Quirks presents...

Exposure therapy at (and to and from) the Walmsley Amphitheatre

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:07:19 GMT

Two crowded Tube trains between Victoria and St Pancras (one at rush hour, the other amidst hordes of stunned Arsenal fans), separated by a taping in which strobe lighting was used. How did I cope? I still don't know.

I am of course referring to my trip to the Millionaire taping - it went rather well. I note, with great interest, that an opening question deemed ambiguous (not least because it was sent to the audience and they were split almost 50-50 between two answers) was thrown out, will be left unaired, and replaced with another, the ATA left intact. The player was somewhat shaken up I think, and was very conservative indeed in lifeline use after that, but at least his game was fair. As I mused at the time, Endemol would have kept the dodgy question in.

Bad Shirt Casino in 12 days...

The strobes of which I am referring to are those that create the 'camera flash' type effect on the (acrylic, not glass) floor, which I thought were hidden underneath it. They are in fact tiny lights - possibly of a kind we've used here at the university, in fact - hidden within the circular scaffolding bars that hold up the larger colour-changing moving lights. These are used annoyingly often, and no warnings were given. Bad, bad, bad. But at least I knew the lighting setup, and could close my eyes at appropriate moments. In honesty, they weren't terribly overwhelming, just irritating. Perhaps that's a sign the inadvertent exposure therapy was having immediate effect...

Oh.

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:19:59 GMT

I now don't have an arranger. Harrie O has confirmed she is actually going to be too busy to help me.

Triggering thoughts of dependence are absolutely flooding to the surface. Harrie O has nothing to do with that. Fortress Weymouth, though...

Great news, plus irony

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:41:27 GMT

Great news: Harrie O, a composer from the music department at the university, is at least tentatively agreeing to fill the vacant role of Quirks' Arranger for the unconnected series of pieces for fellow students, and for the planned Quirks musical. Previous experience includes writing a bunch of arrangements for the musical theatre group's revue in December - to be exact, half of the 24 songs on it, ranging from a three-song Footloose medley to Xanadu. That's relevant.

Here comes the irony. Not immediately though. Hang on.

AM is one of the students singing the aforementioned Quirks, arr. Harrie O pieces. Met her today, after much-documented failure to do so last week, and promptly launched into my Procedure for Analysing Singers' Technical Ability (PASTA). Well, not promptly, for I needed several minutes to become unruffled from the sodding construction noise near the bus stop where I met her. I'm nervous about playing the piano at the best of times.

The PASTA includes but is not limited to a range check, and (with AM stopping me at either extreme) we can now quote her range: G3-C6.

AM is also singing Xanadu (arr. Harrie O) in December. Highest note in that? C#6.

Oh.

Fairness to her, AM reckons that with a more extensive warm-up than was afforded to her here - she was singing non-continuously for about ten minutes before we got to this point - she has more of a chance of getting those notes. On the other hand, she did insist 'please don't write up there'. I shan't. Indeed, I am treating her usable range as Bb3-Bb5.

(Incidentally, a soprano friend of mine from Fitzpatrick-era LJ suggests that as a rule of thumb, one should take an estimate of one's vocal range on a good day, then remove a minor third from either end. She reckons that colds, or nerves, or dryness, are typically likely to reduce one's range by up to that much. That seems about right to me.)

I'd insist upon changing the ending of the piece to be slightly less glass-shattering, but really that's the responsibility of AM and Harrie O. And it doesn't make the tiniest difference to me; the revue is about as likely to be Quirks-friendly as John Endale has of being colonial leader.

So, Lloyd-Webber's writing the Eurosong 2009.

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:09:19 GMT

In my opinion, this is something he'll do very well indeed. This is a double-edged compliment - it implies that over the course of a two-hour musical his reliance on recurring motifs gets very old, but this isn't the same, it's a three-minute song people will judge on first listen, and that's playing to his strength in writing something instantly memorable.

The talent show angle to decide the singer is somewhat inevitable, but not too bad an idea. Or rather, it would be better if the song was written with multiple singers in mind, and used for the final, Idle-style. Instead, it seems as though it'll be tailored for the winner, which is reasonable (and I should know, seeing as I write songs tailored to specific singers a lot now), but I do worry about it being an overly showy piece. Especially if we get a classical soprano winning it... then again, if it draws the typical pop-singer crowd, there is absolutely no chance of that.

Brief summary

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 22:07:46 GMT

* Control issues strike back as AM, singer for whom I am writing, was caught up in enough activities that two scheduled meetings were cancelled without me knowing in advance. Got me a bit ratty, to say the least.
* Good news though, in that my furniture has finally arrived; my brother's coming up on Sunday, bringing along his girlfriend from Southampton Poly, to help put it up.
* De Bouwer can't possibly mess THIS up surely?
* Performed with the choir on Sunday at the university's annual showcase of every performing society that can get themselves minimally organised enough to produce one short performance and get their members to the health and safety meeting (that would count out us last year, then). The heat of the stage lights was most irritating, as I was quite close to them - not an experience I much enjoyed but at least it was very brief. Left afterwards due to the Quirks-unfriendliness of said lighting for other performances, in time to catch Britain's Got The Pop Factor on +1 (and the results show without the time delay - very much enjoyed it being that way). I found it extremely amusing and actually purchased The Winners Song (lack of apostrophe on all references on the CD packaging) as a single - only the second time I have ever purchased a CD single, the first being Better Off Alone. Not to put too fine a point on it, but back then Millionaire was bigger than the soaps.
* Which links neatly onto the fact I will be attending a taping of Millionaire on the 29th - should be a very enjoyable day out. And I'm also going to go to a Gambling Party taping in November, if only out of a sense of duty to see what Noel is like in the unedited show. I think I'm ready to do it now - I wouldn't have trusted myself previously, for it could have been tremendously triggering with respect to family relationships. I also hope to write a suitably snarky article for the student newspaper.
* Speaking of snarky student newspaper articles and triggers, my first such article has been published, a call for women to consider weight training. It ended up in the sports section, which isn't ideal; a copy has apparently been stuck to the girls' toilets in the Union building as an advert for the paper, which more than makes up for that.

