zbd1960

As a cellist I'd say make sure you don't skimp on the bow. Cheap bows are useless and will hinder your progress.

Today was a camera day - I was covering a touch rugby competition end of season finals day in Chester. Now have a mountain of photos to process

The C string on my cello would cost £125 to replace.... fortunately they last a long time

I know a husband and wife who perform as a duo (both play classical guitar and are opera singers) on cruises. They tend to get engagements for specific cruises, so will do 2 or 3 week stints periodically. I knew a sax player that did it - he was expected to double sax/clarinet for the onboard band and play several sizes of sax.

OK a bass playing post for a change! I've missed the last couple of jam session with the local rock school due to it conflicting with my holidays. The adult sessions are fortnightly, so it's been 6 weeks since I was there. One of the tutors there is my bass teacher. He's 25 and a music grad - he plays bass, guitar, keys, and drums. He also lives near the southern end of the county so he's nearly 50 miles away. The franchise is opening a new one somewhere much nearer to him so he's dropping my local one. It's understandable as a 50 miles rural drive is going to be around 90 minutes and not cheap with fuel costs. So last night was the last session there with him. It also means I've lost my bass teacher. For our 121 sessions, he see me either before or after the local sessions. Of the four bass teachers I've had, he's the only one I've made any progress with. The first one I never met as he kept cancelling. The second one I did meet a few times, but he quickly realised I was more qualified than he was..... The third one was strange - he'd run three students in separate rooms at the same time... Trouble was, I only found this local teacher as Covid hit, so we've had protracted periods of not being able to meet. Anyway, I'm now back to having no teacher. I can't imagine the local bass teacher scene has changed much since I last looked. All rather frustrating.

I only started playing just before my 60th.... In 1972 I could read music...

Agree with you. I think I'm a competent choral singer, but I never do solo as I don't think I'm good enough.

I posted in the thread about the questionable singer... and said I'd post more about the gig I had a few years ago. I used to play in an amateur orchestra in the Midlands. A well-known nightclub brand wanted to do an orchestral concert version of 90s/00s dance music. Now this is well outside of the comfort zone of your typical amateur orchestra and it required a lot of preparation, with months of rehearsals. First, the conductor had to engage an orchestrator to arrange the music for our forces, which were going to be augmented to make us a 60 piece orchestra (we're about 40 usually), which meant paid deps. In addition we needed a 5 piece horn section, a band (synths, guitars, bass, drum kit), gospel choir... So that the orchestra could rehearse, the orchestrator created a playable file with click track for rehearsals. The music was arranged as two continuous 1 hour sets. We spent months rehearsing. The last three rehearsals were with the extra players and the gospel choir. The final rehearsal was with the 4 vocal soloists. These are I believe 'well-known' performers of this music. Two were decent, two seemed to be more ego than ability. The gig was a sell out in a major concert hall (2,200). In addition to the musicians, there was a whole light and effects show, aerialists, dancers... The conductor had issues with one of the singers in the rehearsal. The singer didn't seem to understand that when you have about 80 musicians playing from a score, there is no way of looping back because you missed your entry. Trouble is he got lost in the performance as well and the conductor ended up making huge extravagant gestures and singing his part to cue the twit. The other singers were at least in the right place, although tuning was definitely a novelty for some of them. I have sung in choirs and performed in hundreds of concerts over the years. If we sang that badly we'd be embarrassed and we'd never hear the end of it.

hmmm... OK it's not a genre I normally sing (I'm a classical guy) but I have a lot of experience as a singer and I've had a lot of singing lessons. Basically, the guy does not know how to sing - end of story. Well done for getting him through it. Trouble is he'll probably think he can wing it next time as well. An orchestra I used to play in did a 90s/00s dance music gig - I'll put a more detailed post in my thread - but long story short: the 'name' artist didn't have a clue about how to sing with an orchestra. He was obviously used to being carried by the gig band. You cannot do that with 60 piece symphony orchestra. He didn't even know where to come in with his own songs...

Oops... I posted this in the wrong thread...

