Summer

While we were talking about this year’s winter being unusually long and cold, a storm came making many places flooded, and then it suddenly switched to summer when the rain had stopped. I think winter is the best season in Brisbane while summer is the worse. Though we can go swimming and to the beach in summer, it is really too hot. The sun rose earlier in the morning and fell later in the evening, and most of the day, it radiates the harsh sunshine to burn the earth. The scene outside the house is clean, clear, and beautifully filled with sunshine as if the earth has been painted with a damp brush for a transparent layer of golden oil. There is no lack of breeze but the wind is warm if it should not be described as being hot.

It is not suitable to be exposed to the sunshine for too long a period. This Saturday we hadn’t been to parks or beaches, and instead, we went to the nearby Kedron Wavell Club for lunch. I had a membership card for the club many years ago when I first settled in this suburb, but I’d lost my card for quite a time. I told to the receptionist and he was very nice and quickly printed a new card for me for free. We then walked to the restaurant inside the club and found a tidy and cozy table to have lunch there. The food was fine except the steak is overcooked — I chose medium as the style when making the order but the beef served looked like to have been at least well cooked.

The club is next to the library so it is natural for us to spend some time in the library before going home. Then in the late afternoon when the sun started to fall down, I mowed the lawn in our garden.

For my journey of music, I have recently purchased a few books of sheet music for Xiao and classical guitar, which should allow me to practice the techniques gradually and systematically.

I also bought an expensive digital radio. It costs me $99. Nowadays very few people listen to the radio. I remember that when I was in China around from 2017 to 2018, it was very hard for me to find a radio in stores. When I stepped into an outlet of electronic products, the staff told me they only sold television and radios in their mind had been outdated antiques. But it is not hard to buy one in Australia. The quality of the digital radio is superb.

Nurturing Arts

This year’s climate is a little weird as the winter season lasts longer than usual in Brisbane, but fortunately, it has become warm in recent days. Yeah, at least spring, if it is still not summer, has arrived.

To avoid direct exposure to the harsh sunshine, we decided to go to an indoor place to spend the Saturday, which was today, and the cultural centre was on top of the list in our mind when we considered where to go.

The cultural centre is located in the suburb of South Brisbane, which consists of the museum, state library, art gallery and performance art centre. We first arrived at the state library where there were some group activities for kids such as the programmes of Rhyme Time and Play Time. The Rhyme Time had been started when we arrived there. There were a group of young toddlers sitting surrounding two adults who were the teachers while the teachers were teaching them to sing nursery rhymes. We asked our son whether he liked to join but he showed no interest. Then we walked to the state museum nearby, where we expected to see some models of dinosaurs that Ivan would be very excited about. However, what pitied us is that the dinosaur garden was said to be closed temporally and the skeleton of the dinosaur was said to be not available until the middle of next year, despite we saw many specimens of many other animals there. The boy was not very interested in the specimens, and it seemed the escalator was more fun to him.

We then went to the art gallery where there exhibited some visual artworks. I was willing to spend time to admire some European-style paintings but the child showed no interest and as a result, we had to leave there earlier and stepped directly toward South Bank Parkland nearby, where the Queensland Performance Art Centre was located inside.

I understand that he is still too young to admire complicated visual arts and music but I am still trying my best to create a strong cultural environment with great artwork and music to surround him from his early years. Many people think the creativities of art and music were born by nature but I believe nurture plays a more significant role. I always thought I myself was a negative example, as I should have some innate talents for painting and music but because of lacking the environmental support during childhood and teenager-hood to develop my own interest, I eventually grew up to be very mediocre in these fields. I remember that when I was a child, my dream was to be a painter after grown up. I spent quite a lot of my spare time painting during primary school. I bought many tools for painting such as watercolour pigments, painting brushes, and papers, as well as textbooks, and whenever I had time, I would paint. But later, academic studies were becoming more and more significant. This was especially true when the entrance exams for senior high schools and universities drew close. I gave up my hobby as it was time-consuming. My journey of playing musical instruments goes longer as I am still an active amateur-level classical guitarist and flautist. To me, playing classical guitar and flute is the best way to relax and alleviate pressure. All the techniques I learned have been obtained by self-taught, which is why I think I had some innate capabilities in music, but I will be much better if I had a teacher or a better music education. Music and painting were among the least important subjects in my elementary education.

