BEDM - 5 lines

Five lines makes me think of a musical stave. I learned to read music at school, learning to play the recorder and the cello; the treble and the bass clef. Later, I had piano lessons and attempted to read and play both at once. It's hard. The left hand and the right moving independently, producing sounds to complement one another.

The dots and sticks are so familiar to me, I forget I had to learn them. I still use them, now to sing from, though my sight-singing isn't great. I suspect I mostly learn tunes by ear, but the music in front of me is a good reminder when I can't remember the tune properly.

I don't know where this is going. My writing muscles are long unused and my blogging skills are rusty. Still, that's the point of using 31 days of prompts. Getting back in the habit.

This is a post for Rosalilium's Blog Every Day in May.

Eurovision!

Tonight is Debs' annual birthday celebration and Eurovision party. Since her birthday is on 18 May, she almost always organises a party to coincide with watching the Eurovision song contest. I haven't been able to make it for years for one reason or another, but this year, I'll be there.

Everyone who's coming gets a country to represent by wearing a costume and bringing food to represent their country. My country is Israel, so I'm taking falafels and hummous and wearing a tea-towel headdress and carrying a sheep (think nativity play shepherds). Should be fun. I'm sure there will be photos.

solos and duets

I've been singing again, so it's on my mind. Indulge me.

I rarely sing alone. Even if I'm singing solo, there's generally an accompanist with me. The relationship between singer and musicians is key to how good the music sounds. There's always an element of uncertainty singing with somebody new - will we get on? Will we understand each other? Are they any good? Am I any good? What if it all goes wrong? But when it's good, it's great. There are some people that I love to make music with - they know what they're doing, we trust each other, even if it goes wrong, we'll have sorted ourselves out before the audience has noticed. I especially love singing duets and improvising harmonies. When you don't quite know what's going to happen, but you weave melodies round each other and it just works. It's so much fun! (And I think people like it.)

In music, and in other things too, I work better when I've got a starting point and and a structure. I love singing jazz because you take the tune and fiddle with it, ornament it, play with the rhythm and the melody and the words and sometimes just end up with wordless noises, but it's all fitted into the progression of chords and the pattern of verses, choruses, bridges and middle 8s. I'm not good at designing knits from scratch, but give me a pattern and I'll change it as I go to make it fit better or look different. Essays work much better when I've got a starting point to argue from or a statement to disagree with.

Yes, you can read into this that I would love to have a duet partner for life. Someone to do life with, to bounce ideas off, to argue it out and improvise with. My own accompanist and fellow troubadour. And yes, I would love for him to be a fellow musician. But also, I don't work well alone, no-one does. I need people around me to relate to and have fun with and to be loved by and to love.

can anyone tell me..

...why the BBC's standard pronunciation for Manuel de Falla's surname is "de FAL-li-ya" rather than "de FI-ya"?
Radio 3 have been doing it all week and now Counterpoint on Radio 4 are doing it too. Although the contestant pronunced it "de FI-ya".

things fall apart

Not me, I'm fine. Got a bit of a cold, but otherwise I'm enjoying the novelty of having the same job before and after Christmas. It hasn't happened for a while. No, it's my stuff that's falling apart. This weekend saw the demise of my front bike light (age estimated at 15-20 years, so it's not suprising, although they were only in active use for about 5 of those years), my CD player (age 10-12 years? Fortunately it's only the CD bit that's died, the radio still works) and a sewing machine needle (age unknown).

The bike lights and the needle have been replaced. I'm working on the CD player. Stops me buying any more CDs (maybe it objected to my most recent purchase - Alice by Tom Waits, although it was playing Jamie Cullum that killed it.) but it's silly to have CDs and nothing to play them on. Any recommendations? I like my current player because it has a radio, CD player and tape player, and because it has a remote control so I can turn it on and off without getting out of bed. Or does everyone have iPods and all their music on their laptop these days? Anyone?