In
this age of internet shopping, local shops are a good thing. The nice people at Sound
Control and I have taken it in turns to be patient with one another this
week: first me with them, after they sold me an Edirol
UA-25, which if you turned the mic inputs up sounded like a sewer, and then
they with me after I completely failed to make any sense out of the E-mu
0404 they replaced it with. Various pieces of equipment around me are now
gradually thinking about talking to one another, in very simple terms for the
time being. I'm hoping that eventually, this long drawn-out and tiring process
will result in me making some music. But that still seems a fair way off
yet.
Meanwhile,
could this be the beginning of our first sponsorship deal? Normally, I'm wary of
these things as quite what we can usefully offer the usual corporate arts
sponsors I really do not know. But, I'm going to enthuse here about the joys of Williams
Bros' wonderfully fresh-tasting hoppy beer (they're the people that make
Fraoch heather ale as well) partly because it really is excellent stuff even in
bottles - haven't found it in cask yet - but also because Scott Williams turned
up on my doorstep a few days ago with 12 bottles and said 'Merry Christmas',
which cheered me up immensely. Their Roisin tayberry ale is something else,
actually: quite inspired, not like a Belgian fruit beer at all.
The
other thing that cheered me up immensely was receiving in my email tonight some
drawings from Joe Davie, as the first stage in the quest for our next album
cover. The Scottie from Mungrel Stuff, who also appeared on the sundial in
Fiddler Tam, is back with a vengeance ...
Monday 18 December 2006
I've
spent most of today proofreading the score of a chunk of Hamish MacCunn's opera
Diarmid against a scan of the composer's MS. As a result my brain is now a bit
fried. But Sibelius is very useful as for a task like this, as you can set it up
to show all the notes in pretty colours according to the tonality, and once
you've got over the fact that the score looks like a collection of boiled
sweets, it's quite easy to spot the wrong notes. I'm not used to big orchestral
scores with horns in F and D, and clarinets in A, but as it gradually comes
together it's quite satisfying. Won't get to hear the results for a few months
yet.
Sunday 17 December 2006
Wednesday
was the only time I had to myself this week, and I spent a lot of it on company
bank account-related tasks. But there was also time to install the latest
version of Sibelius on my PC and put it to
good use, finishing a long overdue tune celebrating a recent birth. Hooray.
I'm
still recovering from Friday night's last-ever BBC Christmas party at Queen
Margaret Drive: special mentions go to the excellent 'smallest ceilidh band in
the world', and to Nick Dempsey's DJing on two counts: 1) he never said a word,
and 2) he wore a noodles 'Music is Stupid' t-shirt of which I am insanely
jealous.
Now
that's what I call disillusionment, vol. 63. Inspired by the trawl through my
final box of old singles which was in the attic, I bought a Stranglers
compilation CD to feed my iPod, and was horrified and amused to find out after
nearly 30 years, that the lyrics to Jean-Jacques Burnel's Go Buddy Go aren't the
usual thuggish misogynistic nonsense I'd come to expect, but are actually about
going to a party with a friend called Bob. Bob!? How many punks in
1977 were called Bob? Susie and I promptly rewrote the entire song so that
the protagonist and Bob are now buying Christmas trees. Great muscular bass playing though. I often wish
that I still had my 1979 Fender P: black, maple neck, the classic punk bass.
Unfortunately it weighed a ton: perfect for sorting out audience fights, but
tiring to cart around. Dave Greenfield also proved that you could be a keyboard
player in a band without being boring or pretending that you couldn't really
play.
Wednesday's
listening also took in Laura Risk's '2000 Miles' album which features a William
Marshall tune 'Mrs Gordon of Knockespoch' that also appears on our Lion CD.
Laura's version sounds like an easy-going journey in a horse and cart along a
country track. Ours uses the original 19th century bassline and is like a 30-ton
Mack truck bearing down on a cyclist. In the rain. Sometimes traditional music
doesn't have to be nice.
later A sombre sight
today. From a distance it looked as though the Mitchell Library was burning down
- the plume of smoke could be seen all across the city. But in
fact it was Café India next door: not quite such a catastrophic loss. I
wrote about the Mitchell Library and its place in my education back on 16 September
2000. It's an open secret that here in Glasgow, listed buildings have
a habit of 'going on fire' when it's particularly convenient for their owners
not to pay for their upkeep, or for a developer to move in on the site. But the
Mitchell Library would be one step too far for that sort of scenario I think.
