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Gastrics were the least of my problems; a hymn to the Dambusters tune. No probs, except I was given melody only and had 7 mins to devise a harmony!!! Also realised there was to be the national anthem and was burrowing frantically through the books beside Dibley's organ to find it. Fortunately Someone was looking after me and I found it in an ancient book. Well, not THAT ancient as it was still GStheQ, not K. Then there was a sheep wandering around the road on the way home so had to tell the farmer.

Well, it is known you're a Grade 8er and consequently not averse to any kind of challenge - so long as that National Anthem wasn't the one written by Haydn.....

Suggest it to the vicar, an Animal Service. Now, which church did that based on an idea of which vicar!!

They've done animal services there a long time before the VoD!

Regards to the Eric Coates Dambusters theme, Jim Royle, with paper in hand marching up the stairs khazi bound singing it always sticks in my mind!

My grade 3 theory book has arrived, and it's demisemiquavers to start us off, something I've not done before. I know what they are but exactly how to fit them into rhythms (I'm only just comfy with SQs). I'm only just memorising the rudimentary stuff like four DSQs is equal to a quaver, eight DSQs to a crotchet and in 4/4 time one whole bar contains 32 of them, which is the USA English term for them - 32nd notes.

I think working in 3/8 is better for DSQs, using them in /4 ones are quite perplexing and impossible (for me) to make rhythms out of them. I'm still not used to SQs and even quavers in /2 times, which in the case of the latter should be '1-ee-and-a-2-ee-and-a' in Desmond time.

There are cross refs to the pink AB bible in there.

The red bible is better. Don't panic, just break them down and imagine they're crotchets - 108,000,000 of 'em to the bar!

Yes, 4 to the quaver, 6 to the dotted quaver, 8 to the crotchet, in /4 time convert all the beats to DSQs and just look for groups of 8, for 3/8 look for groups of 4 and compound /8 for groups of 12 (dotted crotchets).

I started them this morning but I do not intend to whizz through these g3 ones like I did with g2. Just do one exercise, and ruminate on it, then take it to Mabs for marking. Maybe in the meantime have a go at doodle-composing rhythms involving DSQs just to get used to working with them (instead of doing Guardian Sudokus)

Alas no sign of the Whores Bed Carol yet, Gill

Only got posted yesterday afternoon as we had to zap up to the hospital which took all morning. He did his errands when we got back!

I'm sure you will be pleased to hear Gill the thing wot you posted is heavily defaced in pencilling already (finger numbers) and I'm just about up to 'rosemary'. Still waiting for my EFP book, so it's hymn tunes still whilst I wait. with 'proclaim' being where I'm up to in Winchester Old.

Excellent, that's what we like to hear!

CTM3 arrived yesterday, so that's all my Amazonian stuff now. I may get a book 3 piece as HW on Tuesday, we'll have to wait and see.

I sold 2 easy play carol books, both over from last year yesterday at the bookshop. To two different people!

No piano practice yesterday evening. Naughty Dave. By the time I'd done a full day at the shop, drove through rush hour Birmingham traffic in the wind and rain to Aldi, filled up the car, more quintisentially British driving conditions, unloaded the car, put it all away, walked to Balti house that one month earlier had played host to David and Sam Cameron, dined, walked back in the rain, and made a 'proper brew' it was 2130 and I was creamed.

Just driven past the church en route to supermarket, it's really lively and it looks like it's quite a busy Christmas Fayre. On a Sunday, Biddy O'Reilly normally gets the parking space right outside the main doors but her car wasn't there now. But she could have been there, the whole street and the close adjacent to the church was full of cars. Request a carol for a fiver??

There are loads of Christmas FaYres (has to have a Y) on here too...seems to be Christmas already!
I hope the Balti house was fumigated after having a politician in it...

Gill the Piano wrote: I hope the Balti house was fumigated after having a politician in it...

My parliamentary constituency is a Conservative marginal, held by Labour. It was not by chance he decided to dine here. He also ate at the Five Guys restaurant in Solihull, which is an even tighter marginal held by the Liberal Democrats. There's a cracking Five Guys in the Bullring he could have visited (and only a few minutes drive from the venue of his last party conference)

But at least the service the both of us received was more than satisfac-Tory and the place was full to bursting point of happy Brummie balti afficionados.