Out of - and into - nothing

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:23:51 GMT

Seventeen years ago, Durham were playing Minor Counties cricket. Eight and a half years ago, they were still obscure enough that someone who's since posted on this blog was offered a million quid if he recognised that they played at Chester-le-Street. Now they're county champions. I'm not sure which is the most remarkable of the two prior data points, or whether the latter merely reflects a lack of interest in county cricket at the turn of the millennium. Or ITV wanting to get shot of the jackpot.

Anyway, I'm back on the radio, and have also been flyering on behalf of both Surge and the nascent television society (which I am now part of in earnest). Decidedly draining, and I took an afternoon nap for the first time in a while afterwards. On air again tomorrow, 11-1.

And as for into nothing, Bradford and Bingley looks bound as I type for nationalisation. I briefly thought that meant we'll now not only have two government-sponsored Division I teams, but a government-sponsored Division IV ground. Then I found that Valley Parade has got a(nother) sponsored name. I've actually lost track of them now.

Miscellania, bookended by BBC news links

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 09:19:44 GMT

£1 coin counterfeit rate now at levels that caused other countries to redesign their coins. Funnily enough, no such problems with the euro.

I note that Power FM - one of the four Radio Actives that covers Southampton (that's when you know you live in a city - Weymouth had just one Radio Active, though I think it's just about possible to receive two others) - has been ticked off by OFCOM. I also note that their current on-air competition - text in when you hear a given song, and someone will be chosen to win tickets to the station's own Quirks-unfriendly club night in early October - has changed somewhat in the last week. Previously, someone would be phoned back within a minute of the song ending. The last few days, this has been delayed by around 15 minutes. I presume this is a response to OFCOM...

While I'm on a Radio Active rant, I'll note that around 11:30pm last night as I settled into bed I was flicking between various stations on my DAB set (haven't let go of it just yet and am actually listening to it more at present than I have in at least two years). One of the Radio Actives was playing Hunter - my appreciation of Dido is reasonably well-documented, and I sung along an octave down as is my near-automatic response to a Dido song.

The jingle follows it. This is The Love Show on Radio ~~Active~~Hampshire. Hello, people! It's an anti-love song! Have you been listening to the lyrics?!? Or are you too busy focusing on your extensive fawning coverage of a team soon to be playing in Division III?

Flicked to, eventually, another Radio Active, Wave 105. They too had a love show, and they pulled off an even more remarkable mistake, if that's possible, in playing Stepping Stone into the midnight news. I then flicked back to Radio Hampshire for said news which is where I heard this. Fortunately, this is about 4km from where I live, but didn't half scare me when I heard it.

Miscellaneous update

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:28:36 GMT

* It's Southampton on University Challenge tonight. I know one member of the team, its captain. He's a psychology student, and was bought up in Belgium; we've seen streamed episodes of Een Tegen 100 and Miljoenenjacht together in the past. It's Southampton's first appearance in the televised stages in several years - is that typical of an average Russell Group, non-collegiate university? And if not, can we blame the fact that our university quiz is 20% quiz and 80% breaks for alcohol and music?

(Its former host, incidentally, did end up as a beaten finalist on Weakest Link last year...)

* I'm revising my budget and my food plans. This isn't the company in which to elaborate.

* I will say, however, that I'm cancelling all my music lessons. My music remains important to me, but not that important. I have, though, completed (though in a state of non-arrangement) a short, showy piece for EF.

* Just realised that the Manchester al-City takeover was greeted with the oil barons unveiling a light blue shirt with 'Abu Dhabi United' on it. That could be the name for them here...

* Not-unrelatedly, the Buccanneers' sponsor may be imploding. Goodness, two Division I teams seeing their sponsors implode, plus a third who couldn't (or wouldn't) get one in the first place, and a fourth who opted for a charity's name on their shirts instead... when was the last time 20% (if AIG collapse) of clubs in Division I were without paid-for shirt sponsors?

After the most utterly ludicrous day of transfer action ever

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:53:35 GMT

I now pronounce Manchester City as the Manchester Oilers.

(Use of former NFLball franchise name deliberate.)

A realisation of potential significance

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:34:13 GMT

I think I have a disordered approach to spending similar to the more widely recognised disordered approach to eating.

I feel bad about any expenditure, often needing to be prodded into any but the smallest expenses, and will often find ways of compensating for any expenses - this feeds into eating, too, as I will sometimes skip meals rather than pay any more money to buy more food.

Because I am almost unavoidably running a deficit at present, this provides a great deal of reinforcement, as whatever I do really isn't feeling like enough.

