What Are You Practising / Composing Now?

[Joseph K]

Keep going - good to see. I had to check back to your earlier videos to see what guitars you've been using. For Bluesette you were using an electric of some sort, but here you are using what I think is a classical guitar. I assumed until very recently that acoustic guitars are the same as classical guitars, but then I found web pages which informed me that they're not - quite. So called acoustic guitars have metal strings and a slightly different profile from classical or Spanish guitars. All this was completely unknown to me. So who uses acoustic guitars (using that "definition") compared with classical/Spanish guitars?

I've just tried to use/access BandLab - as someone has sent me some music to play and I'll try to get a recording put up in due course. Bandlab seems a bit like an online version of an audio editor - but how sophisticated it is I don't know. Also I don't want to put up any recordings of my playing unless I can be sure of privacy and quality. If I record into a local audio editor or DAW then until (or if) I decide to release any recording nobody will know how lousy my tone was on a particular day, or which notes I missed out, but if I try recordings into an online system such as Bandlab then imperfections will be out there for anyone else to see.

Maybe your videos to Youtube have the same kind of privacy issues - so I think you're very brave to do those - though if you have the right kit you can presumably make the videos first privately, then decide whether you want to upload them or not.

Have you tried Bandlab?

I don't see the need for an audio editor. And regarding privacy/quality, I don't think I'm important enough to care whether a performance of mine has many imperfections and that these are visible to an audience. I know there's a fair few videos on my youtube of lousy jazz guitar playing and too many recordings of one piece by Bach - one day I'll delete most or all of the current ones of renditions of Bach because I fully intend to upload better ones, and I might get round to deleting many of the jazz ones because most are not very listenable - but youtube I think not that long ago made deleting videos more difficult than I remember it being. I guess the thing is it's better to have uploaded these because then I have the option at least to delete the ones I don't like, rather than never having uploaded them at all.

[Dave2002]

You seem very confused. There are electric guitars and there are acoustic guitars. Electric guitars have magnetic pickups, acoustic guitars don't. Acoustic guitars come in various varieties: baroque guitars, classical (or "Spanish") guitars, 10-string classical guitars, folk guitars, resonator guitars etc. etc. which differ in aspects like the material the strings are made of, the material and size of the body, and so on. People who play classical guitar music play it on classical guitars, I guess the clue is in the name.

No - not really confused - or I wasn't until I looked this up. To me acoustic meant - "not electric" - but I didn't realise that there are acoustic guitars which are not the same as classical/Spanish guitars. Electric means with some form of transducer, plus amplification.

So who plays an acoustic guitar which is not classical? Fok singers perhaps? Some pop musicians - though most probably play electric guitars?

[RichardB]

To me acoustic meant - "not electric"

It does!

Electric means with some form of transducer, plus amplification.

As I said, "electric" means with a magnetic pickup. Other kinds of transducers like piezo mics, can be built into acoustic guitars.

So who plays an acoustic guitar which is not classical?

Almost all folk guitar players, quite a lot of jazz guitar players who (like John McLaughlin for example) are often just as fluent with the acoustic guitar as with the electric, very many pop musicians, and so on. David Bowie for example was very attached to the sound of the 12-string acoustic.

Of course you could have looked all this up on the so-called "internet" in a couple of minutes.

[Serial_Apologist]

I might get round to deleting many of the jazz ones because most are not very listenable

I must have caught only the good ones, then!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

No - not really confused - or I wasn't until I looked this up. To me acoustic meant - "not electric" - but I didn't realise that there are acoustic guitars which are not the same as classical/Spanish guitars. Electric means with some form of transducer, plus amplification.

I think an electric guitar is one without a soundbox. All acoustic guitars can be amplified, but that doesn't make them electric.

[Joseph K]

I think an electric guitar is one without a soundbox.

Incorrect. My jazz guitar is a hollowbody - it has a 'soundbox'.

[Jonathan]

My latest Liszt Society journal music section includes a number of incomplete albumblatt, I thought I'd have a go at completing one of them. If I'm happy enough with it, I'll put it on my u-tube channel.

[Dave2002]

Just exploring Nestup, for generating rhythm patterns.

See https://nestup.cutelab.nyc/

Experiment, but do also look at the cheat sheet page at https://github.com/cutelabnyc/nested-tuplets

It'll only generate four tracks from the web page, but to get more simply run it several times and merge the resulting files.

[Joseph K]

Still not perfect, and still not tired of this suite. Invariably the second time the A section comes around I play it better i.e. more legato.

[cloughie]

Satie’s Gymnopedies.

