Polly put the kettle on

There's a bit in the Mahler 8 alto part that I've had on the brain for the past few hours. I think of it as "the Polly Put The Kettle On bit", and I don't think I've ever sung it correctly before tonight, but I practised it on the bus on the way to choir (in my head, in case you're wondering!) and I can do it now. It's just two bars, of which the first is "Polly put the kettle on", and the second is a kind of warped version of "Polly put the kettle on" in which Mahler deliberately changed every note just slightly, but in such a way as to make the resulting bar as difficult as possible. Evil man.

The only other thing I have to report this week (it's not been the most exciting of weeks!) is that I gave a one-off singing lesson to a soprano a few days ago. She was very late, and just when I was amusing myself thinking "typical soprano, they're ALWAYS late", she called to say she was lost. I nearly got the giggles at that point, because I couldn't help thinking that if she'd been flat as well, she'd have embodied all the main soprano characteristics in one go! (Sorry, sops, I couldn't resist that! I love you really!)

By way of a change, I'm going to start my links with a few videos. The first one was mentioned by Graham in the comments last week: a large barbershop chorus singing Seventy-Six Trombones. Do watch the whole thing - it's absolutely wonderful, especially the end.

Here's another one that will make you smile - several people have emailed this to me: Elderly Couple Plays Piano Duet.

The Bridgewater Hall website has a set of three fascinating chats between the two Manchester music directors, who discuss the whole Mahler series in detail. I discovered all sorts of interesting things from these videos.

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir has completed its second project, and if you were impressed by their version of "Sleep", you'll be blown away by Lux Aurumque. This is my favourite of his works anyway, but the quality of this performance is unbelievably high given how they did it. (Read Eric's description of the process - it's a lot more complicated (and musical!) than what they did for "Sleep".) Also, we get to see Eric himself in this one, and I think he's quite pretty :-)

That's all the videos. What else? Well, I'm sorry I couldn't witness this, but a trombonist was planning to play a duet with a RIVER the other day. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere else - I'm hoping to find a recording eventually though!

Guy Garvey (from Elbow) writes in the Guardian about how albums are still important in these days of single-track downloads.

Oliver Condy, in the BBC Music Magazine, wonders whether London needs quite as many orchestras as it currently has.

Chris Rowbury (From the Front of the Choir) analyses the factors that make live performance different from rehearsal.

As with many things, I found this while I was looking for something else: something called the Complete Vocal Institute, which describes the four vocal modes. I'm mainly fascinated by this because I thought I knew quite a bit about singing, but most of the information on this page is completely alien to me, and I don't know how much of it to believe! I plan to ask Maggie to explain it to me :-)

Sad but true: an American high school banned an INSTRUMENTAL version of "Ave Maria" from a graduation ceremony, because it's too religious. *boggle*

Via Intermezzo, the chief exec of the London Phil tells the Times how it was possible for his orchestra to be defrauded of millions of pounds.

Also from Intermezzo: Aretha Franklin is singing opera. And from the same source: news of a Chorus Festival on the South Bank at the start of May. Some interesting ideas there - I'll be interested to find out what reception they get!

I'm a huge fan of Shazam, which is great for identifying music on the radio or during TV programmes. That only works with recorded music, though, and it's much less reliable for classical music, because the main information it uses is the beat, and there isn't always a clear and/or regular beat in classical stuff. However, the other day I heard about SoundHound, which allegedly works even if you sing or hum stuff into the phone. I haven't tried it, though, because it's not free - can anyone with an iPhone who HAS tried it let me know whether or not it actually works as well as Shazam?

I was in the Central Library today, wandering round trying to memorise everything about it (most of it closes next week). I love that place so much - I'll be very sad if it loses its character during the renovations. The Manchizzle agrees with me, but I'm mainly mentioning their post because it has a photo of the Social Sciences room - my favourite bit of the library. And I'm ashamed to say that today is the first time I'd ever really paid attention to the details of that room, and noticed that there is a quotation round the edge of the ceiling. I looked it up and found that it's from the Book of Proverbs: "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. She shall give to thine head an ornament of grace: a crown of glory shall she deliver to thee." I really hope that's still there when the library reopens! But in the meantime, the library has set up a Flickr page for people to put up photos of the library. I haven't looked through them all yet, but if they're all as good as the ones on the first page, I will be delighted. And I'm even more delighted that I realised (if somewhat belatedly) why they're calling this project "Get Wisdom" :-)

What will you be doing at 8.30pm this Saturday? Can you do it in the dark? If you can, you should, because it's Earth Hour.

