Yeah. I know. It’s about time, huh! So, I’m working on EJRuek.com and CountryJames.com, then it will be DLKeur.com right after. Then, I’ll see about revitalizing Aeros’ site. Meanwhile, I did release another E. J. Ruek book. I just never got around to posting it up here on this, my main website. It’s titled Slightly Disturbing Stories and those folks who’ve read it seem to really, really like it.
Author: D. L. Keur
How to Write a Good Book in 17 Days
Way back before I set a moratorium on publishing my novels because of piracy, I set out to write at least two books a year. And did it. In fact, all three of my Montana Love Story novels were written in a month and under, with the second and still unpublished third book drafted in seventeen days and sixteen days, respectively. It was something which I hadn’t thought myself capable, that is to write a good book — one of my books — in shorter than a year. I proved to myself that I could …only to quit publishing in a fit of temper about all my books having been pirated, even those exclusive to Amazon.
Now, a full two years plus since my last novel’s release, an author friend’s needs prompted me to put my process down in an orderly, organized guide. Here it is:
Guns, Schools, Kids, Safety, and the Human Predator
There’s a LOT of hyperbole, a lot of emotion, a lot of tears and cries of anguish. But the sides involved aren’t communicating with each other effectively. In fact, they aren’t even talking, just pointing fingers and screaming back and forth, filled to the brim with emotion about keeping kids safe by banning certain kinds of weaponry. Why am I hearing, I wonder, about guns? Shouldn’t I be hearing about BANNING VIOLENCE?
You know, there are disturbed children. There are born sociopaths. And there are damaged children, some of whom will never become undamaged. And, truth be told, there are just some people who are born mean-spirited. The fact is you cannot legislate safety and you cannot protect people from predation until and unless you somehow identify those who potentially could become predators …which, because we are human, the super-predator, is everyone. The problem with trying to outlaw tools of predation is that other tools then become employed, tools with equally unpleasant consequences.
Everyone wants to live in safety, but humans are, by nature, a very cruel and vicious creature. Heck, most of you don’t think twice about killing a spider that has walked across your path, even when you’re in that spider’s garden.
Let’s look at the rabidity of the factions involved in even this debate. It’s practically torches and pitch forks, no dialogue, no seeking common ground, no attempt to understand each other’s concerns.
I was the kid who was bullied when stuck in a public school. I was a kid who was shunned as ‘different’, not because I was a sociopath and mean, but because I was an outsider. No one befriended me. Nobody protected me from being beaten with chains by my school mates, this in high school.
I can fully understand why a bullied child would turn a gun or a crossbow or a bomb on his classmates. I can understand them lacing candy with poison to retaliate. I never did it, never even thought about doing it, but I can certainly understand the motivation to ‘get even’. I have a broken spine in my back today from those chain beatings. But I was raised by a father who came from the Dutch Reform heritage — always taught to turn the other cheek and to forgive.
You all want safety for your kids and for yourselves. Great. Then you and all of us have to change the nature of human beings worldwide, a huge undertaking with the understanding that not everyone wants peace and tranquility and safety. Some thrive on cruelty and mayhem, on butchery and terrorizing. But, to begin, we have to set an example and that begins with each one of us not engaging in name-calling, castigation, spurning, ostracizing, and condemning those who don’t share our perspectives.
That also means that, reality check, you and your kids have to be always prepared and always vigilant, capable of defending yourselves, even if it means the death of another at your hand.
Just my thoughts.
Knowing the Next Note, Not Just Reading Ahead — Flute Technique
I haven’t seen this particular and helpful flute technique mentioned. There’s discussion about embouchure, about fingers, about breathing, about tone, but not much about something so simple and easy to do that it should go into every flutist’s (maybe even every musician’s) knowledge base. It was taught to me, so I’ll pass it along. It’s ‘knowing the next note’.
I’m not talking about reading ahead, where we are reading one, two, or more measures ahead of what we’re actually playing. No. This technique has nothing at all to do with whether you are playing something that you are reading off a score or something you are playing from memory.
‘Knowing the next note’ means: Have the next note you are going to play after the one you are presently playing already in your head. When you do this, your brain already has set up for the transition.
A lot of players play ‘in the moment’ only, note by note. They may know the piece inside and out, they may read ahead, but they’re concentrating solely upon the note they are playing — its intonation, its quality, its dynamics…a lot of things, including quality and type of vibrato. But. They fail to ‘know the next note’, much less the entire phrase, both of which are exceedingly helpful, giving your body, via your brain’s mental preparations, a head start in preparing for the fine motor skill changes that lead to smooth, clean transitions, note-to-note, regardless of difficult fingerings or of interval jumps. Here’s how:
When playing, simply ‘know the next note’. So, if I’m playing a first register A and the next note is a third register E, I already ‘know’ that, next, I will be playing that third register E, no matter how fast or slowly that E comes after the A. And as I’m playing that third register E, I ‘know’ that the next note I will play will be a second register D. Then, as I’m playing that second register D, I ‘know’ I will be playing a first register C# after that.
The ‘know’ is an active ‘knowing’, instant by instant, note by note.
If it’s a run that comes after, then, ‘know’ the run, and, especially, ‘know’ that run’s target note while playing the previous note.
In essence, you’re focused on the note you’re playing, but, underneath, are actively aware of the note you’re going to next. And it also helps to know the entire phrase in your head in the background, behind the active ‘playing this, knowing that next is this’ technique.
This is a ‘brain technique’ that, once mastered, effortlessly does magical things to performance for smoothing out transitions between even the most difficult fingering changes and intervals one must play.
Hope this helps you.
For Each Note?! Really?!
I got a good chuckle yesterday. Somebody I know was working on intonation, clarity, and truing pitch, and, in frustration, turned around and asked, “Do you have to adjust your embouchure for each and every note on the flute?”
“Yes,” I answered, not bothering to clarify with specifics and cases of exception, because I know this individual doesn’t like the ‘if’s, ‘and’s, and ‘maybe’s.
“For each note?!”
“Set for each note, yes — each note and each type or quality of tone.”
“Really!” — snapped in disgust. “I should have taken up electronic keyboard. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about embouchure and I’d always be in tune!”
They turned around and stared at me, then. “For each and every note you play on the flute, you adjust your embouchure?!”
“Yes.” Now, I added in a small clarification, inaccurate at best in the interest of keeping my response brief and comfortable for them. “Unless it’s a speedy run where you start here on this note, then aim for the target note of that run. Then, it’s a sort of smooth transition through the embouchure adjustments.”
They sighed in disgust, rubbed their face, complained about muscle fatigue, and put their instrument in its stand.
“So every note you play, you set that note with your ear and with embouchure adjustments!” they stated.
“Yes.”
They shook their head. “I can’t even imagine how long that took you to get perfected.”
I didn’t respond. The truth is, it takes a long time to master a wind instrument, because of embouchure requirements. It’s taxing; it’s long, tedious, slow work, note by note up and down the chromatic scale, the major and minor scales…. It’s working slowly and methodically through all the intervals. It’s doing a lot of long tone work and even more harmonic work. It’s not something mastered in a year or two. Maybe four if you work really, really hard, but usually at least a decade. I didn’t mention that. I know that knowledge wouldn’t sit well, not with a beginning clarinetist.
