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I was worried about the border guards along Offa's Dyke, but it's been clarified... there are routes....

Looks like a great event. Wonder if an interloper from the northern Border Marches in darkest Salopia could sneak in next time? 🤔

Intonation is the likeliest issue as others have said. With equal temperament tuning, you are not going to have every fret in tune. All I can say is a set of strings for my cello costs about £300. The plus side is they don't need to be changed very often, but the top string is the one you tend to replace every 18 months or so and they cost around £40.

I haven't, but I know there are people that do. I did take my tenor viol to a community orchestra I used to play in and pretended I was a viola - right clef for the music and also the correct size for the pitch being played (viola's Achilles' Heel)

There are multiple issues here, some of which are common to the high street in general, others relevant to specific sectors. Music chain stores such as Dawsons (I think they originated in Cheshire about 120 years ago?) seem to have adopted the car sales methodology of 'incentivising' staff through sales commission. This is also an issue with photography shops. Management need to get away from this outmoded method - it doesn't work. Decent honest staff get shafted by grasping greedy commission hunters, and customers dislike being hassled. Pay people a decent wage and ditch the fake 'sales driving' methods. As I've said before, the model of business rates and taxes is broken. Big multi-national chains and internet box shifters are able to get tax breaks for opening a low cost warehouse out-of-town, with free parking. Multi-nationals can also play the tax domiciliation game to reduce taxes further. Meanwhile your small chain or independent is stuck with full taxes, outrageous high street rents from London-based absentee landlords, high business rates, and shoppers have to pay to park. It is not an even playing field. Specialist retailers, e.g. music, hi-fi, photography, are nearly extinct.

Worryingly... I discovered that @Manton Customs are rather close to home... as in about a 30 minute drive away. For someone living in rural Shropshire, that's tantamount to next door! I regard anything under 25 miles away as 'local'....

A relatively common example of just intonation still in sue is barbershop quartet singing - that's why the chords really 'ping' since for example the fifths are a 3:2 ratio. I play the viola da gamba (viol) and the frets are tied on - doubled piece of fret gut is used. You have to tune the frets. Good consort players (same is true of string quartet players etc) will adjust so that the thirds for example are more in tune. Probably because I listen to (and have played) a lot of early music, I do hear the ET major third as very out-of-tune. If all you've ever heard is ET, then it probably won't seem odd.

OP You've probably put some of the notes into 'just' intonation i.e. not equal temperament. That would give you better major thirds and purer fourths and fifths, e.g. a sharper C# or a flatter Db would be more in tune in some contexts than an ET enharmonic Db/C#

Proms....

As someone who is 'serious' about various genres of music... the situation about where you can go to look at sheet music or try instruments int he Shropshire / Cheshire / Merseyside / Manchester area is dire. By sheet music I mean more than the standard exam board stuff or tutor books. There's Forsyth's in Manchester (Rushworth's in Liverpool went over 25 years ago, the place in Altrincham went 10 or 15 years ago) and a place in Shrewsbury and they're the only ones I know of. For saxes, there's a shop in each of Liverpool, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent, and Shrewsbury. For strings, there's only a couple of luthiers doing some stuff in Liverpool, there's a couple around Manchester etc. Guitars are somewhat better served, but mostly with generic stuff. And early music? It's either one of the two branches of the Early Music Shop (Saltaire and London) or from a maker.

NBD you say? Let's just say I was >extremely< disappointed to find a luthier there who is about a 30 minute drive away from home.... That could be detrimental to my financial well-being... 🤦‍♂️ It's not as if I don't have a music room that's got a piano, 2 viols, 2 cellos, 4 saxes, and 3 basses in it.....

Thank you to all those that organised it and hauled in their equipment.

Specialist shops are getting fewer and farther apart. It's even worse for orchestral instrument players. There's only a handful of specialist saxophone shops in the country. String players are a little better served with shops often a sideline of a luthier. Quite a few instruments - e.g oboe, bassoon - there is only a very small number and these are often run out of someone's home as a high street presence is just too expensive. One of the issues is music shops usually require a large footprint to have practice rooms to enable people to try instruments etc. This means their business rates are very high. Business rates need to be completely overhauled as the current model just doesn't work. Small independents in high streets get caned and multinationals in out of town business parks get tax breaks...

Should be a relatively straightforward trundle to get there along 50 miles of rural A roads: A41, A51, A50....

I like that he had the money from the Stones to run his own full size big band

For those that prefer one-off payments for software to subscription models, Affinity have both a PS equivalent and a DTP product: Affinity Photo and Affinity Publisher. These are generally £49, but they do have them on half-price offer sometimes.

I've had a couple of cables from Designacable.

I'm not a composer so the answer is none. Artists seem to fall into two broad camps: live hard, die young; live less hard and probably die a bit older. Some artists peak at an early age, others mature more slowly. For some weird reason the focus is always on either those that die young, or who produce nothing better in their later years. Generally, people's work usually gets better as they get older. I suppose some lose their muse, some like Rossini make so much money when they're young, they're not bothered, others like Sibelius became alcoholics and produced nothing for decades.

Over the years I've seen any number of people seriously panic at the thought of turning 30... The shallowness of some people's thinking is staggering

This is a technique issue. There are all sorts of muscles that can kick in and lock up and make singing harder than it needs to be. This also affects range.

I'm primarily a cellist. A cello is not a small double bass. A double bass bow is much shorter than a cello one, is much heavier, and has a much deeper frog. Even with an overhand bow hold which is superficially the same as for cello (i.e. rather than German / viol hold) the technique is different. I'm not sure how cello strings would respond to being tuned in 4ths rather than 5ths. The tension on the strings is going to be 'off' since the C will be E, G will be A, D is unchanged, and A is G. I suppose it is a form of scordatura tuning... What will be peculiar is the normal 'positions' on the cello are not going to do what you would expect. In standard tuning, sliding to 4th position with the thumb at the shoulder means your 1st finger is playing a 5th up, i.e. the next string. It's a bit like a bass viol I suppose, that's tuned DGCFAD

I hadn't sung a note until my mid-30s and I hadn't picked up a cello or sax until my 50s and bass until my 60s... Do your best to find a vocal coach / singing teacher. Almost everyone is capable of singing, but there's more technique to it than most people realise. Just be aware that not all teachers will teach all styles/genres, so you if you have a very specific requirement, you'll need to ask to make sure that it's something they can get to to in due course

Thank you. That resolved it.

Previously when entering a thread, it would take me to last one I'd read, whereas sometimes it is now taking me to the first post in the thread. I'm selecting 'unread content'.

Bass is my most recent instrument... it started with a Yamaha upright piano...Now there are alto, tenor and bass recorders; tenor and bass viols (viola da gamba); 2 cellos; soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxes; 4, 5, and 6 string basses....