I think my parents being partly reliant upon my savings during the mid-2000s (couldn't she just have got an excessive loan like everyone else did? Actually, I think she did...) is at the heart of this disordered approach. I've referred to the family home as the Fortress; in many respects, my savings account is my fortress, and many of my regrets over student life and moving into my new flat come down to the raids on that fortress.

Made it. Sort of.

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 18:59:08 GMT

I've arrived; there's been a few problems that are being dealt with, and it's going to take a while before I can have Internet access as the BT phone line appears to be disabled.

I'm still not sure whether to regret my decision or not... but here's one thing that definitely isn't going to be regretted. Acquired from an Oxfam in Southampton city centre today, the sheet music for Memory, as performed by Elaine Paige, and correspondingly in a key such that the range is G3-Eb5. I think we have the first thing to do in our lessons when Helen returns...

Tomorrow is the day.

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:01:18 GMT

I'm nervous, to say the least. It still doesn't feel quite right. It still feels unreal. I still have a few regrets.

But it is probably going to be completely worth it. This wasn't a move with just this year in mind.

bangs head on wall. Repeatedly.

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:12:41 GMT

If this had come in four years ago, I wouldn't be at university now.

Rather a lot of frustration

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:31:09 GMT

* At the Crass Spectacle, and at one of the non-sporting events in particular, for two reasons. One is peculiar to this Spectacle, and has denied a British competitor a medal; the other is inexorably tied with the sport, and any further comment would be dangerous to make to my readership.
* At my move; I'm starting to regret it and have been making reactionary comments to the effect of dramatically reducing my other expenditure, even though I will still have enough savings to last this year with ease. This might reflect a lack of expectation in the job market making me more desperate to keep a financial safety net. Still, at least I'm not going to be in the Crass Spectacle sailing village...
* Not quite unrelatedly, Mum is now acquiring Setanta - entirely for the England matches. And then complains when trying to upgrade her MurdochTV account because she gets an Asian-sounding call centre operative. She used the 'I'm not racist but' line. Cue Avenue Q.

Shiny!

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:12:09 GMT

I have a flat. It is unfurnished; the price differential between furnished and unfurnished flats was very significant, and the utility of having my own furniture is decidedly non-trivial. Its location is fabulous, on a side street in the student quarter that few students ever tread upon despite being within 1km of both campus and the Portswood shopping street (and even closer to a bus route to the city centre). It even has a communal garden that the other residents scarcely use - lacks a garden bench, mind, or that'd be a fabulous location for lyric writing, but otherwise a fabulous addition.

It's in the same price bracket as my halls accommodation; £60pcm cheaper but with bills to more than wipe that out. However, my dad is potentially offering financial support for the first time, which will probably cancel out any losses. Either way, there is no doubt at all that on my utility curve, this is What Money Is For.

I think it's possible I'm going to stay here until I have enough of a deposit to get a sensible mortgage (as opposed to a mid-2000s mortgage). It's certainly a place that could serve me well for years to come. I love it.

Bad timing?

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:28:39 GMT

This is the promised Next Post. It throws far, far too much into doubt for me to be at all comfortable typing it.

The family unit, in their infinite wisdom, are strongly in favour of me moving to a furnished flat, almost to the point of insistence. Perhaps in a reactionary manner, I am wanting an unfurnished flat to prove them wrong, but also because I cannot see the lower rent being cancelled out in furniture costs (or even if it is, the utility of my own furniture - in my own preferred contemporary chrome-and-glass style - rather exceeds the cost gap, although of course ceteris paribus cannot be applied for a comparison between the furnished and unfurnished in almost all cases!).

Meanwhile they are also arguing, and with more of a point, that I would be 'crazy' to move quickly. However, one potential flat was snapped up (granted, the furnished one, which made me happy), another's been reduced (and will surely go soon after that), and then what? Rental costs are rocketing as demand is increased by the return to the rental market of those who should never have been homeowners in the first place, and this is happening with increasing speed. I've already been told (by Chris - see posts passim - and by the enviable Lyndsay) that I should be leaving a six-week gap between finding somewhere and term.

But then there are definite expenses. I pay £25 per week in upkeep here - my living costs in Southampton would exceed £100 per week. Every week I spend at the Fortress is another £75 or more gained. Is Southampton life really, honestly worth that? This is forcing me to meet uncomfortable questions of utility.

I've spoken to EM, she thinks I should leave it as late as possible to go back, and said she was very bored in the city last summer. This is possibly reassuring.

As for the holiday, that looks less likely by the minute, frankly. If Mum gets her way, flat-hunting will be happening when I was planning to be away. If she doesn't, I'll already have pencilled in a significant expenditure. This Is Not Looking Good. But do not dare rule it out.

The promised post on Who Dares Sings

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:32:50 GMT

So, the July 26 episode, number five of seven. Do we have any idea as to how random this audience selection malarky is? Not very - the audience (contrary to your suggestions of an 0898 number) apply online, and note the link here for tickets to the taping of the Christmas special (yyess) that implies strongly that the contestants are not truly chosen amongst the audience. This could be another scandal here...

But let's assume otherwise. This is post-0898gate after all, surely ITV wouldn't be this stupid. And they've already had the sense to use computerised judging, though transparency is decidedly lacking. I can only presume that it works similarly to the video game Singstar (a reference Brig made as soon as he heard about the show), which has a visual interface that actually makes this clearer (effectively an extremely abstract conversion of sheet music, with transparent bars denoting both pitch and frequency of notes and a coloured bar denoting the singer's attempts at reproducing them). I would expect at least a substantial minority of the contestants to be familiar with this game, though whether all have made the connection between it and the show is another matter.

