zbd1960

Generally with musical instruments, you get what you pay for. The snobbery issue applies in other fields. I do a lot of photography adn there's little to choose other than personal preference and ergonomics between the major DSLR brands (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji). Then you get the Leica owners... Nice kit, but stupidly priced. Saxes have some similar issues. People go nuts and pay stupid money for 40 or 50 year old Selmer Mk.VI Yes, some of them have 'distinctive' sounds, but an awful lot of them are ergonomically poor and not special. The ergonomics and consistency of modern horns are much better than that of 'vintage' instruments, but people go nuts for the 'vintage' vibe. I've tried some vintage horns like Conns, King Zephyrs etc (the ones I tried were from 1940s to 1960s). The ergonomics on all but one sucked. One stood out as good, the others I wouldn't touch. Modern horns (Yamaha, Yanagisawa, Keilworth etc) are consistent, well made, and have much better ergonomics and are generally just much easier to play.

Some years ago, for my job I had to analyse corporate banking data based on turnover. The results distribution was quite shocking. As you'd expect, there was a big spike in the number of small businesses with turnovers measured in up to a few £million. There was another spike at 'big' corporates with turnovers in excess of tens of £millions. There was almost nothing in between... You've got small local businesses, or big corps. What that tells you is the big corps buy out anyone that starts growing and has potential to bite into their market. The most obvious example, and one that is a cause of a lot of issues, is house builders. The big builders buy out all the medium sized companies and remove them from the market place. There are only a handful of companies building the vast majority of housing. You have some small local companies who build bespoke or very small developments. Legislation in this space is poor since what this is in reality is what is known as a 'complex monopoly' where a small number of companies control a section of the market. So companies that care tend to stay small, because if they grow beyond a certain size, the risk of failure increases dramatically as does the risk of big corp buying them out.

I use Allianz for all of mine. There are others. If you're a member of MU then you can get cover through them I believe.

My cello is a German workshop one - it's just had a hard life. It's had a new neck at some point. The back is quite nice, but at some point some sort of solvent splattered the front and made a mess of the finish. I had a luthier give it s decent clean and polish, so it's better than it was. You're right that in the C19th they started trying to make violins look like they were from the C17th and C18th.... this is when people realised that Strads etc were worth a lot of money

The RVW was the biggest concert I've sung in - it was a full house at the Royal Albert Hall. It was the whole experience of the planning, rehearsing, travelling, the day itself. The Sea Symphony is also a great piece to perform and most amateurs don't get a chance to do it because it requires enormous orchestral forces and a big venue.

I saw that ad yesterday for the guitar and I just thought 'yuk'. I'll be honest, I don't see the point in 'relicing' - you get it with string instruments like violins as well, where it is described as 'antiqued'. I don't like 'antiquing' either. Natural wear and tear? Fine - my cello has had a hard life but it's about 120 years old.

I've performed in many concerts. One of the best was Vaughan Williams Sea Symphony with the RLPO as the orchestra... Of the concerts for which I was the organiser, perhaps a full period instrument performance of the Monteverdi Vespers

You can read some serious physics on this... just vaguely digging A level physics form the 1970s out.... the wavelength that you want to produce (B) is affected by amongst other things the mass of the string and its length are the key ones with roles for stiffness, gauge, and tension... Whatever combination you settle on will be a compromise in some way or another. Unless assaulted by an attack of insanity, don't even think about gut strings... when it comes to tuning stability they belong in their own circle of hell

One of the things that irritates me about certain types of jazz gig is where in every piece everyone has to take their turn doing the solo... which involves seeing how many notes can be squeezed into a given time interval... it's just boring.

In my world of choral singing, I've sung in many languages other than English including: Latin, Italian, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, Swahili, Gaelic, Welsh... and some I've probably forgotten about

Indeed.... horses for courses.... Probably because at age of 12 school unexpectedly decided I should start to learn cello... it triggered a tendency in me to pick out and listen to the bass line. Later, when I started to sing bass in choirs, the same thing - I got used to listening for the bass line. Doing that helps a lot with understanding the harmonic structure of a piece. It also reveals how unutterably boring some people are with the bass doing little more than tonic/dominant oompah-ing...

