memories of you

[kevin toner]

[Apologies: for letting 21 March 2012 pass without an update on my Winter Wonderland progress. I’ll be fully resuming from 21 June 2012 in line with the southern Hemisphere winter spirit/spell!]

 

I’ve videoed myself playing what I’ve learned of “Memories of you” so far, which is now at a ‘ready to implement’ or ‘progressing forward’ stage. Link is

.

 

It’s nowhere near ready to go as yet. I’ve basically begun to accept that I must adjust to putting the thumbs fully through the straps to gain much greater control. A small extent of re-fingering is necessary, a small price to play for gaining the necessary control.

 

Thumbs fully through has to be a major principle from now on! There’s one occasion though on MOY when I have to pull out at the arpeggiated mixed double-chord at the D.C., which is a good sign

 

If you do reach the last [6-7th] minute you might hear me more relaxed. It’s of course been very nerve wracking with the crosstown traffic and construction etc. competing for my attention... and as I’m yet a recording novice. Must persevere with the former, but I suspect if I confront the latter it will switch my focus towards myself rather than the external forces. Singing helped in the same way, but is in itself also a distraction despite offering a head start...

 

Despite the deterioration of sound from the compressed file, it’s good to hear from the video what needs done e.g. tightening up on general tempo. I’m becoming relatively comfortable with the occasionally stipulated tempo variations where necessary.

 

I will be able to give more attention to phrasing stipulations in a better sound recording situation. My accented notes; loud and quiet passages etc won’t come through in the videos i.e. yet. Nor can such be easily heard or appreciated when there’s a never-ending continuum of distraction. This doesn’t affect “Winter Wonderland” to anything near the same degree as “Memories of You” as the former doesn’t involve anything much more than simply the notation, which is occasionally slurred and likewise infrequently glissed. MP3s might reveal all later depending on the sound quality. It might otherwise be something that can only be appreciated live. Time will tell!

[Geoff Wooff]

Are you planing to sing the song too Kevin ?

I found the sound a little confusing and not being that familiar with the song I had to find a sung version to compare.

 

As I don't (should not be allowed to) sing I would be looking for a "less is more" setting for myself to play.

 

I await your finished version with anticipation.

 

All the best,

Geoff.

[kevin toner]

Are you planing to sing the song too Kevin ?

I found the sound a little confusing and not being that familiar with the song I had to find a sung version to compare.

 

As I don't (should not be allowed to) sing I would be looking for a "less is more" setting for myself to play.

 

I await your finished version with anticipation.

 

All the best,

Geoff.

 

Yes I'm planning to sing as I've almost found the voice. I may have to layer singing with some songs, time will tell.

 

Yes the sound is confused due to the high degree of slurred (joined-up) chording and so on coupled with zero sound quality. I will try to record and upload clearer sound files so that you can decide whether or not such score arrangements are as suitable for concertina as they are for piano. Again, perhaps such arrangements can only be appreciated in a room with good acoustics. I will work on the recording/sound quality straight away so that there is a better indication.

 

I was also writing a follow up to my original post regarding some of this etc., which will follow in a moment. Alas, I'll also be elaborating on that component called "distraction", but it's something I have to get off my chest!

[Geoff Wooff]

Ah ! Distraction, yes I was thinking about that whilst I laid in bed last night listening to the Frogs croaking in a pond about 200 metres away... it was the only sound other than the occasional Owl hooting. No distractions here except too much work to do.

I grew up in London but it has been 35 years since I have lived anywhere enven remotely Suburban... so I understand and feel very lucky not to have noise and light polution... but it is a very long walk to the Pub!

[kevin toner]

Ah ! Distraction, yes I was thinking about that whilst I laid in bed last night listening to the Frogs croaking in a pond about 200 metres away... it was the only sound other than the occasional Owl hooting. No distractions here except too much work to do.