Now I have become a parent, and I want to give support as much as possible for my child to develop his own interest, especially music at this stage as he has shown some interest in it. I selected a list of nursery rhymes and frequently played the songs for him. My wife and I liked to play the testing game for him. Every time we play a nursery rhyme to the speaker to him, we will ask him for what is the name of the melody. If he answers correctly, we will praise him. My list currently contains around thirty songs, and he has been able to recognise most of the tunes by hearing only the first line of the accompanying before the song entering to the main melody. I have bought him a toyed recorder, a toyed harmonica, a toyed cat-shaped keyboard, a real soprano ukelele, and a 25-notes glockenspiel. He can only generate some random notes from the recorder and harmonica, and today he said the word “dirty” after blowing some sounds with the toyed recorder. He didn’t like the toyed keyboard as it was really too naive even for him as a toddler. We knew that he in fact was interested in the keyboard as he was very excited to touch keyboards and pianos in musical stores. I am a classical guitar amateur, so I regularly practice my guitar playing. My boy often brings his own ukulele to play together with me. Sometimes I will hold his little finger to press on the strings to play a simple rhyme. When he is not playing together with me, he often orders me to play his favourite rhymes. For example, when I was playing Greensleeves or Jasmine Flowers, he often asked me to stop and play Jingle Bell or The Muffin Man which are the tunes he is able to admire. The glockenspiel has given me much pleasure with him. I hold his hand when his hand is holding a mallet, and I control his hand to play some rhymes he is familiar with. I find I enjoy the procedure very much.

Just on the morning of yesterday, when my child woke up, he unexpectedly murmured some fragments of the rhymes, such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Stars”, and “Do you know the muffin man?”, which had surprised me so much, as if my hard work to nurture his music capability had been much rewarded!