There are different examining boards with differing syllabuses. There are separate music theory and practical grades. The one most people known about is ABRSM, which offers the classical based syllabus and a jazz one. The main boards offer grades 1 - 8 plus 3 levels of diploma.. There are some other options around as well. There are syllabuses for other genres including music theatre. Rock School has a syllabus that is aimed at pop/rock. https://www.rslawards.com/rockschool/ I'm working on G6 for sax and I'm about G7 on cello (ABRSM). I have G6 theory. My bass tutor thinks I'm around Rock School G3 on bass. On sax I'm following the path but not currently sitting the exams. The process has the advantage of providing a planned graded route adding technique and complexity as you go in a structured manner. There is a risk with some people that they get to grade 8 having only ever played 24 pieces...

This comes up in the sax world as well where players are also split between readers and ears... You have to be patient and accept that it's like learning to read - you start off with 'Janet and John', not Shakespeare. A useful technique is to download the score from a site such as IMSLP for an orchestral work, play a recording and follow a line in the score (bass/cello in this case). Acquire the ability to follow the line and listening for it as well. That will get you used to reading and following. My singing teacher would just put stuff in front of me and say 'sing that'. If you want to get better at reading, you just have to get on and do it. Find some easy stuff, and take it slowly until you can get it right, then speed it up, until eventually playing it at the correct tempo.

I've played 1,2,3,4,6 and 8 but only performed 3 and 8 in concerts. I think we're looking at 5 next week in my Monday orchestra. I' never sung any Schubert lieder - have sung some Brahms.

It's never too late. Something I picked up from when I started singing is the importance of playing/performing with others. My singing teacher had me singing in a choir in a few months. When I got my cello and sax back in 2011, I joined a community orchestra straightaway. Community orchestras are almost always short of bass players. If you want to get to grips with reading and playing from staff notation, then playing the bass part in an orchestra is a way forward (and yes the community group I was in had both an electric bass and a DB on that part). Such groups tend to play a lot of film music.

My avatar is me playing my tenor sax... which isn't purple, that's just some of my photo editing. I have a baritone sax... Harpsichords - depends on the instrument: the mid C20th created these cast iron framed monstrosities. Works as a continuo instrument, fair to say more challenging as a solo instrument (depending as I said on the instrument). I'd agree that I'm not a big fan of the Hammond sound. Flutes depend on who's playing them, but it's not my favourite instrument for sure. A nice baroque wooden flute is kinder to the ears

You noticed 🤣 The hi-fi used to be the most expensive thing.... currently it's the saxes...

It's due to the nature of my voice - not something you would usually do. When I started having lessons back in the early 90s I was told I was a light baritone. I've always been able to hit tops Ds, Es quite hard and no real problems getting to F and F#. My voice was reasonably resonant down to the C on the 2nd space of the bass clef, and even OK down to A, by bottom F#/F we're on or off with no control over them. If I did intensive singing like a week's summer school, I'd be able to sing down to Eb. If I did a music workshop and got asked to dep as a 2nd tenor (baritones often are) my voice would tire quickly. In 2019 I had an assessment on a specialist course with a well-known vocal coach that trains opera singers. He put me through a lot of exercises and told me that baritones don't sing Ds and Es the way I do, nor F, F#, G, G#.... he had me singing up to top C and told me I was really a 1st tenor. So, why did I tire trying to sing the lower 2nd tenor part? Because I was trying to sing it as a baritone and 'push' with too much weight in the voice and this brings in all sorts of muscles and locks on the voice which tire it. Why was I assessed as a baritone? Men's voices don't fully settle until around age 35 and I was 33 and my voice was probably had not completely settled. So I found a local (well 35 miles away) teacher. He's an operatic tenor, who originally trained as a baritone at RNCM and encountered the same issue as me, just rather younger as he's only in his 40s now. So i've been learning to unlock my upper voice and to 'let go' of the way I used to sing as a baritone. It involves getting rid of a lot of learnt involuntary habits.

