Nope!

Keep up HG! We got to 101 pages ago and we're now on the Coda

Sorry, Skyers. I lost the will to live pages ago, and haven't been keeping up!

A likely story - I bet you're sat there with several bags of popcorn and ice-cream for the interval

Burp!

Skylark, I think your second-hand account that anacrusis may have said X or Y is inaccurate - I've just trawled through the site, and she's not made any personal comments about you, only a remark that she may have offended you by commenting on the proportion of the posts on here that are cafe-esque. No pile of **** emoticons or anything of the sort; more likely that someone else is **** stirring by spreading such rumour.

I don't go by second-hand accounts - I've seen it for myself. It was a post which was made very shortly after another member on here had posted insulting comments about me and the other "usual suspects", for no better reason than because we don't share the same sense of humour. Anacrusis continued the jibe and used an emoticon of a pile of **** in connection with the posts made by "the usual suspects" - which incidentally I am proud to be a one of. Her post with the emoticon and another one referring to same thing are still there. It seems more than a little... disingenous, shall we say.. to try to make out otherwise.

When anacrusis said above that the conversation was in a private forum, I take it she meant the wine bar? If you're going to be rude about members of this forum, it probably is better confined to the wine bar, and then I would never have known what she really thought about me. Personally I'd rather spend time in the tavern on here having wacky but harmless and friendly conversations, but again, each to their own.



PS. My inbox *is* full again now It would be so much more helpful if people who've got my email address would use it!


Incidentally I was just going to quietly let the matter drop until you made this further jibe, anacrusis. When I posted a couple of weeks ago when I first saw the snide remark and emoticon on the other forum, several people asked me who I was referring to and I declined to tell them. It crossed my mind whether to take you off "message ban" in case you wanted to clear the air in a friendly way, but this further jibe convinced me that you had no such intent, and I won't be banging my head against a brick wall any more.

I found that post when I was looking through, but find it a little spurious that you would conclude that the remark was pertaining to you in any way. To review the premises, we have the term 'usual suspects' and two uses of it:

1) The term was used by someone in a thread on here to refer to you;
2) The term was used by anacrusis elsewhere, within a similar time-frame but in an entirely different context, in a manner which could be considered derogatory.

From this, if I understand correctly, you infer:

3) (1) and (2) mean anacrusis made a derogatory remark about you.

The term 'usual suspects' is in the vernacular (close to 3,000,000 results on Google), and is so vague as to mean that any one person's definition of the usual suspects is likely different to anyone else's. As such, supposition that Anacrusis was 'continuing the jibe', and hence two uses of the term by two different people in two different contexts refers to the same cohort is somewhat dubious. Yes, there is some element of temporal coincidence, but applying Occam's razor the explanation for the chain of events is that it is synchronicity at work. Synchronicity is an interesting mental phenomenon, spotting patterns where there are none - walking around a city and being convinced that all the pedestrian crossings turn green just as one approaches them, even though there is no causative mechanism in place that could mean that was the case. In extreme cases, it can cause psychosis - one can see synchronicity everywhere, no matter how tenuous, and from that conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world. In milder cases, as we have here, it can lead to conclusions that seem entirely plausible but are equally, and indeed more likely, implausible.

Go YAP!!!


although having said that, my toddler-addled brain didn't quite understand all of your post at first reading...... - darn! You've made me have to think!!!!

I was thinking about this the other day - pehaps a bit off topic so apologies for that - but what makes someone want to become an examiner? To me it's about on par with driving instructor - why would you want to put yourself in that situation?

I confess I do scales for two reasons.
Firstly to check my Clarinet is working properly - That really just takes one scale.
And secondly to pass exams - Do you get zero for scales if you really can't do them - or would I get a mark or to for just getting the 1st note right?

You only get zero for not attempting to play them at all.

Now I'm intrigued -
1st note only = 1 mark
Up only = half marks
Wrong scale - i.e. examiner says F major and I acidentaly play F minor = ?

What do you think?

Sorry feeling a bit rebellious after my scales went really badly this evening - I was shattered after gardening all day and realised I do need my brain to play scales even thou most of the time it doesn't seem to be engaged when I am playing them.

You can only achieve 0 in any area of the exam by refusing to do it, you get almost half marks for aural even if you don't get anything right as long as you give it a go!

