Thursday 21 November 2002

Back at my desk again, after two more visits to casualty, with a lot of mail to answer and bills to pay.  I'm now wearing a eye-patch borrowed from my son with his permission, but I don't think I'll be leaving the house still wearing it, as the skull and crossbones might cause unnecessary mirth to passers-by.

I was lecturing at the RSAMD this morning to an attentive bunch of second year undergraduates.  I'm told there were nine singing students there, but only one of them was prepared to even have a go at translating a bit of Rameau's French - I'd have thought if you're going to be a classical singer of any sort, you'd make it your business to have at least a working guesswork if not knowledge of as many languages as possible. Maybe they were just shy.

A couple of nice reviews have appeared of last week's gigs with Chris in Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

I had a failed brush with MiniDisc technology over the last week - I bought a little Sony machine at the airport on my way to the US, and then unpacked it in Pittsburgh to discover it had no microphone inputs.  How can you have an instrument called a 'recorder' that can't record sounds??  All you can do is copy stuff from other media, unless you have separate microphone amplifiers.  

So I went back to the shop on the way home, and bought a more expensive one (sigh) that had the all-important red-rimmed socket. I got that home and recorded a few things, some from analogue, some digital, and guess what, it all sounded terrible.  The bass all but disappeared, there was a horrible mid-range bulge, and any sense of space in the recordings was sucked out - the session tapes from Crichton sounded atrocious.  You could even spot the difference on the cruddy speakers in my kitchen.  So back I went to the shop today to patiently explain that 200 quid's worth of Sony's finest sounded like a load of pants and I couldn't imagine ever wanting to listen to it, so could I have my money back please.  Honestly, even good old cassettes sound better. But then, I suppose these days people actually listen to mp3s for pleasure ...

The lack of mic inputs is a curious kind of sign of the further decline of live music in favour of the pre-packaged variety.  Here's an extract from a UK government consultation document issued on 30 October (Halloween, when in Scotland the streets are traditionally full of kids engaging wantonly in public entertainment, rather than just demanding treats with menaces). "The presence of beggars, rough sleepers, peddlers, buskers and other persons who are threatening or who engage in anti-social behaviour can affect the use of and condition of public space." Guardian, 1 November  Note the inclusion of buskers - it's now official, musicians are engaging in anti-social behaviour. Personally, I find all-pervasive muzak much more offensive, even if, as it was in New York's Penn Station in August, it's playing baroque trio sonatas ...