Whatabout noise?

[Inkanyezi]

Well, the first time you get any sound out of it, it might be categorised as noise.

I have played the quena since the sixties, playing in various bands. Andean music, from Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Argentina etc. I have also been teaching music classes with immigrant children from South America here in Sweden, mainly the quena, but also general music and charango.

This image is of Tania, a peruvian student in Santiago de Cuba. She said she has a quena, but had never got any sound out of it. So I lent her my flute, and we sat in the 'sala', trying to get something out of it. Mostly noise.

The title thus is double-edged. My camera was a Canon PowerShot G7, and I raised ISO to 800 for the rather low light. It is a compact camera with a tiny sensor, and like the rest of them, it is rather noisy, particularly when a high ISO is used. I don't ever go higher than 800 for this reason, but let the camera decide the shutter time, hoping I can hold the camera steady enough. I can! Where I once placed this image, its metadata has been removed, but it was 1/20 second, not too much of a challenge.

The image has been post-processed in RawTherapee, with correction of WB taken from one of the white surfaces, and the white point is dragged a bit to the left, effectively raising ISO digitally by about one stop.

Even the shrunk image shows rather much noise, but does it really matter? As long as the noise does not interfere with what I see in an image, I don't bother about it. To me, it is a fond memory from that day, making noise, perchance to become music.

[Shadowman]

Nicely exposed image. Noise doesn't appear to be an issue.

[tao2]

Older compacts like this, ah wouldn't use above ISO 200. The quality compromise is too great (and can be seen in the photo). Ah think ye could have gotten 400 or even 200 out of that if ye'd propped the camera on the back of a chair, elbows on knees or some such...

[rpcrowe]

Noise doesn't seem to trouble me as much as it does others but, using a noise reduction software (I used NIK Dfine in default setting) does seem to clear up a bit of noise...

[NorthernFocus]

...Even the shrunk image shows rather much noise, but does it really matter? As long as the noise does not interfere with what I see in an image, I don't bother about it...

Discussion finished

[TonyW]

This is a good picture of an attractive looking girl. They are nice natural looking colours.

I find it impossible to get a sound out of an end-blown flute like this or even a transverse flute so I sympathise. I tried listening to some quena music on youtube. The sound is a bit like the Japanese version, the shakuhachi, but the style of music is different, unsurprisingly. From the little that I have heard, the flute music from South America is more different and tends to be pentatonic.

[Inkanyezi]

This is a good picture of an attractive looking girl. They are nice natural looking colours.

I find it impossible to get a sound out of an end-blown flute like this or even a transverse flute so I sympathise. I tried listening to some quena music on youtube. The sound is a bit like the Japanese version, the shakuhachi, but the style of music is different, unsurprisingly. From the little that I have heard, the flute music from South America is more different and tends to be pentatonic.

They indeed are often pentatonic. And I still remember how I about fifty years ago blew myself beet red for a couple of weeks, before getting the first decent note out of the flute. Later I learned that the flute I had bought in a bookshop in Paris wasn't very good. It was indeed really difficult to play, and the noise I made before finally succeeding was by far worse than what Tania performed after just about ten minutes of tuition.

The main problem when trying to get sound out of a flute where you cover the holes with your fingers, if you haven't done it before, is precisely that you try to cover the holes. You must start with all holes open, and one by one, from the topmost one, cover them to get lower notes. If a hole is insufficiently covered, anything from no sound at all to a terrible shriek may come out of the flute. So always start without covering any hole, then cover the topmost one, and after doing that the next hole and play with just those two holes for a while before trying the third etc. The technique is akin to blowing over a bottle. There is also the idea that is difficult to let go, that most people think that you should blow into the flute - when actually you should blow past it - "out of the flute".

The difficult part when covering the holes is that you must lay the soft part of your finger over the hole, to cover it well, not the tip of the finger, but the soft finger-pad. If there is any leak in the upper holes that you don't cover well, it won't work.

So, you could get the sound out of the shakuhachi if you can do it with a bottle. You should not try blowing too hard, and you have to find the correct angle and position of the edge you blow onto. The image of Tania shows it rather well. She has the notch just where her lips meet, maybe the flute could be placed just a tiny bit higher, and then you should not try blowing into it, but out of it.

[IzzieK]

You seldom post an image but this one is absolutely beautiful and the girl is pretty too. Is she your daughter? The noise doesn't bother me at all, but Richard's edit brought the warmth of her skin.

[Inkanyezi]

You seldom post an image but this one is absolutely beautiful and the girl is pretty too. Is she your daughter? The noise doesn't bother me at all, but Richard's edit brought the warmth of her skin.

