Synch or swim

I’ve been attempting to improve my playing by the traditional method: practice. For grins mainly, I’ve posted some of my attempts on YouTube under my human alias, with a mixture of recorders and EWI, along with the computer playing along.

The rather splendid MuseScore website carries what appears to be crowdsourced sheet music, and a free download to read and to write music manuscript, and then to arrange it for bagpipes and taiko drum if you like, although I’ve generally been sticking to flute and strings and rearranging for recorder of playing along.

Telemann’s Canonic Sonata No.1 Allegro, for example, has two flutes playing the same tune with Flute 2 exactly one bar (two beats) behind Flute 1. I turned off Flute 2 and played that part, with Flute 1 and the scrolling sheet music being handled by the computer. The sound was all picked up by the computer’s internal microphone and the webcam captured the video to prove that it was actually Muggins playing.

The other software I use is the free Audacity, which captures just the sound and records it on one channel. Subsequent recordings go on separate channels that can then be edited for volume and timing, and the whole thing mixed. Multi-part playing becomes possible.

My video editing software is the free version of Cyberlink Power Director, so I can, at least theoretically, cut video of my playing each track into a single video file.

That’s a lot of skills to learn: playing, reading music, video capture, audio capture, video editing, audio editing…

Now on to the technicalities of audio capture.

The computer’s internal microphone is appalling. It’s designed for basic voice capture so that Skype is possible. I tried an external hand-held microphone, but that’s simply not sensitive enough. Instrument-mounted mics are both expensive and Not Coming in Doha™. Any noise gets picked up while recording,which includes all the other tracks that are playing, plus the air conditioning, plus any random bleeps and pings if the computer reports any incoming messages, virus alerts, yadda yadda.

One possible solution is to follow the sheet music and play in silence, and have the computer pick up just the line being played. Synching multiple lines then becomes impossible because real rhythm tends to drift without some audio feedback. It does when I’m playing, and I’ve got a good enough sense of rhythm to play drums. A metronome gets picked up on the same audio track and can’t be removed. Another approach is to play along to the other parts, but to pipe these into an earpiece so that I can hear what I’m playing with one ear, hear what the computer’s playing with the other, watch the sheet music, and capture only my live instrument.

Theoretically plugging in an acoustic instrument can work with a flute mic that’ll only pick up what a wind instrument is producing without all the ambient noise. Expensive and Not Coming in Doha™(q.v.)

It’s all a little easier with the EWI. I can plug the output from that instrument directly into the computer as if it’s an external mic. When I play the synch track through the computer I can hear it, but the computer only records what is coming out of the EWI. But because nothing is easy, I can’t hear what I’m playing. So I have to plug the EWI into a separate speaker. I’ve got a Fender Mustang Mini practice amp, so I use that. It’s the one I use for playing when I’m not using headphones and am disinclined to show consideration to my neighbours.

The net result, once I’ve made separate clean audio recordings of each line and separately captured each as audio and video, I can mix the audio and then add that to the video tracks. I do need to get all the video playback speeds exactly right so that audio and video match, and this is proving a challenge. Perhaps I need to pay for better video editing software, or learn how to use the package I’ve got.

The other thing, which is actually pivotal to success, is learning how to play the bluddy instruments!

]}:-{>

I aten't dead

Esmerelda Weatherwax

The blog has been quiet of late because nothing of any significance has happened.

Six days shalt thou labour, and on the seventh day shall thou be confronted by the Client, who has a proper two-day weekend, and verily shall he insist on talking Shop. Yea, and verily shall there be a full, frank, and extremely profane exchange of views.

That was the excitement last weekend.

This weekend, such as it is, consisted of me adding to my collection of musical recordings and uploading them to YouTube. I have at last figured out how to get the EWI to sound reasonable when piped through the computer. Increase the sampling rate. A welcome side effect is the sound that now comes out of the machine is no longer delayed, so I hear what I’m playing pretty much immediately rather than a fraction of a second late, which makes playing to anything like a sensible tempo a questionable ability.

My own ability remains fairly questionable, but abetted by a microphone, some coaxial cables, a computer, a webcam and sound card, and Audacity I have been having some fun recording and mixing. A recent effort produced three tracks of Muggins playing Misirlou on three tenor recorders. Actually one recorder, recorded three times and then multi-tracked. Arranged, mixed, and performed by me.

Interesting that Dick Dale and the Deltones (who did the extremely electric version of Misirlou that you know from Pulp Fiction) hold the copyright. I’m amused that a tune that existed before 1919 and is performed by me off sheet music published in 1936 can be copyright DD&D in 1963. However, I’m not a copyright lawyer, so I guess I’ll suck up the ads that may pop up on YouTube.

