Racing against incoming snow in 2021, I was working to get the track work (including ballast) down before it was buried for 4 months. The last step was to finish painting and add ballast over the top.
The tracks were already covered with a silvery-gray base-coat primer. The next coat of paint would be a rusty brown to paint the ties and the sides of the rails. I purchased a quart of the cheapest flat exterior paint I could find at Menards. The color I landed on is called Fudge TruffleContinue reading →
Hey there – here’s a how-to on setting up compound complex time signatures in TE Tuner and how we use it at rehearsal.
I have the privilege of working with a WGI winds group called River Valley Sound out of Elk River Minnesota. For our 2022 production we’re playing a hymn called “Nearer My God to Thee” and the arrangement we’re using is by a BYU group called Vocal Point. It’s an awesome arrangement and performance – I’ll leave a link in the description. You should definitely check it out.
The Vocal Point arrangement starts in 4/4 but goes into 7/8 time, then back to 4/4 for the arrival, then 7/8 to the end. Normally we’d use Dr. Beat at rehearsal, but we haven’t found a way to set up 7/8 time in it easily.
So I was looking at TE Tuner, which – as the name describes – is for tuning, but it can do so much more. Side-note: another great tuning app I use is iStroboSoft by Peterson b/c it’s got a great strobe display that’s easy to see. But kids love TE Tuner b/c it makes a smiley face when you’re in tune 🙂 It’s only $4 for either iOS or Android and it’s honestly the best $4 you’ll ever spend on an app.
I prefer to use TE Tuner on my iPad because it has a bigger screen with bigger buttons. It also has longer battery life and a regular headphone jack, so I don’t need to bring an adapter to hook it up to a speaker.
But I’m going to show TE Tuner on my phone because I always have my phone with me at rehearsal, and it’s good to know how to access all of the features on the smaller interface.
TE Tuner Metronome
Let’s get to the metronome!
First you’ll want to click the list icon to get into All Preset Groups.
I created a new preset group for our closer.
Count-In
We’ll deal with the count-in first. No matter what the time signature is, we always get a standard 8 beat count-in when we’re rehearsing.
So I turn it on, set it to start and add 8 beats. I turn on the “optional beat equals quarter” so that we always get a quarter note tempo – this is important for the 7/8 stuff later. Then I turn off the voice and turn on the beats.
Met Icons
Let’s go through the icons below the count-in.
Because of the mixed meter in this tune, we want the 8th notes constant. Make sure the 8th equals 8th icon is highlighted so the tempo stays consistent between meter changes.
Next is the accent, I turn that on.
Then the claves are for the sound and I like to set it to “Doctor” since we’re used to the doctor beat style sound.
The last notes icon is to turn on/off drone stuff which we’re not going to configure today, so we’ll just turn that off.
Preset
Let’s configure our first section. It’s the intro and it’s in 4/4 so we’ll leave “With Meter” selected and I know the first section is 32 bars so I’ll set that. Make sure Use Tempo is selected and we’ll set it to Fixed at 160 bpm.
Then you can customize the metronome beats – purple is an accent, gray is off, blue is a standard beat. Touch the Back arrow in the upper left when you’re done.
Then we’ll add a 7/8 section by clicking the plus (+) in the lower right. Keep “with meter” selected and choose 7/8 – our tune goes 1,2 1,2, 1,2,3 so I’ll select the 2+2+3 one. The first 7/8 section is 18 bars.
Under Use Tempo I set this one to Relative and leave the change to zero.
Then I’ll set the accents how we like it for this tune.
(This screenshot is from the 2nd 7/8 section which is 34 bars instead of 18)
Now let’s see how they work – go back to the Closer group and then back again and make sure our new Preset Group is selected. Click the X to get back to the main metronome screen.
Bug or Feature?
Here’s the weird thing that I think prevented us from using TE Tuner when we started the season – when you switch from 4/4 at 160 to 7/8 the tempo comes up as 106.7. I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature but it’s because the 7/8 beat is a dotted quarter up here in the upper left.
106.7 is exactly 2/3 of 160 – which is fine because 2/3 of a dotted quarter is two 8th notes, it’s just weird to look at.
Now I can tap either of these presets to load them. The highlighted 1-2-3-4 icon indicates we’ll get that 8-count intro before our preset runs.
Optional Beat Setting
Here’s where that Optional Beat in the count-in is important. If you touch and hold the 1-2-3-4 icon you can edit the count-in. If I have it off, the count-in will be at the 106 bpm tempo. You can preview it with the play icon in the upper right. We always want the count-in at 160 bpm so I select Beat Equals Quarter.
Sequence Feature
Now that I’ve got my preset groups I can select the Sequence icon to run through the presets from beginning to end.
A useful side effect of this feature is that the metronome won’t switch to the next preset until the current measure is over. I’ll show you how that’s useful.
