Big name signing for Hull!

You may remember my fascination with Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink (note: that's an old post and some of the links no longer work). Well, I was upset recently to discover he'd been released by Celtic... but all is now well, because Hull City have just bought him. So we'll see him on Match of the Day!

(Talking of links not working, I've had a few problems with my online mp3s... the server on which I've always stored them belongs to a friend, who's let me use it for free as a favour. He's had some technical issues, which have meant that that server has been offline for a few months now. I'm trying to find a solution, but for the moment all my mp3s are offline, sorry. I hope to be able to get things sorted in time to give you mp3s of The Kingdom, but in the meantime you can find it on Spotify. (In theory, if you have Spotify installed, this direct link to my playlist should work. If you don't have Spotify installed, what are you waiting for?!?))

I've been very bad about updating here in the past year or two, I know. I just lost my inspiration. But I've resolved to try to improve, and the first step is to share all the links I've saved in the past month.

First and best: Bobby McFerrin demonstrates the pentatonic scale. This is the best thing EVER. It was being talked about all over the web a month ago, but although I saved the link, for some reason I didn't actually WATCH it till today. (If you're wondering where you've heard the name before, he's most famous for this song.)

Most of you are probably watching The Choir: Unsung Town. What do you think? I always get vaguely annoyed with things like this - it's all the little mini-interviews they insist on putting in, I think (e.g. when Gareth confesses that everything is a nightmare) - but I have ended up really enjoying the other Gareth Malone things despite this, so I'll stick with it.

A great post from the Bournemouth Male Voice Choir blog, about confidence in singing. It occurs to me that I'm usually pretty confident when actually singing (in a group, at least - far less so if I'm singing alone) - when I have a crisis of confidence (and I've had some big ones this year) it's always when I'm THINKING about singing.

I'm amused by this review of Die Walküre, which includes the line "The singers needed all the help they could get, but received none."

An interesting article which compares Handel to, well, all other composers.

This had been bugging me for ages - I kept hearing a particular bit of music all over the place, and had no idea what it was. I finally remembered to use Shazam while it was actually playing, and found that it is Escape by Craig Armstrong, and is from the soundtrack of the film Plunkett & Macleane. No idea how it ended up being used for so many other things.

The Royal Opera House is putting on a Twitter opera. I think this is silly. Much as I'm a fan of Twitter, I'm NOT a fan of desperate-seeming attempts to jump on bandwagons.

Did you know that there is now a Manchester Show Choir? I didn't, until yesterday. I'm intrigued by their plans for a world record attempt: "Manchester Show Choir will be attempting the Guinness World Record for the longest singing relay. We have to beat the current record of 202 singers lined up, who each sing one word of our chosen song. The song has to be performed in time and in tune! Wish us luck!" I found out about them because they are advertising for singers, by the way.

Don't know whether any of you will be interested in this, but there is an online thingy for arranging rehearsals.

I'm very much enjoying the Proms, although not that many have stood out. I have three favourites so far. Berlioz Te Deum has always been one of my favourite pieces - I did it a couple of times at school, and I think I've done it ONCE with an adult choir, but it was so long ago that I can't remember which choir or when. I would LOVE to do it again, but in the meantime I always love listening to it.

Also by Berlioz, the Symphonie funèbre et triomphale is another one I did at school, this time as an oboist, and I don't think I've ever heard it since, till this Prom. The sound was incredible - I'd love to have been in the hall for this.

My very favourite Prom, though, was definitely the Ukulele Prom. Such a pity this wasn't on TV! They gave the audience the option of bringing their own ukuleles, and a THOUSAND of them actually did! That was only a small part of it though. This prom made me laugh out loud several times - which is rare for a concert - but there were beautiful bits too. The eight players sang as well as playing ukuleles, and although it wasn't always the greatest singing ever, it didn't matter. In particular, they did several items which involved three different songs going on at the same time - very clever. Sadly it's no longer on the iPlayer, but I have it downloaded, and can put it on a CD for any choir members who are interested. (I'll put it online too when I have server access restored.)

Via ChoralNet, a useful post about vocal health.

This sounds great, although I haven't explored it yet: the sound archive of the British Library is now available online for free.

I'm sure you heard about the opera singer who fell into the orchestra pit but I couldn't resist mentioning it anyway!

And now some non-musical links:

There are plans for an interesting new building in Bangkok.

A useful site that I use quite often, but it occurred to me you might not know about it: Down for everyone or just me? The idea is that if you go to a website and it doesn't seem to be working, you can enter it onto this page to find out whether the website is REALLY not working or the problem is actually at your end.

An addictive online word game: Must Pop Words. Don't blame me if you get nothing done for the next hour, though!

I will be printing this out and framing it as soon as I have any ink: Tech Support Cheat Sheet.

Manchester Confidential has a walking trail of the city centre which visits lots of places significant to the lesbian and gay heritage of Manchester: part 1 and part 2.

Apparently the Manchester accent confuses devices using voice recognition technology.

My latest favourite Big Picture photo set: Californian wildfires.

I seem to have talked about Neil Gaiman a lot recently to various people, most of whom had never heard of him - but even if you know nothing about him, you'll be impressed by the library in his house.

And finally, Radio 4 repeated I Was a Child Prodigy last week, and the programmes are currently still on iPlayer, although not for long. I think anyone who was interested has probably heard them, but if you haven't, episode 2 is entirely about me and episode 5 has a few minutes about me too. (I do have mp3s of both episodes and will put them back online when I regain server access.)

Four days till the dawn of a new age for the choir! It'll be strange but exciting. I'll write again then.