Grrr - trying to do a major editing job on a concert programme, and keyboard is playing up.

Maizie - hope yor bug is short lived!

Was looking forward to seeing 'Best Exotic Marigold Hotel' as I'd heard a lot about it...however upon checking there is a warning that it contains 'strong language, ### references and racism'. This is a 12A film, a twelve year old can legally see strong language, ### and racism. I've goneoff the idea now and will have to find something elae to do next Tuesday night....maybe if theres another film on....

Another hospital visit
More stabby needles which I am completely phobic of...
And the news that my DVT was possibly caused by an autoimmune disease, which not only requires lots more further stabby needles and test, but could cause far more blood clots in future...

You have my entire sympathy. I've struggled through a morning's work, doing everything twice over to counteract the cotton-wool head, but am about to admit defeat...

So sorry to hear that. Hope they get it sorted so that it doesn't cause you too many problems in the future.

Another hospital visit for me too this morning. A scan showed that the tendon in my shoulder has thinned out and almost worn away!! No wonder I can't play my violin. Not sure what happens next....

Good grief! Hugs to all you poorly sick people and hope that the hospital issues are not too great for anyone....Maizie, I sympathise completely, that's what happened to me last Tues. Sorethroat "something's coming" feeling at tea time, and by the end of band my nose was streaming, eyes stinging and feeling really awful! Still not great but a huge amount better....

I'm still alive It stopped worsening at that rate. Thanks to the magic of decongestants I can breath and am not leaking gallons through the eyes any more. I still feel rather like I've been poleaxed, but a bit more napping should help with that

I might also see if I can persuade my husband that he'd like pizza delivered tonight rather than cooking, because I quite fancy deliciously bad for you comfort food.


muzikalbadger, stabby needles and tests are nasty, I hope that the results come back in a way that minimises any future nastinesses

Thanks Maizie, I hope you are feeling better soon!! Im going out for pizza at frankie and bennys tonight to cheer me up too

Im just a big wuss really who hates needles! Its my only real phobia...

One good thing has come out of that: I remembered that I need to book an appointment for a jab I have quarterly - thanks.

sorry to hear that: you may however find that you get used to them and de-phobe yourself . My diabetic son gives himself four injections every day, and ought to be doing fingerprick blood tests the same number of times every day as well, and from having to be persuaded for each and every one has gone to doing them all without bothering at all. In your situation, there is always Magic Cream (EMLA) to numb the skin at least, if you ask . (just ask in plenty of time - it needs to be applied half an hour beforehand).

Maizie - I hope the pizza did the therapeutic thing for you - there's a sympathy bug going round up here too, and neither runny nose nor sore throat really help with recorder-playing .

Me too. I always faint whenever I have an introvenous and it takes me 10 minutes to come around, however I had a blood test in December for rheumatoid arthritis and I didn't faint at all! Plus I could get the bus back home.

Thanks Anacrusis, I am a LOT better than I used to be! At school I needed 4 nurses to hold me down for the routine jabs!! After having a DVT almost 2 years ago (which as im sure you know involves heparin injections and many many blood tests...) I can now cope a bit more, but still get stressed about it and panicky. Its not the pain, I don't actually think it hurts at all (unless you get a particularly evil nurse!) but the thought of the needle going through my skin that freaks me out! Weird huh?!

I won't tell you about the steroid injection I had in my cornea the year before last, then

Makes sense to me. I was rejected as a blood donor because it made me feel very faint when they removed the needle.

Glad to have helped!!

there's about a one in five chance of hitting a weeny nerve in the skin on the way through - so it's not really about a nurse being evil or angelic really, just chance...and it does mean you'd be pretty unlucky to feel much at all. It does make me laugh though: I have a subset of patients who insist on coming to see Dr Excrusis instead of Sister Nicenurse, because they think my postnominals make me a better leech: truth is, the nurses do far more of suchlike and therefore ought to be way better than I am at it . I certainly always go to Nicenurse Karen at our surgery for my flu jab - she's the best archer I know .

And no, it's not weird at all to feel as you do - many feel the same: I used to about drip cannulae too until I'd had one placed for a procedure (childbirth, or something, I think....) - after that I realised it was less of a big deal than I'd thought though, and the next time round just sighed a bit and handed over my arm.

Apropos of the thread title, currently can't go arrgh except sotto voce. It's quite fun consulting with a grotty voice - I don't do it until I'm fairly sure the infectious phase has passed, but it's the one time patients don't crank up the "I'm iiiiiiiilll" cough and miserable look, cos the doc looks worse than they do .

