Life of Wiley

So there I was at 6.30am this morning with bits of card and paper, pens and bent paperclips trying to make a pinhole telescope to view the Venus transit across the Sun. I couldn’t get that to work so I had to wait until the rest of the household woke up so that I could get at my telescope, a 20 year old Tasco 50x40mm telescope, but that didn’t work very well.

In the end I obtained these images using a handheld Minolta Compact 8×23 binocular.

I am of course talking about Watford Band’s concert on Saturday in aid of the Peace Hospice. The concert was superb in all aspects: The band played well (if a little over exuberantly); the audience were excellent and numerous; the choir was excellent; it was all fantastic!

I really need to work up the stamina again, as I was done in by the middle of the second half!

The programme that we’d played included:

• Goldcrest – a march
• Hymn to the Fallen – from Saving Private Ryan
• All in the April Evening
• Fantasia on British Sea Songs
• Cossack Ride and Slavonic Dances
• Breezin’ Down Broadway
• A medley from Swing When You’re Winning

and loads more. Didn’t get to do the Presley medley though, which was unfortunate as I’d mentioned that we were going to be playing that on the radio, oops!

Urgh, this is awful! I’m sure people who have this stuff are well meaning, but c’mon, this is just tacky.

Finally got wireless sorted out at home; not that I didn’t help myself, as I mistakenly bought the Netgear WGE101 wireless bridge instead of the WG602 wireless access point! I did get the bridge to work in ad-hoc mode but found I couldn’t access parts of my home network. At least the bridge will come in handy for when Euan gets an Xbox!

So, having got it working, the last thing I wanted to read today was this article by Jeff Partridge over at Lockergnome!

The problem with being uber geeks is that they get so excited about technology and to what uses it can be put that they sometimes miss the point. You know the kind of people I mean, these are the folks who are avid Slashdot readers; they spend hours in darkened rooms, probably not seeing natural light for days on end; and their idea of a great social night out is a LAN party.

So it should come as no surprise that when dme’s suggestion for In-Car Enterprise-Class Entertainment was highlighted in this article on Slashdot that the comments that followed both on Dave’s site and Slashdot failed to spot that he was, in fact, pulling their collective legs.

As “Da Wimp”succinctly put it: “It’s easy for an intelligent man to act like a fool, the other way ’round it gets harder. I’d add another one: It’s hard for the fools to notice.”

Over on the Trumpet Players International Network (TPIN) mailing list there is a discussion taking place about the demise of the grand cornet solos as so perfectly recorded by Wynton Marsalis on his album Carnaval.

James Klages posed the question and then has this to say on the subject:

Isn’t some of the demise of the cornet solos due to the transformation of the trumpet and cornet. They once had very distinctive sounds, but today, while the sounds are different, they have come much closer together?

To quote the Princes Bride “cornet solos are only “MOSTLY Dead.”

I still write and play them, as do my students. The Salvation army publishes new cornet solos about eight a year.

I see that rapid fall are the result of several factors.

1. Professional concert bands are extremely rare. Sousa is dead. the Goldman band is on hard times now.

2. Following Frederic Fennell, the wind ensemble literature shies away from the type of music that cornet soloists play. Colleges have adopted the programming philosophy of the wind ensemble. They seek to be a “higher level” of culture, not deigning to play transcriptions – or often music that is familiar, beautiful or exiting. The conductors at Eastman were jealous of the place and status of the orchestra and sought to one-up them with the elite – the refused to play down to the audience. In a relatively short time the audience went down from one of standing room only to that where the small wind ensemble out numbered the house. Recent years have somewhat reversed this trend. Sometimes a wind band concert is a pleasant musical

experience now..

3. The Twentieth Century experiment with musical complexity, and the relegation of beautiful melody and harmony to a secondary role undercut the entire function of the cornet in the Wind Band.

*It is now time for players to reclaim the role of composer – writing music that they enjoy to perform and listen (to.)