Those Eleanor Franklin Pike carols really are good. Rather than taking me five days or so to learn one or two phrases, I can just read and play, which is also good SR training. I sometimes think I try to push myself too far that I cannot properly reap the rewards of what I've learned. Hope Mabel has a Christmas party - she has a lovely tea set!

Another definition of 'farage'. Noun, the rancid stuff one finds on the carpet or floor cleaning behind ones lavatory - mixture of dust, mould, sewage leaks etc that has been there for months, years even that Neutradol has no effect upon. I de-faraged my bathroom this weekend but I had to use bleach and washing soda to stop the farage from recurring.

It also seems to stay on your hands/Marigold gloves and the last thing I want are farage spores on Mabel's piano after lesson tomorrow afternoon. It's the invisible killer (farage that is, not kids bogeys on piano keys...)

...trying to remember how many demisemiquavers in a quaver, dotted quaver, crotchet, and commit it to my long term memory.....

Not usual to encounter dsq's pre grade 5!

Gill the Piano wrote:Not usual to encounter dsq's pre grade 5!

In practical terms maybe, but they're included in the theory at grade 3 level. I would hate to play them in even 3/8 time (/4 time would be suitable only for kryptonites).

Devising definitions for farage has led me on to alternative names for the Shadow Chancellor. There are loads but the best ones I've come up with are Neddy Nuts, Ted Sphericals and my favourite, Edward Scissorballs.

All eminently suitable...

dave brum wrote:...trying to remember how many demisemiquavers in a quaver, dotted quaver, crotchet, and commit it to my long term memory.....

Isn't it better to remember how to work it out than to remember how many - I mean dsq is two to a sq so 4 to a q, so 3x4 to a dotted crotchet, rather than trying to learn all the numbers?

It's a bit like learning the fingering rules for the chromatic scale. I always teach that all blacks 3, all whites are thumb, except when you get two together when it's 1 & 2 in the order you can see them on your hand. I've met kids who have laboriously learned parrot fashion that right going up is 1-2 and right coming down is 2-1, then left going up is 2-1, oh hang on, is that coming down, oh, left going up is 1-2, no sorry, it's 2-1... I refuse to let mine learn it that way.

Mabel told me how to RECOGNISE them rather than attempt to remember them in a similar fashion to how a child might have learned his/her times tables in the days of the British Empire. Like visualising them beamed up in 4s as quavers in 3/8 time.

I should have said I'm on book 3 now, even though I've got 4 tunes from book 1 and 18 from book 2 left to do to play catchup. But no rush. I'm finding the remnants of book 1 quite easy to learn now.

It's one of those Sundays when I really wish I was in church. The reason - it's Stir-Up Sunday and God wouldn't want a big foodie puddinghead like me to miss his chance on grabbing that wooden spoon and giving the pud a darn good stir. I sometimes wish the organist wasn't who it actually is. Would the Bishop of Brum understand my predicament?

My wife would like to go to Midnight Mass on 24/12 but we can't do that either.

Try different churches!

Gill the Piano wrote:Try different churches!

There is one a little nearer but it's right in the middle of a dodgy council estate where one would not wish to leave one's automobile or walk through in the early hours of Christmas morning.

But Sunday mornings will be fine...

Sounds really odd but the vicar at Fanny Fosdyke's church is a really nice bloke, he's Zimbabwean and he was actually orphaned until an Anglican mission in Zimbabwe took him in. We had him over for lunch one day.

I don't know the bloke at 'Our Lady of the Dodgy Estate'!

Give it a go then!

Gill the Piano wrote:Give it a go then!

It all depends how my wife feels about going to a strange place with strange people. She's been to Mrs Fosdyke's church before but I don't think she was too impressed, the churchwardens harrassed us both every Sunday to go up for a blessing and we kept refusing every time. Just one 'no' should have sufficed - and afterwards, we were sat in the hall drinking our tea and nibbling our custard cream in the corner on our own like outcasts. Nobody even came up to say hello and we both found that incredibly disheartening for the house of God.

Oh and of course how the weather is on 24/12.

Nothing to stop you dropping in during the week when you have it to yourself... Go to the Ship Of Fools website and see if the church has been visited by The Mystery Worshipper.

There are one or two things they should know about some of the very un-Christian things their organist said to me, if SOF will pay me the fee I'll tell all!

She plays at nearly all of the services now she's Director of Music. She also does work at other churches in the area.

