating area, did the high work, then came back for the pattern. The simulator simply cannot do justice to the landings. It sounds something like "sssshkaklunk!" and it feels like someone dropped thirty pounds onto your shoulders. Then it's just MRT (aka max thrust) boards in (speedbrakes retract) pop the nose up and go again.
I also got a precautionary approach demonstrated to me. These are similar to the PEL's I did back in primary. That was probably my favorite thing today. We get up to 500 feet going down the runway, clean up the aircraft, then pitch up 20 degrees, 45 degrees angle of bank shooting to get back abeam the runway at three thousand feet doing 200 knots. Understand at that point for a regular landing you are 600 feet above the ground. Three thousand is high. So, what you do is get your gear down, flaps half, speed brakes out, and dive pell-mell at the runway. You scoop the nose out coming through the bottom and flare out your landing. Now, when an airliner or general aviation aircraft is doing a flare for a normal landing, they start pretty close to the ground, maybe ten, twenty feet. It was the same in the T-34. For this, you're bleeding off so much energy you start your flare at 300 feet. It's a lot of fun getting to be aggressive to get the airplane on deck.
So, I've officially landed the airplane safely and brought it to a full stop. There's a lot more to do, but that really feels like something.
In your ultimate dream house, what does your favorite room look like?
Simply put, a hangar/garage. It would have a built-in lift, welding gear, an air setup, bandsaw, lathe, and whatever else I can think of for working metal and wood. It might even have a vacuum bagging table for dealing with those fiberglass layups. Naturally, there would be a beverage fridge, and it would be wired up for music. It would also be great to get a grease-resistant computer station nearby so I could use Nasioc tutorials more effectively. Ooh! Also, a tire mounting machine and computer wheel balancer. Much better than paying 80 bucks every time I want to re-shod my autocross wheels.
When skimming a magazine (or book or newspaper) do you flip through the pages from front to back or back to front?
Submitted by enSue.
I am a consistent periodical reader. (Ponder that for a second). I do pick up books, but the vast majority of my pleasure reading comes in convenient monthly format and has lots of pretty pictures. If it's something I bought, I start at the front and work my way back. This will usually be something like a Grassroots Motorsports or a Kitplane (shocker!) If I'm at the bookstore and checking out a title I don't normally get, I go straight to whatever article caught my eye in the first place. If it looks good, I'll buy the magazine, even knowing I may have already finished the most compelling story in there.
I told you I wasn't done. If there's anything left at the bottom of that pot of gold, there's more I'd love to do. I'm not such a one-dimensional guy that I'd just spend it all on cars. That would be silly. I want a couple of airplanes as well. Specifically, I want to build myself a Vans Aircraft RV-8 kitplane. More info here.
While I'm building, I would need to build up taildragger time. I've always loved the look of the Bellanca Super Decathlon. Of course, 180 hp and fully aerobatic doesn't hurt its cause.
So, back to the whole building an RV-8 thing. When an amateur builds an aircraft, it can be certified in the Experimental category. After a set number of test flight hours, you have basically the same priveleges as any private pilot. I want to build this for a number of reasons. First, building an airplane is just one of those things in life I simply have to do. Second, it provides performance and style that your typical certified airplane simply does not. She'll go cross country at 200 knots, perform aerobatics, and get into and out of short fields. The designer calls it "Total Performance." I call it "sounds like fun." Third, with over a thousand kits flying, Vans Aircraft is a good bet in the homebuilt category and very much a known quantity.
Oh yeah, and they look like World War II fighters.
I can't resist the idea of painting it all blue like the 1944+ Naval aircraft paint scheme. With these homebuilts, you can choose your powerplant. Most folks go with the recommended traditional Lycoming O-360. I'm hoping we'll have some diesel powerplant options available shortly. The 100 Low Lead aviation gasoline required for the Lycoming probably won't be with us forever. Diesels can burn jet fuel, which isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Plus, there is potential for less fuel burn and much, much cheaper overhauls, since you don't have to worry about nearly as many components. I'm not too interested in the automobile engine conversions, even though one is based off a Subaru powerplant. When choosing your one and only engine for an airplane, I prefer to be a bit conservative. For avionics, on the other hand, I'll probably go for most of the latest gee-whiz stuff, get the electronic flight instrument systems (EFIS), moving map GPS, and all that. I want to be IFR capable. If I'm going to actually go on trips with the airplane, it needs to dance through the clouds. Naturally, there would be either redundant electrical systems and/or vacuum gauge backup. This technology is always maturing, so I'll see what's coming up.
