Ever forget about RMCG for a few years?

[dofrenzy]

(dofrenzy snaps his fingers) <---Just like that, I suddenly forgot about RMCG some years ago. No doubt at least partially due to selective forgetfulness as a result of making an a$$ of myself here. I mean, I was an a$$ before I got here, but as it became more apparent to you all I crawled back under my rock. Poking around here the past few days has been a treat!

As for paying my RMCG dues....I did play CG Christmas music at a Christmas party my wife's family had. Added bonus: My 8 year-old daughter also played a couple of pieces on her recorder and my 11-year old daughter played her flute. I got some CG/Flute duet material together but the 11-year old hates practicing/playing music with me (see my a$$ comments above). Nevertheless, she broke out the duet book at the party to play Greensleeves and I snuck the harmony in. A treasured memory!

I only play for my wife's family though. My own family....well, hard to describe. I can say that some years back I spent the 3 months before the Holiday practicing hard so I could do my best. My brother sat across the table from me as I provided the CG Christmas atmosphere at a family gathering. When I finished, he was the only one to comment on my performance, with "Wow, those strings look wobbly". Well, at least he was observant! My wife's side, in contrast, simply seems to enjoy the music and are always grateful.

Spent the past couple of years providing musical choices for the kids. Electric guitar, couple of Alto Saxes, couple of flutes, a drumset. Kids, home, work, and business keep a guy busy. Hoping to dedicate more time to CG in the New Year.

No musical stuff for Christmas though. I did give them a rock-wall and some Transformers though. OK, technically the Transformers were for me.

I plan to expand the rock-wall a bit and still need to paint. Check it out:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+GaryDufresne

I wish you all HAPPY HOLIDAYS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Gary

[Matt Faunce]

Hi Gary. Welcome back. It's nice to see you again.

Well, you know the old saying: "Dance like nobody is watching." That's
my advice for rmcg.

I looked at your pictures. Nice. For a second I thought that person
climbing the wall was a mannequin.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too!

--
Matt

[dufres...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, December 27, 2016 at 4:13:18 PM UTC-5, Matt Faunce wrote:

>
> Hi Gary. Welcome back. It's nice to see you again.
>
> Well, you know the old saying: "Dance like nobody is watching." That's
> my advice for rmcg.
>
> I looked at your pictures. Nice. For a second I thought that person
> climbing the wall was a mannequin.
>
> Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you too!
>
> --
> Matt

Thank you Matt! That's the 8-year-old on the wall.

Was just watching the Sr. Guadalupe video you posted. Riveting. Thank you for throwing it up here. Puts the whole "talent vs. no-talent" in perspective, to say the *least*.

[Matt Faunce]

Yeah. For me, it's worth watching again; maybe a few times. BTW, I got
half way through it before I realized that you can drag the closed
caption translation to a darker part of the screen. That will probably
be helpful to some people.
--
Matt

[Steven Bornfeld]

Good to see you posting, Gary. Best for you and yours in the New Year!
And get rid of that wobbly string.

Steve

[Matt Faunce]

Hahaha, nevermind the strobe light and pot. It's the string.

Seriously, 'wobbly string', in my experience, means one thing: wolf
tone. José Ramirez the Third said that wolf tones are caused by a
standing wave inside the guitar. His cure was to build a fin inside the
guitar along the sides, resulting in "da camera" guitar. My cure is to
stick a piece of foam inside the guitar at the heal. Make the piece as
big as can fit through the soundhole with the strings on. Either closed
cell or open cell foam works, but I use closed cell because it doesn't
flake off pieces when rubbing past the strings when putting in and
taking out. I only put it in when the humidity is low. (I still think
it's the high barometer more than the humidity, but people say I'm nuts.
It hardly matters since they usually change together.)
--
Matt

[dufres...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, December 28, 2016 at 11:20:31 AM UTC-5, Steven Bornfeld wrote:
>
> Good to see you posting, Gary. Best for you and yours in the New Year!
> And get rid of that wobbly string.
>
> Steve

Thank you Steve! It is great to "see" you again! I think the wobbly string comment was just a comparison of nylon vs. steel string tension and how much a CG string travels, and how easily (from someone who had never witnessed a CG being played). It's weird....I get the distinct impression that my family members don't know how to appreciate music....well, sure they enjoy Bon Jovi, Snoop Dogg, The Roots, etc. (and I do as well) but it seems to stop there. Well, my older sister, when she was 40, gushed about how much she loved Beethoven and lamented not having experienced it earlier in life, so there is hope!

