Sorry not to have posted for ages, I had a stupidly busy month or so, followed by a week or two's total exhaustion. I'm just getting my energy back now, and starting work on my list of things-I-should-have-done-ages-ago. Which includes this! (People to whom I owe email - sorry, you're also high on my list, and I'll get to you soon.)
Anyway, I have a load of links to post, but first let me look back and see what musical things I've done since Whit Friday.
There's been quite a bit more intensive Gerontius work, which is going very well indeed I think. Last weekend we spent a day rehearsing at my old school, which was nice. I hope everyone took the opportunity to have a look inside the Baronial Hall and Cloisters (there's some information about all the buildings at the Chetham's Library site).
I also had my vocal assessment (I assume everyone has by now) - I thought it was fun in the new format. I actually did a huge amount of practice beforehand, but most of that was actually for a couple of non-choir gigs I had just after my assessment - the timing was fortuitous; I probably wouldn't have practised that much for JUST an assessment that involved no solo singing, but it certainly helped!
The two gigs were both at Manchester Central Library as part of the current Mills and Boon exhibition. (There was an interesting article about it in the Times.) If you're wondering how we got the chance to do this, the answer is that it's as a result of my band performing at the Henry Watson Music Library's Christmas Music Day - and we've also had other bookings as a result of that same day, so any groups who chose not to take part last year may wish to rethink this Christmas!
We sang for a couple of hours at the launch party, which was great fun even though we couldn't be heard very well (note for future reference: singing in the Henry Watson library itself, on the second floor, is fine; singing on the first floor, near the room with the fabulous high roof... not so much). I'd told them that the core of our repertoire is 50s and 60s girl group songs, so I was delighted when they subsequently entitled the entire exhibition "And Then He Kissed Her". So we opened our set with that song, and finished a couple of hours later with "She Loves You", and it all went down very well. (They had hired actors for the occasion to play "heroes"... they dressed in tuxes and wandering round looking moody, and their function for the evening was to escort the various VIP guests - including many Mills and Boon authors - around the exhibition.)
A week or so later, still as part of the Mills and Boon festival, the library held a Regency Day, and they asked us to perform a couple of sets of "Regency songs". This was much more of a challenge, because although all the singers in my band are very experienced choral singers, we have never been asked to perform anything classical as a group before. Luckily we had a few solos and duets between us that we'd often sung for fun, and I dug out a few new things and filled up the rest of the time with folk song arrangements which I'd done specially. (Everything else had to be rearranged slightly anyway, because we were performing with guitar accompaniment rather than piano - I was the only pianist there, and in most cases I needed to sing rather than play, so I had to write out all the piano parts for guitar.) I spent a truly RIDICULOUS amount of time trying (and failing) to prove to my own satisfaction that folk songs would have been performed in private recitals in Regency times (1811-1820, in case you were wondering - the period when George III was still king, but due to his madness, the Prince Regent was in charge). I spent even longer trying to establish the dates of the folk songs on my list, but I did at least get somewhere with that enquiry. Even so, the song that went down best on the day was probably Rachel and I doing Via, resti servita from The Marriage of Figaro (better known to us as the "age before beauty" duet). We've sung it for fun lots of times (rarely without collapsing in fits of giggles) but have never performed it before. (We do it in English and omit the recitative at the start.)
And finally, in musical news: I saw the Police live at the MEN Arena last week. I'd had the ticket for over a year (just as well, because I couldn't have afforded it otherwise) - the concert was supposed to be last October but was postponed because Sting was ill. I was in an absolutely foul mood when I went, not helped by the fact that I was alone, for once not by choice (the people I'd originally been due to go with had sold their tickets to people I didn't know). But it was an absolutely fabulous gig, and by the end I was grinning from ear to ear. Highlight for me was "So Lonely", which is one of my favourite Police songs anyway, but by the time they finally played it (in one of the encores) I'd assumed they were missing it out, so I was thrilled when the intro began. I was also amused to notice that during the guitar solo, Sting decided to have a lengthy conversation with Andy Summers (who, in case you didn't know, is the one who was PLAYING the guitar solo). It didn't seem to affect the quality of the guitar-playing, mind you. (But then, I can never understand how Sting manages to sing while playing unusual rhythms on his bass.)
