Monday 15 April 2013

Monday - Things you didn't know about me (1)

MUSIC



When I was 8 years old I started learning the recorder. I hated it. Played well (preferably a wooden instrument) it is beautiful; played badly it is awful. I still have mine (treble and alto) - the treble has a cracked mouthpiece where I threw it at the wall during practice. The alto was even worse - nobody properly explained the clef and how 'c' was now in a different place on the stave and now needed different fingering.

Around the same time I started learning classical guitar. I didn't do well at that either, even with my 7/8 size guitar my fingers didn't have the reach.

At age 11 I happily abandoned the recorder and took up piano; which I would study on our second hand upright for the next five years. My first piano teacher also taught me another use for the guitar; and I learnt to accompany myself whilst singing.

Teaching my dog, Leo, the guiatar

At the same time I started singing lessons and joined the church choir. I had finally found my instrument, voice.

I studied music for GCSE and for A-level; wrestling with Bach's harmony rules and learning to identify the composer of music by working out the period; the style, the instruments. I enjoyed A-level music so much that I spent a year at University doing a Bachelor's degree. Only the thought of what I would do when I graduated threw me off this path.

This means I've always preferred 'classical' music. From medieval through baroque and renaissance through classical to the romantics. I always drew the line at modern (famously swearing alliteratively at an assignment on Bartok).

The nearest I got to popular music was the 1960s until my very late teens; and to the present date my discovery of music has been through TV, friends and the Better-half.

You may or may not have know all that about me... but things you don't know about me; what is on my iPhone right now to listen to:-
Rammstein - Amerika
All Saints - Never Ever
Black Eyed Peas - Boom Boom Pow
Bob Marley and the Wailers - Jamming
The Dresden Dolls - Coin Operated Boy
Status Quo - Pictures of Matchstick Men
The Damned - New Rose
Boyzone - Words
Scala & Kolancy Brothers - The Blowers Daughter
Frank Sinatra - Something Stupid
Carter USM - Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere
Faure's Requiem
Slik - Forever and ever
Debussy's Clair de Lune
Barber's Adagio for Strings
Ima Robot - Greenback Boogie
Brandi Carlile - The Story

...that's a few of the 479 that just came up as I pressed the next button. Eclectic, no?!