zbd1960

I should add that disliking football and having no interest in it at all when growing up in Liverpool in the 60s/70s.... didn't help... (I still can't stand football, I just have to accept I;m in a minority on that one)

Yeah, been there...

I was 50 when my dad died of cancer. He had seen me in many concerts (and many other things) some really big ones. All I ever got was negative feedback.

My dad was never supportive of anything I did, so I'm envious of those who didn't have that experience.

Well, my preferred genres are renaissance and baroque (although others are OK). I have sung quite a lot of both. I like to play renaissance consort music on viol, but there's absolutely no one round here to play that with. I get to play some baroque on cello. The orchestras/bands I've played cello and sax in over the years tend to a lot of film music and musical theatre medleys, with the odd symphony by Beethoven, Haydn, Dvorak, Sibelius etc thrown in. I don't yet play bass in a group

Ugh SAP/Concur - as a now retired employee of a large company that was how we claimed our expenses. It was horrendous. One of the clunkiest and user hostile systems I've encountered. We decided it was a conspiracy to deter us from submitting expense claims...

I discovered a couple of years ago that there is a plaque on the wall of a hotel in Shrewsbury commemorating Paganini performing there...

I know you'll all go 'uh, what?' but as a teen in the 70s this all passed me by... although I was aware of them as people in my class used to talk about them etc. In recent years, I've got to know people who've worked with them so I am more aware now than I was nearly 50 years ago...

I would hope that no one would take those ads seriously. They're incoherent, don't make sense, spelling and grammar are both optional. I would hope that that's enough red flags to deter people...

Just played in my first concert since 2019 due to Covid. Mix of Grieg - Peer Gynt- and Gershwin.

I think I'd be looking for a second opinion from another GP that's more sympathetic.

I suppose I'm a 'serious' hi-fi person... It was around late 80s/ early 90s that cables started to become a 'big thing'. I remember Hi-fi Answers (magazine) got obsessed with it... It got to be such woo-woo that I stopped buying the mags. It got to be absurd. There is some mileage in quality of cables, insulation, shielding, connectors... but I think the law of diminishing returns kicks in quite quickly. So is the £10/m speaker cable better than the bell-wire stuff you used to get? Pretty sure yes. Is the £200/m cable much better than the £10/m? Almost certainly no. A big issue is no one that I am aware of has come up with a scientifically provable way of impartially determining cable 'quality' beyond things that can be measured like resistance, capacitance, inductance, purity of conductor etc. This means that either it cannot be measured, or we haven't found out 'what' to measure. This means it is highly subjective and that also means it's open to suggestion, which is how the snake oil merchants get in.

OK I'll start off with admitting I'm probably weird... but I never developed any interest in rock/pop etc when I was a youngster - I went straight to classical. I have no idea why anyone would listen to rap. You can probably make a stronger argument for it being a form of urban poetry than music. As I've got older, my tastes have changed and widened. These days I like some jazz, New Age, and World stuff. In order to get meaningful bass tuition I had to join my local branch of Rock School and it's hilarious as "We're going to play x" and I haven't a clue what it is, no matter how famous... sometimes I might recognise it. (My intention is to play bass with a big band and possibly some jazz.) OK so onto unpopular opinions... In the jazz world I've got no time for Coltrane. Randomly playing 3 million notes a minute might be technically very accomplished but leaves me cold: it's just noise. I'm not a fan of Beethoven symphonies 3, 7, or 9. The reasons are quite complex. Some is over exposure, some is I think they're very difficult to do 'well' as consistent works, especially 9. Everyone raves about the last movement (Ode to Joy) but it's actually quite weird and the other movements suffer. I think the issue is that too many performers treat LvB as a 'heroic romantic' composer and he isn't - he's late classical/transition.

There's not a lot that can be done with fixed frets. Older fretted instruments like the viol (viola da gamba) have moveable frets. They are just loops of fret gut tied onto the neck and you move them to tune them. Players who are better than I am will will adjust the tuning of the frets to some sort of temperament (e.g. sixth coma mean tone etc.) that will produce better tuning in specific keys. Some will even 'split' the frets (they are double loops) so that for example the diatonic semi-tone of C# in the key of say D maj is distinct from the chromatic Db... Complications like that are why keyboards and fixed fret instruments settled on equal temperament.

I suspect some of this (i.e. awareness of tuning) is down to musical background and context. If you're playing in a band with wailing guitars with a lot of overdrive etc. then tuning is not going to be that obvious. If you're playing in a set-up where the sounds are much cleaner and purer, then tuning/intonation are going to be more obvious. The other factor is the harmony and the function the note you are playing in that harmony. If you are just playing roots and fifths, tuning issues will be less apparent than if you're playing the major third.

Yes, I've not actively watched it since the mid-70s for the simple reason that it is not my preferred musical style - I have no interest in it. I also said that we're all different and if it floats your boat, then fine. I do know quite a few people who are having watch parties: they obviously enjoy it. I do think it needs a re-think as the cost of hosting it has become such that only affluent countries can afford to host it.

I'm thinking of stringing one of my basses with flats. Interesting, in effect most decent cello strings are flat wound these days - thankfully (apart from really cheap strings) the days of cheese wire type strings have gone... I was talking about restringing my main cello with my teacher yesterday. One option that came up was Larsen Arioso Magnacore - at about £230 a set they're cheaper than my current strings... The current strings, apart from the A which I replaced about 3 years ago, have been on for 8 years....

It has a bit of a rep as well.... I avoid it

Sorry for the mental block yesterday!

I'm not sure Woodwind Exchange is still going? Web site seems to have vanished. Possibly Hanson's in Yorkshire and Curly Woodwind in Liverpool. There's a place in Stoke-on-Trent whose name currently escapes me as well

Oh dear.... I'll be honest, I'm not a Eurovision fan - it's not recent, goes back to the 1970s... Some people I know are quite obsessed with it and will be having a 'watch party' for it... I didn't make myself popular when I said I didn't like it... We're all different, so I'm fine if it floats your boat.

Skiing is so much easier now with modern carving skis - unlike the really hard work straight skis I learnt on in the 80s

It's what happens when assorted pieces of timber and an old leather Chesterfield go through a matter transporter and the Schrödinger Compensator goes wrong...

On cello rather than bass...

Yes - it's part of the Tabley House estate