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2004-10-31
Drinks at an altitude of 306 feet
My cousin Jochen likes to do things in style. After he got married in an impressive ambiance with a few carefully selected guests, there had to be an event for 'a somewhat broader' crowd of people. So there were 90 guests today. And of course this had to take place in an inspiring environment as well.
Like me, Jochen is very fond of Rotterdam. So what location can you choose then? Yes indeed: The Rotterdam Space Tower! To be quite honest I had never been there myself, but it is a great experience to be there. The restaurant is at an altitude of 306 feet, but the panoramic elevator ("Euroscope") goes up to 615 feet!
I should have gone there much earlier. It is absolutely fabulous! Thanks to Jochen and Miranda I finally made it there. Judge for yourself, look at the pictures. This is Rotterdam, the city I love.
2004-10-30
Hurdy-gurdy spectrum
So now everybody is curious what the spectrum of a hurdy-gurdy looks like, right?
Well, have a look:
The vertical lines are sounds with a constant frequency. This explains the whining sound of the hurdy-gurdy, caused by the sympathy strings. In this case you can click the picture to hear what it sounds like -- I didn't make that possible for my voice exercises ;-) -- and then you can hear that indeed a melody is played here. Those are the little yellow and green dots in between the vertical lines...
Well, have a look:
The vertical lines are sounds with a constant frequency. This explains the whining sound of the hurdy-gurdy, caused by the sympathy strings. In this case you can click the picture to hear what it sounds like -- I didn't make that possible for my voice exercises ;-) -- and then you can hear that indeed a melody is played here. Those are the little yellow and green dots in between the vertical lines...
2004-10-28
Speech exercises
I make little progress. Week after week passes... In two weeks from now I can go to the VU again. I hope they will prescribe me Estrogen then. That would do me good. The Androcur (and the herbs I have been taking for years now) do help a little: A body is becoming a little bit more feminine. But it goes so slowly.
Fortunately I have the speech therapy now. And I do get homework. I have to practice. Finally something I can do. Exercise one: Sliding tones. I have to start with a low pitch and then go higher and higher, as far as it goes. I made some (spectral) images of it:
This is a 'U'. You can see my voice not only has a base pitch, but also a lot of harmonics.
What I do not see in the pictures is the 'breast resonance'. Or at least it doesn't look the way I expected it would. If this were a resonance like in a 'sympathy string' on a hurdy-gurdy, it would produce a constant frequency. And there is nothing with a constant frequency in this picture...
This is an 'Ah'. Without straining myself I can easily reach 300 Hz. That is quite high already.
And here I have tried to get as far as possible on the 'Ah'. I almost reach 500 Hz, here, which is two octaves higher than my normal sound. That is heavy work. An hour later I could still feel this in my throat! It is important not to do these exercises too often...
Fortunately I have the speech therapy now. And I do get homework. I have to practice. Finally something I can do. Exercise one: Sliding tones. I have to start with a low pitch and then go higher and higher, as far as it goes. I made some (spectral) images of it:
This is a 'U'. You can see my voice not only has a base pitch, but also a lot of harmonics.
What I do not see in the pictures is the 'breast resonance'. Or at least it doesn't look the way I expected it would. If this were a resonance like in a 'sympathy string' on a hurdy-gurdy, it would produce a constant frequency. And there is nothing with a constant frequency in this picture...
This is an 'Ah'. Without straining myself I can easily reach 300 Hz. That is quite high already.
And here I have tried to get as far as possible on the 'Ah'. I almost reach 500 Hz, here, which is two octaves higher than my normal sound. That is heavy work. An hour later I could still feel this in my throat! It is important not to do these exercises too often...2004-10-18
Speech therapy
It took me a while to find a speech therapist, who is willing to help me outside office hours, but I did. Today I was there for the second time already. The first time we did a lot of administration and looked at the data the VU collected about me and sent to her.