Anyway, the mass singalong at the start is Lost In Music, as it presumably always is, and on this evidence this'll be a cheap show for ITV1 tonight. Of the five possibly-not-random contestants on the first song that matters to the game, it's two guys, Carl and the dubiously-named Shano. The hosts are right to pick up on the latter mentioning the fact one of his favourites at the karaoke bar he runs is Grace Kelly, and when it comes up on the songlist it's quite clear what's going to happen. I know what I'd be choosing - Thank You. An octave down, natch. Shano does pick Grace Kelly, and as I wrote at the time, 'and hands victory to Carl, who picks Hey Big Spender'.

So to the first singalong. Obviously, one of the highest notes in the chorus is there as a hot note, and pleasingly so is the song's lowest note. I think. The overall target is 58, with two 100 scores - both in the chorus, I think, which certainly justifies the song selection if it is. Carl gets the break to prepare for his assault on that, before which we are subjected to a singalong of It's Raining Men. This wasn't an obvious break link, and I was moved to write 'is this a European format?' in my notes here.

Act II. I quote my notes again. 'Carl will expect to win, surely. He won't when he's interpreting the song. Or singing horrifically.' 31 is actually more than I thought it warranted, though both he and I were having fun in his performance. Unfortunately that doesn't win here. Brilliantly, he is sent off to Everyone's A Winner.

One pointless Denise interview with someone who apparently pulled her husband at karaoke (by proxy, effectively - her friend took his number for her, or something. I wouldn't have a clue how this dating game works) later, and the second contestant-selecting singalong is Daydream Believer. Now, I don't know if it's that obvious on the studio displays, but it's obvious here - melismas are denoted by dashes. That's one strategy to watch out for, and nobody seems to have grasped it. This is especially important given the show's use of edited versions of songs.

Again it's all-male, which rather disappointed me to be honest - it's Dave and Tony. Dave's repertoire at karaoke? 'James Morrison and the crooners. Yyesss.' Tony mentions Justin Numberwang, but the hosts don't pick up on the strategy here as they did with Mika, merely getting him to do a bit of dad-dancing. Or as Denise brilliantly calls it, morris dancing. Aaanyway, this is going to be a very interesting song selection. The 14 unselected songs from last time are up there, and Dave picks You To Me Are Everything. Can't judge if that's a good decision or not as I'm not entirely familiar with the song. Hello, what's this? Tony picks Thank You? Yes, he did! Oh this is interesting now!

Dave's got to set the target now. Oh now I remember this song. The edited version misses the song's highest notes - or at least the Eurovision Key Change I'm sure this song has - and Dave gets a 67 on it, a consistent performance with just the one 100. It's got a good chance of being enough, but has Tony pulled off a tactical masterstroke?

Not of the one I envisioned - Tony's actually singing this in the same octave as Dido. Chalk (another) one up for the Female-Sung Pop Really Is That Low collection. At first I thought he was bad, and then he improved as I sung along, but I couldn't tell how he was doing much, so assumed he'd lost out. The cliffhanger adbreak is... oh, preceded by a singalong of Reach Out (I'll Be There). As you do.

We're back... he's only gone and got an 87! Where did that come from? Dave's sent off with ObSpiceGirls song Goodbye. He'd have beaten Shano, ceteris paribus, if those two had met.

Here's a flaw in the format - player with the lowest score picks first in the final pitch battle. I'd definitely reverse that. Shano picks Sweet Caroline, while Tony opts for Love Is In The Air. At this point I'm expecting a Tony cakewalk, but both sing their songs well (although I don't like Tony's voice, he's pretty accurate). Both get their scores revealed together (neither having a known target to face), and Shano somehow wins, 79-73. Tony produced the highest and third-highest scores of the night and yet has to leave to Didn't We Almost Have It All, while Shano sneaks through with one good performance and one utter fluke, frankly. We leave Act III with Karma Chameleon, a laughably easy LTL... hang on, is that a free web entry I hear of? Yes, yes it is. Of course, texting still opens your Handy to marketing. During the break, I start reckoning that Put Your Records On would be my second choice, with Heaven Is A Place On Earth as a backup option. Others might laugh, but they have no right to until they can point out anything for a low male voice on the selection. What, all there is is Sweet Caroline, which I've never knowingly heard before in my life? (And does that mean I win?)

Act IV. Shano is 'three songs from £50,000'. Ben, I think you mean 'two songs from £25,000'. Unless you're Noel in disguise. Shano is greeted with another bit of ObSoundtrack (The Final Countdown), and would spend (part of) the mythical top prize on a holiday to Japan. The hosts pick up on how Japan is the home of karaoke.

Now here's a question, and one to which I do not know the answer. Is there a recording break between Act III and Act IV, and if so does the finalist have a quick range check during it? It would make complete sense - the procedure would take a few minutes and allow either the hosts to slap on some more slap or for a few reshoots to be done if needed.

(The range check after Act III is probably the only way to do it effectively if the contestants are truly randomly chosen; if, as I suspect, they're not, there may have been one at an earlier stage, before taping even began. If it was done at the audition stage, ITV have a possibly quite extensive database of the ranges of typical karaoke singers, one probably of use to some musicologist or another...)