I've seen a few people raving about this recently: FutureMe gives you the chance to send an email to your future self. I might try it if I can think of anything inspiring to say, but my mind's a bit blank at the moment!

Merlin Mann pleads with everyone to take computer backups seriously. The details in that article might be a bit too technical for some people, but the message is important enough that I wanted to mention it: if you've never backed up the important (i.e. irreplaceable) data on your computer, YOU SHOULD! And if you HAVE done it, but not for ages, go and do it again RIGHT NOW. Always assume that your computer could die at any time, and if (when!) it does, you will have lost all the work you've done (and photos you've taken, etc.) since the last time you backed up. If that's not a problem for you, you don't need to bother with backups. Otherwise... you really, really do.

A friend pointed this out to me today: the London Review of Books personal ads. There is no way I can describe them effectively - just go and look!

And finally, if you're a bit of a drama queen (or king), you may find this button useful....

Barbershop seventh

I sometimes feel a bit guilty that I spend so much time doing what can only be described as "faffing online". However, I justify it by the fact that I learn so many new things as a result! Most excitingly, this week I discovered a NEW CHORD, plus several other related interesting facts. Well, it's not really a new chord - it's just a standard seventh chord - but I didn't know that it was known as a barbershop seventh. I also didn't know that there are strict rules for barbershop arranging, including the fact that barbershop seventh chords should comprise at least a third of the duration of the music... and the 2nd tenor part should have the tune all the way through. (I'd noticed that barbershop arrangements always do seem to have the tune in the 2nd tenor, and contain lots of seventh chords, but I never knew these were RULES!)

I've done lots of singing in the last week, and there's lots more to come. We're off to Mold on Saturday to repeat our a cappella concert, but tonight it was all Mahler 8. We had our German coach with us (the lovely Norbert), which was great, but we're all getting a bit fed up with the bittiness of the music. We'll love it when we can sing through a whole movement, but the fact that none of us are singing any of the choir 1 bits makes it difficult to do that at the moment. Oh well.

I also performed twice last Thursday. The funeral went fine - and our songs were listed in the Order of Service, so there was no shock from the congregation! I was a bit worried that the crematorium staff might make a mess of playing our backing CD (the right track at the right time, and both at the right volume) but they did fine. Then, in the evening, I went to help out the boys' choir at Sue's school, which involved Ave Verum Corpus (which I've sung a million times) and Haydn's Insanae et Vanae Curae, which I'd never heard of. Always fun to discover a new piece!

I was sorry to hear that Craig Wild, a fabulous trumpeter (originally from Rochdale) who I used to teach, had all of his trumpets and equipment stolen from Leamington Spa on Sunday. (Thanks to the BBC Phil Twitter feed for this info.) If anyone who's reading this hears anything, please contact Craig.

I wrote a guest blog post for Chris Rowbury at From the Front of the Choir - my post was about what makes a good choral arrangement. Needless to say I was just as successful at driving away any commenters there as I am here! But do go and read it anyway. (Chris's most recent post (NOT written by me) is about why he believes it's a good thing for choirs to change their conductors every so often.)

Talking of choral directors, here's another thing I found while faffing: some great programme notes for The Dream of Gerontius, written by our own ex-choral director.

This Saturday is Dynamic Range Day - an online protest about CDs being too loud. I can't see it making much difference, sadly. Maybe we can do our bit by exaggerating the dynamics in our Mold gig :-)

I'm rather pleased to discover that this blog is now the top Google search result for "2nd altos". It's been ages since I looked to see what searches are bringing people here, but I did yesterday. One of them was "how good are choir seats at bridgewater hall"... so in case the answer wasn't obvious, I will say: great to sing from, but not quite so good to sit and listen from, because the seats aren't as deep (i.e. they're not as long from front to back) as the seats in the rest of the hall. I've always assumed this is to keep the choir awake...

