Garlic and Dimo

Garlic juice works great as a glue! I'm not really surprised since there have been times when cooking when my hands feel sticky from slicing garlic. Interestingly, I think slicing makes for stickier hands than chopping- but I haven't done any controlled experiments on that.

The dimo (or Di mo) was a small flattened tube- not surprising since it's the inner layer of bamboo. I wasn't sure if I was to leave it tubular or make it flat so I opted to cut open the tube and attach one layer only. It went on fairly smoothly but with a portion of the edge folded over because it stuck prematurely to the garlic juice. Initially the membrane- or reed, I've read it called- vibrated a lot. I tightened it by moistening it and smoothing it out a little more, making the creases and crinkles run perpendicular to the flute. The rough vibration smoothed out and my tone was more smooth.

It seems to take a lot of support to play- It could be, in part, that I'm terribly out of shape, but I had only a small range in which I felt comfortable and had good tone. Small, meaning 6 notes. I had to start in the middle of those six notes and play either up or down; it was much more challenging to start higher or lower and move through the small range. I needed to be very conscious of my breath, making certain I breathed with sufficient support, way down in my diaphragm. My tone had to remain very simple and open and even then I would occasionally just lose all sound. I couldn't figure out why, and though I hate to blame the instrument and not my technique, I couldn't help but wonder if the dimo was improperly sealed.

I also wonder if I should remove the tassel at the end of the instrument? It is looped through the last two "vent" holes but wasn't extremely easy to take off since it was a bit snug.

Dizi Dimo

I've been wanting to get back into shape as a flute player for some time now- a couple of years, actually. I've been stymied by carpal tunnel bilaterally, as well as dealing with the constant needs, requests, demands and desires of three children so the flute always manages to be at the bottom of my priorities. I went so far as to schedule 10 minutes of practice into my Chorebuster schedule, but alas, even that allows it to fall by the wayside.

I hereby resolve to do a much better job prioritizing pleasures in my life!

There- you heard it here first.

Today I stopped by a neighbor's garage sale and found an unused Chinese Bamboo Flute, about which I knew nothing, except that it was long and would have a lovely deep, rich tone. There was an "extra" hole in the flute, between the mouthpiece and the finger holes. The seller and I discussed the hole and what might possibly cover it- she played flute when she was younger but never learned to play Chinese flute and didn't understand the extra hole any more than I did. For reasons I don't understand I had to buy the flute- and planned to look it up on Youtube as soon as I could.

When my 7 year old son got home from a work day at school he discovered the flute right away and we learned the name is "dizi", it's in the key of C (I think- that's what's written on it, along with a lot of Chinese characters) and it needs a "dimo" (bamboo paper membrane, with perpendicular creases and wrinkles) to cover the extra hole. The dimo is crucial for proper tone creating the harmonics and richness that make the sound of the instrument unique. It's playable with substitues but with a very different sound, like with this very nice rendition of Suteki Da Ne, played with a piece of tape in lieu of the dimo. Contrast the more Western tone with this incredible tone of a Chinese performer. When I heard her play I realised I have enjoyed listening to the dizi for years, but didn't understand exactly how a Chinese flute differs from a Western one.

We discovered a small envelope in the case with some dimo and apparently I can use garlic juice as glue- even though one online store refers to "toxic" garlic juice! I guess that's a risk I have to take, but I'll make sure I use the organic stuff from the organic farm down the road, just to decrease that scary toxicity! Now to find a teacher, or music....

All that good juice on the vines- and what about the apples?

For the past few years I've been harvesting and processing our grapes into juice with my handy Saftborn juicer. I don't even remember now where I got the thing, but it has come in pretty handy. This year our grapes were prolific- nice because I have previously known absolutely nothing about how to prune them. The raccoons tried to sneak in during the night to snatch them but the dog is very enthusiastic about protecting all of our fruit trees from the evil beasts and they seem to have given up lately.

Several years ago we made jelly and it was darned good, but alas, we seem to have eaten it all. The kids don't drink the juice much but this year one of them is enthusiastic about the warm juice coming out of the juicer so I have hopes that she'll continue to drink it once it is canned. I did discover that jelly can be made from the juice so hopefully I'll do that in a few weeks.

We don't have an apple tree but sometimes I find people via Craigslist who do and are happy to let me pick their apples- and grapes when ours weren't so productive. I have a fantasy of making genuine apple cider- the stuff that now has to be called "hard" cider even though it was formerly pretty much what people did with their apples. It looks like I don't need a cider press since I have a Cuisinart but I still need to figure out how to make it safely, without pastuerization. It's not that I care so much if the apples ferment- I just want to figure out how to do it. I've made plenty of juice that I can, which involves a hot water bath, but currently I'm mystified about keeping cider.