We have to assume that there's some kind of check going on here, because this choice of songs would be ludicrous for just about anyone else - Take On Me, Mandy (in the Manilow version. That's important.), Angels, Oh Pretty Woman and Dancing In The Moonlight. I can't judge what I'd do here, as these songs are a very apt selection of the sort of male-sung pop that drives me into the arms of female-sung pop. But judging purely on familiarity and likely singability (we are now making the hilarious assumption that my range is the same as Shano's) I'd be picking Angels first and Dancing In The Moonlight second. As you know, my strategy is to play for £25,000.

Shano picks Mandy. A slow song to 'get into it'. 'How well do you know it?' asks one of the hosts. 'I know Westlife did it.' Guess what? He completely messes it up, and gets a 24, including two 0s and a 1. So he produced the worst and third-worst performances of the night, and has to leave with the booby prize, a holiday to the rebel colony of Florida courtesy of the climate criminals sponsoring the football team of a Thai criminal. For some reason revealing that he has won this makes him feel a lot better.

Hang on, what's this? In a twist straight out of Japanese shows (or Popstars The Rivals, or the BBC casting shows if memory serves), he still has to sing to finish the show. Just to make it more evil, it's The Winner Takes It All. And ooh, what's this? He starts singing it an octave down, and after one (!) line gives up on that and starts singing in the same octave as the female original singer. Yes, that's the second time tonight someone's done that. And then he can't sing the chorus there, so jumps back down an octave again. Now, remember this? We can now assume that Shano's range does not extend beyond Ab2 (and probably no lower than C3), and up no further than Db5.

Hang on! That's not where it ends! As I go into Weymouth's music shop, perusing the music books for things that might possibly suit me (a forlorn hope, really), what do I see but the sheet music to Life In Cartoon Motion? And guess what? Grace Kelly goes up to... E5. (The publishers still insisted on following the convention for tenors, writing in the treble clef an octave higher than sung. This produces a mess of ledger lines for this song, which is unhelpful but quite brilliantly telling.) If memory serves, Shano was trying not to break into falsetto, so we can actually say that his range as Gemma would define it does not go as high as Db5. Wish I'd recorded it now...

In short, the show's a good bit of fun, perhaps doesn't quite know how seriously to take itself, and definitely needs a better endgame. But - the upside of 'doesn't quite know how seriously to take itself' - you can take it about as seriously as you want to. (This is, perhaps, a strength it shares with Gambling Party - which one can treat either as a truly brainless game show or a really interesting bit of game theory. Of course, its incarnation in this country offers at least as much to psychologists studying social influence as it does to game theorists...)

I'll be watching tomorrow night. If only because my life is so dull and very much in a holding pattern right now. This leads onto the next post, later today... which will probably now wait until a discussion with the Fortress owner.

As if we needed more reason to hate them

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:16:56 GMT

MySluts signs up to YADIS.

So I got the Eurovision CD for my birthday.

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:55:51 GMT

You were so right, and I was so wrong, about Switzerland. Still not entirely convinced about the change after the first chorus but it's nowhere near as bad as I thought. Would absolutely adore it if it just built up through layers of strings, though. Edit: and is it just me or do the verses sound not-dissimilar to th excellent Lavigne song When You're Gone?

Bulgaria I like more than I should. Ditto Spain, to be quite honest. Somehow. Iceland I like as well. This is going to be another year where songs with Quirks-unfriendly lighting become favourites, it seems.

Still think Belgium deserved a lot better, but then again it is in a musical idiom I like more than, well, most of Europe. Can definitely see why Greece did so well, and I think it's better than Russia. What do Andorra have to do to make the final? Yet again I like their entry; though last year and 2004 were both better, this one should have appealed more.

Other birthday presents: a new headset with microphone, very good sound quality from the speakers though the mic isn't as good as I hoped; two 60x60cm cushions, decidedly fluffy and eminently squishable, taking my total cushion supply to seven (!); two Sarah Brightman CDs (a compilation and Dive), and an Idina Menzel singer-songwritery album (I Stand), which are each more interesting for being compared with each other (two very different musical theatre singers stepping into their own different styles - Brightman's almost ethereal approach works well for me, not yet as won over as I should be by Menzel's intelligent pop and much of the blame has to go to her melisma overuse); a football video game, which seems to be good fun; some amusing books, including one which hilariously uses names of footballers (usually past) for hilarious footballing definitions. (E.g. 'delap (v.) - to tactfully cancel the end-of-season lap of honour')

The bit missing from the Who Dares Sings review and my last post

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:07:35 GMT

It's not fair to insist that blokes hit the B-above-middle-C, that note is generally out of their range.

Try telling that to Guy Chambers. Angels covers a range of B2-B4.

As already shown in previous posts, this is hardly unusual. I would add another strategy for Who Dares Sings contestants; it is both valid and often preferable to sing in a gender other than your own with a one-octave transposition, particularly if you're most familiar with the modern pop idiom. Sam will certainly cope with it, and there is a very clear lack of pop songs in a soprano or bass range.

Let us envision a hypothetical set of contestants; Sally, Alice, Tim and Bryan. Sally's an occasional choral soprano, otherwise untrained, and a range of C4-A5. Alice has done amateur musical productions, does a bit of karaoke, probably fancies her chances, and has a range of F3-E5. Tim's your typical karaoke guy, screams along to classic rock or similar, and has a range of C3-A4. Bryan is a singer-songwriter who also enjoys going to karaoke, sings a bit in choir, and has a range of F2-E4.