Bit off topic and not really an answer to your question either but it just occured to me that my brain sometimes does really strange things with scales. I learnt my scales in English and my teacher asks me to play them in French. If he says "Si" I always want to play "C" (and not B) which I can understand and C is an easier scale to play than B anyway but he once asked me to play "si bémol mineur" which I translated to myself as "C flat minor" not a scale I could ever remember playing before on anything but I dutifully worked out that "C flat" was the enharmonic name for B so it must be B minor that he wanted.

For scales these are the marking criteria for the the next step up from 'no work offered' which scores zero.
Quoted from 'These Music Exams'
7-10 marks
l Very poor or incomplete response
l Extremely sporadic and uneven playing
l Very slow tempo
l Technically inadequate

You can download These Music Exams from this page on the ABRSM web site. It gives all the marking criteria for each of the sections of the exam.

Although you only post infrequently these days, YetAnotherPianist, it's always interesting to see what topics you decide to devote your considerable intellect to

I must decline to enter into a sparring match with you though. It's not how I get my kicks - friendly banter with friendly people is more my cup of tea

I must admit was taken aback when I first saw anacrusis's post on the other forum because up till then, we'd exchanged quite a number of PMs which on the face of it were friendly on both sides, or so I thought. I didn't realise what she really thought, but now I know and have adjusted my own thinking, and I shall just put it down to the fact that we can't all get on with everybody So I don't feel the need to have any further conversation on the matter. Each to their own

So stop wittering about it. I cannot be the only one here with no idea what you are talking about.

Neither do I care. I bet I am not alone in this either.

So don't bother to read it! It's not rocket science, is it

My apologies, skylark. I will try to make myself clearer.

I do not know which thread you are wittering about - the thread in which Anacrusis has allegedly been so rude to you.

I cannot be the only one to be so ignorant.

Nor do I care.

I cannot be the only one to be so indifferent.

I would like you to stop wittering about it here, in this thread.

A fiver says I am not alone in this.

I hope this clears up the confusion.

I'd already said that I didn't feel the need to have any further conversation about it when you decided to extend the conversation If you keep posting, I shall feel as if it's only polite to keep replying

My apologies again, skylark. I must have missed this.

Getting back to the original subject I find that scales have different levels of usefulness on the different instruments I play. I have to admit my sax and flute playing are not known for their familiarity with scales, on recorder scales have featured but to be honest I've never really felt much benefit from them. When warming up on a recorder I tend to blow through a number of arpegios which seems to have the 'lock recorder mode' into my fingers and seems more beneficial to the type of music I mostly play. On clarinet I'm a bit of a scales zealot and will start most practice sessions with a nice blast. I think it is partly that with a clarinet there is a lot of keywork and a reed that may be playing up. A few scales over the full range of the instrument tell me if something needs attention. On a recorder there is a lot less to hide behind......if anything is wrong it is almost certainly the player.

When I comment about the usefulness or otherwise of scale playing, I refer purely to the piano - a point I forget to make. I consider them useless to pianists.

String playing colleagues tell me they are invaluable to learning to get around their instrument. As a totally useless violin and double bass player, I can testify to how bad I was without learning my scales. Of course, whether learning them would have turned me into a half-decent string player is a different story.

Assuming they would, then reason 10x for practising scales is:

to protect examiners from my attempts at string playing without learning them.

What about arpeggios? Do people generally hold the same opinions about the usefulness of practising arpeggios as they do about scales? (I'm saving my own thoughts for later! )

I do notice that one of the reasons I'm fumbly on a piano is not being able to place arpeggiated sequences accurately, and at least arpeggios sound more harmonic and are less of a grind: they're also harder to do though! If I were ever to go back to the keyboard seriously, I guess I might give them a go.

On the recorder - well, there's Bach , and lots of it - also Corelli, and the wonderful thing about that is also that the music doesn't just do a long string of arpeggio, it'll do short fast sections of alternating notes of the arpeggio, fast enough for the difference tones to appear too, and fill out the harmony further .

I bet you a pound to a penny this is because your fingering is poor.

Take the good old D major arp as an example. The standard RH fingering of 1,2,3,.....5,3,2,1...... is horrible. It means we are putting our thumb under at the very point it has to travel the longest distance.

Change the fingering to 2,4,1.....2,1,4..... and life suddenly becomes much easier, with the thumb hardly having to travel any distance at all to reach the A. Apply this principle to arpeggios in pieces and most of the difficulty people experience with these vanishes. Works with white key arps as well, but does not feel so natural.

ooh, thanks for that one . There is some very tempting Scarlatti lying around in the house...