Lake Thingvallavatn

May 29, 2014 — Outdoors, Uncategorized — 1 min read

The arctic char is by Lambhagi og Tuesdays I thougth as I drove towards lake Thingvallavatn last Tuesday. This is a foolish thought and irrational It followed thoughts about all the advices I have gotten about how to catch the fish in lake Thingvallavatn. Advices I have followed but have not brought me any luck.

Somewhere I read that you surely would find fish at Lambhagi in lake Thingvallavatn in the spring. So i went there three years in a row but did not catch a single fish. I went there for the fourth time last Tuesday. The weather was great.

When I arrived at the fishing spot I remembered an advice which said that you should cast the fly north-west. That I did and soon a beautiful arctic char took the fly. But it did escape. The next one didn´t and the third one did. On the way back to the car I fell flat on the ground and broke the top of he fly rod. The original story is here:

Meðalfellsvatn early in the spring

April 26, 2014 — Outdoors, Uncategorized — 1 min read

Spring is here which means the sport-fishing season has started. The first day of summer was very nice and it brought up the thought that it was time to go fishing for the first time this spring. So I stopped by lake Meðalfellsvatn on my way home from work on Friday. I fished until ten o´clock in the evening in a beautiful weather. To make the story short I didn´t catch anything. Just enjoyed the signs of summer as I practiced fly casting in the calm lake.

From lake Meðalfellsvatn

Baula and it´s surroundings

April 22, 2014 — Outdoors, Uncategorized — 2 min read

During the Easter holiday I stayed in the family hut which is located deep in the Valley Norðurárdalur in Borgarfjörður in West-Iceland. Most of the time the weather was bad so I spent the time writing an article about the surroundings and it´s history.

The mountain Baula

The photo above is the view to the northwest from out hut. It was shot two years ago in October when winter was closing in. The mountain on the far left is Baula. It´s 936,6 m high. The mountain next to Baula is Mælifell (Measure mountain). There are eight mountains that have the same name. Then it´s Baulusandur (Baula´s sand), Litla Baula (Little Baula) and Skildingafell. It´s not that hard to climb Baula. I did that in 1993 with my wife and I can tell you that the view from the top is magnificent.

The next photo is the view to th northeast. The valley is called Sanddalur (The Sand Valley). In the old days there used to be three farms in the valley but now there are only few summer houses. The highest mountain is on the right site of the valley. It is called Tröllakirkja (Trolley Church). The stories tell that the trolleys gatherd around this mountain to discuss what they should do about all this humans that had recently moved to this country.

Sanddalur

The last photo is the farm which is close to our hut. It is called Krókur. The river is Norðurá a famous salmon river.

The farm Krókur

If you want to read the whole story visit my web. Here it is.

Romanza

February 3, 2014 — Music, Uncategorized — 3 min read

I guess we could say that the classical guitar piece, Romanza is to the classical guitar player the same as Stairway to heaven is to the steel string guitar player. It´s the piece everyone wants to be able to play.

It´s not known who composed Romanza but a lot of guessing has been done. Was it Antonio Rubira? David del Castillo? Francisco Tarrega? Frendando Sor or was it someone else? The melody was probably composed in Spain sometime after mid nineteenth century. It´s style is typical for “pop” music of that era. The first known recording of the piece is from Madrid in Spain and was done somewhere between 1897 and 1901. One of those who have claimed to bee the author is Narciso Yepes but that can hardly be the case because the first recording was done before Yepes was born. But we can give Yepes the credit for making the Romanza world famous. It was his arrangement and his playing in the French film Jeux interdits which drew attention to this beautiful haunting music.

It´s really not that hard to play Romanza technically speaking but there are few tricky parts though. The A part is written in e-minor. The melody runs up and down the e string while the other strings sound open. Here it is important to pay notice to the harmony so it won´t overpower the melody. The A part is played twice. The B part is written in e-major. It´s harder to play the B part because of the full barre cords and stretches that can be quite hard to accomplish. To finish the piece the A part is played again once. Then it´s the question whether you should play the melody with tirendo or apoyando? Two guitar teachers have heard me play the piece. One said I should play the melody with apoyando while the other said should play it with tirendo. Well in my opinion you should go with tirendo unless where you want to put special emphasis.

I think there is no right or wrong way to play the Romanza. Just play it with a feeling. If you watch the videos in the end of this article you can hear two totally different versions of the piece but both of them are excellent. When I play the Romanza I draw a picture in my mind of a young couple in love, walking together in the hot summer sun. The only thing they can see is each other. When the A part of the melody comes to an end I can see the sun setting down and the evening shadows creep in. When the B part is played it is completely dark and the young couple head home. Then the A part is played again and the morning sun rises. Don´t these images set the right mood? They work for me.

Here you can get the Romanza in pdf format and here you can get it as a TablEdit file. To view TablEdit file you need Tef viewer. It´s here.

References

Murphy, M. J. 8. December. 2012. Recording the mysterious “Romanza”. Twilight Guitar. Fetched 2. February 2014 in http://twilightguitar.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/3448/.

Romance (guitar piece). (n.d.). Wikipedia. Fetched 2. February 2014 in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_%28guitar_piece%29

Me and my guitar

January 24, 2014 — Music, Uncategorized — 2 min read

I have no idea what got me to start learning to play the guitar. The musical upbringing I got was close to zero. Well, maybe it´s not quite right to say that I did not get any musical upbringing. I always had the radio.

In those days there was only one radio station in Iceland, channel 1. Every week there were only three radio programs where you could hear pop music. The first of them was called Music for patients, the second was called Music for seamen and the third one was Music for the young. Each program was about an hour long.

In spite of this I got the idea that it would be fun to learn to play the guitar.I took the bus downtown and bought myself a Bjarton classical guitar. For a while I struggled to get decent sound of this horrible instrument. To be honest, it was not good. I could not even decide which way to turn the neck, left or right. When I finally decided that right was the way to go things started to get better.

In Dallas, Texas I found a luthier, Christopher Carrington, who builds a high quality guitars at an affordable price. I contacted him and he was willing to build a left-handed guitar for me. He did not charge extra for that. The only difference for him, he said, was that he had to think upside down. No charge for that. The guitar was in my hands at the beginning of the year 1997 and what a difference. Now I could interpret the music I was playing with dynamics. The guitar responded wonderfully to my attacks. This guitar has been my loyal companion since I got it and will be for years to come. Having a quality guitar makes all the difference.

Here is an interview with the luthier.

The original post in Icelandic is here.

So this is Vivaldi

January 23, 2014 — First Post, Uncategorized — 1 min read

Hi, this is my first post on Vivaldi. I read a newspaper article yesterday where Vivaldi was promoted and decided to try it. I must admit Vivaldi looks really promising. The design is clean and no advertisements. That´s great. I don´t understand how Vivaldi will survive without advertisements but I really hope it will. I do run my own website in Icelandic. Vefur Kela I call it. There I write about my interests and here I plan to translate the articles there to English. Why? Well, just to practice my English.

Veiðivötn