FinishMySong Blog

"I see myself as a town crier, can-opener and flag-waver for poetry" - Andrew Motion


It was a previous Poet Laureate, Robert Southey, who commented in a letter to Charlotte Brontë in 1837 that, Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The present Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, will be visiting Haworth for just one night to read and discuss his work, including his most recent, critically acclaimed work In the Blood: A Memoir of My Childhood.

Andrew Motion has written numerous volumes of poetry as well as biography and fiction. His work has received the Arvon/Observer Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize. In 1994 his biography of Philip Larkin was awarded the Whitbread Prize for Biography, and shortlisted for the NCR Award. He succeeded Ted Hughes as the Poet Laureate in May 1999, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has recently been appointed Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. In the Blood: A Memoir of My Childhood was published by Faber in 2006.

Tickets are £10/ £6 (under 16s) and should be booked in advance. Ticket price includes admission to the Brontë Parsonage Museum on the day of the event. The museum will be open until 7.00pm. For further details and bookings please contact the Brontë Parsonage Museum on 01535 640194, or email andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk

Just a little funny for the end of the week: a series of test questions / answers collected by music teachers in Missouri...


Agnus Dei was a woman composer famous for her church music.

Refrain means don't do it. A refrain in music is the part you better not try to sing.

A virtuoso is a musician with real high morals.

John Sebastian Bach died from 1750 to the present.

Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was rather large.

Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling him. I guess he could not hear so good. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died from this.

Henry Purcell is a well known composer few people have ever heard of.

Aaron Copland is one of your most famous contemporary composers. It is unusual to be contemporary. Most composers do not live until they are dead.

An opera is a song of bigly size.

In the last scene of Pagliacci, Canio stabs Nedda who is the one he really loves. Pretty soon Silvio also gets stabbed, and they all live happily ever after.

When a singer sings, he stirs up the air and makes it hit any passing eardrums. But if he is good, he knows how to keep it from hurting.

Music sung by two people at the same time is called a duel.

I know what a sextet is but I had rather not say.

Caruso was at first an Italian. Then someone heard his voice and said he would go a long way. And so he came to America.

A good orchestra is always ready to play if the conductor steps on the odium.

Morris dancing is a country survival from times when people were happy.

Most authorities agree that music of antiquity was written long ago.

Probably the most marvelous fugue was the one between the Hatfields and McCoys.

My very best liked piece of music is the Bronze Lullaby.

My favorite composer is Opus.

A harp is a nude piano.

A tuba is much larger than its name.

Instruments come in many sizes, shapes and orchestras.

You should always say celli when you mean there are two or more cellos.

Another name for kettle drums is timpani. But I think I will just stick with the first name and learn it good.

A trumpet is an instrument when it is not an elephant sound.

While trombones have tubes, trumpets prefer to wear valves.

The double bass is also called the bass viol, string bass, and bass fiddle. It has so many names because it is so huge.

When electric currents go through them, guitars start making sounds. So would anybody.

Question: What are kettle drums called? Answer: Kettle drums.

Cymbals are round, metal CLANGS!

A bassoon looks like nothing I have ever heard.

Last month I found out how a clarinet works by taking it apart. I both found out and got in trouble.

Question: Is the saxophone a brass or a woodwind instrument? Answer: Yes.

The concertmaster of an orchestra is always the person who sits in the first chair of the first violins. This means that when a person is elected concertmaster, he has to hurry up and learn how to play a violin real good.

For some reason, they always put a treble clef in front of every line of flute music. You just watch.

I can't reach the brakes on this piano!

The main trouble with a French horn is it's too tangled up.

Anyone who can read all the instrument notes at the same time gets to be the conductor.

Instrumentalist is a many-purposed word for many player-types.

The flute is a skinny-high shape-sounded instrument.

The most dangerous part about playing cymbals is near the nose.

A contra-bassoon is like a bassoon, only more so.

Tubas are a bit too much.

Music instrument has a plural known as orchestra.

I would like for you to teach me to play the cello. Would tomorrow or Friday be best?

My favorite instrument is the bassoon. It is so hard to play people seldom play it. That is why I like the bassoon best.

It is easy to teach anyone to play the maracas. Just grip the neck and shake him in rhythm.

Just about any animal skin can be stretched over a frame to make a pleasant sound once the animal is removed.

The Little Shop of Horrors is coming to Ilkley Playhouse this June!

The Northern Academy of Performing Arts will be putting on a production of the very silly Broadway classic musical, Little Shop of Horrors, in Ilkley running from Tues 12th June until Sat 16th June 2007. This is the tale of a sweet, vulnerable Marilyn Monroe type-figure, a dentist with sadistic tendencies, an insecure, naive, put-upon florist's clerk hero and a man-eating plant!

