quochuy 3Speak Podcast: Recent Episodes
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Listen and watch the latest videos from quochuy. Hosted by 3Speak.tv. The free speech video platform on the HIVE blockchain.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/mbrqozad
I met @albuslucimus a while back on QuenaSabor Reddit, I got his interested after explaining what Hive is. Since, he has been very active on the blockchain and has started the Name That Tune monthly contest on his blog.
This month, I'm very excited to be the guest author for the Name That Tune Contest #22. I've chosen a song that should not be very difficult. Hint: it's usually played on the pan flute.
How to enter the contest:
- Guess the name of the song
- Enter it as a comment in the post
- Contests ends on July 31st 2023 UTC
- If multiple correct answers, I will randomly pick
Contest Price
The winner will receive the author rewards of this post.
Have fun!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/tzqmaouymi
Working from home is awesome and living on the Central Coast, NSW, means I'm very close to beaches and national parks. Brisbane Water National Park is one awesome place near home, there are several beautiful trails in the park. On a nice day, I would get a sandwich and go for lunch and explore a trail.
This week, I went on Bulls Hill Firetrail because it does not seem very popular, I never see anyone parking there. So I thought it's great for going to find a secluded spot to practice Quena.
Unsurprisingly, the fire trail path wasn't special, however, I noticed some large rock platforms on the side of the trail and went off-track to explore. I'm glad I did because I discovered a marvellous place with view on the lake afar. The spot would probably be the closest to what I could get to look like Peruvian landscapes 😅. That inspired me to practice El Condor Pasa on the Quena.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/bxjwcdfv
During my teenage years, I used to watch a lot of Hong Kong Kung Fu dramas with my parents. That's also what helped me with my Vietnamese since we lived in a French speaking country. My top three of my favourites series at the time were:
- Heroes from Shaolin
- Reincarnated (1979 version)
- Legend of the Condor Heroes
As opposed to my parents, I still remember the theme songs of each of the series. There used to be a time where I kept listening to them. Quite later on, when watching Heroes from Shaolin again, I realised that a lot of the music in the series were actually taken from the Manga series Saint Seiya (Knights of the Zodiac) 🤣
Some of the OST from those series became quite popular. I really like the ones from Reincarnated so I decided to record my own cover using Andean flutes including a Quenacho, a Quena and a Zampoña.
I created the main backing track with Band-in-a-Box and then I exported the tracks into Logic and added extra tracks with real and virtual instruments:
Mixing and mastering the song is always challenging and I always find something wrong after coming back to it after a while lol. Maybe one day I'll try to hire a professional sound engineer to do those parts and compare with my own attempt.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/xuzjpvvs
I'm still practicing my guitar solo playing several times a week. This week I've been practicing "The God Father" and "For Your Eyes Only" (James Bond). It's also a fairly easy song to memorise but with easy slow songs the difficulty is to add effects (bending, slides, hammer on etc...) to some of the notes to make them connect and I still suck at those, they don't all come naturally and the more I focus on them the more I make mistakes lol.
Here is a take of "For Your Eyes Only" by Sheena Easton that I'm happy enough with.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/urrsgrzt
I fell in love with the dark brown flame top look of the ESP LTD EC-256FM guitar so decided to buy it to replace my all black Cort CR50. It must be because of the different wood used to build the guitar but when playing on the EC-256FM unplugged, I could hear a brighter and louder resonance. Once plugged, the EC-256FM also sounded better than the CR50. The only thing I wished the EC-256FM had was a matte finish neck so it feels less sticky. After a day of playing around to test it, I was happy with the new guitar and moved the Duesenberg Les Trem II (whammy bar for Les Paul guitars) from the CR50 to the EC-256FM and put the CR50 for sale online.
Being relatively new to electric guitars, I chose some easy techniques learn:
- playing solos
- alternate pentatonic scale positions
- vibrato/tremolo without the whammy bar
- muting strings when playing solos
Some easy songs I've been learning:
- The God Father (including Slash version)
- Apache (The Shadows)
- Pegasus Fantasy (Saint Seiya)
- Sad Brothers (Saint Seiya)
- some ambient style improvisations
In the video attached, I've recorded myself practicing "Pegasus Fantasy" the main theme song from Saint Seiya. That song has several variations during the anime show, some with electric guitars, some with vocals, some with a mix of instruments. I picked this pop ballad kind of variation and generated the backing track using an arranging software called Band-in-a-Box.
The effect chain is as followed:
- the guitar first goes into a Boss volume pedal
- Behringer CS400 pedal
- Caline Pure Sky Overdrive pedal
- TC Electronics Triple delay pedeal
- Boss RV-6 reverb pedal
- Neunaber Iconoclast cabinet simulator pedal
The last 3 pedals were used in stereo mode and the output of the Iconoclast was connected to a Yamaha MG10XU mixer. I then connected the mixer to my iPhone via the USB/Lightning adapter cable which allowed the iPhone to shoot videos with the audio coming directly from the mixer.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/bnhjxuuz
Making an Andean Bombo
Since I'm making native flutes including Andean Quenas and Quenachos, I thought I'd make an Andean style drum called Bombo to add some percussions to my recordings. Luckily, while driving to my auntie's, I noticed a dirty black plastic barrel on the curbside for council collection. I brought it back home, thoroughly cleaned it and sun dried it before cutting the bottom off.
For the drum skin, I used packing tape and stretched several layers of it on each end following similar instructions to the following tutorial video found on Youtube:
The end result does not look pretty as a single sheet drum skin but it works fine and is very cheap.