For what it’s worth, anyone who wishes to see and hear my eclectic collection of musical work may search for my real name on YouTube with the word ‘recorder’.

The job continues to stink. The Minister of Paper Clips, who says he’s desperate for all the designs to be completed, delights in finding further and more ingenious ways to delay his approvals. A recent one was to resubmit everything he’s already got in a slightly different format. He’ll be getting it in 16-point Comic Sans  if I get my way, along with a plain brown envelope containing some non-toxic crayons.

That’s it then. Day in, day out. Six days a week. I’ve not been out of the region since August 2015 and I’m getting a little stir crazy. There is a trip to UK planned, but that’s not until September 2016, and I have insufficient annual leave to go anywhere else between now and then.

I am holding on to my life, but my sanity is in tatters.

]}:-{>

Regression to mean

Flaxton Faun

It seems that the Goat is doomed to mediocrity. His body absolutely refuses to lose enough weight to get his Body Mass Index below 30. The Goat believes that using BMI as the sole arbiter of overall fitness is flawed. However, it would still be nice not to be labelled as ‘obese’ by the ill-educated Ticky-Box Police. Despite a carefully calorie-controlled diet since the summer of 2013 and steady loss of now over 20% of his body mass because he really was a great lardarse, the Goat has plateaued. Every time he approaches BMI = 30 it’s as if his body recoils in horror and weight gains ensue This despite his consuming ever-decreasing numbers of calories, and despite exercise.

Beloved Wife says that the problem lies with cortisol, which is a hormone released in response to stress and – long story short – pushes up the weight.

The Goat maintains a balanced diet, consumes sensible quantities of healthy vegetables, and generally avoids burgers, crisps, and similar junk. But everything pushes up the Goat’s weight, including air.

Stress -> cortisol -> weight gain
Diet -> hunger -> unhappiness -> stress -> cortisol -> weight gain
Depression -> stress -> cortisol -> weight gain
Starvation -> famine mode -> weight gain

It says here in the University of Interweb’s Faculty of Wikipedia that music therapy can reduce cortisol levels.

As is now well documented, the Goat plays flute-like wind instruments. A six-hole ocarina, recorders, and the recorders’ electric ally the EWI. He was also given a blues harmonica for Christmas, and has been struggling with this one too. Yesterday, the Goat spent all day in front of his home computer with the EWI, some music notes, a load of electric string, and a video capture device. He tried and tried. And tried and tried and tried. And tried. After nearly 100 takes, he had a couple of tunes recorded and posted on Facebook. They are still littered with misfingered notes, completely wrong notes, and horrible ‘how do I finger that again?’ pauses. As the Goat has been at this music playing thing on and off for about 40 years, and has been playing almost daily for the past three or four, it seems disappointing that he seems to have plateaued at this still mediocre level.

Oh, he has improved. He’s no longer scared of the ‘black notes’ and will have a pop at anything in most key signatures. However, some keys are appallingly difficult on a recorder, or anything with similar fingering, and he prefers C,D, F, G and their relative minors. (Technical note for any actual musicians who may have blundered into this blog.) Not that the Goat can sight-read music at anything like the speed required.

But, when it comes down to it, the Goat’s ability falls far short of a live public performance. He occasionally goes along to Open Mic nights with intent to play. These might be essentially Karaoke without a backing track and in front of a benign audience, but the moment the other performers start it becomes extremely obvious that the Goat is catastrophically outclassed and he’s too embarrassed or intimidated to get the instrument out of its bag.

Back to cortisol. The Goat’s music therapy, far from reducing stress, actually boosts it with the frustrations of his inability. And having blown his entire one-day weekend on this exercise in futility, he’s back to work specifically and solely to subject himself to six more days of stress.

]}:-{>

The abbreviated versions

Picked up in part from my lustrious career with the Norfolke Trayned Bandes, here is an incomplete list of some songs that are perhaps shorter than anticipated...

Red, Red Robin

When the red, red robin

Comes bob-bob-bobbin' along,

Shoot the bastard!

Shoot the bastard!

Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!

Widecombe Fair

Tom Pearce, Tom Pearce,

Lend me you grey mare.

All along, down along, out along lea.

For I want to go to Widecombe Fair

With Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer,

Peter Gurney, Peter Davey,

Daniel Whitton, Harry Hawke,

And Uncle Tom Cobbley and all,

And Uncle Tom Cobbley and all.

"No!"

Green Grow The Rushes, O

I'll sing you one, oh!

Oh, no you won't, you know!

Exodus

There are some things

Man was not meant to know,

And songs man was not meant to sing,

And this is one of them.

]}:-{>

Happy birthday, NTB

English Civil War re-enactment.
That's Muggins, over there on the far, far left.