Sunday 10 December 2006
I have
been doing some practising today: well, learning of music really rather than
practising it. The more Beethoven-esque patches of Schetky's music demand more
athleticism in the fingers than I currently possess, so I need to get into
training by the end of next month. But today I came up against an unwillingness
on my part to deal with certain demands of virtuosity, that come along with the
music of the late 18th/early 19th century.
Good
harpsichord fingering is generally about elegance: matching the movements that
your hands make to the way that the music goes, so that your body naturally
plays the music in a comprehensible way. But historically, once you hit
what's unequivocally piano music something else happens, and you start having to
make movements that don't coincide with the music: specifically, turning your
thumb under while playing scales. All aspiring pianists have to learn how to do
this smoothly and without making a bump in the phrase. With harpsichord
fingering, the whole point of it is that making an unnatural movement like that
*does* make a bump in the phrase, so you have to put those movements in the
right musical places. But in piano music, you usually make them in the 'wrong'
places and so have to do it imperceptibly. Well, fine, but I can't help
resisting this rather underhand practice (excuse the pun). I've got used to my
technique being relaxed and out in the open, not hidden away under the back of
my hand. I find myself starting to lose interest
in the music. Maybe I'm just looking for an excuse for not being arsed to
practise B flat major scales any more, but I'd rather learn movements that have
a useful musical result, than movements whose musical result has to be covered
up.
I've
been listening to Fred Frith's guitar solos CD from 2000 'Clearing'. It's very
interesting to compare what he does with a guitar and some electronics to what
Robert Fripp does (which will be soon be heard all over the world every time
someone switches on their PC, thanks to Windows Vista). You can probably guess
which I prefer.
Incidentally,
I realised as I was walking down the kitchen this morning that the famous tune
of the so-called 'Albinoni Adagio' written in 1945 by Remo Giazotto (supposedly
elaborated from a MS fragment - yeah, right) is strikingly similar to that of
'La de Drummond' from the fourth book of Jacques Duphly's Pièces de clavecin
from 1768. So it was actually inspired by a Scotsman. Ha ha.
And
talking of Scotsmen and war (Pierre-Jacques McGregor Drummond was in the Royal
Scots), am I the only person appalled and furious that John
Reid can calmly tell the country that we'll probably be attacked by
terrorists over the holidays, without also saying 'sorry' on the government's
behalf for its spectacularly stupid and ill-conceived foreign policy? The
Observer newspaper's smug, lazy metropolitanism usually irritates me to the point of throwing it across the
room, but this
was worth reading today (written by another Scotsman, funnily enough).
Wednesday 6 December 2006
I
took most of today off to go Christmas shopping, partly at my desk and partly on
foot (and on the bus - some things might have been too big to carry on the
bike). Special mention goes to Timorous
Beasties along the road, and the second hand record shop round the corner
from it, which furnished me with a DVD containing the video for Mike Oldfield's In
Dulci Jubilo. I don't care if you think it's deeply naff, it captivated me
at the age of 9 or 10 and still does. The DVD also shows video evidence of Fred
Frith's 1974 ponytail but that's another story.
An
ongoing tiresomeness of the past four months has been the complete refusal of
someone in particular at Universal Music to deal with my request for a sample
clearance for the Lion CD. I've done the official forms and supplied them with
CDs, followed up by email, regularly chased by phone, and I still have no idea
if or when the request will be dealt with. So unless I hear soon, I'll be
removing a track from the album. It serves me right for trying to have any sort
of relationship with a major record company - it's far better for my mental and
musical health to steer well clear.