According to the VU my articulation is "unwieldy". We will have to work on that. I also have too much breast resonance. My intonation is "reasonably melodious, but not typically female yet".
So we have three things to work on. Today we made a tape recording to keep a record of the current situation and to analyze my current voice. The therapist is quite happy with what I can do already! Of course twenty years of amateur theatre has given me a lot of experience in using my voice.
I had to read out a bit of text, that contained dialogs between a man and a woman. Funny thing is, I always 'do voices' when reading out a dialog. And when I do that, you can hear I am quite good at doing a female voice. But it goes sort of by accident in that case. I will have to learn to control this and use it in my everyday life.
We also listened to a CD created by the VU. On that CD you can hear several men and women reading the same text. And what were they reading? The exact same story I read at the VU. I thought: "Soon I will hear my own voice", but I was not among them. It is quite difficult to pinpoint the real difference between male and female voices really. So my assignment is to closely listen to that in the coming weeks.
According to the VU my articulation is "unwieldy". We will have to work on that. I also have too much breast resonance. My intonation is "reasonably melodious, but not typically female yet".
So we have three things to work on. Today we made a tape recording to keep a record of the current situation and to analyze my current voice. The therapist is quite happy with what I can do already! Of course twenty years of amateur theatre has given me a lot of experience in using my voice.
I had to read out a bit of text, that contained dialogs between a man and a woman. Funny thing is, I always 'do voices' when reading out a dialog. And when I do that, you can hear I am quite good at doing a female voice. But it goes sort of by accident in that case. I will have to learn to control this and use it in my everyday life.
We also listened to a CD created by the VU. On that CD you can hear several men and women reading the same text. And what were they reading? The exact same story I read at the VU. I thought: "Soon I will hear my own voice", but I was not among them. It is quite difficult to pinpoint the real difference between male and female voices really. So my assignment is to closely listen to that in the coming weeks.
2004-10-09
A roller coaster in the dark
My new employer offered us (all personnel) a present: A visit to the "Efteling"! (One of the oldest and greatest amusement parks in the Netherlands.) That is nice! That was on our wish list! It is a pity it was on a Saturday, because it is very busy then. But we had wonderful weather and it was not as busy as I feared it would be.
We had decided to take it easy and not to queue up for the most popular attractions. Waiting one hour to get into an attraction on a busy day is very normal in the Efteling!
For the gondolas we only had to wait for ten minutes. This is a real peaceful attraction. You boat is drawn along some nice canals and over a beautiful pond. It may not be spectacular, but it is very relaxing. Along the way we saw beautiful flowers and we were sailing amidst ducks and coots.
There was also a photo contest coupled to this outing. For the most original picture you could win two tickets for "Thermae 2000" (a nice health farm and sauna in Valkenburg in the Netherlands.), so we had to take part in that too. We arranged a photo in which Julia is holding the company logo invitingly in front of the mouth of "Holle Bolle Gijs". (Holle Bolle Gijs is a guy from a Dutch nursery rhyme. According to the song he ate a cow and a calf and a horse just half, an ox and bull, seven barrels of beer and many more things, but still he wasn't able to sleep because he was so hungry. In the Efteling his statue is sort of a litter box. He keeps on yelling: "Litter Please!" "Litter please!" and if you put something into his mouth he says "Thank you!")
Due to the protection of my employer's privacy I cannot show this picture here of course, but a picture of Gijs without the logo is not a problem. If the jury has enough sense of humor, we will win the prize and than you can read about our outing to Thermae 2000 here soon ;-)
Of course we had to see the latest attractions anyway. We had never been in the Bird Rok and in the Dream Flight, so we did queue up for those anyway.
The bird Rok is a roller coaster in the dark. Let me tell you: That is pretty scary! You can't see a thing, but you feel a lot more! And you don't know what is coming next. Heavy! You reach a speeds of up to 40 miles an hour and experience g-forces up to 3.5 g... Fortunately it is only a short ride, because I don't think I could have taken much more of this!