I grew up in London but it has been 35 years since I have lived anywhere enven remotely Suburban... so I understand and feel very lucky not to have noise and light polution... but it is a very long walk to the Pub!

 

Thanks Geoff, I've got a comment written about it with regards to my urban example, coming up.

 

My walk to the nearest pub was simply across the road before going on fire to make way for such aforementioned mega-developments around the block. Things might settle ironically after the recession! I'm within a block's distance to the next couple more nearest of course. Funnily the replacement pub relocated 1 block in a direct alignment with its past location, but faces east instead of west. I'm fairly surrounded by these Karaoke havens, but I could go on and on about what has been even much louder than these over the years - i.e. in terms of amplified music in the vicinity, which I'd rather forget about and hope for the best. It's okay of course if you're not a resident trying to learn piano arrangements on EC!

[kevin toner]

The video also flagged up another [unconsciously played] error, i.e. an error I’d previously sorted but had forgot about in this instance.

 

This is at the end of the refrain – it should have a gradual quieting of smoothly slurred chords. I have instead been very clumsy here.

 

I did similar on Winter Wonderland at "...town!" (and/or "...down" as added in 1953 within the repeated refrain) at the end of the bridge, mid-refrain, which I'm now fully conscious of avoiding after hearing the recording.

 

Moral of the story:

 

So basically these initial recordings will help me to spot where I'm defaulting. It can be easy to stray vis-a-vis the hoards of things going on in the sheet music and if I may say again if one is literally rattled in their cage due to the aforementioned downtown troubles.

 

The latter for me includes a periodic thumping within the building most probably below my current practising space; and more...

 

Please feel free to ignore the lower part of my post. I’ve been completely brain drained trying to write it during the time of my last reply above so it probably won’t make sense. Read at your own peril! However, I thought I should get this aspect off my chest now for the record since I’ve stumbled onto the subject. Again sincere apologies!

 

 

 

 

The above thumps used to merely coincide with staff opening and shutting times for the shop below me (i.e. since mid 2011 I think, definitely not later), sometimes taking 5-10 thumps in the last hour to shut shop i.e. fairly well after the Friday/Saturday business hours. Having got to the end of my tether and by making the mistake of running in with the person shutting up the shop on 29 Feb 2012 who answered/concluded with the message: “No, I won't stop it I'm going to keep it up”, I've now inherited the thumping problem around the clock, i.e. business hours, since 1 March 2012 ergo no longer at simply opening/closing times. The thumps can be up to around 10No an hour at worst with no set pattern. It’s sometimes compounded by around 3No in the same minute. At least it’s now known that the thumps aren’t simply caused by the doors as I’d once thought. If the continuum of sound troubles over the last 10 years (here) is anything to go by, it might not stop for months/years yet. The council are assessing if the thumps can be deemed as a statutory nuisance before they can help. An officer has a good theory as to might be causing it.

 

It's not just the sound that can annoy; it can be the occasional burst of powerful/putrid garlic odours too, which can strike up to 5x daily anytime between 10am-11pm despite shut windows. The council asked me to keep a diary to check for patterns. Funnily it dropped from daily after this suggestion a few weeks ago, but is back up at daily rates again. I think this had been accruing since a former and neighbouring office outlet was finally morphed into a restaurant relatively recently from around 2008. I wrote a letter to the manager in mid 2011 stressing such concerns among others, but the odour problem has remained unresolved, while the occasional mechanical fan sound problems have been rectified when necessary – luckily a recent planning application to snake yet another nearby flue passed my back window from an adjacent conversion hasn’t transpired, fingers crossed – they simply grow arms and legs. The office, before becoming a restaurant, was the branch outlet, if not head-office, for a ‘friendly soc.’ that had resided in and around the block properties in different guises since the advent of such societies and even beforehand..., in fact this particular ‘friendly society’ was probably the first in Britain. [i see that almost 5 million Britons have a policy with such orgs so I won’t say anything against them despite my suspicions]. They extended this outlet/base in the 1960s up to my property by acquiring a ground floor barbershop that used to sit next to the shop below... They’d incidentally owned my flat presumably up to the late 1990s* i.e. as offices before changing hands to the family property company that I’d rented from in 2001 before buying the flat in 2006. That same company appears to have been behind the other conversions as well.