So, I've drained the leprechaun's bank account pretty well here. Some of this stuff I'm willing to just let stay a pipe dream, but not all of it. A brand new Lotus Exige might not ever be practical for me, but even last year, the Elise, which is nearly the same car, was going used for $36,000. A full STI drivetrain swap is expensive, but dropping in a 2.5 liter turbo motor and doing all the suspension stuff on an old Impreza is not out of the realm of possibility. Racecars can always be found used for much less than the amount of money actually put into them. Besides, right now I don't feel the urge to spend a season going wheel to wheel with people. Just getting some hot laps would probably quench this thirst. Used Super Decathlons are $50k to $60k, so it might not be realistic to own one even as I'm building, but the Citabria, which is nearly the same airplane, is a lot more reasonable. The RV-8 could wind up costing as much as $100,000, but you can buy it very piecemeal. Each large piece of the airplane is assembled from a different kit that can be paid for and shipped seperately. Plus, the quickbuild kit itself totals at only $27,000. With a little careful planning, I might be able to stay current and build at the same time. I'm going to make most of this stuff happen, even if it's not to the full degree I expected.
You've found the fabled pot o' gold. How will you spend it?
Submitted by Red Pen.
Oh man, this QotD opens a Pandora's box of possibilities. Naturally, there's plenty of mundane stuff to take care of, such as buying and furnishing a home. After that, there are a number of experiences I would like to have as a car guy. I want to know what it's like to build up an extremely fast sedan-type racecar, what it takes to do an engine swap and live with one. I want to know what it's like to own and live with an exotic car. I also want to know what it's like to campaign some sort of prototype racer.
I'm already a huge suspension nerd, so a lot of money would go there as well. Doing something like this, adapting something that is not a sports car for track work, often means finding fixes to a suspension system that are not ideal. The Impreza uses a MacPherson strut setup in the front that gives up negative camber as it compresses in a turn. This reduces grip up front in a nose-heavy car. The predictable result is understeer. Since I'm spending the leprechaun's money, I'd go ahead and spring for ZZYZX coilovers, which are just about optimally designed to get the most out of the Subaru suspension geometry, with the ability to get lots of negative camber and positive caster. They're built around double-adjustable Koni dampers and come with a choice of spring rates, so I'd get to learn how to maximize a pretty adjustable suspension setup. Other fixes include thicker swaybars and beefy endlinks to reduce roll, trailing arms, lateral links, strut braces, etc. There are some great products that because I autocross in a relatively tame class I can't use on my current WRX. I want to see what difference balljoint extenders (used to adjust the roll center and minimize camber loss), anti-lift kits (removes the anti-lift and dive characteristics from the car, increasing grip), and fender braces make on an Impreza.
There would be other items, such as a roll bar, race buckets, five point harnesses, and a stripped interior, plus 17x9 or wider wheels, but those are all the big items. Sub 3000 lb, 300 awhp, adjustable suspension with three trick differentials would make for one stupid-fast, stupid-fun car that I built with my own hands.
But... it will always be an Impreza. It will never quite have the cachet or the feel of something exotic. My three dream cars, in order of ascending cost, are the Lotus Exige, Porsche 911 GT3, and Ferrari F430.
All beautiful, all fast, and all somewhat pricy. The Exige starts around $50,000 and is powered by a 4 cylinder 1.8 liter Toyota engine, so it should not be expensive to maintain. The rest will absolutely crush the wallet, with about $100k for the Porsche and $250k for the Ferrari. But man, what fun.
Hokay, prototype sports car... now, if we talk American Le Mans, P1 or P2 class, it's millions of dollars. Those are truly beautiful machines that I would love to try out, but I could happily get my kicks at nearly a reasonable price. SCCA has a couple road racing classes for small displacement prototypes, C Sports Racer, or CSR, and DSR. The car to have of late is manufactured by Stohr Racing. $60k-ish.
Damn near a full on Le Mans Prototype with plenty of carbon fiber, adjustable suspension, highly tuned superbike engine, and ground effect downforce. Just too awesome.
That's all the car guy stuff I've got, but there's more.
What will be your famous last words?
Submitted by ngocaroo.
"Wow, after all the stupid sh$# I got away with in an airplane, this is just embarassing."
Video: Show us some great dancing.
This guy tearing some sh*@ up in his homebuilt Vans RV-4, a great little kitplane, predecessor to the RV-8, my current kitplane obsession. Yeah, he's not busting a move, but that is some amazing dancing down on the deck.