I'm incredibly excited to be involved in this production as the Musical Director (my debut in this role, no less!) and looking forward to working with Ruth Marston who will be directing and choreographing it, as well as with what promises to be a hugely talented cast made up partly of NAPA students and a select few friends of the organisation.

For further information about the show, and to book tickets in advance, contact Greg Silverwood at NAPA on 0113-2505286. Or feel free to contact me with any general queries about it.




In any case, no doubt readers of this blog will be hearing more about the show and be subjected to the odd plug here and there. As anyone in the industry will be aware, it is massively expensive to put on any theatre production so, for the company just to break even, everyone involved needs to do his/her bit to encourage as many people as they can to come along and see it. In the case of NAPA's Little Shop of Horrors this June, I'm sure there'll be no problems filling seats - this is a fantastic and hilarious show with a brilliant script and a wonderful score by Alan Menken. What more can I say... COME AND SEE IT!!!!

You may be too young to remember the first lunar landing. So is Niki McCretton but ever since she was five years old she has wanted to be an astronaut.

Driven by her childhood ambition Niki takes us on an epic expedition of extraordinary moments from history and her imagination covering every major advancement through space - from that first 'giant leap' to dogs in space to space tourism as the new extreme sport (now available from Space Adventures USA, if you can afford it). Personal, funny and highly physical, Niki includes her experiences of weightlessness and her training with the Russian Cosmonauts at Star City, as well as actual footage from the first tourists in space, in this spectacular show.

As well as award-winning performer Niki McCretton, Space 50 brings together an outstanding team of performers, filmmakers, musicians, writers and animators to present this milestone production. Niki McCretton is currently the Dance South West Associate for Somerset.

To celebrate the last show in their current season, Leeds Metropolitan University Studio Theatre are offering £5 tickets for Space 50 on either night, the 28th or 29th March. Call 0113 283 5998 to book your tickets now and quote "email offer" at the time of booking. Or visit www.leedsmet.ac.uk/arts for more details.

According to Bradford's Telegraph & Argus newspaper:

Bradford Music Development is holding a seminar at Claremont Bradford, near the university, on Saturday, May 19, from 1pm to 6pm.

Professionals from the music industry will be on hand to help budding musicians develop their careers.

Demo tapes can be submitted for panel members to comment on and the best three will be awarded prizes.

Demo submissions must be registered beforehand by e-mailing music.development@bradford.gov.uk or by calling (01274) 432416.

I just posted a load more silly email forwards to my webpage. Check them out, here:

http://www.finishmysong.com/EmailForwards/forwdire.php

Take a look at the picture below:


Incase you were wondering, that's Bill Gates in the bottom left corner... the tag line on the email that I received this in said "Never judge a book by it's cover." As true today as it was thirty years ago! :)

The online publication My Wedding Flower Ideas has published an edited and abridged version of the blog I wrote in January about the decisions one needs to think about when choosing the music for their wedding. You can see the article in this month's spring edition here.

The Philharmonia Orchestra is mounting the UK’s most significant celebration of the 150th Anniversary of Sir Edward Elgar’s birth. Conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, Elgar 2007 features 18 concerts in 13 venues across the UK from 11 April to 2 June, taking in Leicester, London, Bedford, Birmingham, Basingstoke, Croydon, Canterbury, Southend-on-Sea, Cardiff, Bury St Edmunds, Oxford and Brighton.

The exploration of Elgar’s finest works includes the violin and cello concertos, Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2, Enigma Variations, Serenade for Strings, Sea Pictures and The Dream of Gerontius, for which Sir Andrew and the Philharmonia will be joined by a stellar team of soloists: Truls Mørk, James Ehnes, Jane Irwin, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, James Gilchrist and Peter Sidhom.

The Series also includes recitals by the Soloists of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Elgar Study Days, a touring exhibition and a major web resource including interviews with artists, footage of Elgar at home, programme notes and much more. Visit www.philharmonia.co.uk/elgar, launched today.

The Cultural Olympiad 2008-2012, which includes the Culture and Education Programme, is the festival which runs from the moment when London becomes the host city, at the closing ceremony of the Beijing Games in 2008 until 2012. It will encompass projects and events organised across the country from national institutions to schools, community organisations and individuals.