 

The corner office was converted 3 decades later for ‘light food and drink’ use (with corner-shop below) during the earlier ‘00s albeit into a simple deli-bar before becoming a fully fledged garlic incinerator – only kidding – from 2008 onward. I think the root of my troubles might emanate from sharing the enclosed lightwell area to the rear, which may have affected my senses over time due to extraction fume leakage – as the smell appears to quickly die away after I go out into the street to detect where it’s coming from! The other offices above the restaurant appear to have been vacated over the last couple of years or so despite the window posters saying that a rather successful travel agent resides there and despite the emergent maintenance works to the building over the last fortnight. I’m rather confused that the old friendly soc. still has their address here if Googled for! More alarmingly, I’ve been the only one breathing this all in at the back since the offices have been vacated!

 

[Furthermore, the lightwell is how I get my fresh air i.e. when chainsmoking staff command the front of the building. The most putrid instigators could sometimes get through shut windows rendering it almost similar to the garlic bursts, but nowhere in the same league. That said, I’ve learnt my lesson regarding keeping the windows shut to the front – it’s helped to dispel the putridity coming from the smokers – only trying to guess when they’ll gather can be difficult as there are 3 shops to worry about. During applying the trick of keeping the front windows shut during working hours, I found myself having to get up earlier and earlier. This was to the point that I had to get up on Sunday morning at between 6-7am to shut windows for one of the most putrid from bunch who was arriving earlier and earlier. That shop used to open at noon on Sunday. Also, the shop next to this has followed suit - sharing the same business activity - and therefore also opening much earlier than normal, meaning longer smoking hours to shut out. That wasn’t the only difficulty in applying the ‘close window trick’ – a restaurant worker then started to come round the corner and smoke here too after the shops had shut and believe me I smelled it before seeing it – very putrid indeed. Fortunately I don’t smell the same level of putridity (smoke generally smells normal again) since keeping the front windows generally shut, but at night I can sometimes get bad bursts/reminders from folk passing by I guess if windows are open. Not being a smoker I wouldn’t know if these were coming from an herbal brand as they weren’t normal, a receptionist from the council’s pest/noise control candidly suggested they’re bad quality fags, but I’d now ask why were they so popular with the shops/restaurant – I am at a loss and think that I’m simply sensitive to something that might be affecting me at a micro/spore level; and I think it’s the restaurant – although I may be wrong? I’m also a regular at a public library that has an open plan restaurant, where I sometimes smell a similar dirty extract smell to that which you’d occasionally find lingering around some restaurant areas in the city. IN fact I’m off there now to catch up on work.]

 

Needless to say the restaurant apparatus started to get earlier and earlier too after my trick of opening the back windows after shop opening times to substitute the front window air – Funnily, I erringly telephoned them recently to ask “why so early on this occasion?” and went through them like a ton of feathers not knowing that the clocks had gone back, but just as of yesterday I had to shut windows as at 9.45am, albeit they’re licensed to open at 11am. I find this air quality literally unbearable at times. I’m also confused as, initially, I could keep my back windows open all day long even during restaurant activity for around 2 weeks coincidentally after telling their manager of my success (in combating the smokers’ intrusions) to the front of the flat in mid around 2011. I’m sure it was a coincidence that it was such a short-lived option.

 

Finally, I’ll be publishing a Google time-line calendar/diary of the ongoing thumping and bursts of garlic when they occur and how they’ve occurred since March ‘12. Hopefully the council will be able to act upon this, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m of course hoping that it all stops before I get round to uploading the calendars as I would prefer not to – my main reasoning for having to use Google calendar for this is for universality since the council are still using CSV files for outlook, which does not recognise ICS file windows calendars!