I saw a 'Reckless' driver on the Bristol Road South yesterday in every possible sense of the word - a very expensive Lexus sportscar with its whole rear view obliterated by a huge 'I'm Voting UKIP' poster, and one of the side windows similarly obscured. Because he's free to choose ignorance of other motorists over knowledge of what and whom is around him. He's also free to endanger other lives and to drive his high performance car like the road actually belongs to him (get out of my way you filthy communist peasant cyclists etc.etc)

I also saw quite amusingly a van advertising something society DOES need, especially at this time of year, plumbing and heating engineers. This one traded under the name of 'Running Water' and had an 01527 area code (Bromsgrove or Redditch). On the back of his van was a caricature of the famous Native American chief with a speech bubble saying 'NO COWBOYS HERE!!'. Classic!!

Excellent. I saw a window cleaner's van today, name of the firm being Bring Me Sunshine. Liked that! Also saw a launderette called The Lost Sock.

Today in Woolvramptin, a sex superstore just off Ablow Street.

Well, I've reached the end of my first book 3 piece with 5 days left before I see Mabel again. And I've done another couple of pages of theory. The note D is the fourth sharp and the fourth flat which helps to recognise g3 major key sigs, so if there's a D# then it must be in the key of E and a Db then the key must be Ab.

My old Achilles heel of confidence and not reading ahead reared its ugly head again but was soon kicked in the crotchets with some more carols and a nice loud blast of God Save The Queen.

Talking about Maggie Murphy's (and my local) church, this has been common knowledge to God for ages but I only found out last night. The church webmaster has links to the Conservative Party....and (this is much worse) on his Twitter feed he has used the 'C-word'. Not a retweet, this is one of his own. I have the evidence.

The information superhighway has also revealed that the adult choir that England's worst piano teacher is a member of is performing at a local venue's Christmas fayre next weekend.

Definitely no midnight mass or Christmas morning carol singing for us then, Mrs Murphy on the organ or not. Think I'll play them in loo.

Sing along to Nine Lessons and Carols from King's on the telly then!

Sadly, we will have no choice. We have the CFK from 2008 though that we videoed, along with a few 'Channel M' (now defunct TV channel for Manchester that used to broadcast nationwide on Sky) kids choir competitions from Christmas.

Just incase of misunderstanding, when I spoke of the 'C-word' I didn't mean 'conservative'. This word is much more Anglo-Saxon in etymology.

dave brum wrote:Just in case of misunderstanding, when I spoke of the 'C-word' I didn't mean 'conservative'. This word is much more Anglo-Saxon in etymology.

Good grief...

And with the cussing organist, the toilet mouthed webmaster and the churchwarden who won't take no for an answer, I'm going to explore Paganism.....

But not before I've sorted my growing pile of sheet music out as there's loads of things in there that would be good SR fodder. I got an EFP book from Marlow I've not touched!

How was 'O Christmas Tree' Gill? Did any cowards flinch or traitors sneer??

Apart from me, you mean? Dunno, I had me back to 'em...

Did you play any other Christmas carols as we're into Advent now?? What about your festive gig list - is that finalised yet?? (treble time like hiring a taxi???)

No overtime, alas.... yep, playing every Sunday in December,sometimes twice, twice on Christmas Eve, twice on Christmas Day. And one for the YMCA.

Wow! The busy Musitian's life....Now I desperately want to go to Midnight Mass, in fact with all the lemons I'm getting in life at the moment I've told you about on PMs, I really want to start going to church again.

Go to the other one. Or go to FFs one in the day when there's nobody there.

It's going to take more than one year's share of Christmas magic to reconcile myself and FF, Gill. After what was said to me.....

I had a piano lesson with a qualified bona-fide piano teacher, Mabel Mucklethwaite this afternoon. Here are the main points:

Four more double octave arpeggios, E and D minor and major.

Moving on with Dozen a day, group 3 but only the first six as they're getting hard now. Half a dozen a day.

Another couple of pages of theory, transposing and usage of 3 ledger lines above and below the Steve.

Homework, Ivan Sings was fine, and he DID sing, but I got the syncopated bits in the last couple of bars wrong! New homework piece Rondo my Mozart, another difficult 'un but a great challenge.

And the best part, the carols! Mabel was on the computer in the piano room when I arrive but I did not sit there and wait for her to finish. I played to her as she worked.....and she liked it!

Next lesson on the 16th, followed the day after by her adults Christmas party. Her boyfriend is having lessons and he will be playing also. Well, she couldn't afford William Hague or Ed Balls!!!

Still progressing well then - splendid.