New music freaks Aran out--it's often a struggle to get him to learn a new piece, and he often goes into a full autistic meltdown over mid-song key changes.  No lie!  He hits the key change, and just freaks.

And yet, he loves to transpose music on the fly.  One song that he just hated because "It's so hard!" he finally mastered. Just today he sat at the piano and played it, watching me out of the corner of his eye as he did so.

"Did you hear me play that?" he said.  "It's in C instead of G."

"Pretty good, " I said.  "Did your piano teacher tell you to do that?"

"No," he said.  "I did it because I wanted to."

Oddly, this was the song that has a key change in it.

Sheesh.

I'm obviously not a pre-teen or a teenaged girl.  But when a boy whose voice hasn't changed yet sings a romantic song, all I can do is laugh.  A guy who sings soprano can't do love songs.  Justin Bieber, are listening?

That is all.

So I'm working on a steampunk novel set in London in 1850.  Music plays an important part.  We have mad scientists and zobmies (oh yes, you can't avoid them).  We also have the square root of two.

The square root of 2 is an irrational number.  It can't exist, but it does.  The sides of an right triange prove it.  The square of side a plus the square of side b equals the square of side c.  If you can square a number, you can get its square root.  So if a=1 and b=1 on our triangle, what is c?  That's right: 2.  1 squared + 1 squared = 2.  Very nice.

If you can have 2 as the result of a square, you must be able to get its square root.  So what's the square root of two?  There isn't one.  But there must be one, since you can measure the distance of the hypoteneuse that produced it--or can you?  Irrantional number!

The square root of 2 is the symbol adopted by the Third Ward, which is the clandestine Britich agnecy that hunts down mad scientists before they go too far and set off those doomsday devices they love so much.  The Third Ward shouldn't exist, but does.

One mad scientist remains at large, and the Third Ward -must- find her.  She taunts them, sends them messages wtih music playing in the background.  (Mad scientists love music.)  One of the characters who has perfecdt pitch realizes that the jarring chord everyone thinks is there to provide atmoshpere is actually a tritone clue.

A tritone is an augmented fourth or diminished fifth (C to F#, for examle), and is displeasing to most ears.  The mad genius plays a chord: G#, B, a rest, and D.

If you convert the notes to their freqency numbers in Hertz, you get 51, 39, 0, and 9.  Convert those to coordinate readings, and you get  51°30'N, 00°09'W--the coordinates for Hyde Park in London.

Oh yes--G# to D is a tritone.  The frequency ratio of a tritone is the square root of two, and it's the only tone to have an irrational number as its frequency ratio.

The mad genius is toying with our heroes by encoding the coordinates of his hidden lab in an annoying song--and hiding the lab right in the middle of London.

Will they find our mad genius in time . . . ?

I spent 45 minutes figuring all this out. 

I'm such a geek.

Every year I tell myself I'm going to go to the Saline Celtic Festival, and every year I end up not going.  This year, I said, "Dammit, I'm going!"

According to the web site, several workshops were scheduled for Friday evening, including one for playing in an ensemble group and another for playing the Irish pennywhistle.  This in addition to various bands.  Saturday, the main day, was filled with activities, ranging from jousts to haggis hurling to maypoles to dance workshops.  And, of course, music, music, music.

Aran has been on a big knights 'n' dragons kick lately, and it occurred to me that he would like the festival, too, but not until Saturday, when there's more going on.  Also, he and I haven't done anything together as just the two of us in a long time (unless you count piano lessons).  I told him about the festival, and he was eager to go.

Anyway, tonight I put Corey in the car and drove down to Saline--just me, since Aran wouldn't be big on the workshops.  The weather was balmy and perfect, completely unlike the usual hot, muggy destruction we usually get in July.  Found the park with little trouble, found parking with rather more trouble, slung Corey over my shoulder, and headed down.

At the entry table, I said I was interested in both the ensemble and whistle workshops, but it turned out all the workshops took place at the same time, so I chose the ensemble one.  Paid the fee, and the woman directed me to one of the large canvas tents that dotted the park.  "If no one's there," she said, "come back.  They may have moved it because we didn't get as many people as we'd hoped."

There was indeed no one there, so I came back to the registration table.  There I found four or five other people who were also waiting for the ensemble workshop.  And then I saw . . .

. . . them.

One of the canvas-enclosed stages showed a trio of people, and they had harps.  Since the ensemble workshop didn't seem to be in any hurry to start, I said, "I'm going to wander over there for a look."

The people at the harp stage were scheduled to give an event--a combination concert and "this is how harps work" sort of thing.  But there weren't many people in the audience, so everyone was just chatting instead.  They saw my harp case.

"What kind of harp do you have?" asked one of the women.

"Dusty Strings," I said.

"Well, come up and join us!" she said.

