Street Sounds

I have always admired buskers for their confidence to perform in public (I guess the musicians in the first image are not really buskers but I still admire their confidence). I have played cello in a school orchestra , sung in a choir and performed in musical productions on stage, I have also played saxophone in a small "big band" and although it was exciting and exhilarating it was also quite scary too. But at least being part of a larger group of musicians/performers I  didn't feel totally exposed.

Buskers however are totally exposed, once they set up to play on the street there is nowhere to hide and no one else to share the pain if things go wrong so even if I don't always enjoy the performance I do admire the person for putting themself out there.

 

Making Music

 This musician had set up his glass harp in one of the Campos in the heart of Venice. I cannot recall what tune he was playing but he was playing it beautifully. I can imagine that tuning the harp is a time consuming and quite precise matter to ensure that the music sounds right. I expect that this musician is well practiced at this and each glass probably has a marker to show how much liquid to add and where on the table it should be placed. I did wonder whether he carries spares in case he has any breakages, and whether the plaster on his finger was due to such a breakage on a previous outing...

I captured an image of the musician on his own but to be honest it was quite a boring shot but then the woman carrying her bottle of wine walked into the frame and the image became much more interesting as she paid him more than a passing interest.

Did you know that as well as the standard glass harp as seen in this picture there is also an inverted glass harp which is constructed using empty glasses of different sizes partially submerged in water, the deeper into the water the glass is pushed the deeper the note that is created. The inverted glass harp was invented by scientists at Stanford and Princeton Universities and they reckon that the sound produced is even cooler than the standard type of glass harp. If you want to hear a standard glass harp in action click here and for the science behind the inverted glass harp as explained by one of the inventors click here