Me gusta cantar

I am slowly making some progress with my Spanish, see, although the inconsistency of pronunciation is still really confusing! I'll get there. Currently I can understand a lot more of it than I can speak, but there's still a couple of months before I need to be able to speak it, so all is well. (Yes, I'm sure it's possible to go to Spain without knowing any Spanish at all, but not if you're me.)

There is one thing I've noticed while I've been trying to learn Spanish, which I wanted to mention here, and it's something I've never noticed when working on Italian or German or French. (I have O-levels/GCSEs in all three, but I don't use them regularly enough to keep in practice, so every so often I try to build up my skills again.) The thing is that we sing in all three of those languages, so their pronunciation has been regularly reinforced, and I hardly ever have to think how to pronounce the words. This was actually a bit of a problem when I was in Italy last year with my mum, because I could pronounce things so well (e.g. on menus) that the waiters assumed I could actually understand and compose sentences perfectly too! So I often had to disappoint them by slowing them down.

Anyway, I got sidetracked there for a minute... What I actually wanted to explain here was that Spanish is much more unfamiliar to me. I think I've only ever sung in Spanish once, and that was a section of a fabulous piece by Bill Connor called "Land" which was commissioned by the Manchester Cathedral Cantata Choir almost twenty years ago. (I don't know if the work has ever been performed since, but I'd love to do it again.) Other than that, my only Spanish singing has been "La Bamba", and I only know a few of the words to that! So, I've had to concentrate much harder on listening carefully to the pronunciation. I've got a CD that accompanies the textbook I'm using, but at the moment I'm mainly concentrating on podcasts such as SpanishPod and Coffee Break Spanish. (Both are available free on iTunes and updated regularly.) Anyway, it was actually Coffee Break Spanish that made me realise what I wanted to explain here (I'm getting to my point, honest!) because whereas SpanishPod has two hosts who both speak Spanish fluently (although only one is a native speaker), Coffee Break Spanish is made in Scotland, and whereas one of the hosts is a fluent speaker, the other is a beginner, so you often get to hear him demonstrating pronunciation to her, and her repeating it (somewhat haltingly). And what I find fascinating is that even though I'm not familiar with the language yet, I can instantly identify what's wrong with her pronunciation, because exactly the same sort of issues come up every single week at choir, regardless of which language we're singing in! For example, if the teacher guy says a phrase and the girl repeats it, I know immediately that the reason it sounds wrong is because her vowel is more "ew" than "oo", or her T sound is too hard, or her R isn't rolled enough, etc. And every time I spot something like this and then the teacher mentions it to her a moment later, I feel really smug :-)

TL;DR version: being in a really good choir helps with language-learning, in ways you might not have realised!

It does feel like several weeks since I was last in a choir rehearsal, although it was only six days ago. I've been busy nonstop since then, including spending the whole of the weekend earning some extra cash by doing a load of data entry. I'm regretting having volunteered for that now, because although I do need the cash, I probably needed the rest more. And I'd promised myself I'd catch up on emails this weekend... Oh well. If I owe you an email, I apologise - it's not just you! I do read all my emails the day I receive them, but at the moment I can only reply to them immediately if I can do so in one line or so. I do have a folder of emails-that-need-longer-replies going back to December, so if you're one of them, sorry - I'll reply eventually, I promise. (Unless I don't know you at all, in which case I *might* reply, but you must understand that when I have time to clear my inbox, I will give priority to people I *do* know.)

There was no Holst at last week's rehearsal, which is a pity because it looks as if the main rehearsal for that will be tomorrow, when I won't be there. (I'm going to Old Trafford to see United play Inter Milan - I do usually give up my season ticket when football clashes with choir (as it so often does!) but there's no way I'm missing this one!) It was great to be at the BBC though - I love it when we rehearse there (even though we had to go in via the basement on this occasion). It's well-lit and the toilets are clean and numerous (I wish our usual venue could say the same on either count) but most importantly it is in the CITY CENTRE and therefore very easy to get to. Pity we can't rehearse there all the time, but I imagine they charge us an arm and a leg so it probably can't be helped.

Yet again I have had "und alles Fleisch" (the octave leap bit) on the brain ever since the rehearsal - well, until this afternoon, when I heard a colleague use the phrase "always the bridesmaid", and this caused the chorus of "Why Am I Always The Bridesmaid" to lodge itself in my head. (After tomorrow night hopefully it'll be replaced by "Mourinho, are you listening...")

On Thursday I went with a friend to check out an open mic night in a pub near where he lives. Luckily we hadn't rehearsed at all - if we got to go on stage, we were just going to do songs we knew well enough to do at the drop of a hat - because it turned out that the pub had put the open mic nights on hold for a while (I suspect they saw us coming!) However, we spent a couple of hours there anyway, just chatting - very pleasant, I hardly ever do that. My friend's wife has been learning the piano, and she told me that her teacher has persuaded her to take the grade 1 exam. However, it transpired that this teacher hadn't mentioned anything at all about aural or sight-reading, so I think I scared her by explaining what was involved! Hope I haven't put her off the exam... I did say I'd help her if she wanted me to, so hopefully all will be well. (I have many thoughts about aural and sight-reading, many of which I've mentioned here in the past, but I don't think it helps students not to tell them they'll have to do it.)

Anyway, a few links: Someone has investigated the use of a click track on various pop songs. The article itself is quite technical, but if you ignore the numbers the conclusions are still comprehensible.

YouTube has finally chosen its orchestra, and the Guardian has a couple of articles about this (here and here).

The Guardian also has a couple more articles related to the ABO conference: one about speeches in Welsh and one responding to last week's article about drunkenness in orchestras.

And in non-music news, if you're a fan of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", you may find this as fascinating as I do: the transcript of the first story meeting has emerged. (Fuller story here.)

And finally, here's a really nice idea for a birthday present - wish this had happened to me!

P.S. Only just saw this and had to edit to add it: Manchester Confidential samples the buffet at Victoria Station and really, really regrets it. It's funny but sadly all too true!