The Bridgewater Hall, by the way, now has an archive of selected reviews: here's the page for the Mahler in Manchester series, and there's also one for some of the concerts from the 08/09 season.

Here's an interesting Guardian article about how someone became a Radio 3 listener.

Also in the Guardian, Tom Service is enthusiastic about the British Library sound archive.

I love this post by Stephen Hough, which explains why we remember music as more than just a tune.

Via Intermezzo and the Times: Scottish Opera is putting on an opera especially for babies.

I've been enjoying Sacred Music on BBC4, but I was a bit disappointed with the actual singing in the first episode - The Sixteen sounded a bit out of tune to me in several places. So I was a bit surprised to read this glowing review of a recent concert of theirs, which says that the choir were better than the soloists!

(Also, if you haven't been watching A Band For Britain, I recommend you do. There's only one episode left, but you can see the earlier ones on iPlayer.)

There's an exhibition at the Barbican featuring birds playing musical instruments. Tom Service has more to say about this, and tells us about some even better nature/music collaborations.

If you like pop songs but are a bit out of touch, the Telegraph has a helpful list (with YouTube links) of what it thinks are the top hundred songs of the last decade.

Via The Register: a bass (guitar) player was asked to leave a train near Portsmouth, because... well, you won't believe me if I tell you - read the story!

Hands up who knew that Manchester Cathedral is now hiring itself out as a non-classical gig venue? No, me neither.

It seems that Manchester City's stadium will be a glowing blue beacon from next season. I actually really like the way it looks at night already, although I'm still distraught that the B of the Bang was removed.

Talking of football and being distraught, I'm quite unreasonably upset about David Beckham's injury. I've been unable to stop thinking about it all week. If you haven't seen the moment when his world fell apart, here's a very sad (and very short) video. (DId you know that the Poet Laureate has now written a poem about this tragedy? More about this from the Guardian.)

The football fans among you will be amused by Dara O Briain's revelation of Fabio Capello's top-secret plan for the World Cup.

And here are some great photos (from the Big Picture) of the 2010 Winter Paralympics. What a pity none of these events were on TV!

If you ever deliver training sessions or presentations, you might like this: from Stepcase Lifehack, an exercise about changing your focus.

If you're having a bad day, there's always someone worse off: FMyLife may make you smile!

And if that doesn't, surely this will: from I Can Has Cheezburger, Kitteh Choir Director :-)

Take her wrap, fellas; find her an empty lap, fellas

Alison and I are singing at a funeral tomorrow morning (a relative of a friend of hers). We are doing two songs: I Passed By Your Window (which I'd never previously heard of) and, would you believe, Hello Dolly. I've created duet versions and backing tracks for both of them (it's in a crematorium, so there's no piano or organ, so the backing has to be on CD). I'm just hoping that it will be widely known that these two songs are what the family has requested - I've never sung to an audience that's gazing at me in horror, but I imagine it's rather offputting!

I thoroughly enjoyed the concert we did at St Patrick's Church on Saturday. And what a pity we're not doing "We'll Gather Lilacs" or "The Bare Necessities" at the second a cappella concert - I suspect it will be a similar type of audience, and the audience on Saturday LOVED those two songs. I suppose I can understand why they've been dropped, though. I'm a bit more baffled at the fact that Bruckner's Ave Maria has also gone, despite the fact that it sounds fabulous in a church acoustic... yet "The Lamb" (which I have grown to detest over the years) is still in! *boggle*

Actually, there were three things that will particularly stay in my mind from Saturday: the sight of half the audience mouthing the words to "We'll Gather Lilacs"; the lady on the balcony who was dancing during "The Bare Necessities"; and the audience member who told me afterwards that I was a "model chorister" during "The Bare Necessities" \o/ I'm very smug about that!

Now, I'm not entirely sure how I've managed to accumulate 100000000 relevant links in the last week, but I have (well, almost that many!) so I'd better get on with sharing them. (In case you're a recent arrival here, I should explain that the links I share are of three types, and I tend to list them in this order: (a) music-related stories that interested me; (b) Manchester-related stories that interested me; (c) stories that interested me but that aren't related to music OR Manchester, but I thought you might not have seen them mentioned anywhere else.)