Tuesday 5 December 2006
A
lesson learned from yesterday's concert: practising
is over-rated. I didn't practise for yesterday at all, just played 10 minutes of
Hanon exercises a few times last week to get my finger musculature working, and
played all the music through once slowly on the piano on Sunday. If you've
learnt the music (a big 'if'), you know how it goes, and your musculature is
able to play it, then being in good overall shape and a healthy frame of
mind will influence the music
far more than whether you've put in enough practice on bar 28. Of course,
this is a lesson
that you can only learn when not playing in orchestras.
I had lunch with Alison today, where in 15
minutes' occasional scribbling on one sheet of paper (begun on Sunday night) we
came up with one whole season's worth of new programme ideas, all of which we
wanted to play. This would have been unthinkable even two weeks ago. And so we
move forward.
There's an excellent Scottish
appropriation of a cultural icon here.
And I've got a cold.
Monday 4 December 2006
Just
back from today's lunchtime concert (and a quick curry in Perth with Alison and
Andrew), so hooray for Perth Concert Hall's backstage crew. We staggered off the
train and scattered our belongings across the immaculately lit stage while
everything around us went like clockwork, from the radio mic to the fresh fruit
in the dressing rooms. When other people do their jobs well, it makes yours so
much easier. Our first concert there was only a year ago tomorrow.
Thursday 30 November 2006
This
and this
explain why the Lord Provost's car was in the park as I walked through it this
morning. At lunchtime I went to hear Catriona McKay and Chris Stout do their
stuff at the university concert hall - Catriona
is as good an accompanier of fiddle tunes as you could wish for: head and
shoulders above anyone else I can think of right now.
It
looks as though our concert diary this summer might get busier after all, as
Andrew has been cannily persistent both in negotiating with promoters, and in
waiting to engage our enthusiasm for playing. Details to come as they firm up.
It's
St Andrew's Night. It's pouring rain. That'll be Scotland then.
There's
a decent-looking folding Estey organ on eBay for the next few days should you be
interested in such things - a search for portable Estey organ should find it
...
Saturday 25 November 2006
I'm
listening to the not-quite-finished new album by Moishe's
Bagel, which Greg dropped round with late last night, as a prelude to the
two of us sitting laughing at one another. Great music as expected.
Yesterday
Alison and I were in Edinburgh at Noel's place to rehearse for our Perth concert
in a week or so. I've been lent a Nagra ARES-M,
so it was also a chance to test that out - and what a clever piece of kit it is.
On the way back to Glasgow, Alison asked me if it was time we played some new
repertoire and I wasn't convinced (yet), as there's something nice about playing
music you know really well. It's not as though we play it the same way every
time; in fact we never do, it always comes out differently. I've spent enough
time in the past scrambling through concerts, knowing the music well enough to
get by, but not -really- knowing it, just reading very fast.
On
Thursday I had the chance to meet Barnaby
Brown and hear him playing his reconstructed 18th century highland pipes for
the first time. They're made of native hardwoods, they make a great warm sound,
they have a major third in the scale that's actually in tune, they're very light
to carry, what's not to like?
Tuesday 21 November 2006
As
it's been no music day today, I've been
reading about music instead of listening to it or playing any.
Music
is a social process, a collaborative process, it's always a collaborative
process, you can't make it without collaborating, even as a soloist there's a
process that goes on before you arrive at a solo performance that is
collaborative on some level.
So if
you ignore that you're denying an important part of who you are. It's not an
accident that painters are painters because they're alone with their work, and
musicians are musicians because they are not. Everything I've done is dependent
on other people.
And that's how you move forward. And the art of choosing which people you work
with is probably the most important. It's like saying, you know, a musician who
can do anything probably will [everybody's laughter]. And similarly, choosing to
work with 'anybody' means that you probably won't ever discover who you are. As
you always choose your partners, you can put yourself in a position of
challenging yourself.
And
this from Douglas Adams - a lazy remark perhaps, but with some truth in it.
Mozart
tells us what it's like to be human, Beethoven tells us what it's like to be
Beethoven and Bach tells us what it's like to be the universe.
Monday 20 November 2006
A
joy lost in the digital domain. Last Tuesday I carelessly dropped my turntable's
stylus onto a record label and wrecked it. Then when the postman came to deliver
a new one the next day, the doorbell wasn't working, and I've only had time to
pick it up from the sorting office this morning. But this means that the
pleasure of hearing delicious analog clean-stylus stereo has been delayed, and
so is sweeter. Just in time for no music day
unfortunately.
