Monday 27 Oct 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

So yesterday I went to visit a friend. This resulting in an improvised rock climbing session.

Apparently the local uni has in indoor rock climbing wall. It’s 10 m in height, and like most indoor walls, it looks like a lump of tarmac with a million bits of multicoloured chewing gum stuck to it. When you look at it, there seems to be a diverse multitude of hand holds. When you actually try to climb it, suddenly there seem to be no handholds at all!

The thing is, most of the holds only actually let you hang on by your very fingertips. Almost none of them are big enough to actually grab hold of properly. Apparently this is supposed to make it more “challenging” or something. Personally, for me it just makes the whole process “not fun”.

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Monday 20 Oct 2008 by Orphi the AweKid.

As you may know, I’ve spent the last two months learning Widor’s Toccata. (In case you don’t know the name, you can see it performed on YouTube here.)

It has taken me countless hours of studying and practicing to reach the point where I can play any of it fluidly. Kontakt’s pipe organ sounds have been invaluable in this respect. (My synthesizer has a sound that resembles a pipe organ, but only quite losely — and only with a piffling 4 notes polyphony, which is nowhere near enough for complex organ music.)

Anyway, on Saturday I had the honour of playing this thing on an actual pipe organ!

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