Tag: Casting

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Well, well, well… What do we have here?

Vermont! Here I come. One of the smaller, but favorite events I get to teach at is Mimir’s well. This is a Viking descriptive event which is all about classes and an A and S display and contest (some years). I tend to offer up on the Bardic track because there are a lot of folks who enjoy performance but not a ton who teach. That’s ok. Not everyone teaches, but I love doing it. In addition, I was asked to teach a class on pewter casting. I have been making tokens for the last year or so as well as award medallions. The Event Stewards wanted to get more folks into doing it since it was as far spread in this part of the Northern Region. I happily agreed.
I had decided to challenge myself. I have a really big fear of putting my own work for the general public. Not only that, I never feel like my polyphonic works are good enough. I was inspired by their Royale Highnesses to compose them a processional. His Royal Highness crown winner has an early roman persona. I pulled from the texts of Augustus. I used a small portion of the texts that I felt would represent our Royalty

Bella terra et mari civilia externaque tóto in orbe terrarum suscepi3  victorque omnibus veniam petentibus4 cívibus pepercí. Externas  gentés, quibus túto ignosci potuit, conserváre quam excídere malui. Míllia civium Rómanorum adacta sacrámento meo fuerunt circiter quingen ta.
Wars, both civil and foreign, I undertook throughout the world, on sea and land, and when victorious I spared all citizens who sued for pardon. The foreign nations which could with safety be pardoned I preferred to save rather than to destroy.

Choir

Below, find  the MP3 and the recording I made during rehearsal. Sheet music to follow. I chose to teach this during the ad hoc choir that I run. It was a dream group because I had a pretty good balance on all voice parts. Everyone learned it quickly and took direction well. Again, everyone was excited to perform this during court while THR processed. TRH were banished from the room while we rehearsed because I wanted this to be a big surprise.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1xSn0BGTbBZfLUvubdQLD7hwQkYXfbw8J
Pewter casting came later. I went through all the different forms of casting materials from clay, cuttlefish bone, soap stone and sand. We went over the materials I use in my anachronistic process (which you can see in my post for making the tokens for Ozurr and Fortune) and then, everyone who gave a donation could bring their own piece home. I had made two molds, one a Mjolnir and one a Viking brooch replica. I wanted to keep with the mood of the event. Also, this is the first time I’ve ever let anyone use my supplies or cast in front of me. I made sure to bring safety equipment to make sure everyone was safe and was ready to have my first vict-.. first student attempt this as HRH walks in. I of course offered him the chance to cast and he took it. A perfect pour! It wasn’t the first time I’ve ever had royalty attend my class, but it was the first time they were ever actively a part of it.

Everyone had gone home with their own, personally casted piece. There were no injuries. Only a few broken rubber bands and my mantra (NO PAPERWORK) seemed to work.Casts

If you’re curious about the site tokens I made (all 200 of them) here is a picture of the completed tokens.

Site tokens

The rest of the day I got to enjoy classes. I had my Partner with me and his son, in matching garb (which was cute as heck!). It was also his son’s first event. He got to calligraph, make an LED lantern, chainmail and even got a token from TRH. You could see the magic in his eyes as he entered our little village and made new friends. He felt right at home. This is a huge deal because he doesn’t have a lot of friends. They say he’s weird (Honestly, he’s a normal kid who really enjoys Pokémon and telling you about it. Also, wicked smart at math). If you have been part of our village, these are qualities we all share.Family
The end of the day was here. Court! My partner loves court and he’s only been to one. It’s not the gift he got (both times) but the celebration of people and the pomp and circumstance that goes with it. I got to explain the awards people were getting, the vocabulary we were using and what was what and who was who.
It was my turn in court. I am one of the officers for EKCoP (east Kingdom College of Performers). I serve as Chancellor as well as Deputy Chatelaine for the Northern Region. I had been given the Travel journal to pass on since the recipient was sick (with the world being like it is right now, we don’t want any of your flu/COVID-19 crud). I asked if I could present it in court. It’s a cheesy way to get the college some recognition and make the recipient feel more special. As I was about to sit down, their royal highnesses told me to hold on.Journal
What had I done? Did they hate my song? Wha I being Banished because I’m an obnoxious and loud Bard? No.. they were doing a thing.

I was inducted into the Order of the Silver Wheel. This is an armigerous level award for those who do community service. I never expect to get awards for what I do. Sure, I dream about them like anyone else, but I do what I do because I enjoy it and want others to enjoy. I was literally dive tackled by 2 of my peers in the order… who also happen to be in the Free Company of the Stella Maris. With teers and joy I entered the order.
Please see this BEAUTIFUL scroll done by the hand of Kenneric Aubrey. Text is based off of L’homme Arme (The Armed Man)

Here is a copy of the sheet music for the processional:

Patronus

 

Here is an MP3 of it, at a fast tempo, This should be performed at a  marching tempo and militantly timed.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hvby7YD2y9oJRj0biix5tQtXn3OoN_Fh/view?usp=sharing

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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):

 

54514104_2294728344138437_8900480613199380480_n.jpg

 

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*