OK - very long day today of sight reading as I was playing cello in an all day workshop near Malvern. The work was Mahler Symphony #5. It needs a big orchestra e.g. 6 horns, 4 trumpets 4 trombones... I've attached a PDF of the cello part... Where there are multiple staves, it's because the cellos have to split. Usually the 'outside' player takes the top, and 'inside' the lower.

The musical world is small, and the early music world even smaller... I used ot go to early music summer schools and he'd often come along with a set of viols for people to play. Renaissance viols come in different shapes and pitches. The baroque viols from 1600s settled into a more standard shape and tunings. This is what Richard makes This is an original Henry Jaye viol This is a modern copy of a Jaye viol form 1624

Mine's a Czech instrument - nothing special. I've met Richard and played some of his viols - he mostly makes Renaissance ones rather than Baroque I think? You'd struggle to commission a tenor viol for less than £6k

The shape is reminiscent of a viola da gamba, which is what attracted me to it. My own tenor viol is rather more prosaic and commissioning a bass is a lot cheaper than a viol.

I've done the odd sax workshop where there's been an expectation of some improv and i'm not much good at it - purely because it's not something I do on a regular basis. It's another skill that can be learnt

Some classical musicians do improvise, it's just that in many of the genres they play, it is not a requirement. For example, organists are trained to improvise from day 1 and it's a fundamental part of getting your ARCO or FRCO (Associate/Fellow of Royal College of Organists). Baroque soloists are also expected to improvise, but it's mostly decorative improvisation. The cadenzas in classical concertos were originally improvised, and some players do, but often they learn a cadenza created by another soloist from the past.

I've seen several posts here about the difficulties of reading music and of sight-reading. As adults we tend to think we can do things 'straight away' once we've had something explained. This is generally not a realistic position. It's certainly not true of playing an instrument. Reading notation is akin to learning to read, only it's less complex as there are fewer symbols to learn: there are only 7 note names (A to G). What frustrates many adult learners is that their reading ability is out-of-step with their playing ability. That is purely down to practice. You don't go from Enid Blyton to Tolstoy quickly when learning to read and music is no different. Sight-reading is similar - you have to do it to improve and you have to start with simpler pieces. When I was in my 30s and I started singing lessons (never having sung a note, nor at that stage having really played an instrument). Each week my teacher would stick some random thing in front of me and say 'sing that'. He was making me sight read. At first it was hopeless/impossible. Over time you recognise intervals and you find you're doing it. You do more complex pieces, you get better at it. To improve sight reading you have to do it. My summer school last week was filled with sight reading since most pieces I'd never played before. Something I've suggested to others in the past is go to IMSLP.ORG and download something like a cello / bass / bassoon part (e.g. a concerto grosso by Handel) and use it to work on both reading bass and sight reading. The most important thing with sight reading is staying in time - wrong notes don't matter, but staying in rhythm does.

That's a weird paper saving device used by lead sheets - that's not how standard notation works, which puts the key signature on every line. First time I encountered a lead sheet that confused me

I believe music teachers use coloured overlay sheets to help people with dyslexia read music - I know no more than that, but might be useful?

I've played medleys in various orchestras and even simplified versions are tough! I know people who've played the Symphonic Dances which Bernstein himself arranged and they are said to be some of the toughest stuff out there, especially for rhythm

Yes, and because of the instruments I play, I can read all four standard clefs (bass, tenor, alto, and treble). Last week I did a lot of sight-reading at summer school for both cello and baritone sax. I taught myself and passed grade 6 music theory - when I get a chance I'll do 7 and 8.

