one new ingredient/a hundred new accords

[Guest guest]

Back when I started studying NP sixteen or so months ago, I made my

initial investment in the basics. For a couple of months, once or

twice a week there'd come a package from a supplier and inside would

be ten new things to play with. Adventures of the person who had

never before smelled spikenard or neroli! I spent (literally) months

with my nose to scent strips and vials, with notebook at the side,

trying out hundreds of different combinations in the search for accords.

The basic accord work tapered off after about half a year of testing

pairings and combinations. I have the richness of the memory of the

experience, and full notebooks. Since that initial discovery period,

the discovery of Twenty New Accords a Day has tapered off, since I

hold within my memory the knowledge of what goes with what. While

I'm always discovering new combinations, the rate of discovery has

mellowed out - no more 'Ten New Accords a Day' kind of stuff.

Until three days ago.

I ordered *one* new ingredient - just one: frangipani abs - which I

had never before smelled - and it is like discovering a whole new

wing to your house that you never knew was there - whole new worlds

of scent have arisen with just this one addition. Ten new accords

this morning alone!! Sniffing a tiny blob of frangipani abs on a

scent strip and smelling it with the 180 little bottles on the

perfume organ. Fun!! I spent the first couple of days with the

scent strip with nothing but the frangipani on it, noting it and its

characteristics and its behavior by itself...its metamorphosis...its

drydown. Then I started doing the pairings.

Much scribbling in the notebook this weekend!

I have a question for:

How is 'frangipani' pronounced? I see it in the dictionary

pronunciation guide as both fran-GEE-pah-nee and fran-JEE-pah-nee.

Seems like either is acceptable, but I bet there's a way that people

in the perfume world say it. I like the sound of franJEEpahnee

better, but I don't want to sound like an ignoramus...

Alfred

loopy on frangipani, here in San Francisco