Talking of Sting singing, it was interesting that he didn't sing quite as high as he used to. Several of the songs were definitely in lower keys than the originals, and in many of them Sting sang a different harmony part than his usual one. He did go for quite a few high notes - and nailed them all - but he was much more choosy about them! (Before you ask - he'll be 57 years old later this year. But he still looks - and sounds - amazing.)
The other thing to mention is Stewart Copeland's amazing percussion playing. For most of the songs, he just played his usual drum kit (although that was quite impressive enough) but for some songs, notably Wrapped Around Your Finger, he used a full array of unusual percussion instruments as well. There were people sitting BEHIND the stage - I didn't notice until almost the end of the concert that the stage wasn't quite against one end of the Arena as it usually is - and I don't know how much of the rest of it they could see, but they must have had a fabulous view of Stewart!
So, what else?
I'm still working as a temp at the same place, and more broke than ever, but I do have an interview on Wednesday - the first one I've managed to get since last August - at an organisation for whom I would absolutely *love* to work. It's for very little money indeed (possibly even less than I'm on at the moment, which I didn't think was actually possible), but it is for slightly fewer hours per week, so if I got it, it would hopefully leave me with a bit of time to make some money by other means. I need to find *something* extra in any case, because I'm fed up of not having enough money to have 3 meals a day and STILL being behind with my mortgage! (I'm earning a bit extra this weekend by revamping a couple of spreadsheets for my boss, for example - I'm hoping I can get a bit more stuff like that to do.)
I had a small amount of interest in my mention of doing bespoke arrangements for groups, but nothing concrete has happened yet - I do have some plans to do something about that, I just haven't had time to put any of them into action. Here's a new offer, though, which might be of use to slightly more of you: backing tracks! It occurred to me, when I was creating a few backing tracks for myself to practise to recently, that this might be something other people might need. I've done quite a few in the past for various people - they're not amazingly high quality, but they're certainly good enough to practise to, and (depending on how fussy your audience is) maybe to perform to as well. Some free samples of my previous work: Poor Poor Joseph, Pharaoh Story, and Those Canaan Days, all from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (these were used in performance - the school had bought a set of backing tracks, but it turned out that many of the songs were missing, so I said I'd fill in the gaps so that they didn't have to miss out whole chunks of the show). Also You're Still The One (Shania Twain) which I did for my sister (although she said the result wasn't good enough for her to even practise to!) and Bist Du Bei Mir, which is one of the ones I did for myself recently.
Limitations: well, these mp3s are entirely computer-created, so the backing vocals can't sing actual lyrics (I believe there is a piece of software which can work with Sibelius to do that, but I don't have it, and in any case the Sibelius technical forums suggest that it doesn't work brilliantly). Also, I don't have the expensive extras which enable the full range of realistic instrument sounds to be used - all the basics are there, but some sound more realistic than others. But if you just want piano accompaniments, that's not a problem anyway - the piano sound is fine. However, on the plus side, I can amend the tracks as necessary - so if you wanted them in a different key, or slightly faster, or with rits in specific places, or with the intro repeated between the verses... easy! Oh, and if it's a song for which there is no sheet music (or at least, if there is, you don't have it), I can still create a backing track, although it would take a bit longer.
Anyway, if you're interested, in either backing tracks OR arrangements... email me.
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention... Was I the only one who didn't know that Bist Du Bei Mir wasn't actually written by Bach?
Finally, before I do all the links I've been saving to share with you... I promised to explain RSS feeds! I know there are many explanations of these all over the web, but I assume that if people are still asking for explanation despite this fact, then the explanations must not be clear enough. So let me try!