(Note that Sally's range is Tim's an octave up, and Alice's range is Bryan's an octave up. Also note that Bryan's description and range is a match for the writer, which is deliberate. The significance of the names should be easy to work out.)

Alice has an awful lot of songs to choose from, pretty much the whole female pop canon. She'll want to avoid the work of certain singers - Cantsing, Lewis, some of Clarkson - but it's probably safe to assume she'd know that. The strategy for Alice is to pick songs without large leaps, for these are more difficult to judge, and Sam's judging is going to look at intervals in order to account for octave transpositions, surely. She is right to fancy her chances.

Tim - if he's careful - also has every right to fancy his chances. I say 'if he's careful' because of just how difficult certain rock songs are. If he leaves his bravado on Upper Ground - presumably for collection by Nicky Campbell, judging by his performance when I saw him - he'll find a fair chunk of pop songs to suit him.

Sally's in trouble. Most female-sung pop music goes below middle C. She can't. She may be bailed out by a probable emphasis on higher notes on the pre-selection; I haven't seen an episode, so cannot comment, but can only presume. She might well recognise that Clarkson and Lewis and the like have high notes, and so does she, and she should pick those. Wrong - they invariably have low notes as well. (In fact, the Lewis version of A Moment Like This is too low for Alice, let alone Sally.) Her strategy is to do what Tim does, one octave up, and if that means sounding like a chirpy classical soprano while singing 70s poodle-rock ballads, so be it. It's her best shot at the money. This assumes it's possible. If it's not, she needs to get very lucky with the song choices. Basically, pray for Wuthering Heights.

Bryan's got practically nothing in the male pop canon for him. However, his range is an excellent fit for female-sung pop, and his strategy is to do what Alice does, one octave down, and if it means being a guy singing about girly-girl issues, so be it. It's his best shot at the money. This assumes it's possible. If it's not, he needs to get very lucky with the song choices. If I knew what he had to pray for, I'd be singing it at karaoke myself.

With the show's inherent and nearly unavoidable bias towards the tenor and alto ranges out of the way, let's go for the shows inherent and entirely avoidable flaws. The risk-reward element is probably the worst I've ever seen. (Actually, thinking about it, it's not only not the worst I've ever seen, it's not even the worst I've seen from The London Studios. That was the first round of For The Rest Of Your Life.)

The strategy is exceedingly obvious to all but the most capable singers or the least capable strategists; play for twenty-five grand. I know I'd do that. Obviously I'd do the third performance just in case, and if I knew I'd messed up the second I'd leave with the five grand, but I'd quite deliberately pick my perceived strongest song second, with a view to walking away after it.

Far better in my opinion would be to make the endgame an old-fashioned bonus round, with a set jackpot for a certain average, and failure to do so earning a consolation prize based on their score, in the Family Fortunes style. A grand per point average could work, with fifty grand for an 80 average still there. That way, you actually place more emphasis on the jackpot, and you lose the jeopardy element. Which doesn't work that well on UK television anyway as the contestant pool tends to be relatively risk-averse, doesn't work at all on Saturday night television, and definitely doesn't work on Saturday night television with the mindset of the population increasingly set in recession mode. Even Gambling Party contestants are being remarkably cautious of late, with a string of contestants taking offers that even I wouldn't consider worth taking - and Who Dares Sings contestants don't have someone in a bad shirt to bully them on.

Of course, none of this matters to me. I'd never go on the show for one simple reason; the very high probability of Quirks-unfriendly lighting, not to mention Quirks-unfriendly volume. But if I were to get on the show, I'd be quietly confident of winning twenty-five grand so long as I could pick songs by females and faced a moderately weak opponent in the first round.

In other news, it's my birthday. This isn't entirely unrelated; twelve months and twelve hours ago I was at a karaoke bar in Blackpool. Singing. A song by a female vocalist, natch - There You'll Be.

All the laughter I shared is becoming a memory

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:49:57 GMT

I'm lonely in Weymouth. Very lonely.

But less so thanks to acquiring the Steps double album The Last Dance in a charity shop. Lots of dance remixes, of highly varying quality, but goodness, I'd forgotten just how good this lot were. You were bang on, daweaver.

And the album-opening Overture - an orchestral medley of several Steps hits - is brilliant. And reminds me a) how good the melodies of Steps songs were, b) how different songs can sound dependent upon the arrangement. Which in this case was partly the responsibility of Pete Waterman, who co-produced with Dan Sanders and also shares an arranging credit with him, though credit for orchestration goes to Simon Hale. If Celador had called on those two in 1998, they might not have needed the Strachans... but, as we know, it is a very good thing they did.

Went into the town centre for a haircut (and spent some minutes trying to find the hairdresser - a clear sign I am unused to Weymouth, and I took that as frankly A Good Thing) and eye test, leading to the purchase of replacement glasses. Opted to go up in price range to exploit the Specsavers 2-for-1 offer that could include a pair of sunglasses - the intention now is to wear these in all environments where light levels may be high enough to be Quirks-unfriendly. Also got anti-glare lenses for the other pair (why, why, why have I not had those before?). Could have got all those at a lower price than I did, but an extra £24 (taking the total price for both pairs to £129) allowed me to pick some exceedingly shiny designs. It's not like I spend much else on the way I look...