After the bird Rok we went for nice lunch. When we came out of the restaurant we heard a very loud noise. A couple of actors came out of the "Carnival Festival" and started to perform outside of a square. They were stimulating the audience to participate with well-known Dutch sing-along songs like "Tulips from Amsterdam".
The Dream Flight is not so scary and not so dark. But you must not be afraid of heights, because you are riding a sort of mono rail through very big halls where a lot of nice things are to be seen. Very beautiful!
We had a very nice day. If you listen closely to the sound fragment of "Tulips from Amsterdam", you can even hear me laughing, so that proves something!
2004-10-07
Route of Lights
The psychologist has advised us to do a lot of talking, no matter how much it may hurt. So it looks like we did exactly the right thing yesterday.
But tonight we did something nice: We did the "Lichtjesroute" (the "Route of Lights").
Every year the liberation of Eindhoven from the German occupation in September 1944 is celebrated with lights all over the city. This is a tradition that already started in September 1945, when people spontaneously put a candle in their windows to commemorate the liberation.
The picture on the right clearly shows people celebrating.
But there is much more to see in the form of light bulbs. Buildings, animals, doves of peace too much to mention...
This has grown into a real professional event, but still it depends on the work of a lot of volunteers. The route is about thirteen miles long and all the streets along this route are decorated.
There is also a part of the city, where people have found a very original way to do this decoration. There are only white houses over there and all they did was put up red, white and blue spotlights to light the walls of the houses. (These are the Dutch national colors.) A great effect, achieved in a very simple way!
On some locations really great pieces of artwork have been created. Look at this smurf castle for example.
Where there are smurfs, the evil magician Gargamel is not far away. Speaking of the devil: That is his house over there!
In another location a complete circus has been created. These are the elephants.
But tonight we did something nice: We did the "Lichtjesroute" (the "Route of Lights").
Every year the liberation of Eindhoven from the German occupation in September 1944 is celebrated with lights all over the city. This is a tradition that already started in September 1945, when people spontaneously put a candle in their windows to commemorate the liberation.
The picture on the right clearly shows people celebrating.
But there is much more to see in the form of light bulbs. Buildings, animals, doves of peace too much to mention...
This has grown into a real professional event, but still it depends on the work of a lot of volunteers. The route is about thirteen miles long and all the streets along this route are decorated.
There is also a part of the city, where people have found a very original way to do this decoration. There are only white houses over there and all they did was put up red, white and blue spotlights to light the walls of the houses. (These are the Dutch national colors.) A great effect, achieved in a very simple way!
On some locations really great pieces of artwork have been created. Look at this smurf castle for example.
Where there are smurfs, the evil magician Gargamel is not far away. Speaking of the devil: That is his house over there!
In another location a complete circus has been created. These are the elephants.
2004-10-06
Kittens
A very dear friend of ours, the same one who borrowed us her Fiat the other day, had a litter of kittens at home. They were nearly six weeks old now, so they will soon leave the nest. We were just in time to have a look at them.
They were adorable! Six little pussies! They are so playful. They have to try everything. They climb on top of everything, they try to crawl into everything. And they like to lie together so closely you can't see where one pussy ends and another one begins.
Their mother is only a little pussy herself really, not even one year old. And she is pregnant again! The poor thing... This is really too much, so her mistress has decided to have this second litter aborted and have the mother sterilized now.
We have a very nice contact with this friend and with her husband, who is a transvestite. So before we knew it, we were in a profound conversation about our relationship and how we want to continue that in the future. That is a very difficult subject. Most relationships come to an end when one of the partners decides to transition. What is happening to me is very difficult for me, but for Julia this must be a true disaster. She is loosing her husband. Try to imagine that! I admire Julia's courage and fidelity for still going on with me!!
Meanwhile we drank their whole stock of wine...
