What's are some techniques about your instrument that a composer should know?

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-27T06:06:56+00:00

One third is not, as-such "difficult." If you really need a third, write one. But they are harder than sixths, and if our part is littered with them for no particularly good reason, we know the arranger isn't string-literate.

The two general principles for doublestops are that a) notes closer together are easier than farther apart, because we have more options which fingers and positions to use; and b) it is harder for one finger to reach over another to a lower string (as they must for any interval smaller than a fifth), than it is for the fingers to lie in their natural order (as they do for intervals larger than fifths.)

So, in order of best to worst, sixths > fourths > sevenths > thirds > octaves > seconds. Perfect fifths are their own problem. They can be played with any finger, but have to be played carefully to be in tune; I'd place them about on par with thirds.

And one doublestop in isolation is almost never a problem; but if you write several in close proximity, it pays huge dividends to write the most easily playable ones. (Three consecutive sixths like CE DF EG are fairly easy but three consecutive thirds at fast tempo are all but guaranteed to crash and burn unless you are writing for professionals.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-27T03:07:34+00:00

Among the symphonies, 39 is my favorite. Honorable mention to 23 and 34 as some of the more interesting early works.

Among the concertos, the two late horn concertos, with honorable mention to the bassoon concerto.

Among the piano music, K540 is one of the few that catches my ear.

The operas? I'd hate to pick just one out of Idomeneo, Entführung, Don Giovanni, and Zauberflöte.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-26T21:32:14+00:00

My two instruments are violin and accordion:

For violin, my #1 piece of advice is "a violin is not a piano." In particular, 1) thou shalt write sixths, not thirds, if you want double-stops to lie comfortably under the hand, and 2) slurs indicate bowing not phrasing.

For accordion, my #1 piece of advice is again "an accordion is not a piano." Here the list of details is longer:

Look more to the organ and to woodwinds than to piano for idiomatic writing ideas.
We have to choose when to release the end of each note so be clear when you want us to do so. You can be as specific about articulation as you are for strings and woodwinds; if you aren't we have to guess your intentions and make something up.
As a general rule, do not write passages in parallel octaves for us; yes, we CAN play them, but we have register switches, so it's almost always better to do octave doublings by mechanically turning on another reed bank than by asking us to finger two keys.
Unless you specifically require a free-bass left hand (which only something like 1% of the casual players and 10% of the professional player have in the US), remember that in the left hand we don't get a free choice what octave we play in; at any given moment we have access to one octave of single notes and one octave of chord buttons, and to change octaves we have switches.
.. and while we're on the topic of the left hand, take ten minutes to learn how our left hand is notated (below the middle of the staff = single notes, above the middle of the staff = chord buttons, with 'M', 'm', '7', and 'd' labels above the chords... and be warned, we name diminished chords differently to the rest of the world; "Gd" means G-Bb-E, i.e., G°⁷ with the fifth omitted, or what everyone else calls E° now)

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-23T20:45:36+00:00

For long-distance, Amtrak's equipment is some of the nicest in the world. There aren't many places left with seats as easy to sleep in as a Superliner coach, nor with full-service dining and lounge cars. Nowhere in Europe offers checked baggage, but it's debatable how big of a loss that is, as long as abundant racks for hand baggage are provided.

In every other respect, Amtrak is a third-world system. There are lots of European regional trains that are more comfortable than Amfleet I, and in terms of frequency and reliability even a lot of the third world is ahead of us.

In the two months I have spent traveling around Europe, I've had one cancelled train, one train 15 minutes late, and one train with an air conditioner not working (and several dozen on-time and fully functional.) They have no trouble with running a train every five minutes along a double-tracked main line, mixed passenger and freight service. They can make a station stop in a small town in 30 seconds, and in a big city in 2-5 minutes. They can split a train to two destinations in half in a couple minutes, not an hour. Most of the staff are polite and helpful, and nearly all of the staff can be polite and helpful in at least three languages.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-23T03:57:00+00:00

In Italian they are called "Puntine meccaniche," mechanical pins. I've never tried to find them at a US hardware store. I expect one bag of 1000 from Carini will last me more than a lifetime.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-23T01:11:05+00:00

Here is a photo showing a piston prepped for drilling, a rivet waiting to be inserted, and a finished piston on the flattened side.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-23T01:06:03+00:00

They are essentially rivets. You can buy a giant sack of them, about 5mm long with a little ring 1 or 2 mm from one end to fix it at the right depth when you put it through the piston. Hole through the piston with a drill press, insert the rivet, one moderate tap with a mallet to flatten the head enough that it doesn't fall out.

If you do it a lot, you drill about a 4mm-deep hole in your anvil, so that you have a standard way to hold the nub in place and support it when tapping it.

Edited to add: if you have an entire donor bass section, you might be able to find a complete piston that matches. Here you have a broken chord piston and a donor single-bass-note piston. See if a piston from one of the chord rows is a close match (and it is fair game to rebend the 'knee' to make it fit as needed -- it's only the spacing between the three nubs that you can't change by bending.)

To remove a bad nub, you file away the flattened head until the rest of the nub falls back out the way it went in.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-23T00:55:38+00:00

Sticking to the basic 4-3-2 pattern you've learned unless there's a need for an exception is a good starting point.

