You write a prompt, hit enter, and watch the console light up green. Code pours out. It feels like magic. Then you try to maintain the thing a week later, and you realize your shiny new AI agent just built a leaking bucket.
Wanting to get a different sound from my cornetto, an oboe playing friend of mine and I mounted a reed instead of the regular mouth piece on it. I wanted more of a crumhorn sound but ended up with something that sounded fantastic on every 20th try and otherwise was really hard to play. Lots of strange sounds coming as well. 
But I like the idea. 
Here are the photos. First the reed, then two full-length versions of my Moeck cornetto with the reed and finally the normal mouthpiece.
Trying to research what areas of Greece the eight church modes came from I used Google Maps. But to my surprise, neither searching for geographic places nor getting details of Greek cities worked very well with Google Maps for Mac. I hope Google will aquire more detailed shots for cities outside the US and make searches available also for historic places such as for instance Troy, where according to Mattheson the Phrygians with their mode lived.
We already know that Mattheson disliked French singers, but he doesn't spare the British either. Quoting chapter 9 in Der Vollkommene Capellmeister paragraph 13-14: ...Germans generally produce more basses and tenors but the Italians more altos and sopranos than all other regions: together with the more rugged climate and lifestyle also beer drinking contributes to this in the case of the Germans; but the Italians are the opposite in both respects, and in addition there is the frequent castration.
This weekend Dan Laurin is giving a masterclass in Esbjerg, and me and Michael are going to play Belicha, an estampitta from the 14th century Italy. As far as I've understood, there was much culture imported from the middle east to Italy at this time, and you weren't really in style if you didn't have your clothes imported from Istanbul. Grove lists this piece as a dance, but I think many would agree to this being more improvised music. I sure would like to see someone dance to it. So I've been at the library borrowing stacks of music with Taksims (Taqsīm) trying to get to know the contemporary arab classical music more. According to Grove, Taqsīm means dimunition and is a form dating back to the 18th century, but I haven't been able to find any earlier forms leading up to the taqsīms until now, so these will have to do. And my imediate reaction is that early music lovers should get some CDs and listen to this! There is so much brilliant music and musicians in this genre! I'll definetly use their input for improving my Belicha. Perhaps not for this masterclass, but certainly during this semester. Lots of great ornaments to be "borrowed".