Other Stuff » Mick Bordet

After a suitably long wait, I received my much-anticipated Raspberry Pi about a week ago. It’s a tiny single-board computer that runs from SD card and costs the princely sum of $35, yet is capable of running HD video and fitting in your pocket. The Pi was developed as an educational tool to encourage kids (young and old) to learn more about computers in the way that the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum did back in the 80′s, though it is a sign of the times that today’s “Next Generation Spectrum” comes fitted with HDMI, USB, Ethernet and SD storage. I think the comparison with the Speccy is quite apt, since the Pi does have its limitations in terms of memory and CPU power, yet already people are using it for all sorts of home-brew projects: from running car engines to playing Quake 3.

Since I already have a ‘main’ computer, the Pi is a bit of a foot-in-the-water for me, following on from the purchase and successful construction of a MeeBlip earlier this year. I have a couple of projects I would like to try out on the Pi, which are fairly different in scope.

1. R-Studio server
My recent dabblings in ‘R’ have been interesting (to me at least), but I only have it installed on my laptop and it would be really nice to be able to access it from work or from a mobile device. My programming environment of choice for R is RStudio, which has the ability to run its own web service, which is a great facilty that I hope to be able to make use of. There may be problems getting it to do much, if anything, on the Raspberry Pi due to the memory limitations, but I would like to give it a shot.

2. PureData thingie
PureData (PD) is a visual programming environment for music (and other things) that I have been wanting to investigate for some time now. It is incredibly flexible, letting you control synths with just about anything that can be attached to a computer. The small size and fast start-up time of the Raspberry Pi should make it ideal for using as a sort of music interface brain. I’m not QUITE sure just what the result will be, but I think it could lead to some sort of bespoke music performance device, not necessarily an instrument, but maybe something to control effects whilst playing.

I think the possibilities for this little computer are vast and I’m looking forward to seeing just what it can do!

I’m beginning to think the green clarinet was merely the tip of the iceberg of silliness. I nearly fell off my chair laughing at the “new eximious rare larruping blue electric guitar” I came across today. Surely somebody’s taking the extreme mickey? I thought this was a joke, but looking the words up confirmed that they are genuine English. I feel humbled that my vocabulary can be expanded by someone with only a passing acquaintence of the language. Or maybe he just needs a somewhat less eclectic thesaurus.

Personally, I’m going to make every attempt to make use of these eximious words in my everyday larruping conversations.

I’m not a great singer. I’m not even a good singer. My voice isn’t BAD, but I really need to concentrate to stay in tune, and I don’t feel natural doing it. When I do concentrate and practice plenty, I can record a reasonable vocal for a song. Today I had a shot at the playstation game Singstar. In a nutshell, you sing into a microphone along with a well-known song and the game works out how well you stayed in tune and rhythm. Not very well at all, in my case.

The only song I did reasonably well in was ‘Every Breath You Take’, which I suspect was because I know it fairly well and it is reasonably close to my own limited vocal range. Less successful was ‘Tutti Frutti’, and I totally crashed and burned on ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’, but I was trying to sing the female part, two octaves lower than normal, so not entirely surprising.

I found I did better by ignoring the on-sceen guide, apart from the lyrics, as the notes shown are in proportion to the line being sung, so can be two words or a whole sentence; 1 bar or 4. One of those things that is probably easier to follow if you can’t read music. What is interesting, though disappointing for me, is the read-out shows how far out from the notes you are singing. I found that I was wobbling around notes much more than I realised, though once I saw that I was able to address it.

I hope to have another shot soon – I think it could actually be a reasonable tool for improving pitch awareness, and helping my own singing skills (or apparent lack of them).

I don’t want to get into the habit of posting items of weird-but-true instruments and other musical items – I’ll leave that to the experts at (the very entertaining) MusicThing and others. I have to make an exception for this, I’m afraid.

The Fluorescent Green Clarinet

Why?

I was trawling around the shark-infested treasure trove that is eBay, looking for a little bargain, when I came across this item. A bright green clarinet. Wow. Got to have one of those! Or not.

The black tube of the beautiful green

The seller, a Mr jianada0377, is from China and has a wonderful way with words. So, once he’s introduced his ‘black tube…’ he goes on to say “If you like Chinese culture and Chinese arts, please don’t miss this item. As you know, the Chinese has long history around the world.” Indeed. I’m sure thousands of years of Chinese culture have passed in order that the very pinnacle of artistic endeavour can be attained by crafting this fine instrument. He sums up by letting us know that “It will bring you and your family happy”. It certainly made me smile. He has a whole range of products, including “The electricity guitar of the elegant white” and “Chinese kissable bran-new superb guitar” amongst others. However, leaving aside the results of an auto-translator gone haywire, it got me thinking.

What self-respecting classical clarinet player is going to turn up for a concert with one of these? Not too many, I’d wager. Okay, what about a jazz clarinettist? Not much more likely, I suspect. Well, it would look eye-catching for a rock clarinettist, but when did you last see one of them? No, nor I. So who is buying these things? Somewhere in China there’s a factory churning the little critters out (just do a search on eBay for “green clarinet”), so there must be a market. And they can’t just be toys – not only do they look like they might actually work, but they cost about £100 or more to post from China to the UK. Yeah, right.

[Update]

Amazingly nobody snapped this up, so it went unsold at £4.99 (plus £150 packaging, of course!). Looks like probably the same guy is (trying to) sell them under various names (just search for “black tube beautiful green” on eBay to see) starting at only 27p this time. “Pay attention to the color and the skill”. Yes, indeed. And where on eBay would you look for this latest little gem? Why, ‘Jewellery & Watches > Vintage & Antique Jewellery > Vintage Costume Jewellery > Pre-1837′ – of course! It just gets better…