From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V3 #308 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Monday, November 16 1998 Volume 03 : Number 308 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: It's So Quiet Tonight/ Sight reading! [RThurF@aol.com] Re: Alloy: It's So Quiet Tonight/ Sight reading! ["I T Admin @ Govt Offic] Re: Alloy: Sight reading/ fame peeves [RThurF@aol.com] Re: Alloy: Dolby bio [RThurF@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 18:28:40 EST From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: It's So Quiet Tonight/ Sight reading! In a message dated 11/14/98 8:07:57 PM Eastern Standard Time, help.gonw.st@gtnet.gov.uk writes: << Every time I think about starting to learn to read music I think of how long it will be before I'm even slightly competent. You may feel like you're doing mental gymnastics, but at least you have years of experience behind you. I can only play my guitar by ear and don't even know the names of any of the chords I play, never mind being able to read the dots. Stick with it Robin, there's always more to learn, but look at how much you've learned so far. I bet it's a lot when you analyse it. >> Thanks for your sweet encouragement. It's nice to know someone sympathises with what I'm talking about! Even when I began playing upright bass in orchestra when I was a little kid, the sightreading thing came so much easier to everyone else, and I really didn't understand it. It might as well have been gibberish... I just did everything my stand partner was doing! There were also many external complications, because I knew I needed more practice time but my mother couldn't stand having to pick me up at school with the bass, so that I could practice over the weekend. We couldn't afford for me to get my own, all of which combined to create an awful lot of stress for me back then! But I'll always regard an orchestral career as a bassist as 'the one that got away' :) Anyway, cello is excellent for now, and will do nicely as a second instrument til I make myself a lovely proper bass (soon!!) Good to get encouragement Slarv, you have really made me feel better... and yes you're right, I really have come a long way since my beginnings as a sightreader. I'm especially proud of my improvements at keeping time properly, since both cello & bass are the rhythmic anchor for any group they're played in. I'm also prone to look at percussion notation in order to make myself feel better about having to read mere bass clef... poor percussionists! Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 00:29:46 +0000 From: "I T Admin @ Govt Office North West" Subject: Re: Alloy: It's So Quiet Tonight/ Sight reading! At 18:28 15/11/98 EST, Robin wrote: > > >Thanks for your sweet encouragement. It's nice to know someone sympathises >with what I'm talking about! Even when I began playing upright bass in >orchestra when I was a little kid, the sightreading thing came so much easier >to everyone else, and I really didn't understand it. It might as well have >been gibberish... I just did everything my stand partner was doing! There were >also many external complications, because I knew I needed more practice time >but my mother couldn't stand having to pick me up at school with the bass, so >that I could practice over the weekend. We couldn't afford for me to get my >own, all of which combined to create an awful lot of stress for me back then! >But I'll always regard an orchestral career as a bassist as 'the one that got >away' :) > (Whoooops - ramble mode toggling 'ON.' Apologies in advance if this becomes another drawn out Slarvi Saga.) Ah, this rings a few bells. Not particularly with music, but my education in general. When I was about 8 I was in the lowest of the three streams in my year. After I did well in my mid term assessments I was moved up into the second stream, but I hated it. They were doing all kinds of things I wasn't familiar with and I felt really out of my depth and out of place. I also thought (probably incorrectly) that all the kids in that class looked down on me. Looking back, this seems to be a strange attitude for me to adopt. I don't think most kids think about this kind of thing a great deal, but I felt under a lot of stress at that time. I wasn't helped by the attitude of the teacher in this class, who seemed to take great delight in humiliating me instead of trying to help me get up to speed with the rest of the class. Instead of improving, I became withdrawn and didn't want to go to school at all. My mum had to visit the headmaster to discuss my problems and he was quite sympathetic, but even so my teacher still seemed to be victimising me. At the end of term he left the school. Whether my mum's (and other parents') complaints had anything to do with his moving on, I don't know, but I DO know I started to do better in the next year. However, half way through the final year of junior school I was moved up into the top stream. I should really have been pleased about this, as it meant I was performing well, but instead I felt that I was being pushed beyond my capabilities and started having problems again. Once more I