The Progress of Studying Classical Guitar

In the year 2021, I began to study a simplified version of the anonymous Romance D’Amour on the classical guitar. There were quite a number of months for me to be able to play this arrangement, which only has the melody surrounded by some low register accompanying. Despite it being said to be a very simple arrangement, it was quite challenging for me at the beginning as it was the first time that I practised playing the melody together with simple harmonics. It was also the time I began to realise the need to alternate my right-hand fingers. Yeah, these were very fundamental points for entry-level classical guitar playing, yet even these very basic techniques are challenging for me who was a self-taught middle age adult.
I played this piece of music to my wife on the second anniversary of our marriage. At that time I was playing without using the nails of my right hand. From the beginning when I studied classical guitar, I had been rather reluctant to grow my nails as I felt it would sacrifice much in other aspects of life. I was encouraged to do this as I heard that some legends of this instrument such as Sor only played with flesh of fingertips in history. However, I soon found that the guitars in the old days were different from contemporary instruments, and the most distinguishing characteristic was that the guitars in Sor’s period used gut strings rather than nylon strings which were the standard nowadays. There were a few professionals who played without nails today but their techniques favoured gut strings more, and the gut strings were not only expensive but also sensitive to environmental factors such as humidity and temperature. I was disappointed and even tried to give up playing classical guitar for this reason. Despite many people online said as an amateur, one could use just flesh on nylon strings. However, I was such a perfectionist who could not bare this. My enthusiasm was cooled down to a great degree due to the fact that I couldn’t find a well-known professional player who played barely with the flesh on nylon strings.
The turning point was at the end of 2021 when I realised that there were some top-level virtuosos playing on nylon strings with very short fingernails, especially notably Virginia Luque and Lorenzo Micheli. There were not that many details about how Lorenzo filed his nails but from his comments on his own Youtube channel, he said he used very short nails of the right hand and with the pinky attached to the soundboard, which had allowed him to play both modern classical guitar and baroque guitar conveniently. Virginia was Segovia’s last private student, there were interviews for her online regarding her techniques which were said to be taught by Segovia. She claimed herself to be a nailless player, though it was controversial as she also grew nails which were of course very short (not beyond the fingertips) on her right hand and the nails were said to be only used to support the fingertips, and she really did not touch the fingernails. Her techniques were also described briefly in the comments of her Youtube channel.
I was very excited to know these short nails techniques, which could be a very good compromise between my classical guitar hobby and other aspects of life. I listened to the music played by Lorenzo Micheli and Virginia Luque again and again, and then I grew my nails and then bought a fingernail file to file my nails so that there were not exceeding the edge of my fingertips. I soon found that Virginia’s technique which does not use the nail to touch the strings was very hard to achieve, and the posture of Lorenzo’s technique which placed the pinky on the soundboard was a bit stiff. However, I did feel that using some short nails, which first touched the strings with flesh and then released the strings so that they also touched the nails, could produce a better tone quality than only using flesh. I thought that I did not need to fully copy the others’ techniques, as everyone was different.
From the beginning of the year 2022, I studied a new piece of music, the ancient English folk song Greensleeves, arranged by Bradford Werner. I practised and practised and finally became familiar with it around the time of our third anniversary of marriage. Bradford’s Youtube channel has many free only lessons, but I was not very interested in them. I was more interested in the music sheets that he edited. I bought some PDF books from the website and the song Greensleeves was from the books. When I studied to play songs from the very simple classical guitar repertoire, I found that my knowledge of music theory was very limited so I read some books on music theory, especially harmony. Also during this period, my old classical guitar, which had accompanied me for nine years since I bought it when I was 28 years old, was broken. I purchased a new one online and also learned to change the strings.
I then got a bit tired of it. In the following couple of months, I hadn’t touched the guitar that much. 
One day when I was with my wife and son in Aspley Hypermarket. We stepped into a musical instrument shop. There my child was attracted to the colourful ukeleles. Then we purchased a yellow soprano ukulele for him. When we were back home, Ivan was playing with the new bought ukelele. Then I went to my working studio and brought my guitar to the lounge. I played the Romance D’Amour and Greensleeves while he was happily touching the strings with his little hands. A couple of weeks later I also bought a glockenspiel for him. I was especially enjoying the moment when he was grasping the mallet with me holding his little hand to play some simple melodies such as the Birthday song and Jingle Bells on the glockenspiel. The boy liked the glockenspiel and also the ukelele. To allow him to grow up in an environment with art and music, I regularly brought my guitar to play in front of him.
Then I thought I should study a new song. This time I chose the Chinese folk song Jasmine Flowers. The arrangement was also made by Bradford. With the fundamentals built during practising Greensleeves and Romance D’Amour, I was becoming familiar with this piece of music faster than when I studied Greensleeves. I could play it in a few days. These days I was also reading a book about the biography of the classical guitar Maestro John Williams. Before reading the book, I had known that John was born and then grew up in Australia. But I was surprised to know that his mother’s father was ethnically Chinese.

A discussion on Xiao’s versatility

The Xiao, which is an ancient Chinese vertical flute and also my favourite musical instrument, has gained interest from all over the world recently. There have been English tutorials on Xiao on Youtube, some English books for Xiao on Amazon and some makers of Xiao from the United States over the past decade, but it is still not as popular as Dizi or Shakuhachi worldwide, let alone compared with the western concert flute. Generally, the versability of Xiao has been underestimated, both in and especially outside China.

Recently the social media platform Reddit, there was a question raised by someone who was going to compose a piece of music for the Xiao flute and asked if it is possible to play all the 12 chromatic notes with one Xiao flute. A few people answered the question and said that it was impractical to play all the chromatic notes on Xiao before I posted my answer that it was in fact possible although challenging to play chromatic scales on a Xiao by covering half holes for some notes.