I think I'm gettign this too - I've been sinking since monday!

I doubt this will get any better by tomorrow!

It's everywhere this, isn't it? I've had a bug of some sort for most of this week (low point yesterday), and it's been a thorough nuisance...

My beautiful Bb clarinet has developed a long crack - about 3 inches long!! I am so upset! Need to take it back to the maker next week - but I have a Band concert tomorrow!!! I will need to get he old Buffet B12 out and see if it still plays!

Oh no!
I hope it doesn't take as long to fix as mine did.

How long did yours take to fix?

a couple of months.

Really!! Oh no!! Was it back to normal afterwards?

Yes. It's been fine.

whereabouts is the crack?

in the back of the upper joint - from the speaker key hole down to the RH F# hole! So concerned about it!

Having one or two problems trying to remember how teach told me to play a piece in CTM book 3. Gonna sit at piano and try to fathom it out now, oh m'aidez m'aidez....as for ledger lines they really get my goat. I think the hair off the dog treatment is called for there...

If there is such a thing, that's not a bad place to develop a crack : that should be utterly repairable

Getting somewhere with the Gymn. Still a bit mystified by the second line and I still can't remember exactly what she told me BUT I am progressing on the awkward fingering, and will have a go at copying some ledger lines down on my manuscript paper just to get them down in my head (it's good training for my Brian too, who needs Nintendo Light brain train games when you have a 'heavy' piano to do it for you...)

My piano teacher really knows how many beans make five (in case you don't know, it's:

one bean
two bean
a bean
and half
and half a bean)

or should that be how many beats....

Thanks Barry. I'll find out on Tuesday when I take it over to Peter.

Not sure where else to post this.

I've just seen a heron devour a frog out of our pond. Quite an interesting spectacle, but I did feel a bit sorry for the frog.

Once it had eaten it, I shooed it away. (I didn't want a half eaten frog lying around.) He can go and eat some-one else's frogs.

We have a similar problem - a pond full of frogs, and an absolute pest of a cat (not ours) who fishes them out with a paw.

Just invented one or two theories as to how I can become a better sight reader, but they're hardly screams so I'll share them elsewhere. She is watching Match of the Day, now she's switched over to Bull's Eye. Bullie's special prize is a 'wonderful week for two at Pontins'

Come friendly bombs......

It's
Two beans, a bean-and-a-half, half a bean and a bean. Has a wonderful rhythm.

Do you manage to fill in the Missing Link where learning and reading is concerned?
I find a lot of mine (I'd be better off posting this in Teachers, come to think of it) can either look at the music and READ it every time, in other words take in the instructions and obey them, which is what you do the first time, or they can try to remember how it goes.

A lot of them find it difficult to look at the page and just let it remind them. They're either reinventing the wheel every time, wasting a lot of brain power on deciphering what they've already deciphered once, or they're looking down at the same keyboard that they were looking at when they played the previous piece, and trying to remember what they played last time. I'm sure there's actually a learnable skill (which comes naturally to many people) in just using the printed information to remind you of what you had already learnt.

There's a re-org going on at work and I've been put into a new team. The rest of of my previous team stay where they are, but I'm the only one moved into the new area and I'm the only one based in the north west office - all the others are in London or abroad.

I strongly suspect I will now be a "travels-to-London for 2 or 3 days a week" person (it'll have to be overnight stops, so living out of a suitcase in central London hotels seems very likely).

This could stuff up my choirs if it works out wrongly. Might be looking for London music opportunities at this rate.....

Shoud lfind out more on Monday.

Well, it's all experimental stuff I'm doing with sight reading at the moment, Linda. Like learning to carry on, even if I do infact make a b*lls up. So what if I make more balls ups, or play anything in rhythm...the fact is that I would have carried on to the end of my particular 'dirge of despair' in stead of doing one mistake, seizing up, calling for Mother Mary, or even saying an expletive followed by 'I'll never learn to bleeding sight read'.

I'm now playing slowly. DEEEEEEEAAAAAAAADDDDDD slow. So I can consider the relationships between a note and the note(s)/chords after it. My teacher hasn't told me to do this but if it'll help me, and early indications seem to indicate that it may be doing that.

I must also find out whether the ABRSM publish anything especially for sight reading. I've googled 'how to sight read piano' too and I get a lot of conflicting answers on there.

Here's something that makes me scream. It's a gorgeous spring day here in Britain. The sun is shining. The weather is sweet. It makes me want to move my dancing feet. But not her. She doesn't want to go out, the damn hypocritical philistine that she is. Still if it can be done alone it shall be done alone.

