Hi, I'm back. Well, I never really left, although I've been
traveling a lot in the last year and a half or so. I've been
concentrating on learning other instruments, mostly the concertina,
although I've been dabbling with bellows-blown bagpipes, clarinet,
Appalachian clogging, and some other stuff. I'm now living (mostly)
in Bellingham, Washington. And I'm starting to try some new things
on the bones, and I'm planning on looking for some folks to play with
in public, so I'll let y'all know what's up with that as it unfolds...

Oh, if you don't know me, I'm Jeff Lefferts, see http://
bones.JeffLeff.com/ for some bones stuff. I'll be adding to it soon
(I promise! Before the end of the year, for sure!).

So, I have a few fun discoveries to share. I'll be on the road yet
again for a few weeks, but I made a quick recording of something I've
been working on. I've thought for a while that it would be
interesting to do two-handed triplets, but slightly offset in time so
the right-hand clicks would occur exactly inbetween the left-hand
clicks. I'll bet some folks already do that (or have in the past),
but I haven't seen or heard it. I can't imagine what it would sound
like at very high speed, some sort of insane buzzing, I guess! I've
given it a few half-hearted attempts in the past, but I couldn't work
it out. A few weeks ago, I decided to give it a good try, and got it
going (although it's not too fast or accurate yet). I really had to
break it down, and try to get the sound in my head. I started by
playing triplets in one hand, and just trying to get a single click
inbetween the first two clicks using the other hand. Anyway, here's
a video I made (excuse the over-echoey sound and lens flare). The
file's about 2 megabyes in size, and shows a few different contexts
and speeds (as well as different ways to make it sound
unintentionally sloppy):

http://bones.JeffLeff.com/media/sextuple.mp4

More practicing needed! As well as working out how to fit it in when
actually playing along to music.

I've also found some interesting bones stuff on the web, which I'll
be sharing shortly. And let me know if there's anything you'd like
to see on the website.

--- JL