Also popped into Weymouth's sheet music shop...

* Alisha Keys is guilty of contravening the Trades Description Act. Her Songs in A Minor aren't all in that key.
* We have another entry to the short list of Pop Songs Higher Than Wuthering Heights. And probably more if I looked at more. From Leona Lewis - Footprints In The Sand was already there, her version of A Moment Like This is as well - as written, its range is F3-A5. (...she took a simple Cowell-show final song and left it with a bigger range than Born To Try. Good heavens.) However, it's written in a slightly different key, to make the piano part less evil. The actual range as performed is E3-Ab5. Which is the same range, but looks (even) bigger.
* Found an advert for a singing teacher, as I'm terribly tempted to have a temporary teacher in Weymouth to give me something productive to do here. Go to her website. Realise it needs Javascript. Decide against it.

Quirks flirts with the right, yet again, and solidfies a few things

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:19:43 GMT

The old Tories are back.

And my initial reaction was of complete agreement. Not complete disagreement - complete agreement.

I'm of the opinion that encouraging individual responsibility should be at the heart of governmental policy. That's why I support a shift towards indirect taxation. If it is regressive, it is only because the poor make poor expenditure choices - and if they do not make poor expenditure choices, either it will not be regressive or they will be less poor.

A certain degree of equality is necessary. Equality of opportunity is more important, and correcting mechanisms to reduce unfavourable behaviour is more important still. Ironically, this does include relatively high tax on high earners to reduce inequality, because many (most?) very high earners are engaging in 'unfavourable behaviour' (and furthermore, inequality fuels crime). That said, an aspirational society is essential.

How all this affects those with disabilities is causing me a massive headache. I feel, deep down, I should be on equal terms with neurotypical individuals, and that any weaknesses I have are not to be compensated for. Other people I know strongly disagree, hence the suggestion of part-time study. Could it be that I am accepting key parts of the right-wing consensus precisely because I would be a loser from it? It's the kind of irrational thinking that would go with depression, and while I have never been diagnosed with it (mostly because I expect diagnosis to lead to the enforced consumption of useless and damaging drugs - and by implication NHS wastage, which of course feeds into this right-wing spiral) it is not totally unreasonable to assume I do have it, or some other personality disorder. Visiting a doctor has to happen, but I'm terrified of doing so.

My mind's a mess. No wonder I ended up so close to the centre of the compass when I did the test - I'm taking sometimes contradictory extreme positions, and my attempts to rationalise them leads to a garbled centrist mess.

Aww, bless

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 11:44:33 GMT

Mum, upon hearing Invincible on my speakers:

'Is that Steps?'

Speaking of Steps, Summer of Love is a fantastic pop song, something I discovered upon hearing it again on Friday...

Definitely shifting to the right

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:49:38 GMT

Latest Political Compass score: (-0.25, -0.21). I've adopted many of the fundamental points of the authoritarian-right consensus and it's making me at once squicky and fiercely proud. I am almost certain I'll end up as a conservative of some description in the future.

This has been at least partly sparked by the recent report from the Rowntree Foundation - which incidentally I think has an excellent basis in methodology but gets enough wrong to produce horribly skewed outcomes (like taking a council flat in Loughborough as the basis for housing costs). I feel incredibly guilty to this day about claiming benefits, and having claimed them in late 2005, firmly agree with those who consider them excessive, especially given the other incentives provided for those on benefits. At my most reactionary I want to propose the removal of all benefits; at my more reasonable, I would call for their replacement with a set minimum Citizen's Income and no further assistance whatsoever. Tax would then be very low for low earners, and income tax would in fact be generally low, as the tax burden would be heavily shifted towards indirect taxes designed to shift consumption patterns.

I also firmly believe the vast majority of the British public are awful with money. Most claim the headline £13,400 figure is laughably inadequate, but I would find it remarkably easy to live on that in Southampton. I've found a studio flat in a reasonable location for £450pcm including all bills; food costs are around £35 per week; £20/month buys a bus pass that takes me everywhere I want to go in Southampton; I presently spend £22.50 on musical tuition per week (£10 for composition, £7.50 for singing, £5 for piano), hardly buy any new clothes, maybe £5/month in all, my mobile costs around £15/month, and there are no other major expenses I'd then face. My last estimate of living costs, yesterday, came to £195 per week; that was before I found this particular flat. There's even one for £400pcm including bills somewhere else too. And with £22.50 of that expenditure easily removed, it looks incredibly easy to live happily off less than £200 per week in this city. Indeed, whatever I'm earning, I'll stick to that level of expenditure, and then watch with an insufferable level of smugness when - not if, when - the chickens come home to roost on the wastrels around me.

My new ambition; become an outright homeowner by the time I'm 35. If I'm in continuous employment between graduation and then, this should be a doddle. If I need the state to live, I shall deservedly die.

Mostly from the weekend

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:56:15 GMT

Coffee with EF on Friday morning. She's been mentioned once, she's a soprano, with a voice rather more powerful than nineteen-year-old classical soprani are meant to possess. This has earned her more plaudits than perhaps she currently deserves - I say this knowing that her voice is very clearly a work in progress. What isn't in question is that she is an extremely friendly and articulate person, and our intellectual conversation flew by.