All in all this lasted far longer than intended of course. And we were also emotionally touched. A little too heavy for a weeknight. And then the next morning very early, before my work, another visit to the psychologist, who will go on about the same subject.
2004-10-03
The hurdy-gurdy again
This weekend Julia was in Rotterdam to play in the musical, so I had the house to myself. I didn't have to feel bored though, because I wanted to have the photos I made of the musical developed, printed, scanned-in, cropped, resampled, uploaded and linked into my diary as soon as possible. And I still had a lot of translations to do.
But wait a moment! Isn't Saturday, October 2nd the first Saturday of the month? Of course it is! Time for another T&T-evening! Just like in September, August, July, June, May and April. But last time I didn't feel very nice on that evening. And this month there was nobody to call impatiently whether I was finally ready to go at 9 PM. No, I could even have decided not to go there at all!
But I did go anyway. I wore the same clothing I wore yesterday to the première. But funny enough I didn't get a single reaction about my outfit at the T&T-evening. Yesterday at the musical I got a whole lot of positive reactions. Apparently this outfit was too 'fitting' / too 'normal' / too 'adjusted' to provoke any reaction on an evening like this. I did feel quite chic myself on my thin four inch heels, with a closely woven fish net pantyhose and a long black dress...
This evening we got a concert, because my friend from two months ago had brought hir hurdy-gurdy. Ze explained to the crowd how the instrument works and played four pieces of music on it. I thought this was quite daring: You wouldn't expect people who visit a T&T-evening to be in for an intermezzo like this. And then four tunes in a row! But ze was very successful. Later that evening six people came to hir to personally thank hir for this performance!
But wait a moment! Isn't Saturday, October 2nd the first Saturday of the month? Of course it is! Time for another T&T-evening! Just like in September, August, July, June, May and April. But last time I didn't feel very nice on that evening. And this month there was nobody to call impatiently whether I was finally ready to go at 9 PM. No, I could even have decided not to go there at all!
But I did go anyway. I wore the same clothing I wore yesterday to the première. But funny enough I didn't get a single reaction about my outfit at the T&T-evening. Yesterday at the musical I got a whole lot of positive reactions. Apparently this outfit was too 'fitting' / too 'normal' / too 'adjusted' to provoke any reaction on an evening like this. I did feel quite chic myself on my thin four inch heels, with a closely woven fish net pantyhose and a long black dress...
This evening we got a concert, because my friend from two months ago had brought hir hurdy-gurdy. Ze explained to the crowd how the instrument works and played four pieces of music on it. I thought this was quite daring: You wouldn't expect people who visit a T&T-evening to be in for an intermezzo like this. And then four tunes in a row! But ze was very successful. Later that evening six people came to hir to personally thank hir for this performance!
2004-10-01
Madam
For the second time in a week I was invited for a kind of entertainment I wouldn't have chosen myself. I don't like musicals, because the story progresses at such a slow speed. Every time after a little action a song has to sung and a dance has to be made, while I am mainly curious how the story will develop. The story of a musical like 'The West Side Story' can be told in five minutes, but in the theatre you have to wait for the end of it for over two hours. It just isn't efficient.
On October 1st, Mutua Amicitia staged the première of the musical Madam by Annie M.G. Schmidt and Harry Bannink. And I was in the audience. I think it a as a very brave choice for a theatre group to do a musical. That requires a lot more than a normal stage play. So then there is the question whether you have all the skills you need to make this happen.
Mutua Amicitia (Muut for friends) didn't have those, but they hired professionals to compensate that. For instance they hired a professional choreographer an a singing instructor. But still it had to be their own members who were to put it all on stage.
Fortunately Muut had chosen excellent material in the musical Madam. Annie's texts are snappy and hilarious, Harry's music is beautiful and the story has a strong plot. So what could go wrong?
A lot of things. Muut is an amateur theatre group. It is not a choir, nor a dance-group. Singing and dancing are disciplines the members simply don't have, except for some positive exceptions. Stefanie Heijnraets did very well as Madam, both in acting and in singing. The same goes for Marian Roomer as Anita. Hans Verhoef played Mr. Valentijn excellently and sang quite well.