To read Youth Music's draft aims and outcomes for musical activity for young people linked to the Cultural Olympiad and feedback your thoughts via our online survey visit:

http://www.youthmusic.org.uk/news/general.jsp?ID=591

DEADLINE FOR RESPONSES: TUESDAY APRIL 10, 2007

This morning a friend of mine sent me a fascinating email comprised of a series of pictures designed to give us a sense of stellar scale - how big the earth is as compared to other objects in space. I really love this kind of thing and I was recalling how Bradford's Museum of Film, Photography and Television used to have a video on display that attempted to give us an idea of distance in the universe. As it happens, I found both this and an updated version of it on YouTube:


Certainly quite stunning to watch, especially as just a minute and a half into the journey on the latter video the camera passes the farthest reaches of human travel, and as we look at the distances still to pass, this reach is absolutely miniscule. It becomes clear very quickly how little we actually know about our surroundings in this universe and thinking about this has the personal effect of confirming my agnosticism - with so much out there that we are clueless about (just expressing it in these terms leads to an inevitable and massive understatement), how can anyone tell me that they know with any degree of certainty the answers to questions of our origin in the cosmos, etc? My response to any evangelical theist on this issue can only ever be to encourage them to look into the night sky and tell me again that they know and have absolutely no doubt that their ideas about life, the universe and everything are correct.

For some reason, I seem to be getting a reputation with my brothers in The First Few for having a dislike for all things sampled. So, I write this blog to clarify and defend the position that samples are all very well when used properly but in the context of a live rock performance in a small venue they tend to sound, well, utterly shite.

For evidence of how effective and useful samples can be when used sparingly and appropriately balanced with other more traditional musical instruments, one need look no further than the opening bars of Pink Floyd's outstanding album The Division Bell. Here the music ever so gradually builds up through a period of more than five minutes, initially with some elongated sounds that are unrecognisable as anything from the natural world but almost certainly are made up of digitally altered samples, then with the introduction of a number of instrumental forces, starting with piano and an electric guitar, the latter of which is treated with a number of enhancing effects, making it difficult to hear where this sound starts and where the samples end. Once drums join the compliment of sounds the auditory experience feels complete and so the album moves forward with its inevitable rock feel.

So, I'm not a Luddite when it comes to the use of these various bits of gadgetry in music making. There are even good examples of where drum machines (God forbid!) can really work well in an interesting and creative way. Take Sheryl Crow's song We Do What We Can from the sensational 1993 album Tuesday Night Music Club: through the majority of this track the accompaniment to Crow's vocal is mainly very gentle bass, piano, a little brass and also a fixed drum machine track that sounds like the 'swing' setting on a child's keyboard of the late 80's - there is nothing to the sound, but in this particular context it works perfectly, especially when contrasted in the middle section of the song with a live jazz kit. When the tinny little drum machine comes back for the final verse we actually feel some sense of relief having just been through a much more frantic section with live drumming. Wonderful stuff.

But, then we have bands who play in pubs and clubs in your local town. You know the ones - they'd love to write music half as inventive as Pink Floyd or Sheryl Crow, and maybe one day they will. Hell, maybe they're already writing incredible songs, but rather than let those pieces stand on their own merits they feel the need to add garnish in the form of various samples, no doubt badly recorded and very badly placed. Say, the sound of a ticking clock here and some rain and thunder sounds there - utter clichés often thrown willy-nilly into the mix, usually way louder than they deserve considering the lack of musicality about it, not to say anything of the all too regular distortions etc. Even 'serious' classical musicians of the avant-garde fall into similar pitfalls - I once saw a guy in Birmingham playing a self-penned four-part flute piece made up mostly of imitative counterpoint, three parts of which had, for no reason that I could establish by logical reasoning, been pre-recorded as a *shudder!* backing track! This, despite the place being full of musicians who were more than capable of playing those parts live - it seems that the composer chose to go ahead with the performance in this vain, though, to give it some kind of edge. Somebody ought to have tipped him off about today's blog message: whatever your musical tastes and however cool you think it'll sound, seriously people - leave the samples to those who can do something interesting with them.

As a postscript, I hear the voices of criticism yelling out the question "What about digital piano? How do you think they got it to sound so much like a piano??" Well, yes, I acknowledge that sampling was required to get my Korg SP-200 (and many other digital instruments) to sound like a real acoustic piano and, so, sampling does also have a part to play in more traditional approaches to musical performance. However, samples used to mimic a real instrument are somewhat different from those used to make it sound like it's raining in The Shoulder of Mutton, of an evening, and even then they often don't work... have you ever heard a convincing clarinet or cello sound coming from a keyboard?!

The Topic Folk Club meets each Thursday evening in the Cock and Bottle pub in Bradford (93 Barkerend Road, just up the hill from Bradford Cathedral). See below for a breakdown of the events they have coming up this month:

March 8 - Grace Notes

Superb quality three-part female vocal harmony from the best in the business. Sometimes a capella, sometimes accompanied by flute, bodhran, recorders or keyboard; sometimes traditional, sometimes more contemporary. They having been singing together for a decade, but the individual careers of Maggie Boyle, Lynda Hardcastle and Helen Hockenhull go back even further. “Nothing short of stunning” is one of many rapturous reviews. Featured Support will come from Simon Alexander, one of the Topic’s best technical guitarists, with a selection of distinctive original songs and worthy covers from his favourite songwriters. Tickets £6 / £7.