The Mahler in Manchester series has reached its halfway point: Mahler 5 was last Thursday, and the reviews are good, although a bit inconsistent: five stars from the Guardian, four from the Times, only three from the Telegraph. EDIT: And, belatedly, four from the Independent. But four stars from the MEN, and The Classical Source don't rate performances, but they seemed to like it!

Talking of reviews, I learned from this one that the William Byrd Singers have a new conductor that people in my choir know well.

Oliver Condy writes about early morning practice.

Via ChoralNet, news of a choir that only performs new works, and restricts this even further to Connecticut composers!

VHK's Singing has some interesting points to make about the increasing tendency for anthems in cathedral services to be thought of as separate from the liturgy rather than part of it.

I found this site while I was searching for the sheet music and/or lyrics of "I Passed By Your Window": My Mother's Sheet Music. (I didn't find either - at least, not free - so I ended up writing them out myself anyway!)

Philip Langridge died the other day, and this inspired the Guardian to write an editorial about English tenors.

A fascinating post from Allen H Simon on ChoralNet about a concert he's doing this weekend featuring misattributed works. What I found most intriguing was his description of how the singers treated the music differently when they knew it wasn't really by Bach etc!

BBC 6 Music has been arguing about who the best (non-classical) guitarists are. They have a poll in which you can vote.

Nigel Kennedy is running a Polish festival on the South Bank at the end of May. (I hadn't realised he lives in Poland these days.) The most intriguing event (to me) is a screening of the 1973 England v Poland football match, accompanied by Kennedy and Polish jazz musicians, playing a semi-improvised score.

Great short piece from the Guardian about bands who sing in minority languages.

Lots of discussion this week about a lecture given by Alec Ross to the Royal Philharmonic Society on Monday night. The subject: whether or not it's OK to applaud in non-traditional places. Tom Service and Intermezzo and Classical Iconoclast like what he said. The Times asked several influential people to comment before the lecture took place, but the exact subject matter turned out to be more specific than they'd imagined.

I enjoyed the first episode of the new BBC series A Band for Britain, in which Sue Perkins tries to help Dinnington Colliery Brass Band get new players. If you missed it, you can see it on iPlayer via that link.

Chris Rowbury wonders what rehearsals are for, exactly.

A fascinating article in the Spectator which explores the job of orchestra leader, specifically in an opera orchestra.

Tom Service reminds us that Elgar will soon vanish from our £20 notes.

Some news that involves both music AND Manchester: I've been warning you for a while that Manchester Central Library (including the Henry Watson Music Library) will close soon while the whole building is renovated over the course of three years. Well, I was in there the other day - the first time since the new year - and bits of it have already closed. The Henry Watson is still open, but only for the next three weeks - it closes at 8pm on 1st April. So, if there's some music you desperately need from there, get it ASAP! Full details (including specific dates and FAQ) about the Central Library closure are here, and specific information for users of the Henry Watson are here. (And if you're one of the surprising number of people who have never been inside the Central Library, do go and visit before the end of March, because it won't be there - at least in its current form - after that. The Social Sciences library (on the first floor) is one of my favourite rooms in any building anywhere, and I'm praying they don't change the basic structure of it. If you've never seen it, I beg you to.)

Here's a great feature about female Mancunian role models. One of them sigs in our choir :-)

Manchester Confidential tells us that the Beetham Tower is still whistling, even though it was supposed to be fixed recently. I've still never heard it!

Mancubist tells us that there is currently an exhibition about Manchester's past and present music venues - on platform 12 at Piccadilly Station. I hadn't realised that was an exhibition space, but there you go!

I'm sure you'll have read that the Lowry wants 1000 volunteers to be photographed naked. Sadly the dates involved are 1st and 2nd May, which is our Mahler 8 weekend. Otherwise I have no doubt our whole choir would be there :p

More Metrolink chaos this summer, this time on the Bury line.

Doctor Who is travelling round the UK on a tourbus! He'll be in Salford on 31st March, and there'll be a big-screen event in Manchester after that. I'm hoping I'll eventually get over the fact that he's not David Tennant any more, but it'll take a while!

This intrigued me: via BoingBoing, an article about an international argument over exit signs.

There are millions of online personality quizzes, most of them extremely stupid, but if you like that sort of thing, this one is a bit better than the majority: the HTML colour personality test.