But the rest of the group... Most players only had small parts in the musical, so there was very little they could do with their experience in acting. But they often had to sing and dance, at the same time! For such parts you shouldn't hire actors, but singers and dancers! That is the way it is done in professional musicals as well. Parts like these are filled in by people who cannot say more than three lines of text or even actively listen to another player saying a few lines of text. But as soon as they can start dancing and singing again, the enthusiasm returns and everything goes well as if it isn't difficult at all.
But Muut doesn't have people like that! Fortunately there are a few more good singing voices in the group apart from the main characters, but that just isn't enough to make the whole thing work.
If you really have to make a musical, you should go to the sound recording studio with these ladies and record each voice of each song separately until it works. Then add a few strong voices to the choirs (like Daniëlle Blok for instance, Muut's best singing voice) and mix the result with the orchestra tape. You won't get a 100 % live musical this way, but would it matter?
Where was Daniëlle anyway? How can Muut stage a musical and leave her best singer at home? A pity.
Something many people overlook in the theatre is the work of the technicians. Apart from a lot of acting I have also done light and sound engineering in the theatre myself and that makes you look at any stage performance in a different way: I often look 'The wrong way' in a theatre. With every change in scène goes a change in 'light setting'. For the audience this is very straightforward: If the lights go up on the right side of the stage, that is probably where the next action will take place, so everybody looks to the right.
But I glance upward as well. Which spots have come on and which have been switched off? By the way, there were about one hundred spots to light all this. I think few people will have noticed that. But the result looked very well indeed.
As is usually the case nowadays, there were several places on the stage that represented locations that can be many miles apart in reality. Using this technique makes a great difference in the speed of your performance because you don't need to change the decor so many times. The technicians take care of the rest by lighting the right place on the right moment. This looked very well too: The lighting was very filling for the atmosphere of the scènes and the soloists got an extra light.
No you don't notice the technical aspects until something goes wrong. And things did go wrong, in spite of the dedicated work of the technician. He is at the back of the hall behind a large control panel full of knobs and buttons. It was him who put up all those lamps, made them point in the right direction and put the right color filters in them. I noticed the soloists often didn't stand on the spot where they should have been. That way they cannot be reached by the spot that has been put up there especially for them! Nico Vellinga, the technician, solved that by secretly switching on extra spotlights if something like that happened. I think few people have noticed that, but I look for things like that...
And then suddenly someone rested his behind against the switches of the working light in the hall! Bang! All the fluorescent light tubes came on at once! Gone was the atmosphere! This didn't happen once, but several times in a row. This is something the technician cannot help! The working light is not connected to his control panel. I think the fire brigade wouldn't even allow it to be any other way.
Nico Vellinga (Nivell Theatre Productions): "I felt so powerless at these moments!" I can imagine that very well. There you are with your state-of-the-art equipment and then something happens you cannot influence.
I have uttered a lot of criticism. Does that mean I disapprove of the performance as a whole? No, I don't. In spite of the problems mentioned, Muut has show a great performance here. The 200 people in the audience have had a wonderful time. And even I, not being fond of musicals at all, did like the show.
By the way, if the musical has been played a few more times, many things will go much more fluently than they did on this first evening. So I can recommend people to go and see it. Especially on Saturday, October 9th. I expect that will be the best performance of this musical.
On October 1st, Mutua Amicitia staged the première of the musical Madam by Annie M.G. Schmidt and Harry Bannink. And I was in the audience. I think it a as a very brave choice for a theatre group to do a musical. That requires a lot more than a normal stage play. So then there is the question whether you have all the skills you need to make this happen.
Mutua Amicitia (Muut for friends) didn't have those, but they hired professionals to compensate that. For instance they hired a professional choreographer an a singing instructor. But still it had to be their own members who were to put it all on stage.