The event turned into a combination jam session/workshop/shop talk thing that went on for over 90 minutes.  The four of us compared notes and threw together a quick performance of "Greensleeves" and "Sheebeg, Sheemore."  More people came.  We swapped harps around.  Harpers love doing this because different harps have different feels and different sounds, so it's interesting hearing how your music comes out on someone else's instrument.  It's also interesting hearing someone else play your harp because you never hear your own playing, just like you never really hear your own voice--the tone sounds different from the audience than from behind the harp.  It was great fun!

I never did make it to the other workshop.

Once the harps wound down, I wandered about the festival.  It was very quiet and uncrowded--Friday is a very light day.  The main stage ran a couple of really good Celtic bands and one lousy one.  (Lousy because I hate so-called Celtic rock. It sounds dumb no matter how you do it.  In my humble opinion.)

And then home.  Tomorrow I return with Aran.  We'll see how he likes it.

After a holiday hiatus, Aran has returned to piano lessons.  I took him over today.  It went very well.  Aran played some of his previous songs as if there'd been no gap.  I told his teacher about his ability to call out the key of songs he hadn't heard since before he learned to read music, and she both laughed and cheered.  Now he has =three= new songs to learn.

And he's working on a SPONGBOB SQUAREPANTS script.

While we were decorating, we played Christmas songs on the stereo.  Aran took to calling out what key the next song would be in, as in, "They're going to sing in E-flat."

Last year at this time, Aran didn't know key signatures.  What this means is that Aran's music memory is such that he can think of a song he's heard from before he learned how music works and name the key BEFORE he actually hears the key again.

Apparently somewhere in his head is stored every song he's ever heard.  He can access it and play it in his head so accurately that his perfect pitch kicks in and allows him to name the key properly, even though he hasn't listened to the song since he learned what a key actually is.

This is getting scary . . .

I'm writing and listening to music.  Aran wandered in and said, "Is that the Brandenburg Cancerto Number 5 in D?"

Why yes.  Yes, it is.

UPDATE

Kala was also rather amazed at this incident.  The follow-up conversation went something like this:

ME: Aran, where did you learn about the Brandenburg Concerto?

ARAN: In orchestra.  [A class he had last school year.]

KALA: How many times did you hear it in orchestra class?

ARAN: Once.

ME: Once?

ARAN: Yeah.  The teacher played it on the radio.

KALA. Just one time?  You're sure?

ARAN (getting a little annoyed): Yeah.

Okay, then.

We finally got a piano tuner in.  We found one guy who wasn't available until the fifth Wednesday of a month with no "e" in it during a new moon.  We called another guy and arranged for him to come, pending a confirmation, which Kala left on his voice mail.  When he didn't show up, she called him and he said, "Oh!  I never listen to my messages."  Then we called a third guy who did arrive on time and who tuned the way out-of-tune piano very nicely.  At last!

The piano sounds so much better now that it's completely in tune.  Aran certainly enjoys playing it, and I can play Corey along with him.  I also play now and again.  I hadn't realized how much I'd been avoiding the piano myself because of its bad voice.

Snurched from kradical :

- Choose a singer/band/group
- Answer the following questions using only titles of songs by that singer/band/group
- Tag 7 more people.

I'm going with folk singer Heather Alexander

1. Are you male or female? "Ragged Man"

2. Describe yourself.  "The Witch of Westermereland" or "Storyteller"

3. What do people feel when they're around you? "It's All About Me"

4. How would you describe your previous relationship? "Flesh Against the Thorn"

5. Describe your current relationship.  "Contraridance"

6. Where would you want to be now?  "Neverland"

7. How do you feel about love?  "Antique Desires"

8. What's your life like?  "The Hunt Is On"

9. What would you ask for if you had only one wish?  "The Golden Ring"

10. Say something wise.  "Courage Knows No Bounds"

Yesterday I found an old pennywhistle in the family room.  It wasn't marked, and I couldn't tell what key it was tuned to.  I played a scale.

"Aran," I said, "what key is this in?"

"D," he said without hesitation.

Very handy.

For his entire life, Aran couldn't sing.  I mean, really couldn't sing.  He would drone in a monotone whenever he had to sing anything, and often he would refuse to sing entirely.

And then lately, he's started singing.  He'd sing with songs on the car stereo and he'd sing songs he'd heard on television.  He refuses to switch octaves, which causes him problems if the original singer is a man, but he was singing.

Today on the way to karate class, I said, "Aran, can you sing middle C for me?"

He sang a note.  I don't have perfect pitch, so I couldn't tell for sure, but it sounded close to me.  I wanted to grab a musical instrument--any musical instrument--to check, but none were at hand.  After we got home from class, I took him to the piano.

"Aran, can you sing middle C for me again?"

He did.  I checked it.  He had it.

So not only is Aran's ear perfect, his voice is, too.