Geoffrey Ellis is a well-known keyless flute maker living in the United States, who also makes Xiao. On his website, there is such a statement as an introduction to Xiao, “The length of the bei xiao ranges from around 24” for the smallest xiao up to 36” and it has more than a two-octave range. Skillfully handled it will play four notes of the third (altissimo) octave. Very skilled players can (technically) achieve fully chromatic play by the use of half-holing, though such notes are not as strong as open-holed notes, and in particular, the second note (Eflat on a D/G xiao) will be very anemic when achieved through half-holing. Because of this it is not really considered a viable option.”

I just want to comment on this statement. Nowadays the Xiao should easily reach two and a half octaves, while skilled players can play the full range of three octaves on a well-crafted Xiao. I have tried that I can play the full range of three octaves on my Xiao made of plastic though I am just an amateur level player. By the techniques covering half holes, it can play chromatic scales. However, the techniques of half hole covering should not merely be a technique of finger movements, but also the control of the breath. Master Winson Liao has a tutorial online for the half-hole covering technique. Based on his technique, a player should also blow downward to the Xiao and in this way the half hole can be opened larger. Here we should note that half hole covering here means to cover some part of the hole, not exactly half of it. The principle here is very simple. The pitch will be turned down if one blows downward to the Xiao flute so that the half-covering hole can be opened larger to maintain the accuracy of the pitch.

Easter Holiday

How fast time flies. Three of the four days Easter holiday have passed. It is now the time to record the activities during these three days.

On day one we went to Cleveland, which was a seashore suburb to the east of Brisbane. Several years ago before I went to Shenzhen, I had visited this suburb a few times. It was the place where I bought my car in 2016. As the car dealer gave me a discount to have the car service in their store, I visited there for car service twice from 2016 to 2017. For the first time for car service, I went there with two friends who were studying at QUT then. After the car service, we drove to many places of interest in the surrounding area. For the second time, I went there with my parents, and we found a snug place for fishing.

This time I went there with my wife and son, and the scenic views were as beautiful as before. The sea was so calm that it looked like a huge lake. It was not a popular place for tourism, and most visitors were local people. The shore, the river, the street and houses were all very clean and tidy. I could not be able to spot even a piece of rubbish. The buildings there were all nice with very few old and broken houses. The region of Raby Bay had many canals, along which the houses were splendid and all with a boat ramp. We first arrived at Raby Bay Boulevard Park. It was a quiet, beautiful and small park by the sea. There were not that many people, with some of them casually fishing. There was a nice small playground for children with a slide, four swings and a few rides. We had a wonderful time and had our prepared lunch there. After lunch, Ivan played with the lunch box by casting it on the lawn and picking it up with much fun. We had tried to find the fishing location where I and my parents visited before, but as I had forgotten where it was, we eventually couldn’t find it. In the afternoon, we went to the park next to the old Cleveland lighthouse. There was a canteen with a great sea scenic view. We bought a box of fish and chips and ordered two cups of coffee there.

On the second day, we had a good time in South Bank Parkland. We parked our car at QUT’s gardens point campus, and walked there through Goodwill Bridge which was across the Brisbane River. South Bank parkland is a memorable place for my wife and me as it was where we hold our wedding in 2019. Our wedding was held in the then Steak House (a western-style restaurant with river views) that was located along the river and next to Goodwill Bridge. Now the restaurant has changed its boss and is named OTTO. We had planned to have our lunch there but we gave up this idea as the dishes seemed too small and expensive when we checked the menu online. We went through a passage of an arched metal channel on which lots of bougainvilleas spiring around. When we arrived at the swimming pool, Ivan had some fun with the water. Then we headed to the Ferris wheel. This was the first time for Ivan to be on a Ferris wheel, but I had not much more experience than him. I had become a bit nervous and vigilant during the process while my wife said I looked too stressed. Sitting in a carriage on top of the wheel, we could see a full view of Brisbane CBD.

On the third day, which was today, we went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which was a zoo not limited to koalas but was the largest sanctuary for koalas in the world. The zoo was located in a western suburb of Brisbane with river views. Ivan was a bit afraid of the koalas when he first saw them. However, he soon liked them after a while. He wanted to touch them but of course, he couldn’t do that as there were fences surrounding the trees where the koalas resided. After watching the koalas, we entered the kangaroo field. There were plenty of kangaroos on a large lawn. Some kangaroos were in the restricted areas with a board saying that only staff could enter inside, while some were in unrestricted open spaces where people can feed them. I was a bit afraid of the kangaroos though I knew they were tame animals and probably would not attack humans. Naturally, I would like to keep a certain distance from them. However, my son was so brave and excited that he chase the hopping kangaroos, touched them, kicked their tails, pinched their ears, and attempted to tear their furs. I was so worried that the kangaroos might be irritated and hurt him. There were so many kangaroos that the grass field was full of kangaroo poos. There were also a couple of black big birds which were too heavy to be able to fly. I forgot their names but based on my memory they were endemic animals within the Australian continent similar to koalas and kangaroos. After playing with the kangaroos, we went to the barn to see some sheep and pigs. There was a small pool on the way to the barn, where there was a crocodile. We bought yearly tickets so we could go there many times in future.

The weather was nice during these three days, The sky was clear with a few clouds. It was not hot though the sunshine was bright.

Playing the Guitar

Today we went to the Wellington Point, which was the endpoint of a peninsular to the east of Brisbane. The spectacle there was splendid, and the weather was clear and pleasant. When we arrived at a lawn by the shore, admiring the beautiful scenery formed by the sunshine, the calm sea, the blue sky, the white clouds, the green trees, the beach and the flying birds such as seagulls and ibises, I brought my classical guitar out of the bag, sat on the grass under a tree and played the song Romance De Amour. The guitar I played was a new one, which was purchased a week ago online after my old guitar had broken. It has a solid bruce top and nato back and sides, and thus sounded a little better than my old one that was built with a laminated wood top.

Time has flown fast. I have been playing the classical guitar intermittently for 9 years. I am still at the beginner level, as I didn’t have that much determination for learning the classical guitar until very recently. It was during the time that I was devoting too much to research when I purchased my first classical guitar. I did not attempt to learn it seriously and merely used it as a way to spend some boring time or practice the fingers and wrists to avoid getting a disease called “computer mouse hands”. At the time when I started to be able to play some simple melodies, I went back to China to work there for a couple of years. I bought a steel-string acoustic guitar there but practice not that much.

In the year 2019, I returned to Australia to start a new life – setting up a family and starting a new career. I started to learn classical guitar again. I was always a self-taught learner, as studying with a teacher was impractical to me. I remembered that during my wife’s pregnancy, I normally played the guitar for some time almost every day at night. Then I could play some simple melodies such as Moscow Night, Greensleeves, and Minuete in G major more smoothly than I was able to perform before I went to China. This routine activity stopped some time before Ivan was born.

I then hadn’t touched the guitar for a very long time until around May 2021. To celebrate our second marriage anniversary in August, I tried to learn a piece of music played by the guitar so that I could play for my wife on that special day. The song I chose was a simplified version of Romance De Amour. It is simplified as it has been transposed to A minor and E minor so that it could be played in the open position. In addition, it only has the main melody and some low pitched accompaniments. It is said to be at the easiest level. However, it was still not so easy for me. First, I did not know I needed to alternate my right-hand fingers at the start. For a long time practising, I was using the wrong way to pluck the strings, which the ring, middle and index fingers responsible for the E, B and G treble strings respectively, and the thumb for the three base strings. I noticed this was the wrong way after I watched some online tutorials. I then bought a textbook which was Noad’s Solo Guitar Playing for reference. The other problem was I feel it was hard to pluck more than one string at the same time. The finger movements were too rigid and I felt it hard to move my thumb. But after some practice, I started to master this piece of music and played it on a special day as a milestone I set for myself.