Once both sides were taped, I added some decoration using an off-cut of fabric I used to make flute bags and attached a piece of green paracord to hold it over my neck (it's very lightweight). The drum sticks are made from the stalk of a "Kangaroo tail" collected during my hiking session in the bush.
Repairing a broken Djembe
Few days after making the Bombo, someone on Facebook Marketplace offered a Djembe for free. It had a torn off drum head (skin). I decided to take it and try to repair it. I could fix it using the packing tape method but a djembe usually have the skin much tighter than a Bombo so that it produces higher harmonic frequencies so I decided to do it the hard way.
I started to untie and loosen the ropes around the body of the Djembe. They are used to hold the drum head in place and tighten it to adjust the tone. As I loosen the rope, I noticed it was pretty dirty and dusty so I saved time by just cutting it off into pieces.
The rope off, the drum head is now free, I removed the skin from it's metal ring and put the ring aside for the new skin. I didn't have any real leather or animal hide and was looking for something I could re-use. In the end I remembered I had that blacksmith apron I made from an old punching bag:
But first I needed to re-string the second metal ring that will be used to pull the skin ring down to tighten the skin. So I went on Youtube and found this video which is showing people making a Djembe:
That was clear enough for me to start making the loops from a paracord.
Usually a Djembe would also have a smaller metal ring at the bottom but this one was using a ring made of rope, so I did the same thing and made a ring of paracord and used the same method to tie some loops to it. I then started to install the drum head and added vertical ropes linking the top ring to the bottom ring. I watched a few videos to learn this process but this one is the one I watched most:
Getting it balanced was tricky. The punching bag fabric is a false leather, not only it was thick but it was also quite stiff making it difficult to get it go between the two top rings. In the end the top rings were a bit crooked but it seems to be OK.
So I proceeded with tuning the drum. The vertical lines alone are not enough, although they do tighten the drum skin, it's not easy to get it very tight for a bright sound. So an additional tuning process is needed. For this, I used another piece of paracord and started some twist knots at the bottom. This special knot, when pulled on will make two vertical ropes twist and thus shorten in length, tightening the drum head in the process. I used the Djembe tuning locked method described in the following video:
I started a first round of knots and as I progressed I did noticed a brightening of the Djembe voice. On my second round, I noticed the ropes were too tight and I was only half way through the circumference of the drum, so I undid the second round and redone it but tying only every other set of ropes. Although I could have left it halfway, I think it looked neater if I went the full round skipping some ropes.
Here is the result, from punching bag to apron to drum head:
And here is the side view:
I like this green paracord better than the original black one, it gives a nicer color contrast.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/kpzzqtun
I recently bought a Cort CR50 Les Paul electric guitar to step into ambient music. I really like the dreamy soundscape music with those long delays and reverbs. I started watching a few tutorial videos and thought it would be easy since I play a bit of ukulele and guitar already but ambient guitar is a bit different since you usually want to spread out the notes of the chords you are playing as to not overcrowd the sound with those long delays.
In this first attempt, I'm using effects inside Logic Pro but I've since purchased some guitar effect pedals so that I can practice and play without the computer. So far I have:
- a Behringer CS400 compressor to increase sustain of played notes
- a Donner Morpher Distortion to add a tiny bit grit to the clean guitar sound
- a TC Electronic Flashback Triple Delay to combine up to 3 different types of delays and create more space
- a Boss RV-6 Reverb to wash all those delays creating even more space
- a Donner Circle Looper to create live loops of the guitar and play the flutes on top of
- a Neunaber IconoClast speaker emulator to be able to connect directly to regular speakers while sounding like a guitar amp
Using a mixing desk in front of the pedals, I can also play my flutes using some of those pedals as effects.
I'm still practicing and will be uploading some more tunes soon.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/olfzejrx
A mark tree is a percussion instrument consisting of a series of small chimes. It is used to add some musical colour to a piece and is played by sweeping a finger through the the series of chimes.
For future flute recordings, I've decided to make myself one by using aluminium flat bars. So I headed to the local hardware store to buy some. I started to cut the first bar to a 20cm piece. I then carry on cutting 34 more pieces reducing the length by about 3mm each time.
The band saw left some burr on the end of each aluminium section so I had to sand them off. I then made a little jig out of an off-cut of wood to make sure I'm drilling a hole at the same place on each of the sections. The holes are then drilled on the drill press.
Once all sections are ready, I went on and cut a little section of pine wood. I have 35 bars of 1cm width and I want 3mm gap between them so I need:
35 + (34 * 0.3) = 45.2cm of wood. I added 5cm on each side so the total length is 55cm (rounded down).
The cut wood is then sanded to clean its surface off all the dirt and stain.
With a pencil, I then marked the location of each holes to be drilled on the board. They are spaced 1 + 0.3 = 1.3cm, starting at a bit less than 5cm from the edge.
I then marked a line with a homemade marking gauge. This will make sure my holes will be aligned.
Back onto the drill press to drill those 35 holes with a 2mm bit followed by sanding again to remove all marks on the wood. Before continuing, I applied a layer of oil to the wood to protect it and reveal the grain.
With a thin fishing line, I started to attached the bar chimes to the wooden frame. It was a bit time consuming to get them aligned enough but I got something acceptable in the end.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=quochuy/thffzolc
This week, I've started building some native American flute (NAF) from bamboo. I've always wanted to try the NAF but never got the opportunity to buy one. Having watched a lot of videos on the making of one of those flutes, I've decided I could make one myself and started the build.
Bamboo is easy to work with and is naturally hollow which saves a lot from the process. This flute is tuned to the key of G♯m on the Pentatonic scale.
The background scenes were recorded at Avoca Beach, NSW, Australia.
Wishing you a relaxing weekend.
Thanks for watching.