Today
I overheard a bit of Guy Barker's dZf, recorded last week at the London Jazz
Festival. Some great sounds, particularly the bit with contrabass clarinet and
tuba sax (at least I think that's what it was) - listen
on Saturday and find out if I'm right.
Making
diary decisions for 2007 ... difficult.
Saturday
18 November 2006 Melrose On holiday
for the weekend. Hooray for kind babysitters and other generous relations. Last
time I stayed here was in May
2001, when it was called the Bon Accord hotel, and it was nothing to write
home about. In fact, Nicolette, Alison and I escaped across the road after our
concert to the classier Burts Hotel
to get a decent pint of beer. Well, now this
one's been
taken over by the Burts people and there's lots to write home (or here) about,
but I'm not going to because we're too busy enjoying it. But I will mention that
the food is fantastic.
At
Harestanes yesterday while eating a perfect Canterbury tart made from their
newly picked apples, I spotted a book published in Brechin in 1886 of 'Modern
Scottish Poetry' which included work by the St Andrews minister and composer of
surprisingly good songs, John Park. The book left with me, paid for of course.
John Park is of relevance to the project that John
Purser and I have been working on for the last few months, and about which
we will soon go properly public.
Melrose also has its own
tiny branch (just 2 tables) of Plaisir
du Chocolat. If I lived anywhere near here I would frequent it with shocking
regularity, working my way slowly through its huge list of teas and hot
chocolate. If it had wifi access I would adopt it as my office, and my
disposable income would be disposed of in one direction only. Just as well I
don't live here then.
Tonight
we watched Howard Goodall's How
Music Works on Channel 4: music theory turned into brilliant telly. If you
can, watch it.
On
Friday, at the third attempt, I finished editing the set of Katherine's tunes
that we recorded back in September - they're here. Go
listen.
I spent
most of yesterday in the company of (in no particular order) Catherine
Bott, David Owen Norris, Haydn,
pizza, beer, and a 1609 harpsichord
by Andreas Ruckers in playing condition that sounds absolutely fantastic - not
all of these necessarily at the same time. But it was very entertaining. And
Kate's singing of 'barbaro ed infidel' from Arianna a Naxos was a reminder to
anyone listening that pissing off a powerful dark-haired woman is not a good
idea.
I'm
still backing out of upcoming playing work left, right and centre. Perhaps
someone can explain to me why I'm delighted to get out of playing one of the
greatest pieces ever written with an excellent team of international soloists,
and meantime very happy to jump up on stage and busk Cher covers on the melodica
with my daughter on my shoulders. No, actually, I'm quite capable of explaining
it to myself: I'm determined to make sure that I'm not mistaken for a
professional musician.
I
had far too much to do today, but it was lightened by a very enjoyable hour in a
studio with virtuoso actor Tam
Dean Burn, and an impromptu attempt to sell an idea to Radio 3 controller Roger
Wright, who I think, judging from his remarks about Mark
Radcliffe and landscape gardening, was only humouring me. Oh well. You fill
in the blanks.
Tuesday
7 November 2006
I found
these
photos from Saturday, and this
one, and this one. And while wandering around Flickr, also this.
Live melodica on stage.
Useful
board meeting last night, very welcome appointment-free day today. Got my hair
cut.
Sunday
5 November 2006
To
Glasgow University concert hall tonight to hear Ronald
Brautigam play Haydn on the university's Paul McNulty fortepiano. Fireworks
indoors and out. Astonishing playing, and spectacularly faithful to what Haydn
wrote: big smiles all round. At John
Purser's request (and, less directly, mine) he's been learning Erik
Chisholm's mammoth Hindustani Piano Concerto for a recording in February.
Will be looking forward to that too.