If we’re running one set before the 7/8 time starts and it’s only 16 counts, I can tap the 7/8 group on the fly and it will advance to that preset after the current measure is over.
Now I can add the additional 4/4 and 7/8 Presets to this Group so I can let the met run from the beginning to end of the tune.
Aside about TE Tuner on iPad
Before we go I want to show you one more thing which I think is important. I was talking to my brother in law who works in the Spring School District in Texas and he was telling me about Philip Geiger, a band director from the district who co-founded TE Tuner in 2012. Now if you know anything about music programs in the US, many don’t have the budget to get new equipment every year.
This is my 4th generation iPad from 2013. It is stuck on iOS 10 but TE Tuner still runs perfectly on it, where as many other apps aren’t receiving updates or flat out don’t work on this older hardware.
As a software developer myself, I understand that engineers are always looking at using those shiny new features. But I appreciate the intention it takes to maintain backwards compatibility for older hardware. Kudos to Mr. Geiger and his team – I left a link to his BOA hall of fame induction if you want to learn more about him & his career.
Hope you find this guide to the metronome features useful for your ensemble.
Being a die-hard Minnesotan, I’ve developed some habits that I need to break. Many of these are stubborn/stupid habits that simply come from getting old and always doing things the old way.
One of them is my insistence on not using seat warmers in cars. Mostly because my first encounter with them was unknowing. I was riding in someones fancy car (Lexus) and it detected that a butt was in the passenger seat. Combined with the outdoor temperature, the climate computer decided it should activate the heated seat. About a minute later I was wondering if I had peed my pants 😳🍑🔥
I decided then and there that it would be the first and last time I used a heated seat… But was it really?
Driving my Chevy Bolt in winter, the range is reduced due to several factors: batteries don’t like the cold, the factory heater is a resistance unit instead of an efficient heat pump like on the newer Teslas. Combined with the fact that my car is currently limited to an 80% charge, the juice gets used up much faster in the winter.
I still love this car, and I’ve come to terms that I won’t be doing any winter road trips in it this year. But even with long-ish drives around town, I want to know my options for energy conservation. My two best friends in this department are the heated seats and the heated steering wheel.
Running both full blast for one person is less than one hundred watts 💯
Compare those numbers to the resistance style heater that is used to heat the cabin – it can use up to 9kW. That’s 9,000 watts y’all – enough power for a small rock concert 🎸 It works well – the cabin heats quickly, especially compared to an internal combustion engine. It’s just sort of a power hog… granted it won’t be using 9kW all of the time, but it will use that much to get up to your desired temperature.
Reducing heater usage
There are a few things you can do to reduce the mega energy sap from the heater:
Pre-heat the car while it’s plugged in
My 240V charger can deliver 40 amps of power to the vehicle, that’s 9kW (240V x 40A = 9600W). The Bolt will use up to 7.6kW of that (32A). If the car is plugged in while pre-conditioning, the Bolt will use as much of the AC power it can. This will pull at most 1-2kW from the battery even if the heater is going full-tilt. Result: pre-heating while plugged in won’t take away any range from your trip, plus your car is toasty warm when you get in.
Use the heated seats and steering wheel
I’ve learned to love the heated seats and steering wheel. You’ll be surprised how much a difference it makes to heat the surfaces your body touches. The wheel is like holding a hot cup of coffee, which has some sort of lizard-brain effect on your perceived comfort.
The climate controls will guess how high to turn the seat warmers on. Despite my earlier protests, I now find myself turning the seat heater up an additional setting so I can turn down the cabin heater a few degrees.
Turn the heater off
I don’t normally do this, but I will if I really need to conserve range or it’s not terribly cold out. The difficult part to manage when the heater is off is window fogging. Face masks help with moisture from our breath – what a strange time we live in. Wet hair from a recent shower certainly won’t help either. Even a cup of coffee can make things worse, but I have to draw the line somewhere! ☕
I really wish there was such thing as a heated foot plate. I think I could go further with heater off longer if my feet had a little heat 🥾🔥Maybe I’ll get some heated socks or boots to see how much it helps.
Looking at several garden railway roadbed installation methods, I wanted to mount my track to boards for smooth operation. We’ll use the crusher fines as a base under the boards, and later on the top and sides as ballast.
I started by cutting my 1″x4″ cedar boards to the exact length needed for the straight sections. I did rough cuts for the curves on 1/2″ pressure treated plywood:
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With my area leveled, I laid the track out to make sure everything would fit. This was when I discovered I had to make a few minor changes to my design.
You can’t have a left turnout switch immediately following a right turnout switch. This is because the manual switch mechanism on the left-hand switch will interfere with the track coming off the right turnout. You have to put one straight section in-between the switches. You can see the first left-hand turnout operation switch between the tracks here:
You can also probably spot my SCX24 Subaru brat up there. I wanted to make sure there was room for a small fire road between the tracks and the garden edge.
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