zbd1960

I noticed the 'work in progress' when I logged on the other day

I refrained from posting that one yesterday... I can confirm that I can only scratch my cello... It had an outing last night at orchestra and I was the only cellists... sight-reading my way through Haydn Symphony 99, Beethoven Egmont overture, and Bach's orchestral suite #2...

My musical background is a little... err... different... for example I was going to sit ABRSM grade 7 theory before lockdown happened... It took me a while to get to a bass teacher I got on with. #1 was highly qualified but kept cancelling lessons to rehearse for gigs... to the extent that I never had a lesson with him. #2 I actually felt was OK, but primarily a guitar teacher. After 3 lessons he said to me that I was a far more experienced and capable musician than he was.... #3 was a joke. He had this converted unit which he ran as a recording studio, with a room either side. So he would have a student in each of the three rooms simultaneously and rn between them... #4 never turned up. I joined the newly set-up branch of Rock School and their adult group. Lockdown happened but they assigned me a bass tutor. We had Skype lessons for a while and now in person. He's a young guy - about 24, but he's got a music degree and training as a music teacher.

My (admittedly limited) experience of pub/band singers is the majority fall under the 'tuned shouting' description. And 'tuned' is not necessarily the same as 'in tune'. Too many think that singing is not a serious technical skill and you can just 'sing'. As with any instrument, there will be the odd person who can just wing it and get away with it - but not many. There's a lot of technique to singing properly to protect you voice and to enable you to sing for a protracted period without tiring or injury

ugh... where did that come from.... quite right, fixed.

I know....

I have yet to gig with bass - I've joined local Rock School and will see where it goes... But... I play in orchestras where you have a guy at the front waving a stick to keep people together. Doesn't stop issues... the commonest are speeding up when it gets louder, slowing down when it's quieter. The biggest tempo crunchers are usually the heavy brass (trombones/tuba) - if they charge off there's not much anyone can do about it. When that happens, the rule is watch the conductor. There is a well-know (probably apocryphal) quote that conductors should never look at the trombones as it only encourages them....

That's a fantastic looking bass. Love the wood and the purple heart accent.

Obviously he must have been a devotee of atonal serialism

e.g. no symphony orchestra concert hall / theatre has been 'tested' with full capacity audiences

Yep. The altos and tenor shawms are also very loud - that was a soprano. They were used outdoors for leading processions etc. I was singing in an early music workshop some years ago and there was a tenor shawn in the instrumental group. It's a long instrument so sitting down, they had the bell playing into a cushion filled with lambs' wool to reduce the volume...

Ahh... you need to encounter shawms... not to be used indoors...

I think I saw a report yesterday showing some preliminary results from the first set of event tests? The whole thing is beyond annoying. The entire arts/events industry has been hung out to dry. A huge number of people who work in this space are freelancers and none of the government's schemes covers them. The failure to address that might be irreversible damage to the sector as people have had to find jobs and may not come back. Without insurance no company is going to even attempt to run an event where they have to commit finances with no idea if it's viable or not. Most major European countries have put some sort of government backed scheme in place to cover organisers. I have heard repeated statements for at least the last 2 months from government mouthpieces saying "We're working flat out on a solution...". Germany announced April last year what it was doing right through to August 2021.

I think there are two issues causing this. To put an event on requires planning and financial commitments to give out contracts to suppliers etc. Without insurance, they're placing themselves at enormous financial risk. It takes months to plan a big event and I think they're also sayign they haven't now got enough time to plan properly.

Yes, that's true and I'm a part of it. There are more people in this country in choirs singing on a regular basis than play or attend football.... It's odd that it doesn't have a higher profile. A lot of it stems from the cathedral tradition. The cathedral choirs generate a huge number of experienced singers who often go on to lead and conduct choirs.

Apart perhaps from the Welsh, we don't have a culture here that encourages everyone to sing. It is much more of a 'standard' thing to sing in many European countries (and elsewhere). I agree that apart from the blessed few, most of us have to put effort into singing properly - there is a lot of technique in that. Control, dynamics, and range are what teaching improves. I hadn't sung a note until I was 33, when I started lessons and that started a huge thing for me singing in choirs of various sizes from chamber choirs with 2 dozen in them to large choirs of 150. I've been fortunate to sing some serious 'gigs' in some major venues, including the Albert Hall. The problem comes with those that sing along with the radio and think that's all that's involved to perform in public.

I think the overwhelming majority of people have the capability of singing, the number who are genuinely 'tone deaf' is in fact very small. However.... whilst some people find it an easy thing to do, others need a mix of encouragement and tuition.

In similar vein, the orchestra summer school I go to (so a week of playing) was cancelled again a few weeks ago - two years in a row.

This is an important point. There is stuff to learn about playing or singing in a group and amongst the obvious ones are listening to each other and adjusting pitch/tempo/volume etc as necessary. It's especially important in non-directed bands/ensembles since you haven't got a conductor to sort those things out.

I've encountered similar, although in a very different context... I don't sing solo, but I am a very experienced choral singer. We would occasionally get people wanting to join the chamber choir I sang in - a lot of our repertoire was a cappella (unaccompanied) - you very quickly discovered that some of these people had no idea. This included basic things like not all parts have got 'the tune', and the reason we have a conductor is so that we're all singing the correct things at the correct time. Then there's the issue of blend.... Fortunately we had a policy of trial periods which gave us the option to say 'no thank you'. Won't be everyone's cup of tea as it's not exactly rock n roll, but this is an example of the kind of things we sang (I'm not religious, but a lot of choral music has its origins there). I would sing the baritone line, which partway through merges with the bass line https://youtu.be/5AOwGE0KuRI.

Having at least some lessons will help a lot with sorting out technique issues etc. I much prefer to have a teacher, not least because it will push me down paths I probably would not otherwise take. I'm probably weird (there's not need to answer that! 🤣) but I don't have any problems with theory and quite enjoy it. Unless you wander off and want to read figured bass and realise it on a 6 string bass... you don't need to go too far, but enough to be able to understand the basics of scales, keys, chords and harmony etc is probably useful.

I'm currently trying Logic Pro as a free download... Currently watching loads of online stuff to get my head round it

OK... this seems like a sensible place to ask... I'm thinking of trying a 6 string... just for fun... so one of the ones that pops up when I look around is the Spector Legend 6. Anyone familiar with this and have any thoughts? Ta.

To quote Dr. Johnson: Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel

My French is reasonable... (as with many Brits, I can read it better than I can speak it, but I can get by) but the lack of punctuation added to the challenge