Photo from Sir Thomas Tyldesley's Regiment of Foote FB page, edited by me.

Well, I’m back. As discussed in my immediately previous post, the main reason for spending ten days in England was to attend an English Civil War re-enactment at Marlborough in Wiltshire. I wouldn’t normally have made the effort, but it was the Norfolke Trayned Bandes’ fortieth birthday party. We’ve been re-enacting the Civil war for rather longer than the actual seventeenth-century event.

Having arrived in Plymouth in the wee hours, courtesy of Qatar Airways and National Express coaches, I grabbed some sleep and then enjoyed the first of a series of hearty English breakfasts. Huzzah for Nanny Goat! That evening, it being Nephew #1’s eighteenth birthday, I took him down the pub and force-fed him beer. He’d obviously never drunk beer in a pub before. As I’d not had any ‘proper’ real ale since last October, my first pint unsurprisingly hardly touched the sides. For shame! Nephew #1 was to get his birthday present a few days later, wherein he’d hurl himself from a serviceable aircraft in a tandem skydive. I’ve seen the photos, but as they’ve STILL not been uploaded on to social media, my plan to post one here still sits firmly in the Pending tray.

At last. Over a year later I've finally got the pic.

Nanny Goat had very kindly offered the use of her new car. She disposed of her ten-year-old City Rover earlier this year and purchased a very clean 2011 Toyota Aygo. It burns about half the petrol that the Rover did, which means 44mpg around town and an excellent 55mpg under my rather heavy right hoof on a long run. For the ECW muster trip I had a passenger, and by dropping the back seats this minuscule car swallowed all of our kit, a birthday cake, and had room to spare.

I am, in fact, not left-handed!

Speaking of kit, I rummaged in the attic and have rescued some of my other re-enactment costumes and hardware. I decided not to import my spring-steel cup-hilt rapier into the UAE, and that’s still languishing in England. For the weekend, I borrowed a massive tent, an air mattress, sleeping bag, etc. Only afterwards did I discover my old tent in Nanny Goat’s attic, by which time it was too late.

The weekend weather in Marlborough was truly excellent, except for one squally downpour that hit the campsite while I was halfway through erecting my tent. It was up sufficiently to provide shelter for several campers. Having established camp, I and several many Norfolkes headed off to the small but perfectly-formed beer tent. I deployed my recorder, and there was much singing well into the night. I’m mildly surprised how many songs I could remember after a gap of over sixteen years.

Drill occurred on Saturday morning after an unhealthy breakfast at the burger van and a second breakfast back at the Norfolkes’ campsite. Drill is a practice for the afternoon’s battle. As a drum wasn’t available, I took the opportunity to take photos. I’d not be taking a camera on to the field during the actual battle. Anyway, I’d have a drum and therefore no free hands.

Norfolkes engage Blackwells and Tyldesleys.
There might be a certain amount of violence.

And after drill, a small group including myself wandered down the hill into Marlborough in search of provisions and refreshment. The Town Council who were sponsoring the event as part of commemoration of the real Siege of Marlborough (December 1642) wished members to go into town in full seventeenth-century kit. Several went armed with swords. 

At the Green Dragon Inn, there were real ales for sale, left over from a recent beer festival, at a splendid £2 a pint (which is nearly half-price for Dyne Sythe). I confessed that my tankard held slightly more than a pint; the landlord thanked me for my honesty and filled it to the brim anyway. As I was dressed like a Hobbit, I found it necessary to play music from Lord of the Rings in the bar (to applause) and then we retired to the beer garden for pipe-weed and more music. And more ale, I confess.

Birthday cakes.

The Norfolkes’ 40th birthday party was at the campsite after the battle, where much cake, booze, and food was consumed.

And then on Sunday, we did it all again, except that this time the Royalists won.

Back to Plymouth, and to my delight Nanny Goat had had her new internet delivered. She’s now decided to drag herself into the 21^st century. “Old Mrs Brady is 86 and she uses Skype and Facebook. If she can do it…”

Plymouth Sound.

I unpacked the modem/router and plugged it in. It was ready to go after about five minutes. There was no computer in the house except for my telephone. After trips to the computer shops, Nanny Goat has decided she wants a tablet computer. Something that’ll do email, Skype, and a bit of web browsing. She’s taking lessons and advice from her tech-savvy grandson, my Nephew #2, and will probably pick up a Samsung Galaxy for a knock-down discount when the 2015 models start to appear. Incidentally, I’m astounded to see Nanny Goat gets over 12Mbps, and she pays a mere £5 per month more than for just the telephone landline. The router is free.