I've always been an obsessive type of person, and when I first started using the web, I quickly acquired a long list of favourite websites. Of course, these could be saved so that I didn't have to type them in every time, but I still had to visit each one regularly in order to see whether anything had changed. This was annoying and time-consuming, because although some of the sites changed every few minutes (e.g. BBC News), some only updated themselves every few months. But the only way to know was to actually look at them.
A long time later, tabbed browsing arrived. This is one of a long list of things I don't know how I lived without, and simply means that rather than opening my favourite websites one at a time, I can open them all at once. It takes a while to load 100 websites at once, but it's possible, and when the loading stops, you have all the pages open on separate tabs within your browser, so it's much quicker to look at them all. (I regularly open 80 tabs together, and I can see at a glance which ones have new stuff on them, so when I go to read them, it works as follows: I look at the first page (on the front tab), and either read it before closing it (if I can see it's got new stuff on it) or close it immediately with a keyboard shortcut, bringing the next tab to the front.)
(If you don't currently use tabbed browsing, I urge you to investigate it. Unfortunately most versions of Internet Explorer don't have this feature, but in any case if you're still using Internet Explorer I urge you to investigate Firefox or Safari, and not just because of the tabbed browsing.) (I'm well aware that many work computers still run Internet Explorer and that you probably can't do anything about this - this is certainly the case for me at work, and I curse the fact daily!)
Anyway, what does all this have to do with RSS feeds? Well, there is still a disadvantage with the opening-100-pages-at-once method, which is that you still have to look at each page to see whether or not it's changed since the last time you looked at it. Wouldn't it be good if there was a way of being notified when a website is updated, so that you don't have to look at it until then? Well, this is what RSS feeds do. Many websites have them these days (they're not always called RSS feeds - sometimes it's XML or Atom or just Subscribe, but the function is the same, and the icon is usually the same - see below).
But how do you actually use them? You need an RSS reader (also called feed aggregators - Wikipedia has a list of the main ones) - this is a piece of software that scans the list of websites (specified by you) and grabs any new articles from any of them. The software can either be stand-alone or part of a more general piece of software - for example, I used to use NetNewsWire, but then Safari (which is the main browser for Apple Macs) added an RSS reader, so now I just use that. I have it set to scan my list of websites every 30 minutes, and after it's done so it displays the number of new articles. To read them, I just have to open my RSS page, which displays all the new articles on one page. If I choose to, I can click on any of the articles to look at the website they came from, but I don't always need to do this.
And how do I get the feeds onto my list in the first place? It's particularly easy with Safari (or Firefox), because all I have to do is to click on the RSS icon and then save the result as a bookmark. You can see an example of an RSS icon in use on the BBC News page, where it's in the top right-hand corner. (The thing next to it that says "news feeds" actually takes you to a help page - the feed itself is reached by clicking the icon.) If you're using a separate feed reader, there are various ways of adding a new feed to the list - sometimes just clicking the icon will do it automatically, but you might have to drag the icon to your reader or copy and paste the address etc. The software should have instructions that tell you which.
(This blog does of course have an RSS feed itself - the link is at the bottom of the main page, called "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)". In the current version of Blogger it's a bit fiddly to add an RSS icon and I haven't got round to it yet.)
Anyway, I hope all the above makes sense. Short version (for the TL;DR folks) - if you look at the same websites regularly, RSS feeds can help you save time by telling you when they're updated.
So, finally finally, in no particular order other than the order in which I saved them... a load of links (not all are music-related).
From A Cappella News: The17 Choir - a group of 1700 people in Derby who will be part of a choir for a one-off performance. 100 groups of 17 people will each record just one note!
From The Spectator: a great article by Peter Phillips on the English choral tradition.
Also from A Cappella News: singing in a choir makes you healthier.
More news about Maestro - the forthcoming celebrity reality show, where they battle to conduct an orchestra at the Proms. Also, an article by one of the competitors about his experience.