Saturday
4 November 2006
What a
busy day. I spent this morning at the Beacon Bonanza: the huge local jumble sale
sort-of-thing where I bought my beloved £20 bike last year, and then this
afternoon Susie and I set off on the train into town for some musical
adventures. First, we dropped in on the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's
rehearsal with John Oswald, Chris
Cutler, Zeena Parkins and co.,
then we wandered across the road to the guitar band extravaganza that was the Get
While the Getting's Good launch party. St
Deluxe were acting as Future Pilot AKA's backing band, with a bit of help
from 6 year old Anurudh Dade (who also made the cover painting for the CD) doing
some funky drumming. Have melodica, will play, so I busked my way through a fun
version of Orange Juice's 'Moscow' - I even worked out when to shout 'MOSCOW!'
by the third chorus - before we were joined by Duglas Stewart out of the BMX
Bandits for a suitably deviant version of Cher's 'Believe'. Susie was not
going to be upstaged by someone younger than she, so she climbed onto my
shoulders to witness Duglas's unexpected kazoo solo from above, and establish
her rock chick credentials. There were a few video cameras around
documenting this, so I wonder if youtube will be graced with the evidence
soon.
Earlier
in the day, entertaining
listening included the Kendal Mintcake remix of S-E-X-X-Y which appears in the current
TMBG
podcast: a brilliant mash-up that incorporates amongst others The La's, Herbie
Hancock, the Beatles, Raymond Scott, and, gloriously, Andy Partridge. When
you make music that of legal necessity has to remain outside the music
business, the music has to be its own reward.
Friday
3 November 2006
Tomorrow
at Glasgow's own organic vegan café-bistro-record shop-brewery-library-performance
space Mono,
is the launch party for 'Get While the Getting's Good', a compilation of music
by Scottish artists on the aufgeladen und bereit label. Katherine (viola),
Alison (cello) and myself (glockenspiel) played on the Future Pilot AKA vs.
Concerto Caledonia track 'Elephants'. I'll probably go along and play a bit of
melodica in the Future Pilot acoustic set. See you there? Details from Future
Pilot AKA here and from a&b here.
Yesterday
I cycled into town through sunshine and leaves, strangely reminiscent of cycling
through another city 3000 miles away, nearly three weeks ago. My lecture
at the RSAMD wasn't exactly a triumph,
however, buckling as it did under the weight of technological failures.
The first was an electronic diary failure which meant that the harpsichord
hadn't been tuned, so that anything I tried to demonstrate sounded like a bag of
spanners: not quite the thing to persuade a bunch of second-year students that
old instruments are worth spending time with. And they've replaced the old
overhead projector and white screen with a cool new video projection system,
from which the cables had been disconnected for some reason. Not a problem, I
rang the tech guy, he fixed it, fine. But they've installed two plasma screens
about the size of domestic television sets (some penny-pinching somewhere in the
process perhaps?) so that even once it's working, if you project a normal-sized
page of music, none of the students can see any of the detail at all. It was
Rameau, but it might as well have been Elliott Carter.
Wednesday
1 November 2006
I
noticed that John Oswald and Chris Cutler are playing in Glasgow on Saturday
night, so this is probably a good place to point out that you can download
Oswald's entire Plunderphonic album as a .zip file here
(if you look hard enough to find it - try clicking on 'd' and scrolling down).
Nothing to do with James Oswald of course. But well worth listening to if only
to hear Dolly Parton undergo a spectacular aural sex change on The Great
Pretender.
I'd
intended to come up with four concert programmes on Monday, but by 10pm I'd just
managed two. Also this week I must give serious thought to what gigs I'm going
to play next summer: I've got good at turning down playing work (more today),
but I really ought to start deciding what I'm going to do instead. HTF plans are
developing fast on the other side of the Atlantic.
Meanwhile,
in my email from Alison comes a letter from Charles Schetky to George Schetky
written on the Cape of Good Hope in September 1797. It contains the
following advice about the music profession:
Ten
or 12 dollars a week barely able to procure you raiment & subsistence;
together with the society of wicked profligate men who, tho’
not always, yet generally compose the bands in orchestras, will never my Dear
Brother suit either your natural disposition or be consistent with your future
comfort & happiness. [...] I think were
you once firmly established independent of orchestras you would be in no
danger of recurring to them.
Plus
ça change, ... but now I have some lecture notes to revise for tomorrow
morning.
concerto caledonia