MaW’s Blog

In my last post I lamented that not much was happening on the music front.

That’s changed.

I’m now playing in two recorder groups, the SRP, a viol group, the University early music group (who’re short on members) and the office band. Yes, the office band - there is a band, and they seem to think a recorder player is a useful asset. I’ve been figuring out some parts for the office party at the end of November, and I’m gradually getting there. A completely different style of music, so it’s extremely interesting. The most important thing is that everybody seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

Work itself is generally going well, but I’m not going to write about it because it’s not going to win any awards for interestingness.

National Novel Writing Month is approaching once again. This year Hannah and I are the only MLs for our region, so we’ve got a bit more work to do. We need to sort out what’s going in the survival kits this year. The rest will probably organise itself - people have got into the habit of coming to meets now. We realised yesterday that we may be a fairly unique region in that we’ve been having monthly meets for two years now without missing a single one. What’s more, we have an extra meet at the end of October, weekly meets through November, and also weekly meets through June for Script Frenzy (not that Script Frenzy was at all popular with our Wrimos) and other June-time events like NaNoManGo and our own mini-Nano. Our Wrimos really are a fantastic group of people, and I’m honoured to be involved.

Unfortunately with NaNoWriMo looming I’m thinking up plots but also wondering when I’m going to find the time to write anything. Three performances in November and one in December mean a lot of rehearsal time, as well as the usual recorder and viol lessons and groups. I’m going to have to stop reading and just write write write write write I think.

So I’ve not blogged for ages. Nothing new there, I hear the masses cry - at least, I would, if the total audience of this blog was large enough to be described by the term ‘the masses’.

Why the silence? Well, it’s largely because things of great interest have been happening. I know that’s not the traditional reason not to blog, but when searching for a job one doesn’t really wish to shout about it too much on the Internet in a form which will be easy for one’s prospective employers to find - not that I have a moment’s doubt that there’s already a whole pile of incriminating information out there about me. Evidently none of it was really serious, because I got a job and have been working full time for three weeks now. It’s not my dream job, I shall be honest, but it’s a job and it’s a pretty good one really. The pay’s entirely reasonable, the office environment is fantastic, and the people are also nice. The commute could only be better if it was a short walk down the road (rather than a short walk, a reasonable tram ride and another short walk after that).

The major problem is that, as with all software development which takes place against a background of established code, there’s established code. A lot of it. Ten years and more of it. Much of it is poorly documented (by which I mean not documented in any way whatsoever). Quite a bit of it is poorly written, having suffered from the many demons associated with haste, neglect and modification by other people (hint: documentation helps with that). It seems intentions are changing. My team have generally agreed that code should be documented and so forth. Unfortunately we’re now arguing about how it should be documented, but at least it’s a start.

Music things have been on a bit of a hiatus. As it’s the summer, many groups and lessons have been disrupted. I’ve not had any viol or recorder lessons for ages, and my only outlet is playing Telemann sonatas all afternoon at the weekend (I’m sure my neighbours are simply delighted…) and going to SRP once a month, which is an absolute lifesaver. I can’t wait for the start of the school year to return groups and lessons to normality, although I will miss playing with the University early music group.

Still, you can’t have everything.

I played in this one. Each year my recorder teacher Wendy Hancock puts on a concert in Chilwell which is on the outskirts of Nottingham’s metropolitan area. The concert is always free with a retiring collection for a chosen charity (Marie Curie Cancer Care this year), and the performers are described as ‘Students and Friends of Wendy Hancock’. Another tradition is to finish the concert with at least one very loud piece of music in which everybody plays. In order to accommodate that many musicians, the music is usually a polychoral piece, which leads to some interesting consequences in terms of sound, especially since the church isn’t really big enough for everybody to stand up and play at once!

Nonetheless, it’s all good fun. Last year I played with the university early music group and a solo which was taken from the pieces I was at the time preparing for grade 4 descant. I was terrified, played moderately poorly and vacated the stage as soon as was humanly possible.

What a difference a year’s extra lessons makes. Having passed grade 4 and grade 5 (the latter on treble recorder) since then, and played in a few more lunchtime concerts, I’ve become rather more confident and capable. Again the university group played - one piece by our viol players, and one piece combined strings and recorders, repeating the Telemann sonata for six melody instruments in A minor from our last lunchtime concert, which was a resounding success then and almost a resounding success last night. The audience liked it, but we know how it was supposed to go…

I also played with the Mundy Consort, which was much much easier music that we played better than we’ve ever played it before. Terribly pleased with that, because Rachel at least isn’t at all used to group playing or performance, being only ten. She played very well though, and so did Nadia and Patsy who completed that group for the evening (oh and thanks to Christine Ransom for filling in the fifth part in All In A Garden Green for us in the absence of a fifth member of the consort actually being able to attend).

And so there was my solo. This time it was an unnamed movement from Jacques Paisible’s Sonata 8 in C minor. A nice piece, not too challenging except to actually play well, accompanied by Phillip Weller on harpsichord, and Sarah Cook on baroque ‘cello. They’re both wonderful musicians, and it was a joy to play with them even through the performance nerves.

I actually got what I think might have been some genuine applause, and people told me afterwards I played very well, although they could have just been being polite I suppose. Still, definitely much better than last year. I could get to like this sort of thing.