And, in the same vein, Last Choir Standing, the latest BBC reality TV show. There was a trailer for this before Doctor Who tonight, so now I know it starts next Saturday. I'm a bit torn, because I absolutely DETEST all these types of shows... but it's choirs! I might try the first episode and see whether or not I can stand it. Anyway, here's a Times article about it; a Guardian article which is mostly about it; and an article from The Stage which has quite a bit more detail. Let's see what we think!
Not music-related at all, but fascinating: the biggest drawing in the world.
From On an Overgrown Path: article about Gerontius recordings.
BBC article about the search for the formula for the perfect voice. Not sure I agree with any of it, but it's interesting. (And, talking of voices that AREN'T perfect... Amy Winehouse is singing live on my TV at the moment, and although I like most of her recorded songs, I'm really unimpressed with her voice live - is it just me?)
Some interesting news about the Monkey Opera which I saw last year - turns out the artwork will be part of the BBC's opening sequence for its Beijing Olympics coverage. Which reminds me - here's the BBC's Euro 2008 title sequence (featuring the 1st movement of Mozart's Symphony no. 41) and the ITV version (featuring the Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute). Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering about the two songs that have been repeatedly played during games - the one they play at the start (and that the fans sing throughout) is Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, and the one they play after every goal is Samba de Janeiro by Bellini.
In totally unrelated news, there is a game coming out for the Wii in which Space Invaders get their revenge!
If you want to improve your spelling, here's an online spelling test in which you compete against another player. It's not that hard - I can usually win easily, even on the highest level, but then I'm good at spelling! Hint: you have to turn the sound on though...
Here's the lineup for the concert in Poland in September that some of the choir might be singing in. (Thanks to Martin for the link.)
I know I've mentioned I Can Has Cheezburger (the Lolcat site) before, and it remains something that you'll either love or hate - but it still cracks me up daily, and my recent favourite is the printer error one :-)
Sensible Units does exactly what it says on the tin.
Interesting article about drink and drug problems among classical musicians.
When I discovered I Am Neurotic, I texted my mum to tell her, knowing it would amuse her, and I was right - she rang me up and was laughing so much she couldn't speak! It may or may not have the same effect on you!
From ChoralBlog: an interesting post about choral auditions.
From Podium Speak: some information about the effect of singing on cats. (When I practise, my cats tend to leave the room - I *try* not to take this personally!)
Some fantastic photos of the Earth from space, taken from the space shuttle.
I'm mentioning this mainly because I was surprised not to see it more widely reported - the guy who wrote the original Star Trek theme died recently.
From author John Scalzi: some thoughts for people about to get married. It's actually written for same-sex couples, but I think it's good advice for anyone. (But then I've never been married, so what do I know?)
This sounds like a really good book, if the quotes here are anything to go by.
From VHK's singing blog: some sensible words about programme notes.
From author Charlie Stross: an interesting post about whether or not you should unplug your TV when you're not using it, etc.
Some thoughts about musical demographics fro the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra blog.
I'm quite fascinated by this new skyscraper in Dubai. It's not been built yet, but do look at the animation video. (Although, if you were thinking of moving to Dubai at any stage, you should probably read this. How true it is, I have no idea!)
Spinningfields Summer Music apparently features a 4-piece string quartet! Pretty groundbreaking! Oh, and there are some more exciting musical events in Manchester in the next few weeks.
Oh, and today was the Round the Island race. I've wanted to see this ever since I discovered its existence, but yet again I didn't make it. It was only lack of money stopping me this year, so maybe I'll be solvent by next year and I'll be able to go!
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Right, only 7 hours after I started writing this post, I'm done! Must get back into the habit of doing this more often (and therefore more briefly). It's just a bit hard to get motivated when I suspect that there are very few people still reading since I moved to this address. But to those of you who are still here: I'm grateful :-)