She's neither my daughter nor granddaughter. I met her at a restaurant downtown, were friends of ours were playing. She was sitting there with some coeds. They tried to get a sound out of a wine glass, but didn't succeed, whereupon I showed them, by stroking a wet finger over its rim and we played various notes with a few glasses partially filled, that's how we came to talk to each other. My wife and I invited them home for a cup of tea, and I haven't seen her since.



That was six years ago, December 28 2009, in Santiago de Cuba, just a few days after the father of the man that cares for our house had died - the first time we could go out that month. We cared for the old man the last month of his life, sitting up with him through the night, changing drips, cleaning him, till finally, the 23rd of December he gave up his breath. At the age of ninety-one, with prostate cancer.

[george013]

Good picture with that hand. It doesn't look the hand of a 91 year old man. I wouldn't guess that.

George

[Inkanyezi]

What caught the attention of my wife there in the restaurant was that the girls were trying to make a glass sing by stroking a finger over it.

On our journey to Cuba, we had a stopover in Madrid, where we had to stay till the next day, and we took the opportunity to walk a bit downtown. My wife wanted to find books. She knows only Spanish, so anytime we are in Spain, she goes looking for bookshops. So I guided her to Puerta del Sol and the bookstore of El Corte Inglés, and when we strolled from there over to Plaza Mayor, on Calle Postas that leads up to Plaza Mayor, there was a guy playing the glasses. My wife had never seen or heard that before and was greatly impressed. (I have done quite a bit of busking myself in the late sixties.)

My wife first was a bit embarrassed as I talked to the girls and showed them how to do, but when she learned that Tania was interested in learning how to play the quena, she invited them over, as I didn't have my flute with me, but at home.
(The errors the girls made when trying to get the sound out of the glass were twofold: dry finger and beer glass. It has to be a glass on foot.)

[george013]

And here is his father, also Madrid.



Couldn't resist it.

George

[IzzieK]

Now that is what I call "Street Photography". What do you mean by " a glass on foot?" Does that mean, on a stem? I can't remember which movie it was but Sandra Bullock did that as her effort. I can't recall if the glass has a foot or not...

[Inkanyezi]

Now that is what I call "Street Photography". What do you mean by " a glass on foot?" Does that mean, on a stem? I can't remember which movie it was but Sandra Bullock did that as her effort. I can't recall if the glass has a foot or not...

Stem, yes. You know, my mother tongue is Swedish, and I am a bit confused with too many languages. In Spanish, it is simply "una copa", and in Swedish we say that it has a "foot". You do this with wine glasses, not glasses without a stem.
BTW, as you might guess, my wife is in the photo with the glass harp player.

[IzzieK]

Stem, yes. You know, my mother tongue is Swedish, and I am a bit confused with too many languages. In Spanish, it is simply "una copa", and in Swedish we say that it has a "foot". You do this with wine glasses, not glasses without a stem.
BTW, as you might guess, my wife is in the photo with the glass harp player.

I guessed that your wife will be with the first one, the son...Oh! the father's one is George's shot!

Anyway, good shot, including the environment and the smile of both subjects. I understand most Spanish terminology Urban, having lived in and amongst Spanish speaking relations of my mother from age 7 to my second year of university. I can translate, but not speak.

[Inkanyezi]

I'll hang on a while to the noise topic.

During December and January, I was in Santiago de Cuba, and there I don't have access to the web. The web is useful for finding information of just about anything, in any language, even if it is also sometimes a very deceptive friend, leading you on the wrong track. Hence, I couldn't do any search for the source of the expression on the bread cart. Bread is distributed in the town with this kind of cart, wheels often made of ball bearings although this one has real wheels, box mostly of aluminium sheet. Carts with ball bearing as wheels make a terrible noise when dragged along the street.

On the other side of the box, one can read "muy fuerte doping". The guy distributing bread was not very helpful. Perhaps he was not the one that had decorated the wagon, he might have been a stand-in, and he didn't know English. I discussed the matter with various people at home, my brother in law living in Atlanta GA couldn't give a clue, although he too found the phrase on this side highly offensive.

The mystery was resolved when I came back to Sweden in February. I searched on the web and found a CD named Doping by Yomil y el Dany, with one of its titles "A la ****ing Nigga". It is reguetón, the noise I had to withstand through the holidays, culminating at New Year's Eve.

[IzzieK]

I was laughing when I saw your image here offline and I can't go in because I was doing our accounting today so here I am with a smile on my crazy face looking at it again...this is inspirational. I will keep my eyes open for such images that will put a smile to my face and hopefully, on others too. I do not think this will be lost in translation.