And Michael Stewart ripostes:

To me, this is the most telling and correct reasoning. And it is also the fault of MOST (certainly not all) of the typical cornet literature. Cornet solos are notoriously corny or “banal” in nature. How freakin’ many times do we have to listen to an inane Theme and Variations cornet solo that goes without any inspiration or musical character or thought – 1/8 note variation, triplet variation, 1/16 note variation, triplet 1/16s, etc….BLAAAAH!

Personally, the music written for wind ensembles mowadays (and throughout the previous century is FAR more entertaining, exciting, and musical than a concert of Sousa marches, cornet solos, and that ilk. As musicians, it’s our responsibility to uphold high levels of literature and to go beyond what is fun for the audience, or even ourselves. If we can decry popular musics (pop, rap, metal, country,etc) for pandering to the masses, then we have to hold ourselves to a similar standard and advance our craft – personally and
communally.

As a cornet player myself I love the grand cornet solos and would love to have the necessary technique to carry them off successfully. One day, who knows, I’ll be able to play Carnival of Venice or Napoli like Wynton. However, my belief is that music is for the purpose of entertaining people and in the concerts that I participate in, and have been to as a member of the audience, it is pieces that are melodic, easy to listen to and fun.

There’s no doubt in my mind that in these grand cornet solos there are some beautiful melodies and there are also some fun aspects to both for the listener and definitely for the player.

The most enjoyable “concert” I ever attended was a dinner/dance by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Barbican where the band played swing music. Was it corny? Possibly. Did we enjoy it? You bet!

When we’re out with the band our audience want to hear things like The Floral Dance, or The Lincolnshire Poacher whether the band like it or not and whether or not it’s corny.

All I can say is, let’s make music for people to listen to and enjoy.

Having had excellent service from Amazon in the past I am at a loss to find why I’ve had such poor service from them over a Netgear Wireless Bridge device. I ordered it over a month ago where Amazon set the expectation that I’d have it within 2 weeks. After two weeks I got a notice saying it’s been delayed by 4-6 weeks and now that time is up and I’ve just had another notice saying that it won’t be available for another 4-6 weeks.

So I’ve looked up another cheap supplier, Comms Express and they’ve turned it around in a day. So what’s up Amazon, why can’t you get hold of any of these things?

On Monday we were supposed to be taking Euan up to his grand parents but he’d decided he didn’t want to go! I suppose he’s feeling maybe a little bit vulnerable now that his little sister has turned up.

Anyway, we all went to Chalfont Fair instead where, coincidentally, the band were playing. It was really odd being at a band engagement without playing and quite frustrating too, especially as the band were really putting in an excellent performance that was going down well with the crowd.

My playing’s taken a dive over the last couple of weeks due to the change in family circumstances, but I’ve now been practicing quite hard in preparation for our big charity concert on Saturday. I’m really looking forward to it, it should be a corker.

For the first time since Eva was born we all attended church. Our friend Alison was the preacher for the morning service which was celebrating Pentecost.

During the service Alison used a very powerful mechanism for getting the point across about the Spirit speaking to all present at Pentecost, she had the lesson read not only in English, but also in Chinese and the Bemba language of Zambia. Care needs to be taken when using this to not use too many speakers otherwise the effect is to muddied.

But if it’s muddied you want then this will also work well for illustrating the story of the Tower of Babel too!

Well I’ve bitten the bullet, jumped with the rats and followed the sheep and ditched Movable Type in favour of WordPress.

I’ve got no real good reason to as I haven’t read the new licence yet but the upgrade to 3.0 looked harder than I wanted to spend time on and, now that I’ve installed (painlessly) WordPress, I’m quite impressed with it. It allows posting by e-mail obviating the need for any plugins and whatnot, and it was very trivial to add category images (ala Slashdot style).

I’ll probably play with the style a bit, but I think I’m more likely to make the main site more like the blog in terms of style.