Speaking of Nephew #2, my sister suggested that he might like to spend some quality time with his uncle, so the two of us went karting. He’s about half my weight, so unsurprisingly quicker on the track. To my irritation, I only discovered that it was possible to do the tight chicane at full throttle during the third and final session on the track. Nanny Goat took pictures, politely declining the opportunity to demonstrate to us how karting should be done.

Nephew in Kart 9 gives chase to his XXL uncle in Kart 10

Kart 9 overtakes Kart 10.

All too soon, I was back in Dubai with a suitcase stuffed with liquorice from Tiger Treats of Looe, and historical costume and hardware but no sword. Beloved Wife, recently returned from nearly a month in the United States, would be off to Budapest in a day or so, and would I like to come?

And so it came to pass that I hardly had time to download my photos before the pair of us were off to Hungary for a few days. But that’s another story for another blog post.

]}:-{>

Norse saga. Part IV – Norway Horsey

Wednesday 14 August

Twilight moon through some rigging.

We had an early departure from our subterranean Stockholm hotel, whose corridors looked exactly like those on the ferry. We didn’t have time for breakfast, but as that wasn’t included in the room rate it wasn’t a loss. The train to Oslo was not a sleek bullet train, but it seemed to travel fast enough through some very pretty fields, forests, and lakeland scenery.

Unfortunately, some yoof sitting exactly opposite us could have been the star of all Swedish translations of Tom Stoppard’s Talking Heads plays. This motormouth didn’t let up for six hours. If it wasn’t his mates (who couldn’t get a word in edgeways) it was his telephone victims. Even the next carriage, full of screaming brats, was inaudible: drowned out by Monologue Man.

The hotel turned out to be rather further from the railway station than originally planned, and then owing to map-reading challenges, wasn’t actually so far after all. We checked in, dropped our bags, changed, and then headed out for an afternoon snack and to be amused by the buskers, who included a double-bass player, and someone playing Bach’s Toccata in D-Minor on a piano accordion. The Living Statues don’t seem to get the idea at all, especially the ‘statue’ bit.

Oslo Fortress is free to get in, which was just as well because the various exhibitions where admission is payable were shut this late in the afternoon. The setting sun offered excellent light for interesting photographs.

Main entrance to Oslo fortress. There's a bridge over a dry moat and a wooden drawbridge.

Looks like someone's only blown the bloody doors off.

Inside Oslo fortress.

Oslo fortress: sea view.

And down on the quayside, the Mazda MX-5 Owners Club was having an informal meeting, so we chatted to the owners. Beloved Wife thinks she knows what her next car might be.

The light blue Miata/MX5 looks like it does the occasional track day. The dark blue one is more desirable because it has a retractable hard top that doesn't use up any space in the boot.

A lot of people were strolling on the sea front, and there was some kind of stage set up. It turned out that the Olso Philharmonic was about to perform Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony to an open-air audience, so instead of immediately heading for food, we hung around and listened. Additional soloists included Olaf Ericsson on the Harley-Davidson, and some yapping from Bark.

After sunset, which occurs just after 9pm in Oslo, the temperature dropped markedly. Immediately following the concert, we headed off to the nearest plausible restaurant. Chinese green tea, Hot and Sour soup, and Pork and Chilli were all extremely welcome, as was the 30m walk from the restaurant to the hotel.

Thursday 15 August

The hotel breakfast is comprehensive and excellent. At last, bacon! And fried eggs too. Then to the sea front for a ferry across the bay.

Ferry 91 is a bus for the purposes of public transport tickets. I headed off to obtain day passes from a machine on the quayside, only to be thwarted by the demand for payment. The machine didn’t take cash, would only accept a card with an embedded chip, and then wanted nothing to do with the six-digit PIN supplied by my Local Global bank. It’s four digits in Norway, or it’s no way.

I got day passes for cash from a manned booth, and got aboard the ferry mere nanoseconds before cast-off, and nobody checked the tickets anyway. We’re supposed to activate the 24-hour tickets by wafting them in front of a card reader on board, but no such device was in evidence.

After disembarking (‘debarking’ is what you do to tree trunks) our first destination was the Norsk Folkemuseum, a large partially wooded area of reassembled historical buildings from Norway’s past. The stave church has been dendrochronologically dated to 1212, complete with dragons in some conflation of Christianity and Nordic myth, and was refurbished in the nineteenth. 

Gol stave church, resited in this museum.

Dragons!

Stave church interior.

Some of the buildings were populated by Living History people in costume. A nineteenth-century schoolroom demonstrated those infamous Victorian values: one of the punters’ children was visibly disturbed when he saw a naughty schoolboy being given a simulated caning. They don’t do that in Scandinavia any more: it’s the law.

Schoolroom. The lesson was in Norwegian, but the map seems to indicate the lesson was about Palestine.

Other delights included the bread-making, and a 1950 farm with real, live animals. Well, a pig. While the girls on a school field trip went to find the animals, the boys all climbed aboard an ancient tractor.

I was assured by a re-enacting farmer that this lady will never find her way on to a dinner plate. She's got a lovely porcinality, and is ideally suited for a petting zoo.

My great uncle had one of these, and when I was that young I too used to climb all over it.

We didn’t bother with the horse and buggy ride. The horse was, I had explained to me because I know about 0.0001% of what there is to know about horses, a Norwegian Fjord Horse. Small, strong, low maintenance, good temperament, and a very old breed. The animal’s mane had been clipped to show off a distinctive and completely natural dark stripe. Here, at last, is the reference to the Norway horsey mentioned in the blog post title!

The stripe is emphasised by roaching(US)/hogging(UK) the mane.

We chatted briefly to some costumed musicians and I tried to play a ram’s-horn recorder, a musical instrument that probably suits me far too well. I couldn’t get Bach’s Bourée out of it (too many black notes) but was more successful with the Horses’ Bransle. Then the re-enactors stepped outside for some traditional music and dancing.

Traditional Scandinavian dancing.

Fiddling about.

It was a short walk from the Folk Museum to the Vikingskiphuset. In this apparently converted church are three Viking longships, funeral artifacts, and the mortal remains of three Vikings. These were all originally unearthed from burial mounds in the 1920s, unless you count the grave robbers in the ninth century who had it away with the gold and jewels and scattered the human remains over a wide area.

The Oseberg ship.

Exquisite carving work on the prow.

Further to matters maritime, the walk from the Viking Ship museum to the Thor Heyerdahl Kon-Tiki museum looked like a long one, so we returned to the ferry and caught No 91 for a very short boat ride. Kon-Tiki and the Maritime museums all shut at 1800, and it was now 1710, so we chose Kon-Tiki and spent fifty minutes checking out the photo galleries and both Kon-Tiki (1947: balsa wood raft that travelled from South America to Polynesia) and Ra II (1970: papyrus boat that sailed from Morocco to Barbados).

Kon-Tiki.

Ra II.

And there was stuff about Easter Island too. Did you know that the famous stern stone-faced moai are actually from the waist up and not just head and shoulders? For unknown reasons, most of the carved body details are buried. Heyerdahl’s team took a shipload of plaster with them specifically to make a cast of a full-length statue, and this full-size copy is in the museum. The moai are, in fact, huge.

Naturally, because all the museums shut at spot on 1800, the queue for the 1830 ferry back to Oslo centre was immense and the ferry left full with a large queue remaining.

It was sunny, and there was a bit of a breeze, so the rag-and-stick brigade was all out in force. One racing yacht was presumably practising as back and forth it sailed. Downwind with the spinnaker deployed, then tacking upwind, and repeat. The amusement of standing in a queue watching the boats would have been much reduced had the weather been wet.

Tacking upwind.

Running before the wind.

The next ferry was due at 1900, but the local public transport actually sent a special extra at 1845 to remove us, and most of the queue, back to Oslo city centre.

So back to the hotel for a short break, then we headed out for a most excellent steak dinner at the Nyborg Steakhouse right near that main railway station. Not cheap, but nothing is in Norway. Then back to the hotel, picking our way between the hen parties and professional beggars on their mobile phones, to a well-earned tryptophan coma.

]}:-{>

Recorder tune

Image: Jakegothicsnake
 on deviantART

I’ve been fond of music since my second (Chamber of Secrets) year at secondary school. I joined the school choir and discovered to my delight that I could be a part of polyphonic singing. Chords. Harmonies. Fugues. Clever stuff. I’ve been a member of various choirs, choral societies and barber-shop quartets on and off ever since. It’s helped me to learn to read music. I have never been much good at this, but I can – blob by blob if it isn't too complicated – figure out which note to sing, and for how long.

But as for playing a musical instrument, that skill eluded me. Perhaps I should have gone to recorder classes when I was ten, but I honestly thought the school meant tape recorders, and nobody told me otherwise. By the time I found out that a recorder was a musical instrument, it was too late as I’d been signed up by my parents to play foopball and rounders. We all know how much I love athletic sports.

My kid sister was given an electric chord organ a couple of years later, which I was Not Allowed To Play. She also started on the recorder, but never played it and I eventually ended up with the instrument and The School Recorder Book One.

Almost all of my schoolfriends played the piano; one or two also played guitar and other instruments. I managed to talk the school’s music professor into lending me an ancient clarinet for private practice. I tried and tried, but as the house where I lived was a Wimpey hutch with paper-thin walls, I never got past the tooting and parping stage. 

“Either play a proper tune, or not at all” was my father’s ultimatum, so the clarinet went back to school. There was, basically, no music at home unless you count Terry Wogan’s breakfast radio show and my mother Nanny Goat’s early morning singing (which is just fine unless you’re not a morning person). Hence my almost total ignorance of sixties and seventies music.

I tried and failed to learn to play the guitar. I’ve always been hopelessly flummoxed by any form of stringed instrument, I seem to lack the co-ordination required to play keyboards, I can’t get any sensible sound out of a brass instrument, and although I’ve dabbled with percussion, a drumkit isn’t something you can carry around in your pocket. 

So for about thirty years, on and off, I’ve been messing with recorders, ocarinas, and penny whistles. A former girlfriend gave me a magnificent wooden tenor recorder in 1989 (the fingering is identical to that of the traditional school descant recorder, but it plays an octave lower), and someone in the English Civil War Society (ECWS) gave me a Bakelite treble recorder that was broken, but if I could repair it I could have it. I replaced the missing piece of Bakelite with Milliput and it’s been fine ever since. I still have the original wooden descant, and that instrument’s got to be over forty years old and still going strong  despite much abuse.

I’m sure that I saw someone playing in a live band in an ECWS beer tent on an electric, amplified recorder, but it took about twenty years to do something about it. More of this anon…

For the past couple of years, Beloved Wife and I have attended a pre-Christmas party with some musical friends. The basic idea is to bring a dish, and to sing and/or play Christmas carols in the small music room. The usual suspects play guitars, saxophone, flute, and piano. I showed up with my voice and my recorders.

I was, and continue to be, horribly outclassed musically. I can sing OK, or at least hold a tune in a bucket, but my playing leaves much to be desired in the Department of Correct Notes. Most of this is a requirement to practise, but there’s another issue: competing against a host of concert instruments, the unamplified recorder is virtually inaudible. This is why the recorder dropped out of fashion centuries ago. Orchestras got bigger and louder, and the poor recorder simply couldn’t compete with the volume. You can’t blow harder without making ghastly squeaking noises. Obviously, I need some form of electric pickup. If Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson has one, which I know he has because I’ve seen it attached to his flute, I should be able to buy one somewhere.

At this point, the shop assistant in Thomsun Music, Wafi City, Dubai, showed me Akai’s EWI, or Electric Wind Instrument. It was stupidly expensive, so I bought mine from Sax.co.uk in London. Actually, it was a Christmas present from Beloved Wife. The EWI (“Eewee”) is a MIDI breath controller. It translates breath force and keys pressed into a musical note. Output is through a thick coaxial cable to an amplifier, or directly into headphones. This is win/win. I can now make plenty of volume when playing live, but can practise using headphones so that the rest of the universe is kept in blissful ignorance of my many, many mistakes.

I configured my EWI to play with more-or-less flute fingerings because those are very similar to those of a recorder. Other musicians might prefer to select ‘Oboe’ or ‘Saxophone’. With dozens of different voices to choose from, I can have the instrument sound like a clarinet, bassoon, saxophone, flute, or any of a host of other instruments and occasionally very wacky sounds. I was piping the sound through the stereo until I bought a guitar amplifier than comes with dozens of presets so I can now, if I wish, sound like Hendrix. Yeah, in my dreams.

I’ve been practising. I like to pick up either a recorder or EWI every day, and I’ve been downloading sheet music (most of which is too difficult to play) off the interwebs, and trying to build a repertoire. Most of my stuff is dimly remembered seventeenth and eighteenth century stuff and simple folk tunes, but I’ve also been working on other pieces including Christmas carols, some Bach, Sousa, and Abe Holzmann’s Blaze Away:

I love to go swimmin’ with bow-legged women

And swim between their legs…etc.

Seems a lot of popular music and big-band stuff comes pitched in keys that are awkward for flute fingering. It’s not exactly ‘too many black notes,’ but fingering that’s difficult for a novice. There’s a remark here possibly involving Old Goat and New Trick.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever be a particularly good musician, but I amuse myself. If I can actually amuse anyone else without too much embarrassment, that’ll be a bonus.

]}:-{>

Grandpa's Advice

Totally by accident I found this song. Turns out it was written by Adie Grey and Dave MacKenzie and performed by Adie Grey. Being a song about motoring, it even found its way on to NPR's Car Talk programme.

I found the music here between 2'50" and 6'22" on a short video involving Royal Enfield motorcycle maintenance.

Verse 1
I remember Sunday drivin’ in my Grandpa’s car.
Old songs on the radio; the smell of his cigar.
Everybody’d honk at him because he’d drive so slow.
He’d just laugh and tell me, “Kid, here’s something you should know...

