zbd1960

I'm back from a week at music summer school near Stafford. This year I'd signed up for a different set of classes to the past. I did conducting, solo singing, string orchestra, chamber orchestra, and choir. I even managed to overcome my dread/fear of singing solo in public and sang in the solo singing recital. I chose "Where'er you walk" by Handel. The YT video is sung by a counter tenor, so an octave higher than I sang it. The venue is a grand country pile which is now used to run arts activities, mostly for schools.

What would sort it out - but they won't do it - is to go and book a hearing test. These are easily available on the high street. Then they might understand that they've got a problem, or will have one soon... That would determine frequency range and sensitivity.

If you're wearing protection and it is that loud, then that is seriously wrong. People need to take this more seriously. I'm extremely wary of loud environments, which is why I have an app with an SPL meter on it. OK it's not 'accurate' since a proper reading requires measuring distances etc., but it's a useful guide.

Yamaha have been making musical instrument since 1887 and pianos in 1900, which is why their logo is three tuning forks.

It's a thing in the cello world as well "antiqued" - no, if I'm buying a new instrument I want is to look nice, not as if someone has thrashed it with branches off a holly tree

Five of us cellists from orchestra got together yesterday for a pleasant lunch followed by playing music arranged for cello quartets and quintets. Event was hosted by one of the cellists in a rather nice house with stunning views.

One of the things that happens as you get older, you realise that time is precious and you lose the willingness to waste it trying to sort people/organisations out. I have wasted years being a part of clubs/groups, where I should have walked away. I wasted 15 years or more on several groups where I was heavily involved in the organisation and running. You eventually realise they don't care - they plug you in, use you, throw you away, like a disposable battery.

'ok, I suffer from "white coat syndrome" when it comes to making recordings of me playing anything... I started organ lessons September last year. Here's a rather splashy recording with assorted errors using my Hauptwerk organ using the Hereford Cathedral sample set... https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LomcMKJeDjRNR1i1UzkGShtLJsqOCKrL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R-DqKlYMf_UOcd2jfmYxpgxsIujQgguP/view?usp=sharing

Interesting piece by Henry Mancini with an ostinato bass line - very 1950s/60s. Fantastic graphics.

Back in my 30s, I started having singing lessons - until then I'd never sung a note. From there, I started to sing in choirs of various types and sizes - I've never sung solo. The problem with not doing this stuff as a youngster (and being told you can't sing) is you tend to be horrendously self-conscious (well, I am anyway). I tend to lose the plot if I try to sing solo. The ridiculous thing is that I am fine singing complex stuff like Bach or Bernstein, even with relatively few voices to a part... In a fit of insanity, for the summer school I will be going to in a few weeks time, one of the sessions I have signed up for is solo singing... I haven't had proper singing songs type singing lessons since I moved to Shropshire in 1999. Just before Covid hit, I started having some very technical lessons to do with voice production. A mix of Covid and the teacher moving 50 miles away put a stop to those lessons. I bit the bullet this week and had my first 'proper' singing lesson this week in 26 years.

I've taken my cello the train - which is a real PITA as the only realistic solution is to have it on a seat and pray the train isn't too busy.

Ignoring deficiencies in eyesight is not sensible, and in the case of driving, illegal. You need an eye test to determine what is going on and what the options are. I was 16 when I realised my distance vision had 'issues', so I had to wear glasses for distance and owing to a weak left eye, I needed to wear them all the time. As is common with most people over 40, reading became affected and I had to switch to varifocals. There are different qualities of lenses and inevitably the more expensive ones are better. I never had any issues wearing varifocals, some people do. I opted for lenses typically costing around £400 plus frames. Then in my mid-50s I discovered I had sudden onset cataracts. I had replacement lens surgery in both eyes and the new lenses in my eyes corrected my distance vision, so I now only really need glasses for reading. I use 'occupational lenses' which are so I have a mix of reading and intermediate reading - so I cna read music etc. They have a greater depth of field so things farther away remain in focus. Your eyesight sounds like it is opposite way around to mine, but there will be solutions, probably not cheap ones if you want good results. Ignoring eyesight issues is storing up future problems.

A rather more staid event as it was the first concert given by the two new community choirs (same MD for both). So, the more sedate environs of the local Methodist church. Rep was essentially a mix of music form shows, American Song Book etc. As we're new groups, we don't have enough rep to fill a full concert so some 'filler' provided by a couple of precocious youngsters aged around 8 or 9. Whilst both were extremely good (the young pianist was scarily good) I could have done with that tbh. One of the stalwarts of the local music scene provided some very different stuff with a mix of folk/jazz improv type stuff - duets on various combinations of piano, flute, violin, tin whistle, and later on a small Gamelan set-up... And the issue is when you have 'guests' they tend to do too much.... However, the two choirs did well.

I was going to say teak is heavy.

Things you didn't think you'd need to do: remote login to the organ from the Macbook... I have a 24" monitor built into the music desk so that I can play from PDFs. There is a spare USB socket near ground level around the back where I could connect a USB stick or portable drive. I'm thinking that rather than that, I could try remotely connecting the Mac to the organ's PC and do it that way. So, some online searches pulls up that MS makes the Remote Desktop app for Mac. I did need to run a script on the organ's PC to alter some permissions (again an online search sorted that out). I then remoted into the PC from the Mac and copied across assorted PDFs. I have encountered one issue that I've not definitely resolved yet. When you load a PDF (enScore) page forward stops working after the initial scroll to the start of the music. It might resolve when I next power up as I didn't do a re-boot after the changes to the PC. If not, the next thing to check will be drivers I suppose... (a big reason why I switched to Mac at home 8 years ago).

My cello case is a Hiscox. I've had mine about 15 years now and it was £300 then. It's bomb proof, but not light.

