Sunday 1 November 2009

Busy week

No time for blogging this week - too busy going to museums, looking at mummies, fish, stuffed animals and Abyssinian lyres - apparently they had heptatonic diatonic scales, I wonder how they know? You can't tell by looking at a violin what the tuning is and Indian violinists have a totally different system to western ones, for example. Then there was quite a bit of cooking, lots of games of Happy Families a big lunch at the friends-round-the-corner, a trip to see An Education with my Mum at the Odeon West End, no less - lots of witty moments, but not enough to add up to a great film, and horror anachronistic tea bags in 1961, last night the Sidcup Rec and the Beatles tribute band who played at my brother's wedding and today an Elgar concert at the RFH....

Then it's back to work (at this rate maybe for a rest!) and the real business starts of concerts, prize day etc, having two sets of clothes, academic dress (and with this weather, I need the fur!) in between, teaching and rehearsing and trying to do the paperwork for me external concerts.

And my other orchestra and the mystery English symphony with with the obbligatory pub lunch to discuss... the Hoyer compensating triple and a few car crash concerts people had been in. Apparently, the lead taper on the Bb side is quite long so you sound like a horn and not a hose pipe. As long as Horn 1 plays in tune I'm happy. Too much detail! Compensating horns, ugh! Full triples must be very heavy though even with hollow rotors and titanium valves....

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