u/Mudsharkbites

The local savers has a standing 30% senior discount on Tuesday’s. The lady that runs the jewelry department always prices the sterling jewelry at spot melt for whatever it is that day. I sweep in and get it for 30% under melt value on Tuesday morning.

Is it a fantastic deal? No, it’s not nearly as nice as finding silver items mis-priced for next to nothing, but it is still a good deal. These four pieces were 180.4 grams, or just a little shy of 5 toz melt which I got for $220, so I can’t complain.

Found an old pocket pig coin saver, you know, for kids. The icon on the front specifies Mercury dimes, so I decided to fill it.

The $3 purchasing power of 30 dimes for a kid in the 1940’s is now not even quite matched by the $140 melt value of these coins today.

Thinking of buying this but I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s a paperweight. Fairly heavy. Marked 925 S.C. whatever that means.

Anyone seen one of these before?

This morning I inked some green staff lines in my journal and in about 10 minutes had composed a piece pretty accurately reflecting my feelings about the anniversary of 9/11. It took way longer to set and post on my blog than it did to compose it. The piece almost auto-wrote itself.

The National Tragedy

For starters I publish original lead sheets DAILY on my blog. I write them all using pen and ink on manuscript without an instrument and edit them a little, then I use ABC notation to get a readable score and post the music and audio to my blog alongside some commentary. The whole thing comes off as a slightly sarcastic diary in the form of sheet music.

Lately I’ve been taking to drawing staff lines in my journal and augmenting some of the stuff I put in there with musical motifs.

A few days ago I put down some yellow staff lines and laid a tune over them in bright pink ink - the whole thing pops off the page in a way that’s impossible to catch in photos. After finishing it I thought “this looks like pink lemonade music,” hence the title.

You can find the finished sheet music and audio here:

Pink Lemonade

While you’re there, look around a bit if you like.

This is a set of theme and variations based upon the Duke Ellington / Juan Tizol jazz standard “Caravan,” performed by Yin Hao. At the time he performed this he was an exchange piano / composition student alongside me at UMKC. He didn’t know until the day before this performance that the theme was a jazz standard.

Here’s a tip - never use a jazz standard as a theme. Both Alfred Music AND Mills music wanted to bilk me for $200 to each one of them just to allow performances of this piece, and, I had to put on the music that my piece was an arrangement of “Caravan.” This is no more an arrangement than Rachmaninov’s variations of a theme by Paganini is simply an arrangement of that classic violin solo.

Performances of this will resume in 2032 when Caravan goes in the public domain, and I intend on releasing this score for free at that time as well.

In this piece, each variation is intended to musically illustrate a scene, character, item or incident in either the book or movie “A Clockwork Orange,” hence the title.

A Clockwork Caravan

Scabiosa

It turns out that, not surprisingly when you think about it, the same combinations of whole and half steps that produces a mode that combines Mixolydian and Lydian modes also produces Phrygian and Dorian modes.

The title refers both to the pincushion flower and the ink used to compose this. I’d add a picture of the inked music but there does not seem to be an option for that.

A good friend of mine who was a superb artist died about four years ago. His family has been paying for a storage space for all his stuff for too long and asked me if I would help them clear it out and I could take pretty much whatever I wanted.

Amongst other things I found these dip pens and nibs. Some of the nibs are really tiny and he had specialized holders for them.

The nibs are stuck in two of the holders and almost all of them are caked with ink that has resisted the efforts of an ultrasonic cleaner to remove the crud. I found a nearly full bottle of Higgins drawing ink so I assume that’s what he was using.

There was also a really odd tiny glass dip pen in a plastic tube - it’s really thin and it has a tiny glass tip on it.

I’ve attached pictures of everything. I’ve no idea if any of this is of value but regardless I would love to clean these pieces if nothing else, especially the holders that have the tiny nibs stuck in them.

Any help appreciated.

When I saw the eclipse this evening I knew the title for today’s tune and started composing.

Turns out it wasn’t a blood moon after all but the title stuck anyway.

Blood Moon

I’ve started adding music to my journal because I want it to include more than just text and drawings so I bought an “automatic 5-line pen” that draws five line staffs and a Mitchell #0268 music writing nib, both from John Neal Books, and I think the finished product looks way better than anything I’ve gotten with any of my fountain pens that have music nib, including my sailor 1911.

This will go on my blog tonight at midnight.

Having to compose music daily for my blog often the biggest problem is putting a title on the piece. That wasn’t the problem today. I had the title in mind before I started and composed to it.

That rarely happens. I thought it turned out nice.

Does anyone else do their composition work in ink?

Elephant’s In The Bag

I purchased a five line pen from John Neal books for drawing musical staves. I wanted to use it so I can occasionally add musical cues to my journal.

Though messy, I drew some lines in my Leuchtturm1817 120 journal with Akkerman’s Shocking Blue then with some with Black Sumi ink, filling a page with staffs. Since I had a page ready I took out the Colorverse shuttle nib and dipped it in some Hebron Rouge Hematite and got to writing.

Despite the occasional smears & blobs of ink on the page it’s kind of startling to look at. The Ackerman ink sheens in pink nicely, The sumi ink reflects off the surface of the page, and all the notes and beams are full of gold glitter from the Rouge Hematite

I used this piece, slightly edited, for today’s blog post. Check it out if you like.

https://philipdewalt.substack.com/p/denis-wouldve-loved-it

I have this nib that will draw a five line music staff as long as you can keep your hand steady. I haven’t used it for a while.

Just started journaling and since I’m a composer I thought it would be fun to once in a while toss in a musical motif or two, so found the nib and tried it.

It was never all that dependable, but now the 2nd line from the bottom is dead. No amount of cajoling can get it to produce a line. I’ve tried cleaning the nib in our untrasonic cleaner but it made no difference.

Is there anything I can do that might help? I don’t want to buy another one, they’re ridiculously expensive now and you can only buy them in multiple packs, more than I even need.

I found this holder in a $4.99 bag of stuff at the local Savers. It’s quite hefty. It inspired me to go ahead and get a brass Colorverse shuttle nib for it.

It’s perfectly balanced and writes like a dream.

I absolutely love using this - it’s taken over from all the fountain pens I used to use in my journal. I can fill a page with one dip and that’s about all I ever write at a time anyway.

Glad I didn’t have to buy a Colorverse holder, I can’t imagine it would be an improvement over this anyway.

Would love to know where the holder came from.

Hope this doesn’t get me banned here - something along these lines DID get me banned from r/silverbugs

The Rigged Election Shuffle

https://philipdewalt.substack.com/p/rigged-election-shuffle

I tried to crosspost here from r/fountainpens but apparently that’s not possible.

When I first started composing, which pre-dates music setting software such as Finale, the standard method for finished scores was to use a fountain pen with a music nib, which was a kind of slanted stub, on velum, then it was sent in for processing and you’d get a score back that looked somewhat like a blueprint. I still have a few of them. I’m glad those days are gone.

However, I’ve taken a hankering for fountain pens and since they still make them with music nibs, I bought one a while back, a Sailor 1911 with a 14k gold music nib. I used to use it for my daily composition blog but once I got an Apple Pencil I abandoned the practice favoring my iPad and ZoomNotes which automatically backs my work up in my Dropbox.

Recently, however, I read an article the premise being future historians are going to have a real problem finding out what we’ve been up to in this time period since very little information is being preserved in analog / printed format, and they further stated handwritten accounts such as journals are going to be invaluable resources, which led me to realize - my blog and everything I’ve posted will disappear the instant Substack shuts down, and all the backups in my Dropbox are useless unless I have them all printed.

Do I really care if people in the future look at my music? I don’t know, but do I want it all lost, no, so I purchased an exceptionally good hardbound music book with 120g archive paper, loaded my pen up with Akkerman “Shocking Blue” ink and resumed composing by hand using ink. Unless it’s destroyed, centuries from now my book will still be readable.

Having just inked my first entry I’d post a picture here but there is no way to add it, just links, so here’s the finished score on my blog:

https://philipdewalt.substack.com/p/shocking-blue

The inked page isn’t there - to see it go to the r/fountainpens subreddit - it’s still near the top.

FYI, I compose these scores in one sitting with virtually no editing. It’s part of the aesthetic of composing with ink.