Then the final pieces were stupendous amounts of fun. We were joined by Sinfonia Chorale, who provided the vocals, and Phillip on the pipe organ, one choir of twenty-ish recorder players and everyone who had a stringed instrument playing that in the other choir. We belted out some South American baroque music, and it’s still going through my head now.

Well, alternating with the UK’s Eurovision entry from last night anyway.

I’m approaching the end of November. As people who know me will know, this means that it’s coming up to the end of National Novel Writing Month. As I write this, I’m approaching 50,000 words. I promised 60,000 words this year, so I’ve still got a way to go, but I should get the coveted green bar on the NaNoWriMo forums soon. What I need to stop doing is having days where I don’t write anything at all, but it’s a bit tricky when the other ingredients of the Time Of Panic are also looming. I’m therefore planning some sort of marathon novelling session at the weekend, and will probably write during the meet on Saturday as that usually works out fairly well. The plot’s a little stickier than it used to be. Lots of threads are starting to come together, and I’m rather worried that it’s all going to suddenly get very silly. One particular character’s introduction may have been a mistake at this point, and I’m seriously tempted to eliminate her from the story entirely during editing.

But I’m stuck with her for now, and she does have a habit of being rather wordy, so that’s something good at least.

Now for the other ingredients of the Time Of Panic: obviously I still have to work on PhD things. I won’t go into that, because people’s eyes tend to glaze over when I start talking about it — either that or I get into arguments about the necessity for correct-by-construction programming and dependent types. The other big panic-inducing thing is the concert on Tuesday, in which I’m playing bass recorder. Since I’ve not been playing it very long, this is a problem — not because of the fingering, as it’s the same as the treble/alto, just an octave lower. The problem is that the bass recorder parts are written in bass clef an octave lower than they sound, and I’ve never had to read bass clef before. This has made initial rehearsal of pieces quite tricky, because my bass clef sight reading is very, very slow.

But after Tuesday that will all be over, and I think we’re going to be okay. Whew.

So the next panic is the following week, as I’ve got my ABRSM Grade 5 Treble Recorder exam. The pieces might be okay — with the possible exception of the rather hideous List B piece (I do not like modern recorder music, or at least I don’t like what I’ve encountered of it so far — I’m quite sure that modern composers don’t set out with the idea of making a nice piece of music, but instead prefer to see how they can torture the musicians while pleasing the apparently deaf critics). The scales, though… that could be a different matter.

Add to that the difficulties of sight reading from treble clef onto a treble recorder when your primary sight reading practice has been from bass cleff onto a bass recorder, or from treble clef onto a tenor recorder (which is what I’ve mostly been doing in groups lately) and you have a recipe for more panic.

So got to squeeze some sight reading practice in somewhere after the concert, and not play any other kinds of recorder until the exam.

But on the bright side, my oven is now fixed, and a few other things here should get sorted tomorrow and maybe next week.

MaW has been busy. MaW has also, it seems, taken to writing about himself in the third person.

Enough of that. I went on holiday to the Lake District. Some photos in the gallery (not many, I’m too busy to muck about with tweaking and uploading lots, and you probably don’t want to look at them anyway. I did pick the best ones though).

I’m still preparing for my ABRSM grade 5 treble recorder exam, which is in early December.

It’s nearly time for National Novel Writing Month to start! This year I’m one of three Municipal Liasons for England::Nottingham region, so there’s more to do on the organisational front. MLs are of course also expected to reach 50,000 words, in order to set a good example. I’m aiming for 60,000 this year, but we’ll see how it goes. I hope I can do it, because if I don’t I suspect Paul will be terribly displeased — more so than he was last year after I completely failed to blow up any planets in my novel, even after we spent an enjoyable afternoon discussing how you could blow up a planet with a ferret (we thought maybe a ferret travelling at 0.99c might do it on impact, but nobody actually sat down and worked out the energy requirement. It’s quite possible you’d need several ferrets).

So this year I have a basis for a plot, I even have a preliminary title, and I’ll be sticking bits of in-progress stuff up on the NaNoWriMo page here from time to time. Maybe even the whole thing like last year, if you’re very, very unlucky.

What else? Oh yes. I’ve started lessons with the Latin, Ballroom and Salsa society at the University — Latin and Ballroom lessons, that is, the Salsa classes are different. It’s fun but quite difficult, and I’ve stepped on far too many toes. I think my feet are too big, and I feel the need to only dance with girls who are wearing steel toecaps for their own protection.

Of course, it’s difficult because quite often we’re both making mistakes, so even if one of us dances perfectly we still end up stepping on each other’s feet. Sort of a lose-lose situation really, but hopefully that will fade with more practice.

It’s a shame I can’t make the practice sessions, but they rather clash with recorders. Recorder lessons are now on Mondays, followed once a fortnight by a Monday consort, nice and small, good people to play with, great music to play.

Wednesdays is Collegium Musicum — first concert this year is in late November, lunchtime again. Nowhere near as scared about it as I was this time last year. I guess that’s what experience will do.

Thursdays is dancing, as mentioned above.

Saturdays throughout November are devoted to NaNoWriMo.

So I’m a bit busy for the foreseeable future. I also have a nifty little software project to write some time, but that’s not really going to be on the map until at least Christmas.

Oh yeah, and an interim report for my PhD. Gotta fit that in somewhere too.