[dufres...@gmail.com]

I'm going to try this. I put new strings on for the holiday season and have found that the high-E string, fretted at the 3rd fret (G) emits a high ring when played with some force, but ONLY when the 6th string is fretted at G as well. Would you call that a wolf-tone?

[Matt Faunce]

I think so. A good tone starts with the attack, blooms, then decays
slowly and gracefully. A wolf tone booms instantly then then dies a weak
death without much sustain.

My wolf tone is on the A; maybe centered a few cents below an A.
Classical guitars typically have their wolf tone between G and A.

I think the reason it's noticed when fretting the low G is because the
fundamental frequency of the standing wave is the fundamental of the low
G. So, the high G alone only rings at a fraction (1/4) of the standing
wave frequency, which corresponds to a harmonic of the fundamental
frequency, so fretting the low G allows sympathetic ringing of that
note, sounding the fundamental of the standing wave G.

Or maybe the fundamental of the standing wave is the mid G (open 3rd
string). In this case the high G is 1/2 of the fundamental, but the low
G hits the standing wave with it's first overtone.

Anyway, this is all just an educated guess. I might have gotten my
fractions backwards. <shrug> I need another cup of coffee.

--
Matt

[dufres...@gmail.com]

>
> I think so. A good tone starts with the attack, blooms, then decays
> slowly and gracefully. A wolf tone booms instantly then then dies a weak
> death without much sustain.
>
> My wolf tone is on the A; maybe centered a few cents below an A.
> Classical guitars typically have their wolf tone between G and A.
>
> I think the reason it's noticed when fretting the low G is because the
> fundamental frequency of the standing wave is the fundamental of the low
> G. So, the high G alone only rings at a fraction (1/4) of the standing
> wave frequency, which corresponds to a harmonic of the fundamental
> frequency, so fretting the low G allows sympathetic ringing of that
> note, sounding the fundamental of the standing wave G.
>
> Or maybe the fundamental of the standing wave is the mid G (open 3rd
> string). In this case the high G is 1/2 of the fundamental, but the low
> G hits the standing wave with it's first overtone.
>
> Anyway, this is all just an educated guess. I might have gotten my
> fractions backwards. <shrug> I need another cup of coffee.
>
> --
> Matt

Matt, thank you for taking the time to explain. I've had this guitar (Hippner) for about 13 years and never had a problem, although I did take a couple years off from playing. I also stopped humidifying the house. My experience is exactly as you describe: A high-pitched harmonic loudly jumps out of the guitar, completely overpowers the 1st-string G I am playing, and disappears as quickly, making it sound like a flubbed note. I'll throw some foam in at the heel and let you know the outcome.

[Matt Faunce]

The foam helps. I said "cure" but it just lessens the problem. The
problem, if Ramirez is right, is the inner dimensions of the guitar. It
seems to be less of a problem in high humidity, and I think the reason
is because bloating the soundboard makes the wave coupling of the guitar
less efficient. The coupled system is this: string --> bridge -->
soundboard --> airwave resonance inside guitar --> soundboard --> bridge
--> string --> ... around and around. Efficiency brings out the wolf
tone inherent in the resonance of the airwaves inside the guitar.

I still think the low air pressure, more than high humidity, is what
decreases the efficiency, but the guys at rec.audio.pro say I'm nuttier
than a fruitcake for thinking this.

--
Matt

[dsi1]

That would be sympathetic tones. As it goes, you cannot play any note on the guitar without it causing the other strings to sound. Most folks don't seem to notice this. I don't know why, you'd think they would.

[Andrew Schulman]

Hi Gary,

You were gone?

Best,

Andrew

[John Nguyen]

On Tuesday, December 27, 2016 at 3:50:17 PM UTC-5, dofrenzy wrote:

Welcome back, Gary Dofrenzy!
Cheers,

John

[dufres...@gmail.com]

> Hi Gary,
>
> You were gone?
>
> Best,
>
> Andrew

Meh....maybe not so much "gone", just not "here". It was weird....sitting at work, knowing there was a place on the Internet that I liked but simply couldn't remember what it was. Delcamp would come to mind, but when I visited I would quickly realize that it was NOT the place that I liked and quickly moved on with my life. Then, one day......"Ohhh...right....RMCG!"

You and I last communicated when you sent the DVD in early 2015. A wonderful, touching documentary Andrew. You should know, it is in my CG video collection along with Bream's "Guitarra!" and JW's "The Seville Concert".