Fortunately Muut had chosen excellent material in the musical Madam. Annie's texts are snappy and hilarious, Harry's music is beautiful and the story has a strong plot. So what could go wrong?
A lot of things. Muut is an amateur theatre group. It is not a choir, nor a dance-group. Singing and dancing are disciplines the members simply don't have, except for some positive exceptions. Stefanie Heijnraets did very well as Madam, both in acting and in singing. The same goes for Marian Roomer as Anita. Hans Verhoef played Mr. Valentijn excellently and sang quite well.
But the rest of the group... Most players only had small parts in the musical, so there was very little they could do with their experience in acting. But they often had to sing and dance, at the same time! For such parts you shouldn't hire actors, but singers and dancers! That is the way it is done in professional musicals as well. Parts like these are filled in by people who cannot say more than three lines of text or even actively listen to another player saying a few lines of text. But as soon as they can start dancing and singing again, the enthusiasm returns and everything goes well as if it isn't difficult at all.
But Muut doesn't have people like that! Fortunately there are a few more good singing voices in the group apart from the main characters, but that just isn't enough to make the whole thing work.
If you really have to make a musical, you should go to the sound recording studio with these ladies and record each voice of each song separately until it works. Then add a few strong voices to the choirs (like Daniëlle Blok for instance, Muut's best singing voice) and mix the result with the orchestra tape. You won't get a 100 % live musical this way, but would it matter?
Where was Daniëlle anyway? How can Muut stage a musical and leave her best singer at home? A pity.
Something many people overlook in the theatre is the work of the technicians. Apart from a lot of acting I have also done light and sound engineering in the theatre myself and that makes you look at any stage performance in a different way: I often look 'The wrong way' in a theatre. With every change in scène goes a change in 'light setting'. For the audience this is very straightforward: If the lights go up on the right side of the stage, that is probably where the next action will take place, so everybody looks to the right.
But I glance upward as well. Which spots have come on and which have been switched off? By the way, there were about one hundred spots to light all this. I think few people will have noticed that. But the result looked very well indeed.
As is usually the case nowadays, there were several places on the stage that represented locations that can be many miles apart in reality. Using this technique makes a great difference in the speed of your performance because you don't need to change the decor so many times. The technicians take care of the rest by lighting the right place on the right moment. This looked very well too: The lighting was very filling for the atmosphere of the scènes and the soloists got an extra light.
No you don't notice the technical aspects until something goes wrong. And things did go wrong, in spite of the dedicated work of the technician. He is at the back of the hall behind a large control panel full of knobs and buttons. It was him who put up all those lamps, made them point in the right direction and put the right color filters in them. I noticed the soloists often didn't stand on the spot where they should have been. That way they cannot be reached by the spot that has been put up there especially for them! Nico Vellinga, the technician, solved that by secretly switching on extra spotlights if something like that happened. I think few people have noticed that, but I look for things like that...
And then suddenly someone rested his behind against the switches of the working light in the hall! Bang! All the fluorescent light tubes came on at once! Gone was the atmosphere! This didn't happen once, but several times in a row. This is something the technician cannot help! The working light is not connected to his control panel. I think the fire brigade wouldn't even allow it to be any other way.
Nico Vellinga (Nivell Theatre Productions): "I felt so powerless at these moments!" I can imagine that very well. There you are with your state-of-the-art equipment and then something happens you cannot influence.
I have uttered a lot of criticism. Does that mean I disapprove of the performance as a whole? No, I don't. In spite of the problems mentioned, Muut has show a great performance here. The 200 people in the audience have had a wonderful time. And even I, not being fond of musicals at all, did like the show.
By the way, if the musical has been played a few more times, many things will go much more fluently than they did on this first evening. So I can recommend people to go and see it. Especially on Saturday, October 9th. I expect that will be the best performance of this musical.
© 1985-2006 E.G. Snel
