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 :-)