G

[dufres...@gmail.com]

>
> Welcome back, Gary Dofrenzy!
> Cheers,
>
> John

Thank you John! 2016 will go down as the year I learned to pronounce your name! Listening to NPR, I learned about a musician named Thao Nguyen, but on the radio, they didn't spell it out. I didn't get very far on Google looking for my poor phonetic spelling of your surname, so I switched to her band name, "The Get Down Stay Down". Lo and behold, I finally learned how to pronounce "Nguyen". You can now take solace in knowing that at least one person on RMCG knows how to pronounce your name. Unless of course you pronounce it "unnn-GUY-en", like I always did. In that case probably everyone knows how to pronounce it. ;)

I always like to take these random mentions of bands as impetus to listen to them, so back to work now with "Thao and The Get Down Stay Down" in my ears.

G

[Matt Faunce]

I wasn't sure, so I went to Forvo to listen.
https://forvo.com/search/Nguyen/vi/

I was pronouncing your name wrong too:
https://forvo.com/search/dufresne/

Or, do you guys Americanize it?

--
Matt

[dufres...@gmail.com]

> I wasn't sure, so I went to Forvo to listen.
> https://forvo.com/search/Nguyen/vi/
>
> I was pronouncing your name wrong too:
> https://forvo.com/search/dufresne/
>
> Or, do you guys Americanize it?
>
> --
> Matt

Evidently, it depends on who you talk to! Here in New England, where there are more Dufresnes than you can shake a stick at, it is typically pronounced as most people know it from Andy Dufresne in "The Shawshank Redemption"; that's the "English" pronunciation on Forvo....awesome website by the way, never heard of it before. My wife recently ran into some French folk who distinctly pronounce the "s", but they add it AFTER the "n", like do-frens. I work for a French company (Dassault Systemes, under the SIMULIA brand) but I've never heard any French people say my name, and I'm not much of a French speaker myself. I did write a poem in French though:

Ne rigole pas mais
Je ne parle pas Francais.
Je suis desole!
Parlez vous Eengleesh?

Tangential guitar connection, the poem was inspired by "Mais Ne Rigole Pas", a song from "O Universo Musical de Baden Powell" that has a groove I absolutely LOVE. I had "Mais ne rigole pas" translated and it stuck in my craw until a poem emerged. It's a nod to the US American tendency to think that French people will understand them if they pronounce English words with a French accent.

[Matt Faunce]

On 12/29/16 2:13 PM, dufres...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> I wasn't sure, so I went to Forvo to listen.
>> https://forvo.com/search/Nguyen/vi/
>>
>> I was pronouncing your name wrong too:
>> https://forvo.com/search/dufresne/
>>
>> Or, do you guys Americanize it?
>>
>> -- Matt
>
> Evidently, it depends on who you talk to! Here in New England, where
> there are more Dufresnes than you can shake a stick at, it is
> typically pronounced as most people know it from Andy Dufresne in
> "The Shawshank Redemption"; that's the "English" pronunciation on
> Forvo....awesome website by the way, never heard of it before. My
> wife recently ran into some French folk who distinctly pronounce the
> "s", but they add it AFTER the "n", like do-frens. I work for a
> French company (Dassault Systemes, under the SIMULIA brand) but I've
> never heard any French people say my name, and I'm not much of a
> French speaker myself. I did write a poem in French though:
>
> Ne rigole pas mais
> Je ne parle pas Francais.
> Je suis desole! Parlez
> vous Eengleesh?
>

Nice!

> Tangential guitar connection, the poem was inspired by "Mais Ne
> Rigole Pas", a song from "O Universo Musical de Baden Powell" that
> has a groove I absolutely LOVE. I had "Mais ne rigole pas"
> translated and it stuck in my craw until a poem emerged.
>

I'll have to look up that Baden Powell song now.

> It's a nod
> to the US American tendency to think that French people will
> understand them if they pronounce English words with a French
> accent.

Hahaha!

--
Matt

[Steven Bornfeld]

I just KNEW Doe-FRENzee had to be wrong. I didn't go for the full
French pronunciation though--I figured it was something like the
pronunciation of Andy Dufresne--doo-FRAINE'. But we could go for the
full-bore French pronunciation if he'd prefer.
It's interesting how transliteration from other languages (and
especially those using different alphabets) leads to different
pronunciations. Given the readings of the name "Nguyen", I'm not sure I
actually hear anything like the Roman letter "g" in there.
In dental school we had a French instructor whose name was Alain Roizen
(pronounced roy-ZEN'). Of course had his grandparents moved to NYC in
the last century or so, for sure he'd be "Alan Rosen".

