I left work around 9 last night and spent a short hour with Jenny before she was off to bed.  I needed to do my creative thing quick because I had to wake up early this morning for work.

I knew pretty much all day that my creative thing was going to be tuning my glockenspiel bars but I had no idea the process was going to be such a slow and methodical one.  All of the bars after cutting were about 1 to 2 semitones higher than their desired pitch.  I had read that you use a fairly large drill bit and drill indentations in the middle of the bars and to be careful because quite suddenly you can drill for too long and pitch your bar too low.

It was sort of true, except I found myself drilling and drilling and drilling and then checking it and hearing the same old pitch.  Once the pitch lowered a bit, it then lowered exponentially from there.  So you did have to be careful.

In two hours time I’d only tuned 4 bars.  I started with the lowest note which are the largest bars and perhaps that was some indication of why it was taking so long to tune.  Perhaps when I make it to those higher notes the process will move quicker.

In other news, check out the mess in my studio right now.  It’s off the hook in there.  I’ve got typewriter parts over here on one side of my desk, an old record player in the middle plus all of my soldering tools and trash from when I made the bliptronomes.  I guess its a sign of productivity but man I need to give that room a good cleaning.