Earbrass

No. It's just the size of the gap between 2 notes. The "root" changes with the key you're playing in, but the size of the gap between any 2 given notes is independent of the key (at least in equal temperament tunings, which is what we overwhelmingly use). A perfect 4th is a 5 semitone (or 5 fret) gap.

My advice would be to start by learning to recognise the different musical intervals. It can be helpful to have memorised examples of each (eg perfect 4th - first 2 notes of Away in a Manger, perfect 5th - first 2 notes of Thus Spake Zarathustra (2001: a Space Odyssey theme) and so on). Good luck!

"Version" is about right. Sorry, but I think she completely ruins it. Catherine Bott / Christopher Hogwood / The Academy of Ancient Music FTW.

When I am Laid in Earth (Purcell's Dido and Aeneas) Gloomy Sunday - Diamanda Galas Follow those with one of mine, so any attendees can reflect that it's actually no great loss after all.

My GAS rule of thumb: give it 3 months - if I still want it after that I'll usually get it, but often I've lost interest and started GASsing for something different by then.

You can bow up to 2 strings at once (or 3 if you have your bow very slack). You can bow only the four main strings - the other 12 strings are sympathetic, and usually tuned in a chromatic scale, so equally good for all keys. Pressing a key moves a piece of dowel against the string, stopping it at the appropriate length - like moving frets against the string instead of the other way around. Traditional Swedish tuning is (low to high) C-G-C-A, but some players, especially those from a violin or viola background prefer have the second string a D rather than a C, thus giving straight fifths - C-G-D-A - pitched like a viola. The traditional design has 3 row of keys, one for each of the top 3 strings - so the lowest string can function only as a drone on its open note, but these days more builders, especially perhaps those continental builders outside Sweden, are also producing more "4 row" harpas, on which there 4 rows of keys, one for each of the main strings.

I wonder why you think it acceptable to express and incite hatred of a group of people based purely on their age, when I'm sure you'd condemn similar treatment based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

Hi Robbie, thanks very much for your comments. Yes, big fan of Väsen myself, and have seen them live a couple of times. I was lucky enough to attend a nyckelharpa masterclass by Olov Johansson when they came over and played a gig in Shoreham-by-Sea in 2016 - I had only been playing the instrument a little while, and he was very patient and helpful.

...and you only discovered all this during the lockdown? Must have been quite an afternoon on Google.

Yes, I know Vicki (nyckelharpa is a small world!) - I first played a nyckelharpa at her house, before buying one of my own. She's a great player and has done a lot to popularise the instrument in the UK.

Here are my nyckelharpas. The acoustic one was built by Kjell Lundvall in 2015, and the solid body was by Olla Plahn, 2019, and features a piezo pickup under the bridge and a built-in preamp. The "band" pickup on the Lundvall harpa is used for live performances - for recording I find a ribbon mic gives the best results - an example can be heard here:

Some of you....a few of you....one or two..OK none of you probably remember that I submitted a tune for the December covers challenge and came joint first with several others. Well, I have been tweaking it quite a bit since then, and I think this is the final version. So, here is my version of "Kadrilj efter Birger Törnkvist".

Camel?

"The very beadsmen learn to bend their bows Of double-fatal yew against thy state." Shakespeare's Richard II (3.2.120)

Otis Luxton, in Lavenham: http://www.luxtoninstruments.co.uk/about/

😂 and ewww!

I was all set for a short trip to Finland at the start of April to see 3 gigs on 3 consecutive nights as part of the JuuriJuhla festival in Espoo. Now the whole festival has been cancelled. Slightly bizarrely, our language classes at the Finnish Institute in Kings Cross have also been cancelled because of the Finnish government's decision to halt public gatherings.

Me too. I think it was May 1975??? I seem to remember attending 3 big gigs in the one month - Led Zep at Earls Court, Yes at QPR and Wakeman at Wembley. Two of them were excellent.....

Saw Pink Floyd in 1974 at Wembley Empire Pool, as it then was; they played a couple of tracks nobody had heard from their forthcoming album, including "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". I was also at the Stone Roses gig at Alexander Palace in 1989 - taken by a younger colleague eager to introduce me (already an old fart at 29) to the "new" music. EDIT - just remembered, I saw Bob Marley and the Wailers in Brighton on his last ever tour in July 1980, just a few months before he passed away.

I suppose that makes mine a Damien, then 😎. The most interesting / worthwhile job I ever had was teaching philosophy to undergrads at Cambridge University - not full time, just did a few hours a week whilst a graduate student. After that there was about 35 years spent as a computer programmer, mostly in the city, which depending how you look at it was either a tedious waste of a lifetime or a dead cushy way of earning decent money which left enough time and energy to pursue other interests (mostly musical) in my spare time. These have included working as a composer in a very modest way for theatre, film, contemporary dance and TV - never getting anywhere near being able to make a living out of it - I'm really not very good - but making a nice bit of cash here and there from the best jobs (though many were unpaid). Retired last summer at 59. Hoorah! Now combining looking after our three geriatric cats (this takes more time and energy than I could ever have imagined) with playing nyckelharpa for a bizarre and theatrical 2-man morris side and also in Scandinavian music sessions, a bit of home recording for my own amusement and trying to learn Finnish.

🙋‍♂️

If we're talking early influences: King Crimson Gong Henry Cow In my 50's I had something of a musical renaissance, thanks in no small part to Mari Boine Värttinä Esko Järvellä

Nobody mentioned the Elf Band from Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom yet? https://www.youtube.com/embed/oPfj9UmHwl0?start=145&end=241 (featuring Ben on thrump-warbler, Mr. Elf on spaalthrottle and Nigel on blotto horn)

Anybody else remember this? We also had the sequel - "Birdy and the Group". Had forgotten all about them until this thread.