[RichardB]

I've been working a bit "feverishly" for the last couple of days to get something finished - the electronic parts to a new work for solo performer (violin, voice, movement) whose score was finished a while ago and which is having its first performance in Paris early next month. I had two reasons for speeding up: firstly, the concert is coming up quite soon; secondly my OH tested positive yesterday and isn't feeling well so I thought I had better get this stuff finished before I almost inevitably get this virus too. Luckily I don't have too stressful a week coming up, nothing that can't be easily postponed.

Apart from being a new departure in terms of composing three seldom combined kinds of activity into the same piece, it's the seventh instalment to have been completed so far of a series of sixteen based on a cycle of poems written for me by our late friend Simon Howard. The sixteen are grouped into four "acts", in each of which four of them are interleaved in various ways. Act 3 is a 32-minute composition for an ensemble of sixteen instrumentalists (one of whom is also a vocalist) which was premiered by the Musikfabrik ensemble in Cologne in 2017; of the two completed components of act 4, only one (a duo for horn and percussion) has been performed so far; the other (a solo for basset horn) was written last year. Act 2 is in progress for the French ensemble soundinitiative, whose violinist Winnie Huang will be playing the new solo; act 1 is in progress for the Chicago-based Fonema Consort. With luck it might all be finished late next year by which time it will have been ten years since Simon departed this world.

[Joseph K]

I've been working a bit "feverishly" for the last couple of days to get something finished - the electronic parts to a new work for solo performer (violin, voice, movement) whose score was finished a while ago and which is having its first performance in Paris early next month. I had two reasons for speeding up: firstly, the concert is coming up quite soon; secondly my OH tested positive yesterday and isn't feeling well so I thought I had better get this stuff finished before I almost inevitably get this virus too. Luckily I don't have too stressful a week coming up, nothing that can't be easily postponed.

Apart from being a new departure in terms of composing three seldom combined kinds of activity into the same piece, it's the seventh instalment to have been completed so far of a series of sixteen based on a cycle of poems written for me by our late friend Simon Howard. The sixteen are grouped into four "acts", in each of which four of them are interleaved in various ways. Act 3 is a 32-minute composition for an ensemble of sixteen instrumentalists (one of whom is also a vocalist) which was premiered by the Musikfabrik ensemble in Cologne in 2017; of the two completed components of act 4, only one (a duo for horn and percussion) has been performed so far; the other (a solo for basset horn) was written last year. Act 2 is in progress for the French ensemble soundinitiative, whose violinist Winnie Huang will be playing the new solo; act 1 is in progress for the Chicago-based Fonema Consort. With luck it might all be finished late next year by which time it will have been ten years since Simon departed this world.

Sorry to hear about your OH.

And your Howard cycle sounds very interesting. Here's hoping it's released on CD one day...

[Serial_Apologist]

Still not perfect, and still not tired of this suite. Invariably the second time the A section comes around I play it better i.e. more legato.

I'd be pretty chuffed, Joseph K.

[Serial_Apologist]

I've been working a bit "feverishly" for the last couple of days to get something finished - the electronic parts to a new work for solo performer (violin, voice, movement) whose score was finished a while ago and which is having its first performance in Paris early next month. I had two reasons for speeding up: firstly, the concert is coming up quite soon; secondly my OH tested positive yesterday and isn't feeling well so I thought I had better get this stuff finished before I almost inevitably get this virus too. Luckily I don't have too stressful a week coming up, nothing that can't be easily postponed.

Apart from being a new departure in terms of composing three seldom combined kinds of activity into the same piece, it's the seventh instalment to have been completed so far of a series of sixteen based on a cycle of poems written for me by our late friend Simon Howard. The sixteen are grouped into four "acts", in each of which four of them are interleaved in various ways. Act 3 is a 32-minute composition for an ensemble of sixteen instrumentalists (one of whom is also a vocalist) which was premiered by the Musikfabrik ensemble in Cologne in 2017; of the two completed components of act 4, only one (a duo for horn and percussion) has been performed so far; the other (a solo for basset horn) was written last year. Act 2 is in progress for the French ensemble soundinitiative, whose violinist Winnie Huang will be playing the new solo; act 1 is in progress for the Chicago-based Fonema Consort. With luck it might all be finished late next year by which time it will have been ten years since Simon departed this world.

I must look up Simon Howard. Hope this comes off after all the work you've put in, Richard.

[RichardB]

I must look up Simon Howard. Hope this comes off after all the work you've put in, Richard.

You must remember Simon though, he was a member of the original Radio 3 Forum and then this one, under the names Julien Sorel, John Skelton, Arcades Project and probably others I can't remember.