Mar 15 A Double Header evening:

two acts for the price of one. Mulberry Blue is an exciting and energetic band from Leeds, playing a variety of instruments, and presenting a selection of their own songs and standards, with excellent harmonies led by the stunning vocals of Beth. Laura Hockenhull is a traditional singer with a beautiful voice and mature delivery. No doubt her famous mother (see above) has encouraged her from the start, but this self-assured performer is very much her own person. Tickets £4 / £5.

Mar 22 - John Wright

A real delight. John is one of the best interpreters of song on the circuit; a finely balanced, authoritative and husky-smoky voice putting over quality songs by writers such as Allan Taylor, Pete Abbott and Brian Bedford. He is always accompanied by quality musicians: this evening it is the self-same Pete Abbott on guitar, and Gregor Borland on fiddle and mandolin. No Featured Support tonight, but another opportunity for quality floor singers to strut their stuff. Tickets £5 / £6.

Mar 29 - Mark Newman

Guitarists all, come and weep. Rarely does one see a practitioner of such delicate, effortless fretwork, such lightly skipping fingering, such effortlessly timed melodies. Mark is a consummate professional, mixing his beautiful tunes with traditional and contemporary songs. Featured Support comes from four stalwarts of the local scene: the rich a capella harmonies and musical humour of Whitney Gin. This really will be an evening to remember. Tickets £4 / £5.

April 5 - Martin Carthy

The big one. Martin was a one-time annual fixture at the Topic, but astonishingly this is his first visit in 14 years. The doyen of traditional folk music, Martin has done it all, and many a club owes its continued existence to his faithful support of the club scene when he could have retired to much bigger venues. No Featured Support tonight, but another opportunity for quality floor singers to stuff their strut at the feet of the master. Tickets £6 / £8 are available in advance: either at clubnights, or email guy.killingbeck@orange-ftgroup.com (Don’t just “reply” to this Newsletter: I’ll be away.)

April 12 - Steve Tilston

Another big one. Songwriter and guitarist of many many years experience, Steve has played with the greats, and the greats still cover his songs. A performer of flair and massive ability, it is great to welcome him again. Featured Support comes from the tender and thoughtful duo of Siobhan and Chris Nelson. Tickets £4 / £5.

I received the below email from a friend this morning. It certainly looks like a petition worth signing, and these days the Prime Minister usually responds personally to all those who sign a petition on the government website with a full explanation of the way we'll be moving forward on a given issue. Being involved in music on a daily basis myself, I'm very much against any action that 'inhibits the central role' music making has in our lives, so will certainly be signing it and await the PM's answer on this matter.


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MUSIC PETITION

There is a government move afoot to make it very difficult for musicians to perform live in small venues, or for schools, pubs and charities to raise money for causes through musical events. The proposed new legislation will inhibit the central role music making has in our lives and communities.

If you circulate this to your friends, all each person has to do is go to the government's petitions website below, give your name, email and address - it takes about 30 seconds.

Success could make a vital difference to the nurturing of community music making, and enabling young musicians to find their feet in the performing world.

The live music/licensing e-petition now has over 33,000 signatures. It currently stands at no.5 in the list of petitions on the Number 10 site. - and there are three more months in which people can sign.

But the petition needs to do much better to make an impression on ministers, and to encourage DCMS to implement music-friendly amendments. Please click on this link to sign :-

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/licensing/

I've recently been downloading and watching a lot of Disney's past catalogue of movies in an effort to get a greater understanding of the kinds of things that are watched by the children that I teach singing to. I also thought that I might get some inspiration for songs that I could do with them, and Alan Menken has certainly provided a plethora of great material from so many of the more recent Disney productions to be going at.

Striking too is the vast range of issues and historical references that are covered in the various Disney movies, from the way in which we naturally grow apart from our parents (as dramatised in The Little Mermaid), through a moving account of bereavement in The Lion King, and a remake of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in the sequel to that movie, Simba's Pride, to a commentary on prejudice and the insanity of war in Pocahontas. So far, I've only covered a fraction of the films that Disney originally produced for children and it's true that the back catalogue does include some duds (such as High School Musical that is so sickly sweet it's frankly painful to watch) but the vast majority of these movies have been made to a very high standard indeed, cleverly thought out and excellently executed by the various production teams involved.

Even as an adult I have found many of the Disney movies both entertaining and at times moving in the extreme. The ideas conveyed are as relevant to past generations as they are to their intended audience of youngsters who will make up future societies, and I think there are many 'mature' people on this earth who could do worse than to take heed of the advice imparted by some of these Disney films. This is all too evident when I flick between listening to the following lyrics of the song Colours of the Wind and reading today's BBC news that tells of soldiers and civilians being killed on the battle fields of some Asian country or other: