Dad3353

I play drums, but this ^^^^ is exactly how I've always done it. With five-hour variety shows, with drums in every number and several segue sessions, it worked for me. After a few decades, it all starts to make sense, and one can 'feel' the way through new stuff, but only after having put in the hours, I found. Retired, mostly, now, but I still write out stuff that I want to study.

Bring your own matches.

I may have posted this, a few years back, but I can't find it, soooooo... The scene..? The local annual festival (Les Trois Elephants, France...) which attracted 300 volunteers, and 10-15000 visitors. I was, for several years, one of the standing committee to manage it all. One of the specialities, other than an excellent programme of top and up-and-coming acts, was street art, jugglers, theatre, odds and sods of all sorts, all with a festive spirit. That year, we rummaged through some brain-storming ideas of things to put on, apart from the rock concerts, main stage. I had worked for an enterprise importing second-hand pianos from the North of England to France, to be refurbished and sold here. In this, I had contacts with a major supplier of pianos, and knew that they had a massive stock of unsalable joannas, gleaned from modest homes all around the North. I 'phoned them, and organised a shipment of a trailer-load of these old wrecks, to be delivered to the festival site a week or so before the 'off'. The idea was thus : The fifty or so pianos were to be stacked, to build the Biggest Bonfire of Pianos in the World. It would be laden with divers fireworks, with things like ping-pong balls between the strings, so that, in melting, sounds would emanate.I had even foreseen a couple of sacrificial microphones inside, to capture and broadcast the cacophony as they burned and fell, 'live', and record the feat. Alas, it all went awry when first one, then two, then more volunteers and committee members, in seeing these items, asked if one could be spared, as they wanted to give it a Good Home. By the time I became aware of this covert dilapidation of my pyramid stock, it was too late; half had been filched, and it was too late for me to complete the stock with enough to achieve the World Record I'd envisaged. The pianos were, in the end, dispersed around the site, tarted up with gaudy paint, and added to the atmosphere in a less spectacular style. The cost..? I had contacts with shippers, willing to come back from Blighty with any load rather than empty, and the job lot of duff, wooden-frame pianos cost even less than the transport. The biggest part of my budget was to be the pyrotechnics, which were not called upon in the end. A shame; I would have liked to have gone down in History holding that World Record title. The Festival has moved on since, so there is no longer an annual, national event here that I could pin this to. One day, maybe; one day...

A cup of hemlock for me, please.

Check that it's a piano with an iron frame, not a wooden one. A wooden frame piano cannot hold its tune, so not much point tuning it. In France (and maybe elsewhere...), such pianos are not classed as 'musical instruments', and cannot be sold as such, but only as 'furniture', for decoration. Just a thought.

Indeed. ...

It matters little to me, as I close my eyes when listening to Good Music, usually.

I was earning just under £6 a week back then, as a BEA avionics apprentice. Just sayin'.

You are @Leonard Smalls and I claim my £5.

Project Spare Parts ...

Bass - lead - amp (clip/on tuner...) because that's the sound we like from the bass. If it ain't busted, don't fix it; just a clean bass tone, s'all.

The ones that require a leap of faith..?

Thief steals guitar from shop ... ... and another ...

Tread carefully; you're addressing an ancien developer..! If one may only develop for next week's shiny gadget, one's product has a very short shelf-life. This, of course, makes sense for some folk (read 'industries'...), but some prefer keeping stuff going for a bit longer than the attention span of a ten-year old with too much pocket money. I always preferred stability over uber-powerful cutting edge, and had a healthy career in many IT roles. (It is, however, a crap 'tablet', I'll allow ; goodness knows with what delivery of mail-ordered slippers it came as a 'free gift', but I found it under a pile of old stuff carefully put aside by my late wife, many years ago. It turns on, and I found how to take a photo or video with it, then turned it off and put it away again. I wouldn't use it to handle the sound or lights to our cottage, let alone a concert. I have laptops for that, all PC OS stuff...).

I just listen to the music; I couldn't have helped the fellow then, and even less so now. Hejira is, of course, another gem from that stable.

Play closer to the bridge, adjusting volume levels as needed.