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I'd agree that main thing type of mute does (use them on cello as well) is to change the character of the sound.

I may be able to make this as it's about 50 miles away - it might clash with another commitment, need to check. If I can attend, I'll bring the ACG and Manton

Thank you @itu What you do with the frets, except the first (one nearest the nut), is tie them further up the neck i.e. nearer to the nut than where they need to be placed. This means they need stretching to be put into place. The challenge is the first fret. You need to use pliers or similar to pull the ends of the fret gut as tight as you can.

The cello had an outing last night - so the gig was a bit different to most here... orchestra in a church in Carlisle with two operatic soloist. And yes, orchestras have similar issues with sound as bands, even though we're unamplified. Our issues is that church acoustics are almost always awful, overly resonant and leads to mushy sound, particularly in the bass department.... where have I heard that before? Decent audience. Only one on the very tricky opera arias had significant 'moments'

It was gig time last night - concert of operatic music. Instrumental items included Wagners prleude to Act 3 of Lohengrin, suite from Carmen by Bizet, the waltz and polonaise from Eugène Onegin by Tchaikovsky, ballet suite from Faust by Gounod. Two soloists singing various items including the Flower Duet (think BA adverts...). Someone caught me at it...

I wear a 'traditional' / 'classical' harmony hat - I'm not that familiar with what goes on in other genres. I agree it's essentially a IV/I cadential sequence. No key change is inferred as there are for example no pivot chords or attempts to create a new tonic etc.

Chord III is one of the lesser used chords. What's also odd is the heavy chromatic alterations involved in this sequence. You start in G (1 sharp), then B (5 sharps), C, then finally Cmin (3 flats)

There is an article in the Guardian online today about 'like farms' in Vietnam. It was under photography as somehow a photographer got to visit some of these. This is where companies buy 'likes' etc to boost their online profile.

I have limited experience in this space... but I had to do some of this as part of my course work. In Adobe Premiere Pro you can separate the audio and video and put whatever audio track you like to the video. So you could import the two independent of each other and then synchronise them if you wish to do that.

You cna make a 'page' non-active so no one will see it

An increasing number of YT videos have the voiceover given by AI. It's obvious. Worse are the ones - I've particularly noticed this with equipment review videos - where the text is obviously AI generated as well as being 'spoken' by AI. These videos are awful since all they do is pick up the advertising fluff from the manufacturer's web site and regurgitate it. You then get people saying 'great review, thanks' etc. Those responses seem to come from people with English as a second language so possibly they don't pick up on it being 'fake' the way a native speaker would.

In this version, the first could be D with a 7th added but missing the 5th. The second is just a major third and you can't say much more about it than that. The third one is ambiguous. It could be a chord of D with a major 7th, but it's missing the third so you can't tell if it's major or minor. Or, it could be a chord of A with an added 11th in some sort of inversion... but I think that's stretching it as there's no 5th, 7th, or 9th...

In terms of age profile / demographics at these things. It's kind of inevitable and it's the same whether it's guitars/basses, photography, astronomy, hi-fi... go to any event for any of those (and I've been to events for all of them) snd most people are aged 50+. There are many reasons for this - and it has changed over the decades I've been doing these things. Older people are generally in a better financial position, so are able to go and buy stuff at these events. They also have more time. Income levels are another issue. A mix of incomes not increasing and incomes being squeezed tends to hit younger people harder.

I resisted going to this... mainly because I'm going to the photography show at the NEC in a fortnight and that may well get expensive. Last time it cost me £600 for an A3 printer...

Having solely been a classical guy in my teens in the 70s, I missed most of these things. I had a potter around YT to listen to various items and found them interesting. I do find it interesting how musicianship and skill was commonplace back then. The level of sophistication with the writing and the arrangements/orchestration.

We know he's a rocker/biker since in Exodus we have: the Triumph of the Lord was heard throughout the land...

Whilst metal strings are significantly more robust than gut strings, they are prone to the same issues, albeit much less so. When you tighten a string, there is some stretching. That stretching is not uniform - some places it will stretch more than in others and this creates a very slight variation in thickness/density of the string along its length. If you repeat the process, it will increase the effect - the places where it has stretched already, will stretch some more, creating places on the string where it's thinner. These thinner places become potential places of failure as the thinning will lead to micro-fractures and metal fatigue. At some point, the micro-fractures increase and the string fails. This is also why you should avoid kinking the string. Gut strings are very fragile compared to metal strings - I can tell you from experience that the slightest kink or bend in a string becomes a point of failure very quickly.

If you want to avoid issues like RSI, tendinitis/tennis elbow etc then getting this right is important. Whilst people are different, the general guidance is having it further south to join the cool kids is not a good idea. Advice I received from tutors when starting out was it should be in the same place whether standing or sitting. As a cellist I can tell you getting posture, fingering, and bow grip wrong can give you serious problems

First 'gig' of the year was in fact a string orchestra workshop day on the Wirral. There were over 50 in attendance - I was one of a dozen cellos. There were a couple of DB as well. Main work for the day was Ireland's Downland Suite, which is a 'classic' piece of English string music. The middle two movements are the best known - Elegy and Minuet - but we played all four. It's also known as a brass band work - Ireland arranged it for both.

Ugh. I used to know a narcissistic control freak like that. He liked to play people off against each other. He got away with it for years because people didn't talk to each other. Then one day they did... He didn't last long after that. Unfortunately these people exist.

I dislike big vibrato, especially that archetypal late C19th grand opera soprano type which feels like it covers a minor third... It was introduced as a means of cutting through and being heard against a big orchestra. Music theatre is a particular and distinctive style of singing, which works with some music and not with others. The style needs to be appropriate, and it often isn't.

I'm a trained singer - but classical - I have 30+ years experience mostly singing as a baritone, but I've been workign with a teacher to sing tenor (there's a long story there but I'll leave it for another post). What many people (including singers) don't realise or understand is that there are different styles of singing and the techniques required are different. Not only that, but no one voice can sing all styles. There's a huge difference to being a choral singer to being a soloist. There's a difference between singing German lieder, singing opera, or singing musical theatre. It's a different style to be a Rat Pack crooner, a folk singer, or singing hard rock. If this person wants to sing rock/pop then they need to realise that it's a different style, requires different techniques and you can't just "have a go" and expect it to work. Even within one 'genre' there are variations. If I sing renaissance a cappella polyphony, it's a very different style to singing big C19th choral work with a large orchestra. Some more self awareness would help... suggestion about needing to work on 'style' with a teacher is probably a good route - but you need to find the right teacher...

Vaughan Williams - symphony #5

Testing the new hi-fi with the classic recording of Mahler 4 with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra from the 1960s. I have it on both vinyl and CD.

Welcome. They haven't invented a word yet to describe my bass playing... good job I mostly play cello