A feature of most basses it seems when you buy them is that they come with a little packet of bits and pieces to help make adjustments, like the Allen keys necessary to adjust bridge saddles etc. Cellos and saxes do not have these luxuries... and last week at summer school that proved to be an issue. Saxophones are real Heath-Robinson beasts, although they have evolved and improved since their invention in the C19th by Adolphe Sax, they are still mechanically complex and have inherent tuning issues arising from the laws of physics. The woodwind instrument equivalent of 'action' is 'regulation'. Saxes have an assortment of mechanical contrivances to control the opening and closing of cup keys. Give a sax a stern look and it can go out of regulation. There are needle springs , levers, rods in the mix. Some of the springs hold things open, others hold things closed. There is an art to balancing the strength of the springs. If you get air leaks caused by pads on cup keys not seating properly, strange things can happen. To give you an idea of just ONE thing these have to do: to play in the second octave, you have to depress the octave key. This opens a valve on the body and it's engaged by rolling the tip of your left thumb when you reach D on the 4th line of the treble clef. However, when you get up to A, the body octave valve is closed and a second one on the neck is opened. If you come down from A, then the opposite happens... this happens automatically through a complex arrangement of levers. Anyway, I was in wind ensemble on Wednesday after lunch and suddenly there was either no sound coming out of the baritone or weird noises. I played down GFED in lower octave and sound generally went up, sometimes by a 12th or more. Going up, some notes went down... There was a great deal of whistling and parping... It was obviously leaking all over the shop. One obvious things was the little 'see-saw' that controls the octave mechanism wasn't working, but there were other issues as well. The needle springs all seemed to be hooked on and seated. The big band tutor was sitting in on clarinet and she came over and agreed something was loose... The conductor of the group is an oboist and she spotted it - one of the screws that goes into one of the control rods was proud by about 3mm, it had obviously been working its way out and the control rod was loose meaning various key cups were not seating properly... that rod had three major key cups attached to it. The solution was a jeweller's screwdriver, which I didn't have (I used to carry bits around but had got out of the habit). Fortunately, the oboist in the group had some stuff and we tightened it (oboists and bassonist always have a comprehensive kit of tools and assorted bit and pieces). Once tightened, all was fine. Just as well as the big band recital was later that evening... Lesson learnt. I am putting together the tools that need to be in music case. I get issues with the cello's end-pin getting stuck as well. So, a set of various types of small pliers, an assortment of small screwdrivers, some tweezers have been acquired. I just need to add a crochet hook (used to hook needle springs back on), some felt, and some blu-tac...

Somehow I've gone from zero to 5 quite quickly: Fender jazz; Sire Marcus Miller 5 string, Spector 6 string, ACG Krell 32/4, Manton Custom Titan 32/6...

Last week was a busy week at music summer school. I mostly played cello and bari sax, but the Krell had an outing. I've been to many music summer schools of different types over the last 25 years or so. This year's one is one where you sign-up for an assortment of activities rather than say just orchestra or wind band. There are multiple options you can choose for each of the six sessions each day, although some like chamber orchestra are double sessions which means you do 5 options. There are quite a few options to choose from ranging from solo and sight singing, to folk music, trad and modern jazz, chamber music etc. My options were: chamber music, string orchestra, wind ensemble, chamber orchestra, and big band. I did an optional early morning session playing bass rehearsing the ceilidh band (which played for one of the evenings later in the week). You get challenged by a week like that, partly because it's immersive and partly the tutors are pushing you and you're doing things you might not otherwise consider (e.g. on cello I played movements from the Mendelssohn octet and Haydn's Lark quartet). They are quite sociable as well as there's usually a bar for the evening. Unfortunately for me this year, I was not resident on site so a pinto or two was not an option. There are lots of these kinds of things covering every genre and type of music. If like me you live on your own, they are a good option.

OK gig updates... Bass wasn't my main instrument of the week - I played mostly cello and some baritone sax. With the sax there were two performances at the end of the week. I played in a big band, which wasn't full size, made up of clarinet, trumpet, 2 tenor saxes, me on bari sax, bass and rhythm guitars, keys, and drum kit. We did a 30 minute set of a mix of stuff including Green Onions (something like this, La Bamba etc We played in the room that was set-up with the bar, rather than the main hall, so it meant people were dancing... The other bari performance was wind ensemble, where I was a substitute bassoon..., playing more classical repertoire. For string orchestra performance, I was the concertante cellist (soloist) in a concerto grosso by Stanley, plus 'Elegy' by Elgar. For orchestra, the main work was Haydn symphony 104: the first movement has a slow start then sets off...