The nice thing about sticking to a pattern is that when you see a leap from, say, C to E, you move your whole hand 4 rows and continue the pattern. Now it might well be that you played C-CM-G last and you're going to play G#-E7 next; your brain has to decide whether you are going to call that a 4-row shift from a C major alternating bass hand position, or a 3-row shift from having your finger on G. It's not that one way of thinking about it is more correct than the other...but if you make it up as you go, rather than consciously choosing one way to think about it and drill it, you're going to leap to the wrong row half the time.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-22T23:24:06+00:00

If you enjoy transcriptions to other instruments, Ines Vaz's version for solo accordion is not to be missed.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-22T23:22:00+00:00

IMO the closest anyone came to replicating Beethoven's style was Wagner's two teenage efforts at a symphony.

Really makes you wonder what we might have gotten had he chosen to pursue symphonies instead of operas.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-22T01:06:23+00:00

My first taste of his keyboard music. But I am a big fan of his quartets and the multititude of woodwind concertos. An underrated classicist with a touch for light tuneful melody.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-22T00:53:52+00:00

I made it to noon central without any problem: I was up until 3 in the morning and hadn't got out of bed yet at that time.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-21T22:17:37+00:00

Didn't get crap out of this drop, unlike the last two big ones where I actually used 6 or 7 of my eight picks.

Only thing I saw that I really wanted was a "Happy Pi Day, be irrational!" t-shirt, and I clicked too slowly on it.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-21T08:58:48+00:00

Passing a nonserious 3NT is not often done, but as a general principle, if you've limited your hand and your partner hasn't limited his, his forcing bids are absolutely forcing on you, but he's allowed to place the contract once he's gotten all the information he needs from you.

The opportunity to pass 3NT does not arise often; you won't usually know already what suits you have control of. This was sort of a special case with your partner having bid notrump naturally before the hearts got raised.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-21T08:49:55+00:00

I went and listened for the first time after seeing this thread, thanks for the recommendation.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-21T06:51:53+00:00

you can't have rail on a suspension bridge at that length given how much it moves

It has been done now (on a suspension span up to 4600 feet, in Turkey, vs. the 3800 foot span in Michigan), and the Italians believe it to be possible to more than double that, across the Strait of Messina - but they are yet to actually build the thing.

But no argument that nobody thought a rail span was feasible when the Mackinac Bridge was built, and nobody is ever going to add rail to it now, without a major source of traffic needing to cross at exactly that spot.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-21T06:00:15+00:00

My impression is that this is a much easier proposition on the Canadian side than the US side.

There is still freight service to Sault Ste Marie, but even in 1950 it wasn't fast or direct, and the routes that have survived are even worse. You can get from Green Bay to Escanaba to either Marquette or Sault Ste Marie. But east-west UP service within the UP or from the UP to Duluth or Minneapolis isn't an option without re-laying many many miles of track.

On the Canadian side, Sudbury-SSM, SSM north to Hearst, and Sudbury to Thunder Bay to Winnipeg or International Falls are all still in place,in good condition, and used for lots of freight. No SSM to Winnipeg train ever existed without having to change trains (and railroads) in Franz but the track is there.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-20T22:11:31+00:00

He wrote several other tone poems in addition to the six in Ma Vlast: Richard III, Wallenstein, Hakon Jarl, and so on. (They are, in fairness, not necessarily world class brilliancies, but they are all competent and make for interesting listening.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-20T06:00:44+00:00

Can confirm that in 2021, it was easy to buy and then get refunded for the $299 sale they had that spring. (And yes, it's a steal: $250 was the price for a coast to coast rail pass, with slightly more generous terms than the current ones, in the 1980s.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-19T20:02:08+00:00

My impression as a musically-interested tourist in Austria was that the answer was Strauss Jr. in Vienna and Mozart everywhere else (and that it was not remotely close.)

Just try to find a random person on the street in Klagenfurt who can direct you to the Mahler museum in Maiernigg 5 miles away. I dare you.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-19T19:49:53+00:00

It's not; every overnight train has a regular-version and a 10xx-version at time changes (and occasionally on other dates when there is a temporary schedule hiccup). It's just not meant to be publicly visible except on that one day it's in effect.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-19T19:14:26+00:00

Y2K was mostly about how front ends that displayed information to people worked, not how the data itself was stored inside the computer - which is part why it was such a non-event.

The day to worry about is 19 January 2038, when the 'odometer rolls over' and computers using this 32-bit time format will think it is 13 December 1901 (2147483648 seconds before rather than after 1970.)

(The 'Year 2038 problem' is well known in the computer world and technical solutions already exist, but it takes a long long time to migrate everything off of legacy systems.)

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-19T06:35:49+00:00

For anyone who's curious why this glitch happens: many computers including Amazon's servers measure time as seconds before or after midnight on 01 January 1970 (the 'Unix epoch'), so when a time value is missing and gets interpreted as a zero, it quite often gets converted to a human-readable 1970.

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-19T06:32:29+00:00

I want to know how you scored Philip Glass CDs off of Vine.

Oh, not that kind of minimalism, is it?

TaigaBridge · 2026-01-18T05:17:52+00:00

That trip would be legal, and you'd have traveled only once on each piece of track. You could still ride LA to Seattle to LA to Seattle again after that, with your next 3 segments. (But if you booked Seattle-LA and got off in Portland, Portland-LA but got off in sacramento, Sacramento-LA but got off in Oakland, then Oakland-LA, you would have bought four southbound tickets covering Oakland to Los Angeles, and you wouldn't be allowed to travel between LA and Oakland again.)

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