15? You need to try a theorbo.

The pedal board has no wiring to connect it to the organ - just magnetic reed switches.

There was some interest in my new Hauptwerk organ and set-up at the NW Bass Petting Zoo yesterday, so I thought I'd write a bit more about it. Over the last 25 years or so, various software developers have worked to create 'virtual pipe organs' using MIDI. In short, someone goes out and records every single pipe individually, including its reverb decay in the acoustic. You recreate the organ console in the software. Physically, you have MIDI keyboards and pedalboard. The stops of the organ are controlled either through touch screen, or (if you have plenty of money) you can have physical stop pistons that you pull out. When you press a key, the recorded sound is what you hear. The whole organ is loaded into RAM so that there is no lag. So, if you have 30 stops drawn, hitting one note means 30 sounds are simultaneously sounded for that one note. If you're playing four-note chords in each hand AND two pedals at the same time, then that 10 x 30, in this case, so 300 sounds to play... except it gets worse... Some stops are 'mixtures' so if you sound a note, it ALSO sounds a bunch of other harmonics of that note e.g 12th, 19th, 21st. Usually there are at least 3 harmonics sounded with a mixture, but 5 or 7 are common, especially with French 'cornet' stops. So, if you had a 5 mixture, those ten notes become 50 notes, sounding say the root, 12th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 21st.... of EVERY note you're playing. This is part of what creates the complexity of organ sound - it's an analog mechanical synthesiser. I decided a while ago that I wanted a major retirement activity (yes, I know I have lots of music already with cello, saxes, basses, viols...). I've never really been a keyboard player as I never had lessons. I bought a piano when I moved to Shropshire 25 years ago (a 1970s Yamaha upright). I had some lessons then, but not many. I've always been a fan of organ music. Sadly, the sound of many English organs is quite boring as they lack the reeds which add character to Dutch, French, and German organs for example. The English organ sounds specialises in creating a uniform sound across the main diapason/principal ranks. My organ was built by a guy who specialises in building bespoke Hauptwerk set-ups. I opted for a 'positiv' style case as it was going to be in the lounge and I wanted a 'nice' piece of furniture. The main frame structure is solid English oak, as are the 'cheeks' of the manual stack, the organ bench seat, and the expression pedal tops. The pedalboard is recycled from a 60 year old organ and the pedals are solid maple. Some other parts are oak veneered MDF which has been painted so you see the wood grain. The main large flat panels are painted MDF. They were primed and had three coats of paint. The speaker grill design was chosen by me from a sample of 500 designs. I opted for an Art Deco quasi Lutyens 'sunburst' design, rather than something more gothic/Victorian. That was cut by CNC machine. The screens are all Iyama - two 22" mounted vertically for the 'stop jambs' and a 24" in the music desk which can be used for PDFs of music (pages can be turned with one of the toe pistons). All touch-screen. There are 8 general pistons and 24 divisional pistons, 8 per manual. There are a further 8 pistons which can be defined and I've opted to make them pedal pistons. There is a 1,000 step sequencer. This is used for example to set-up a recital - you assign all your stop settings to values. For example, if I had a piece which needed 5 changes of stops then I could pre-program each set of stops and assign them to say sequencer steps 20, 21, 22, 23, and 24. As I need ot hcange registration, I just have to hit either one of the + thumb pistons, or the + toe piston to change to the next registration. I kept the number of toe pistons down to five: three couplers and a + to advance the sequncer, and a page turn for the PDF on the music stand. Toe pistons are expensive items as they're about £50 each for nice brass ones. I ruled out having a further 8 for the pedal divisional pistons. If you have multiple users of an organ, you can assign ranges to specific players so that say Fred uses 100 - 199, Bill uses 200 - 299 etc. Custom built computer has 128gb RAM and two 1tb SSD drives. The sound output is to active Neumann studio monitors. A pair of KH310s inside the box, a pair of KH120s externally on stands, and a KH750 sub. If you want to see the guy who built it getting excited over the first sounds out of it... this is a short 1 min video. Finally, why didn't I just buy say a Johannus, Content, or Viscount off the shelf? Whilst some models are cheaper than what I've paid, most are significantly more expensive and even £25k ones are vinyl not real wood! Despite the cost of mine, the end result is a much superior cabinet and significantly better sound system than you'd get for a commercially available home system. https://drive.google.com/file/d/154ZAxxZ0N0JOuuf9byiSqP-uMdwtq7Xs/view?usp=share_link

Those who were trying my custom 'Titan' 6-string (walnut top) and were wondering what the control options were... and I'm bad at remembering them... here's the set-up. From front to back: Volume (pull for passive) Pickup select/balance Neck switch - down P, middle series, up reverse P Stacked bass (bottom) treble (top) Bridge switch - up parallel, middle single coil, down series. Final furthest back control - Middle. Also, a shout out to @rwillett for making the whole thing possible.

Great day.

I should be able ot be there for 10 - I can be earlier if any help is required to set-up as it's about an hour from here.

More photos and some sort vids of the sound testing - not me playing https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1hCs4C6m-TZsL4XBN6vBvpoypaSFvsoUV?usp=share_link

OK.... here we go... A custom built Hauptwerk virtual pipe organ. Three manuals, 32 key pedal board. Custom built PC with 128gb RAM, assorted Arduino and MIDI boxes, Focusrite interface, two ARC Studio DSP boxes, 1 pair Neumann 310 inside the cabinet, 1 pair Neumann 120 externally, 1 Neumann sub....

OK.... the two-day installation of the "Bird Scarer" started yesterday... It is an instrument which has been built by a bespoke builder for me... It won't be fully functional until after we've installed all the electronics etc today. I will post more later, but here's a teaser...