Many Much Tokens! And classes!

Mimir’s well, year 3 was a resounding success. It was really nice to be able to teach and actually have time to take classes as well as socialize.

About 6 months ago, the Autocrat, Eleanor Grey, had asked me to come teach to make sure there was once again a bardic representation at their lovely event. I agreed. Mountain freehold is a great little shire with great people. Last year, I wrote them a song because they deserved it.

About 1.5 months ago, I was also asked if I could make the site tokens. I happily agreed. Mimir’s well is about wisdom. So, I chose to make tiny wisdom tokens. I sent Aegir the image to 3-d model as I had other work commitments I had to manage and he loves to play in fusion 360 (The 3-d modeling program we use). From there we printed and molded the tokens. She had requested that we make 100 of them.  I had also decided that I didn’t want them to look like pristine metal. So, when creating the positive before creating the mold, I covered it in modgepodge and while it was still tacky, took same sandpaper to it to make it appear more stone-like by taking some divits out of the modgepodge.

Here are the final tokens (Though this one has the hole drilled in the wrong side):

 

 

From there, off to teach classes! I had a bright eyed and bush tailed class right at 10:00am. I always dread the first class of the day. I feel like no one wants to be there that early and no one is emotionally awake. It’s also the same as first performer stage fright. Always so hard to go on first, however, once the stage is set, everyone is ready to go!

My first class is how to warm up your body to perform. Yes, I taught this class the week before, however it is never the same. Here is the outline of the class so you know more (in a bullet form, what was gone over in the class)

1. Why do we warm up our bodies?
   1. Athletes
   2. Protection from harm
   3. Emotionally warmed up
   4. Setting the stage
   5. Setting nerves aside
   6. Ready to move
2. Anatomy of the mouth
   1. Lips, Teeth, Alvular ridge, Hard pallet, Soft pallet
   2. Discussion of how body is connected
   3. Posture- Demonstration
3. Body stretches and massage
   1. Head/temples
   2. Neck
   3. Head rolls
   4. Arm body crosses
   5. Pliet
   6. Foot stretches
   7. Rag dolls
   8. Group massage
4. Breathing
   1. Clavicle breathing
   2. Proper way to breath in (order of operations)
   3. Floor breathing
   4. Engaging diaphragm and low back muscles
5. Breathing exercises
   1. In outs on “Straw”
   2. In outs on “Shhh”
   3. Bubbles
   4. Coughing/laughing
6. Projection
   1. Talk about notes/polyps/hemorrhaging (Julie Andrews story)
   2. 5 locations to send sound in mouth
   3. Discovering the soft pallet
   4. Lollipops/York peppermint paddies
   5. Eyebrows/yawning
   6. Tongue twisters (Diction is done… Mommy made me…)
   7. Finding nasal air flow spot
   8. Tongue position
   9.  Dynamic projection (Using soft “stage whispers” to speak across the room)
7. Body tension
   1. Finding tension in your body
   2. Finding good mouth space
   3. What you can do to loosen up your body

Questions:

 

From there, I hung out, ate, made some music with friends and enjoyed. I finally got to sing a few filks I had composed to those who had never heard them and saw the glee as disney and queen were attached to their favorite SCA activities. In addition, I got to see Aegir working in the kitchen, which he had a blast with.

My final class was just us singing period rounds. I just finished compiling a book of about 50 all period rounds (Sans “Le coq et mort”… which is a traditional, but hey, everyone likes to sing about dead chickens… plus I added the german. Morbid…dead..german… chickens). However, what makes my book different, besides it being so long, is I wrote up all the translations, IPA (Internation Phoenetic Alphabet) dictions and newspaper diction. I will be adding my written documentation on this shortly as well as the appropriate IPA charts, however, after the class, all 14 of my students were begging me to publish it now. (it was 25 pages, so I was remiss to keep printing more copies out of my pocket).  I did, however, sell the 8 copies I made for charity and donated the funds on behalf of my class.

Here is the book, documentation to come!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PvID7hHNG2gvJjWctuWdpQiK-OyhmB_GlVLQhHqEcI8/edit?usp=sharing

Finally, Aegir and I displayed our molds and casts we’ve been doing over the last few months. We had a BLAST telling everyone about the process. Again, making everything more accessible. We really want to make our arts accessible to people. I find it to be a gateway drug. If you find an easy/cheap way to do it, you most likely will want to explore how it was done. *GASP RESEARCH*