Chorus 1
They’re all jerks!
When you’re out here on your own,
Just assume that everybody else is half-asleep or stoned.
They’re all jerks,
And not a one knows how to drive,
So you gotta pay attention to make it home alive.
I’ll give you my philosophy, I guarantee it works:
Repeat it after me, kid: They’re all jerks!”

Verse 2
He said, “They’ll let any fool with money buy himself a car
And you can get a license here, however dumb you are.
Oh, they all turn into hotrods when they slide behind the wheel.
When you get old enough to drive, remember here’s the deal:

Repeat Chorus 1

Verse 3
Twenty-five years later, I’ve got children of my own,
And I do all the driving between school and job and home.
Sometimes on the weekends we head out for the beach.
Now with the kids strapped in the backseat, now it’s my turn to teach.

So every time I’m cut off by some wise-guy in a truck,
Or some hero in a sports car whose gotta push his luck,
I don’t get scared or angry, I just sing this little song.
It always cheers me up to hear my children sing along:

Chorus 2
They’re all jerks!
When you’re out here on your own,
Just assume that everybody else is drunk or on the phone.
They’re all jerks!
And not a one knows how to drive,
So you gotta pay attention to make it home alive.
I’ll give you my philosophy, I guarantee it works.
Repeat it after me, kids: They’re all jerks!
I said,
Repeat it after me, kids: They’re all jerks!

]}:-{>

There and back again

Thank you so much, Beloved Wife, for the Christmas present of an EWI. What is an EWI? It's an Electric Wind Instrument; essentially a synthesiser that the player blows into, and produces music by fingering the keys as if it's a flute, or recorder, or oboe, or saxophone. I use the term "music" loosely, but because the instrument is electronic, all the tooting and parping during practice can be limited to the player's headphones.

The EWI came from Sax.co.uk in London, a shop that specialises in saxophones but that has a sideline in other woodwind instruments. They were very helpful.

Unfortunately, my EWI has a fault, in that it won't play if it's plugged in to an external power supply. Sax.co.uk have agreed that the unit should be replaced. All I have to do is get the existing one to London and they'll swap it. Simples.

Herein lies the problem. Aramex, who do so well with their Shop-n-Schlep service, won't insure the package without seeing the original receipt. I did show them a document entitled "Customer Receipt," but apparently that's not good enough. Aramex also want a sizeable portion of the value of the instrument just to ship it: Five hundred dirhams.

At least the thing will run perfectly on four AA batteries, and you can buy a lot of Duracells for less than five hundred dirhams.

But I've encountered Aramex's reluctance to ship from the UAE before. How is anyone supposed to ship used goods when they won't accept them for carriage without seeing some form of invoice, and they won't insure without an original sales invoice that Aramex alone will decide is acceptable. I didn't have any sales paperwork for a small gift that Aramex refused point-blank to ship to Australia.

One solution is to use Emirates Post, where they'll accept a package provided the sender fills in a customs declaration that gets stuck on to the package. Another is to beg favours from colleagues, friends or relatives who are travelling internationally.

]}:-{>

Frantic corybantic antics

The Goat has been busy. Too busy, in fact, to put in writing those delightful little quirks of Life in the Lands of the Sand. The latest ignominies perpetrated by that old faithful Red Triangles Bank shall, for the time being, go unblogged. So too shall the Goat's most recent experiences with Itisalot.

Most of the Goat's frantic lifestyle derives from living in the Crumbling Villa and working in Abu Dhabi. This eats up about 14 hours a day, leaving six for sleeping and the remaining five for shopping, eating, cleaning, blogging and shoring up the Villa's most urgent crumbles. Yes, that does add up to more than 24, which illustrates the point.

Since commenting on a previous blog post about how the commute was made marginally more tolerable by having the BBC World Service on the radio, the Goat was astonished one evening to encounter classical music on 87.9MHz instead of 'Outlook'. He actually phoned the radio station broadcasting this music to be told that "We've stolen the frequency from the BBC. Shhh!"

It turns out that without notice, Auntie Beeb - or at least the Foreign Office, which apparently is the entity that funds the World Service - stopped renting the VHF band in the UAE, and listeners are obliged to use Short Wave on a variety of frequencies that change throughout the day. Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi Classic FM broadcasts on 87.9MHz in Dubai, 91.6MHz in Abu Dhabi and 105.2MHz in Al Ain. Although until last week the Abu Dhabi signal was so feeble it was amost inaudible even in the Capital.

Classic FM in the UK was once described by one of the presenters as "A rock-music station that plays classical rather than rock music." Is Abu Dhabi Classic FM essentially the same station? Certainly the station's theme tune is the same, and the playlist generally comprises bite-size chunks of mostly well-known pieces of music composed mainly by dead guys in wigs. Cue Monty Python's "Decomposing Composers" song.