Won't be a surprise, but listening to various recommendations from people over the years I've got no interest in rap. Speaking in rhythm is not unique to rap, I've sung choral works that require it, such as the geographical fugue which is tricky..., or speaking/singing aleatorically, which is random....

I usually got to some sort of music summer school for a week each year. In recent years it's been either a mixed one where I've played both cello and sax, or one where I've played just cello in orchestras, or choral ones. This year I'm looking at booking onto a cello summer school - probably the one in Oxford. Which got me thinking... are there summer schools that anyone knows of where you have a mix of teaching and playing for bass? I'm assuming some sort of summer school version of Rock School?

Rather than piggybacking onto the threads of others, I thought I really ought to create my own about my own musical journey. For bass, I'm in the local Rock School franchise playing with the adult learners group. I have a lesson one week and the jam session alternate weeks. Bit of a hiatus with lessons due to tutor being on paternity leave... but he's back this week. I already know all about GAS - you're talking to someone who is into astronomy, hi-fi, photography... before we get to music and I have two viols, 2 cellos, 4 saxes, and currently 4 (soon to be 5) basses... I've been able to read music (bass and treble clef) since I was about 12. The viols mean I have to read alto and octave treble clef; cello means I have to read tenor clef as well.I've got G6 theory and I'd like to get G8 done. I started singing lessons in my 30s and have sung in various sizes of choir since then. I have performed in probably several hundred concerts over the years. Some have been major concerts in big concert halls. I've performed at Philharmonic Hall (Liverpool), Bridgewater Hall (Manchester), Symphony Hall (Birmingham), Royal Albert Hall (London). I've also sung in about two dozen of the UK's cathedrals. I'm not in a choir at the moment as I'm retraining to sing tenor instead of baritone - I hope to join a group in the autumn. I started cello and sax in 2011. I joined local community music groups straightaway as I know how important playing with others is. I'm working on G6 for sax and my teacher says I'm around G7 on cello. Currently, I play cello in two orchestras. For sax I'm struggling to find a wind band near enough that meets on a usuable day that doesn't conflict with other things. I do play sax in a small ensemble which I run, but it only meets once a month. Although I bought my Fender back in 2016, I really struggled to find a teacher I got on with and it was only just before lockdown hit that I found someone I got on with. It's not that I'm difficult (honest! 🤣) but a lot of people who put themselves out to teach beginner bass players find I start asking questions they can't answer... The pic is me and my cello a couple of weeks ago at my first concert since late 2019... The orchestral part of the programme was the suite from Peer Gynt (Grieg) and a medley from Lady be Good (Gershwin). A bit different from the Blitzkrieg Bop at Rock School...

Have to agree. This has been an interesting thread for numerous reasons. I became 'classical only' around age 10, maybe 11.... Started with mainstream classical/romantic composers (usual suspects). Apart form odd bits of Mahler, Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, I always struggled with C20th composers in those days. I moved earlier to the baroque through late teens and twenties. Move on a bit more and early music - renaissance and medieval start to become key. More C20th is slowly added over the years. The big change comes in my 30s when I start singing lessons and performing in concerts which exposes me to a much larger repertoire. Around this time I start to be interested in some jazz and some New Age music. I have not listened to 'pop' / chart music since about 1970. I am 'aware' of the names of various bands, I might have heard various pieces, but I tend to not have a clue about them. It's a conversation point between my bass teacher and myself when whatever piece we're working on for 'Rock School' I'll have either never heard of it, or I might recognise it, but no idea what it's called or who wrote it... Music is a large universe and we can't know everything. Is it odd that I'm not familiar with some popular genres/bands of the last 40 years? Perhaps, but we're all different and I'm an individual.

As a cellist I sympathise about the cost of strings. Fortunately you don't need to change them too often - a new C string for me is £125

Entirely true as it's all highly subjective.

Most serious classical music aficionados that I know are not particularly big fans of ClassicFM... it serve a purpose, but... there's only so many times you can take Rach2...