You know the tempo marking for that is Grave, don't you?

Yes I did as a matter of fact. That's probably where I'll be before I become a confident sight reader. Interestingly enough whilst in church singing hymns (I love singing hymns) you know when you're singing one line you read the next line, or you close your hymn book around two lines from the end knowing all the words you need to complete the hymn. There surely is a relative principle there appertaining to the intriguing mysterious ever-rotating sphere of piano sight reading??

Yes, but I've not made the connection myself yet.....
I've known people who can sight read on piano better than I could do with English prose.

I think that there is, and I think that it involves reading A LOT of music. I think that it is like any language and that constant exposure and practise builds internal mental structures that make us then not have to think about "what comes next". I am also not a psychologist or linguist, so I might be talking out of my backside.

Edit- it might be helpful if I gave some reasoning for why I think this way.

When I was doing piano exams I was a terrible sight-reader (I have the mark sheets to prove it).

I finished with exams when I was 15 and messed around with piano for a few more years - playing and learning what I wanted, transcribing things by ear. I then stopped piano for a few years to concentrate on horn, and played a lot of orchestral and chamber stuff. Somewhere about five years after I stopped piano, I started to play accompaniments for people and I found that my sight reading was just suddenly *there*. I just suddenly knew how to fake things- I was better able to tell "what came next" without having to think too hard about it.

In the intervening five years I did absolutely no sight-reading practise. I just played a lot of music. Consequently, that must have been the thing that caused the improvement.

Exactly. I can read aloud a book, a poem or maybe a passage from the Bible (without or with maybe one) interruption. So put that into a sight reading situation.

Two weeks to Grade 8 Flute, and my back has decided to sulk. Think it's my neck, anyway right shoulder very sore and stiff, can't turn head to left or bend head very much. Sadly think I need to practice today, try to phone Chiropracter in the morning and play tomorrow by ear (hopefully there'll be an appointment in the afternoon I can make after work!) Rubbish timing!

...and the fly on the dog's whoopsie tonight is that I can't do any scales practice, or even another so-called 'doom anthem'. 'She' has come upstairs and comondeered the computer, and she doesn't like me practising anyway. At least my next door neighbour does.

She is a 'ruddy Palestine' to put it into the words of Ronnie Barker in 'Porridge'.

The divvle with the 'Dagenham Destroyer', I still did my scales and arpeggios for grade 3. I don't have to be negative as I'm 99.9% sure I'll get a good mark for these, plus my pieces. But then it's no good complaining to her about not sharpening your Cs in the key of Dmaj or Amaj as she wouldn't have the foggiest idea as to what I was carping on about. Just like if she starts going on to me about her silly little football hooliganism team losing their silly little game of sport.

Agony Aunties'r'us says:

Get yourself some headphones (you are playing a digital, aren't you?) then she won't hear your practice and you won't hear her football commentary. Simples.

(Only you have to make sure you don't either sing along or swear at yourself)

Thanks, Agony Aunties R'Us! Headphones are in the black box of bits and bobs. Knew they'd come in handy sometime, which is not the case for all the rest of the garbage I tend to get at Christmas. Do you do intensive sight reading for piano courses too?

(amazed at the existence of an agony aunt that doesn't sexualise the mundane)

Why can't all piano music be either in the key of C major or A minor. Why does there have to be key signatures? To me this is bordering on musical sadism.

The English Dance is in Amaj. So why do I REPEATEDLY want to play the F#s C#s and G#s as Fs Cs and Gs (i.e how I read them?) Or remember to sharpen in one bar then play on a couple of bars till I reach the next F# C# or G# and then just play the natural note? This annoys me greatly, especially as I ought to know about these things - am I some sort of sight reading spazz or something?

###### annoyance.

Im surprised so many people fight shy of the 'big keys'. I love the challenge of playing in '5 and above'. Only over the weekend I played Lizst Consolation no 3 (Dflat) Schubert Gflat Impromptu, Trygve Madsen Prelude and Fugue No 3 (F# major), and the slow movement of Schuberts last Sonata, with the end section in C# major. Maybe this would be a subject for a new thread. I'll start one.

One extreme......Most humans would find that incredibly brain bending...like memorizing the phone book or something. Sadly you have to do it or you don't get your grades. I don't expect to be able to play in 5+ keys. Just being able to play in one or two would be good (or not playing Fs as F# in the key of F major, thats another one).