We briefly talked politics - she expressed at least some disinterest, I suggested this was because of the lack of ideological differences between the parties and I'm not completely sure she disagreed - but the vast majority of the conversation, inevitably enough, was about singing. Weirdly, I led much of even this conversation, but that was mostly because I tended to have lots of ideas I wanted to articulate, and EF sounded interested to hear them, even if she questioned some.

Here's one I threw out to her that drew the most interesting thoughts. Classical singers, tied to a given vocal classification (referred to as a fach, mostly because the Germans pretty much invented the idea of classifying voices in this way), will... well maybe not be tied completely to it, but it acts as essentially a job description, a set of required skills. In this analogy, to change one's fach is almost tantamount to a change of career path; there'll be transferable skills but there will be other new requirements at the expense of some old ones. Inevitably, one will usually focus upon fulfilling the requirements of this 'job' to the best of one's ability, and change if it appears that is preferable.

By contrast, I argued, those in the popular domain - certainly singer-songwriters such as myself - are in a different position. Here, how their voice is classified is less relevant, and in the case of singer-songwriters totally irrelevant. Instead, the focus is upon being less constrained - allowing their voice to do more, so they have more freedom in choosing and/or writing songs. Certainly, there isn't such a point of diminishing returns as the classical singer might face.

EF isn't so sure about this, but I think I may have expressed it a bit wrongly at the time to her. Another friend of mine reckons that classical singers tend to have - and need - wider ranges than those in other styles, and that the exceptions use technique largely from classical singing - a view diametrically opposed to that of the author of this book. (Incidentally, that too was a meeting over coffee; I tried iced latte, EF thought this was a good idea, I didn't like it, and that is the end of the Coffee Experiment. Still, the caramel shortbread was good, although overpriced.)

She had no arguments, though, about the tendency for musical theatre to lack roles for soprano - in fact when thinking of examples we both got stuck after Christine, and I made an analogy between the general rightward skew of general political discourse on the Political Compass (and the resultant mischaracterisation of centrism as 'left-wing') with the general leftward skew of female musical theatre roles on the Vocal Compass (and the resultant mischaracterisation of roles in a mezzo range being treated as soprano roles - I'm thinking Glinda here in particular, and suspect there to be plenty of other good examples). EF didn't get the Political Compass when I explained it to her, but despite this she understood the Vocal Compass immediately, and from there I think she understood the Political Compass a bit too. Interesting hypothesis #2: a concept in one field is likely to be best explained by means of an analogy with another with which one is more familiar.

I am composing a piece for EF, with a possible view to it being performed with the choir I'm in (which EF has considered joining, but is nervous as to whether it suits her or whether she can devote the time and energy to it given that she has ME). Note-to-self, as I couldn't get to write it down: EF's range is A3-E6, and the strongest part of said range is A4-F5.

A 30-year-old nursing postgrad appeared to be a potential flatmate after some very promising developments over that afternoon. I had already emailed her for an enquiry after she appeared on a list of students seeking accommodation, which I had also joined (though I appear on the undergraduate list, and that's going to ensure some irrelevant emails asking me to join Quirks-unfriendly houses for the next week or more...), and ended up phoning her later on after receiving another email from her (not actually a direct reply to mine, but she was composing one as I phoned her, I gather).

Good news! As I slightly suspected (the list provides a name, date of birth and subject; a mature student in nursing with an English-language name instantly got my radar twitching, if only on the grounds that she may actually know something about people on the autistic spectrum) she does accept the possibility that actually, I can be an undergraduate with the needs and attitude of a postgraduate. Furthermore, she too had been looking at studio flats before baulking at the cost. The generic email she sent out was to look for people to join her on a search for a party of between two and four (or at least, for a house with that many bedrooms, which I presume to be nearly equivalent). This could work out very well but it's by no means certain. May have to stay over summer too, but saying not to do so was part financial decision and part fear of family warfare. Mostly, more than I'd care to admit, the latter. And if I can find a part-time job that I can actually do - which in practice means some kind of office job, even data entry or something similarly tedious. You'd think they'd have such jobs available in a city of over 200,000 people, wouldn't you? (Indeed, I know as much, a friend of mine studying engineering gained just such a job last summer if memory serves.)

She was planning to live near the newly-trendy Bedford-platz area just north of the city centre, a slight problem as a) this is a noisy area due to several nightclubs, b) the other side of the city centre you run smack into an area that is increasingly dominated by Solent Poly students, not what I want at all (and, I suspect, not what she wants either). Further on from *there* you also run into the Archers-road halls, although isolated from all of this at the western end of said road is The Dell, now a development of flats sufficiently upmarket to be safe from the above-mentioned sensory threats but still mostly cheap enough that a two-bed flat there is rather cheaper than two studio flats. And then further along is Marshall Square, on the site of what used to be Hampshire County Cricket Ground; that development is much the same as the one at The Dell.

Anyway, we met at the Southampton Kite Festival on Sunday, a good four miles away from here. Turned out she's currently living in the flat below me, having moved in just a short time ago. Oops! We seem to meet each other's standards as housemates, but she'd rather move in with more people, and I'm not prepared for that. Oh well.

To bring it back to singing, I've acquired the Christina Aguilera album Stripped from a charity shop. There are some very good songs on this album, but they're lost in a mess of melismas. I counted over 30 just in The Voice Within, and that's a song I thoroughly intend to cover in a much simpler vocal style. Or, given what was done to another song on this album, I could say I'm giving it the Alex Parks treatment. Our reader will approve heartily.