Steve

[dufres...@gmail.com]

> I just KNEW Doe-FRENzee had to be wrong. I didn't go for the full
> French pronunciation though--I figured it was something like the
> pronunciation of Andy Dufresne--doo-FRAINE'. But we could go for the
> full-bore French pronunciation if he'd prefer.
> It's interesting how transliteration from other languages (and
> especially those using different alphabets) leads to different
> pronunciations. Given the readings of the name "Nguyen", I'm not sure I
> actually hear anything like the Roman letter "g" in there.
> In dental school we had a French instructor whose name was Alain Roizen
> (pronounced roy-ZEN'). Of course had his grandparents moved to NYC in
> the last century or so, for sure he'd be "Alan Rosen".
>
> Steve

I began using "dofrenzy" as my handle when a friend of many years put it up on the board one night when we went bowling. I asked him why he spelled it that way and he said he thought that was how it was pronounced. Most people say "do-FREZ-nee" or "do-FRESS-nee".

This thread has caused me to Internet-Investigate name changes at Ellis Island. I have always been under the impression that immigration workers there changed difficult transliterations according to their own whim. Turns out that is a myth! RMCG....always educating!

[John Nguyen]

I could not find an equivalence of NG's pronunciation in Western alphabet. The G is silent but used to modify the N.

The best I could describe is:

With the N, the tip of the tongue is positioned at the roof of the mouth and and dropped down to create the sound of the N.

With the Vietnamese NG, the back of the tongue is position at the roof and lowered down to create the sound of the NG.

Believe me, I had a hard time to pronounce the TH in English back then.

Cheers,

John

[dufres...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, December 29, 2016 at 3:19:54 PM UTC-5, John Nguyen wrote:

> I could not find an equivalence of NG's pronunciation in Western alphabet. The G is silent but used to modify the N.
>
> The best I could describe is:
>
> With the N, the tip of the tongue is positioned at the roof of the mouth and and dropped down to create the sound of the N.
>
> With the Vietnamese NG, the back of the tongue is position at the roof and lowered down to create the sound of the NG.
>
> Believe me, I had a hard time to pronounce the TH in English back then.
>
> Cheers,
>
> John

Thank you John. I think that is a very good explanation. I now see (hear) that "NG" it isn't really a "W" sound, which is how it sounds to my ears in some pronunciations. I watched a show on language that indicated that the ability to hear and make certain sounds that are specific to a particular language starts at a VERY young age, and after a certain point it becomes difficult to nearly impossible not only to make a certain sound, but especially to hear certain sounds. Your explanation did seem to make a difference for me.

Some Japanese people moved to my neighborhood recently and I see the Father walking his daughter to the bus stop in the morning, so I have learned some Japanese words. The intricacies of language are FASCINATING to me. The length of a sound for example, like in the Chinese "hao" (good). A long "hao", that goes up in pitch, means good, whereas a short hao means park (I think). Informal Japanese "Good Morning" is relatively easy, sounding like "OHIO" (ohayo) but the formal "Ohayo gozaimas" throws me off. Sounds like some of the sounds are cut off very quickly.

My 8 year old daughter asked the Japanese girl, about age 7, for "dog" in Japanese but she didn't know, so I looked it up. It's "inu"! For many years I have a known a Japanese dog in the neighborhood as the breed "Sheba Inu"....and there it is, the Japanese word for dog right there in the name! I have an Old English Sheepdog and a small Terrier mix, so I figured I would try to learn "small dog, big dog" in Japanese. "Sakoshi inu, Oki inu" respectively. And with that, I have a better idea about what a Japanese "Oki Steakhouse" is! But in Japanese, the "o" is very long, and I think the "i" is very long too, like oookeee, and the "u" in inu seems to be very short and cuts off quickly. Still, very hard to hear and imitate!

[dufres...@gmail.com]

Quick follow-up, I want to say Japanese words like the famous blind Samurai swordsman Zatoichi, all tough and stuff, but all the pronunciations I find on Google Translate are by Japanese women. The best I can do on my own is imitation, so I sound very UN-Zatoichi.

[dsi1]

On Thursday, December 29, 2016 at 11:37:45 AM UTC-10, dufres...@gmail.com wrote:
> Quick follow-up, I want to say Japanese words like the famous blind Samurai swordsman Zatoichi, all tough and stuff, but all the pronunciations I find on Google Translate are by Japanese women. The best I can do on my own is imitation, so I sound very UN-Zatoichi.

The Japanese folks will think you is a crazy white guy if you talk like that. As a foreigner, you probably should soft spoken, like a girl, so as not to offend. Shintaro Katsu once tried smuggle some weed and cocaine in his knickers through Honolulu Airport. When he was discovered, he claimed that he didn't know how it got there. If I was the customs agent, I would have just let him pass. After all, he is a fun guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztgs2XK2I7Y