felt inadequate compared to the other kids in the class, and I was already feeling somewhat under stress as my mum had died a couple of months earlier, after a long illness. Despite this I did reasonably well in my final exams and qualified for Grammar School, which was the highest of the the three standards of secondary school in the UK at the time. I can't help wondering how I might have turned out if I'd had more encouragement when I moved in to the middle stream at 8, or if my mum hadn't died when she did. Now, I don't want you crying over your keyboards while you read this. Many people have had a much worse deal than me, and I think I've turned out OK and reasonably well balanced after these experiences. Kids from very deprived backgrounds have made it big (Sean connery springs to mind as one example, there are many more), and those with a privileged childhood have ended up as wastrels (one or two of our young Lords are wasting their lives on drugs, drink, etc. as regularly reported in the press). I don't think that people can't reach their true potential despite their childhood experiences. Maybe I've reached mine; we can't all be rock stars, captains of industry, world famous inventors, but think I can be satisfied that I've made my contribution to society, even if that wasn't something I aspired to, or even admired in others, when I left school at 18. Reliving this again now has perhaps made me aware of one thing, and that's that kids can also be under a lot of pressure at a relatively young age, and maybe adults forget this and don't make allowances for it, or miss the chance to help their kids overcome these pressures. I have TRIED to help my kids when I thought they were having problems, and continue to do so to this day. How well I have succeeded remains to be seen. Ramble mode 'OFF.' Slarvibarglhee ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 00:29:52 EST From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: Sight reading/ fame peeves In a message dated 11/15/98 7:30:39 PM Eastern Standard Time, Slarvi writes: << I don't think that people can't reach their true potential despite their childhood experiences. Maybe I've reached mine; we can't all be rock stars, captains of industry, world famous inventors, but think I can be satisfied that I've made my contribution to society, even if that wasn't something I aspired to, or even admired in others, when I left school at 18.>> You certainly seem to be doing exceedingly well, you do contribute to 'society' every day - for example right here on Alloy, you've just encouraged someone you don't even know to keep trying to sightread & not give up... now that's a contribution if you ask me :) From what I can tell fame is probably a bigger overall pain in the ass than it's worth, what with people acting really weird around you in public (not just the usual weird, but actually flagging you down to deliberately inflict weirdness upon you, driving in from out-of-state in order to find you and be weird), random strangers going through your garbage looking for 'collectables' & stealing roofing tiles off your house... or worse. Fan letters & admiration are one thing, but the invasive physical presence into one's private life is quite another. Though for business purposes I'm sure having a recognised name is of great value, I carry such a profound respect for anyone who can tolerate the many real burdens fame can bring. On a slightly different note (but not that different), that 'freedom of the press' bullshit that the paparazzi keep flinging whenever they're thrown off some celebrity's property they've trespassed on for the millionth time is getting really old from my viewpoint. Sorry to rant so much on this topic... but I guess I value my own anonymity & privacy so much that the very thought of all of this really appalls me to the core and I think something really should be done about it. I've heard that some legislation has recently passed to ease things up in this area. I don't know if it is enough. <> Parental encouragement is so important! I'm glad you're so supportive of your kids :) I think children actually have fairly stressed-out lives, there are so many different influences on development. Often a child will find him or herself stuck between a rock & a hard place over & over again, and they can do little else besides make their way through it as successfully as possible. Robin T ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 00:44:22 EST From: RThurF@aol.com Subject: Re: Alloy: Dolby bio In a message dated 11/14/98 10:31:41 PM Eastern Standard Time, Wargun2438@aol.com writes: << a quick note here - a link to a decent bio. Any other good ones out there? >> I don't know of any personally... but thanks for listing these. I was interested to see that he mentioned thinking of his own music as a 'collage' - which, in trying to comprehend the creative process which goes into his work in visual terms, is how I have come to think of it too. Am I really catching on? I'll be setting up my own recording studio someday at this rate! Robin T ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V3 #308 ***************************