When I was about to learn it deeper, my enthusiasm was cooled down again. It was because the textbook said for playing classical guitar, one had to grow some nails, which I did not want to follow. I searched a lot of information online, and eventually found Rob Mackilop’s website https://rmclassicalguitar.com/ for the techniques to use flesh purely for plucking the strings. It was said historically there were many famous guitarists such as Sor used flesh purely to play the classical guitar. I was encouraged as I knew Sor was probably the most famous figure for guitar in history so far. However, as I studied this technique deeper, I found it was more suitable for gut strings rather than the modern nylon strings. Gut strings were expensive, easy to break and the tune was sensitive to environments. They were definitely not what I could afford though I admit the sounds they produced were so attractive. I stopped the playing guitar, and instead, I played the flute and Xiao.

However, my wife and mother both believed the sounds of flute or Xiao I produced were too noisy, too high pitched, and not as pleasant as the guitar sounds that I produced before. This puzzled me and drove me to guitar again. Later, I got some materials online that some top virtuoso players such as Lorenzo Micheli and Virginia Luque used very short nails to play classical guitar. Virginia in fact claimed her technique to be a no nail method though she said she grew very short nails to support the fingertips. This information shed a light on me because I did not really care about whether to use nails or not, and I merely don’t want to have long nails to make many aspects of life not convenient. Very short nails are very acceptable to me. Though they hadn’t published any books or papers on this matter. There were comments given by them on their Youtube uploaded videos, which explained how they did.After some practice, I found I got a sense of using short nails for the playing. Then I started to learn new songs. I found that I could handle the two voices in the music much better than before…

Buying a Classical Guitar

 Today I was playing the classical guitar while watching Ivan playing toys in the lounge. Ivan was playing with the toyed fire engine and suddenly he wanted to sit on it. I asked him to not sit on it but as he is merely a toddler less than two years old, I shouldn’t expect him to listen to me. Then I stopped playing, laid the guitar against the wall and the sofa stood up and headed to stop him. But as soon as I stood up, I heard a “bang” sound, and the guitar had just fallen down to the ground. After I stopped Ivan sitting on the toy, I hurried to pick up the guitar and found the bridge of the guitar had been broken.
It is March 27 in 2022, nine years after I purchased the guitar. I could still remember that I bought the guitar in the second half of the year 2013. I was near 29 years old then, as a bachelor living with my grandmother in her house. At that time I was devoted to some tough research topics with very limited financial support. Life was not easy and I wanted to find a way to entertain myself a little bit. I started to think of learning a musical instrument. Previously I had played a type of vertical bamboo flute called Xiao, which was originated from China. As I had lived in Australia for several years, I believed I should learn a western musical instrument, and guitar was my choice due it its popularity and affordable prices.
It was in the afternoon. After shopping, I went to a guitar store near the shopping centre. At that time my parents were in Australia, helping my sister to look after her children. We were together. The staves saw us coming in, and then greeted us nicely. I said I wanted to buy a guitar as a beginner. Then he asked what type of guitars I wanted to learn, “For example, we have acoustic guitars, classical guitars and electric guitars. What do you want? ” This puzzled me as I hadn’t got much knowledge about that, but I first ruled out electric guitar as I felt it was too artificial. I liked the gentle sounds purely produced by the strings vibrating over the guitar body. “What is the difference between classical guitars and acoustic guitars?” I then asked. The staff smiled and said, “The sounds are very different, depending on which one you like. ” He then played some tunes with a classical guitar followed by an acoustic guitar, and said, “The feeling when plucking the strings are different. The acoustic guitars are made with steel strings and the classical guitars are using nylon strings, so the classical guitar is easier to pluck as it is softer. The classical guitar produces a warmer sound while the acoustic guitar’s sound is much louder and more brilliant. ” Only listening to the sounds produced, I thought I liked both of them, though I also agreed they were very different. I then asked the guy which one was more popular. He then said, “The steel strings based acoustic guitar is much much more popular nowadays, as it is used in pop music. The classical guitar is more favourable to playing classical music. ” My father then suggested I buy a more popular one as he thought it was better to follow the mainstream. However, I eventually decided to buy a classical guitar as I liked classical music more, and the price for classical guitar seems more affordable.