And finally, I was telling Caroline about both these sites recently and realised that I don't think I've mentioned them here: Failblog and Learn From My Fail. They may or may not amuse you :-)

The bees are buzzin' in the tree to make some honey just for me

Yes, I've still got The Bare Necessities on the brain, but I do now know it from memory. I could remember the notes almost immediately, but I kept stumbling over a few of the words. The line in the title caused me particular problems, but I have it now. I was thinking about the process of memorising stuff as a result of this, so I was delighted to see a post from the wonderful Chris Rowbury discussing the topic. (Chris works with choirs that always perform everything from memory, but the points he makes are equally valid for choirs that usually sing from music.) Oh, and don't forget my downloadable hints!

I went to see Ruddigore at the Lowry on Saturday, together with several other members of the choir (although we didn't all go together). I really enjoyed it, but I was intrigued to find that some of us found the words extremely difficult to understand (I reckon I could only distinguish about a quarter of them), whereas others thought that the diction was perfect and they could hear every word. In general the latter people were those who already knew the words extremely well, though, so maybe that's what makes the difference. I already linked to the Guardian review a while ago, but here's one from the Times (which says that the diction is crystal-clear) and one from the Spectator (which found lots of it inaudible, and - perhaps unsurprisingly - didn't enjoy it as much). I have to say that the fact that I couldn't make out many of the words wasn't as big a problem as I might have expected - I had no trouble following the plot.

The Telegraph wonders where all the contraltos have gone (thanks to Graham for pointing this out).

Via Intermezzo, Wagner's description of the perfect audience. This amused me a great deal :-)

Via ChoralNet, a great post from Helping You Harmonise about managing stage fright. I particularly like the point that "If your normal rehearsal warm-ups are about getting people up and going after work, you’ll find that using them just before a performance produces a completely over-hyped choir poised to sing sharp and rush tempi." Obvious when you think about it, but I don't think it ever occurred to me before!

Tom Service has a thought-provoking post about music education cuts. Short, but contains some useful facts and figures.

Similarly useful and thought-provoking, but rather longer, is this Guardian article about arts funding.

I'm not sure whether or not I want to hear the result of this, but I'm fascinated by the idea that they did it at all: classical music stars get together to record a charity single. (Note that it's the BBC that describes all those people as 'classical music stars', not me...)

Via Londonist, news of a Chopin exhibition at the British Library. It's on till mid-May, so if you're in London before then, go and have a look.

I suspect this news will be like Marmite, in that you'll either love it or hate it: Intermezzo tells us that there is an all-male production of The Pirates of Penzance, and it's on in London for a month or so from mid-April if you want to see it.

Via the Times: Simon Rattle is fed up with Britain. Most interesting facts from it: he's never done the St Matthew Passion before this year (he's doing it soon with the CBSO) and he's never done the B Minor Mass, and has no plans to because it's too hard!

Tom Service again, this time telling us why we need to build 22 new opera houses.

Intermezzo spends an afternoon with Andris Nelsons (who, I only recently realised, is conducting our Mahler 8 when we do it in Birmingham), and points out in passing that the way to get good audiences for concerts is to do them on Sunday afternoons.

Chet's has launched an appeal to raise money for their new building. I have all sorts of attachments to the old one, so I hate the idea that it's being demolished, but I suppose I have to accept that nothing lasts forever!

A couple of non-musical links to finish. Firstly, from the ever-wonderful Seth Godin (whose blog is linked in my sidebar - I recommend you all read it regularly), my current favourite word: Sprezzatura.

If your email inbox is plagued with a few friends and family members who continually forward jokes and other random stuff to you, here is a brilliant solution: StopForwarding.com. You can stop them anonymously and educate them at the same time!

For the geeks (or semi-geeks) among you: some fascinating facts and figures about Google.

And another brilliant idea: Let Me Google That For You. This will be useful to those of you who are always being asked questions which could be solved in seconds if the questioner could be bothered to use Google. You got to lmgtfy.com, which looks very like a normal Google page. You do the search yourself. LMGTFY then gives you a link to copy, and that's what you send to the person who asked. Watch this example of how it works (imagine you'd been asked "Who's Aaron Ramsey?")