Not that the Goat is complaining. It beats the pants off boom-tsch boom-tsch boom-tsch boom-tsch and tech-tech-tech-techno pop, and takes some of the sting out of the daily commute. Longer tunes mean a lower deejay/music ratio, and this is generally a Good Thing.

Some observations. Three-in-a-row plays take about 20 minutes, and then there's a distinct lack of back-announcing by the deejay. What was that tune? It sounded like Mozart, or one of that crowd (thank you Tom Lehrer), but from which five-act opera that he wrote when he was nine? It is immensely irritating to get to the end of a long series of pieces, only then to cut to the news or other public announcement.

And to the presenters: please, please, please note: Playing classical guitar is not something John Williams does while he's not conducting the Boston Pops. John Towner Williams wrote the music for Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Schlindler's List, ET, Harry Potter and Superman; John Christopher Williams is the guitarist and former member of Sky.

Finally, the cacophone is a theoretical musical instrument that should not be given any air time. Its name is derived from either of two origins; possibly both. Experimental music, including playing all the black notes at the same time, torturing tuneless scratching out of a violin, and beating a trombone with a hockey stick, have no place in the Goat's music collection.

Oh, and the Goat's musical taste is somewhat eclectic. Look at the screenshot from his Facebook page.

]}:-{>

Happy eightieth birthday, Tom

3 4 2
1 7 3 -
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1 4 7

I first encountered Tom Lehrer at the age of around 22. Unlike most of his fans who seem to have been inducted during their Bright College Days, I'd already graduated and had a proper, albeit poorly-paid, job. During the week I lived and worked in Sevenoaks in Kent, having left My Home Town in search of gainful employment (as per Norman Tebbit’s dad), but most weekends I stayed in a disreputable house in Portsmouth with my old college buddies. We would have drunk lots of beer if we hadn't all been so cripplingly poor. Instead, we painted wargaming miniatures and indulged in table-top wargames, roleplaying and computer games. Does anyone remember the Sinclair Spectrum’s 'Elite'? A quarter of a century later, I’m pleased to report that we now all have lives, thank you. But I digress. Occasionally during our riotous evenings in this hotbed of celibacy someone would pull out an ancient vinyl disc of An Evening (Wasted) with Tom Lehrer, and very soon I found myself singing along.

As Lehrer points out on the album soundtrack, The Elements 'may prove useful to some of you someday, under a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances', and this is indeed what happened. I learned it, and have performed it live for Redditch Choral Society, Tinker's Farm Opera, and even the Doha Players. The latter was part of my bit for a revue show; other bits included When You are Old and Gray, I Hold Your Hand In Mine and the extremely dubious Masochism Tango.

It came as a shock to a pub pianist in Loughborough to discover, when he played We’ll All Go Together When We Go, that at least one of the patrons – you can guess which one – knew all the words and the tune.

At one point I even borrowed a copy of the 'Tomfoolery' vocal score and jotted down the alternative lyrics in my copy of Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer (and Not Enough Drawings by Ronald Searle) (Pantheon, 1981, ISBN 0-394-74930-8). Not that I can read music, of course. My own ability with reading the blobs is extremely limited. I learned to sing most of Tom Lehrer's works by listening to my three CD set of Tom Lehrer Revisited, An Evening (Wasted)... and That Was The Year That Was.

So who enjoys Tom Lehrer? Typically it’s college students, even after they’ve grown up and got jobs, mortgages, families, a semi-detached Ford Mondeo and 2.2 pinstriped garden gnomes. Apparently, those who can appreciate the vocabulary and still enjoy scatological humour and smutty innuendo.

That’s me, that is. If it’s also you, this link might prove entertaining.

]}:-{>

Carnal Banana

Actually, this has very little to do with Sins of the Flesh and even less to do with bananas. It's a plug for the Dubai Singers' forthcoming performance of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. The performance will be in the DUCTAC main theatre on Thursday 9th March. Tickets will be Dh 75.

There is so much more to this work than the Old Spice advert or the misadventures of some kid called Damien Thorn. I'd go as far as to admit that Carmina Burana is one of my favourite choral pieces. Another is Mozart's Requiem. So I'm not such an uncultured oaf after all

So why am I not in it? Mainly because to my annoyance every rehearsal so far has been on a Monday, and therefore clashes with the dive club meeting. Plus, I've just booked a holiday in Thailand and the only outbound flight available that suits my itinerary and allows me to use Qatar Airways frequent-flyer miles is also on 9th March. As I'll not have been out of the UAE for 272 days by that time (trips to Hatta and Buraimi don't count) and 285 days since I'll have been out of the Gulf, I think I owe it to myself to go and look at some scenery that's not brown.