Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"More than 50 percent of all Internet traffic across the world passes through Virginia because AOL and 1,300 service providers or technology companies are located in northern Virginia, just outside of Washington." -- from an AP news story (2003-12-11) by Derrill Holly about the first arrests under an anti-spam law.

It amuses (but does not surprise) me that when we needed to find a tune to go between two brand new ones we'd written that we wanted to put in the same set even though they didn't work right next to each other, the tune we found to bridge the gap is more than two centuries old.

I now have chords for the tune that I needed to learn more piano for. Some of the chords came from working them out on the piano, and some from hearing how the first draft sounded on guitar while hearing the melody on a whistle. But the whole exercise has gotten me interested in learning more piano, so I plan to continue working on that. (And no, I still haven't gotten that tune up to speed, but I got good enough at it to hear what I needed to hear.)

The chords we came up with are a lot harder to play on guitar[1] than the melody is (because I've got places where there's a different chord on each eighth-note in a faster-than-dancing-speed reel -- yes, my left hand is that fast, but this is pushing the envelope). I may have actually written a rythm part that'll be easier to play in hocket than straight. Considering that the point was to write something blazingly fast that sounded harder than it was ... Hmm. I'll have to see what Jim (cittern) and Bill (hammered dulcimer) think about hocket. We already come close to that in a few sets.

( Music-encyclopaedia entry for hocket)

[1] A danger of writing them on the piano; I suspected that might happen.