 

Apologies for elaborating on "distraction", but I'm afraid it's one of the components! I wonder though where I'd be now if I’d instead been lured to the countryside or to a house with a garden. Despite the drawback it’s a wonderful flat and privilege to be in. Most of the above problems wouldn’t of course annoy anyone else, merely someone trying to accomplish something special on EC or ergo anything complex. Perhaps the best artists etc. divert madness through translating it into song – try the mad mix of ‘I’m going slightly mad’ or the likes; or by growing mad hairdos; or even by pretending they’re deaf if they happened to be the greatest musician who ever walked the earth. No I’m not insinuating that Beethoven was pretending, but it makes you wonder what is necessary for such a level of greatness, nor would I be insinuating that I’m aiming for such, but again just trying to achieve something special on concertina!

 

[*Oh, my asterisk: you might see on the video sneaking to the left of the screen, that there’s some rather nice glass shelving within a recess. This is 2Metres cu of built in recess (1 of 4, 1 per flat) that I believe were former safes that were too big to haul out during the conversion to flats in 2000.]

[kevin toner]

Something that will be exacerbating the confused sound will be other conscious defaults on the memorised playing. Thanks Geoff for making the earlier point.

 

I’ve spotted another unconscious error I’d got into playing before embarking on a new recording regime – there may be more though that will be spotted and scheduled after a proper recording review! Hence there is another way to spot default beforehand; and it’s been discussed on the forum previously.

 

This is about revisiting notation to correct any defaulting that may have developed due to fingers wanting to do what’s most comfortable to them.

 

The example that I cite here, which occurs thrice, is unsurprisingly at e.g. “...Just re-call...” , i.e. unsurprising because of the fingering challenge not because of the pun on recalling your steps.

 

I have the following ad-lib remark on how I’ve dealt with distraction here and in the past. Apologies if it doesn’t make sense.

 

[after rectifying/rememorizing this over 10 minutes or so, when I attempted to play it in context from the beginning of the stave I got one of these terrible thumps when I reached that bar, which reminded me of similar throws I used to get during the learning on my treble-only days circa from 2007/8 when I realised that I should recall any bars that were wrong – after trying to correct in this manner and upon my suspicion of the throws I deliberately didn’t play the bar during a context run of playing only to find the sound of a flurry of car horn beeps (probably the same distance as the aforementioned frog croaks) yet quietness up to that point. Ever since then I’ve discovered that throwing has been indeed part of the game – it’s coincidental though, surely? Endearingly, I felt I was getting my own back recently when I decided to brave learning and adding the bass/treble playing to the refrain of this song (having realised such could be done and having accomplished it first in the chorus and its mid-bridge after mid 2011) i.e. when the first few bars lyrically seemed to be carrying me through the difficult memorizing/throwing stage or process. For example within the first few bars are questions/remarks like: [right at the beginning] “Why can’t I for-get like I should?...”, which when broken down for memorizing can easily be construed as “Why can’t I for-get? like I should!...”; shortly after at “...can’t keep you off my mind-” the last word “mind” is sustained long for 2 semibreves, meaning it sound like “...can’t keep you off my my!!” i.e. until the end of the long note. I’ve actually collated well around some hundred of these types of lyrical quips since focussing on learning music, which wouldn’t have been the case if I decided not to sing along with the playing to help with the distractions – I’m not a singer by nature, so I’m over the moon I was steered into this in a way; and I might have even found a potentially good voice along the way. I would have honestly given up trying to learn the refrain (bass/treble) due to distraction if it weren’t for these lyrical pit-stops. I might have also been too disheartened to extend upon my repertoire. Thank goodness for lyricists!]

 

Forgive me if I take around a month to pull off a proper recording. If I'm sooner then it'll be a bonus!