Topics

Great gig this weekend (with fellow Frost*ie (tRICKy)) seeing Chantel McGregor doing her thing in Harpenden. She has more than hinted over the years to have an interest in prog (big SW fan!) and she added a 12 minute jam to her set. Her almost unique "homely" and often hilarious stage presence between songs disguises her amazing talents. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUlrOQs-USQ

Can't believe there isn't a thread going on as this is only a couple of weeks away, or, as usual, am I missing something.

I'm planning to go on Sat but have not yet decided on transport. So, options...

1: Train it, which means I will probably miss the end of Threshold - but not worry about having a small tincture or two, or

2: Drive, which obviously means I can leave when I like, and have a wait free direct route back to Middle England-ish without having to cope with late night transport in the Capital.

I'm guessing the ale in the Hippy place will be of the fizzy variety - which makes 2 the most likely option.

I guess I'll need a ticket as well.......    EDIT - Now have a ticket!! 

Who else is going?

Wonderful news!

Camel are back. A special gig on the 28th Oct at The Barbican performing The Snow Goose. Lineup is the same, almost, as the last tour...

Latimer (of course), Bass, Drums, Keys...  

I mean Bass, Clement, Le Blanc with previous gig contributer Jan Schelaas also on keys.

and....More gigs are being considered!  

Tickets procured.  

Just did a random pop over to
http://www.camelproductions.com/
to discover an update in the "News" section!     With his health troubles in the past (and hopefully sorted), Andy is working on a new album!  

Plus there is a nice version of "Silent Night" to download. Absolutely fantastic to hear that guitar again!!    

The Genesis keys man was on Simon Mayo's show on Radio 2 yesterday if you caught it? Quite a decent chunk of chat driven by his new "classical" recording - 'Six Pieces for Orchestra'. (Original title eh??) I think this should be available on the BBC listen again web page?

The snippet they played sounded quite melodic and full, if that makes sense. Further research indicates that people are calling it Film or TV music with melody and in general it seems to be not getting a bad ride so far.

Seeing as

1: Miss Brom loves film music and her main instruments are the violin and sax - which are the two main instruments on at least some of TB's score.
2: I liked what was played last nite,
3: It's available from Amazon at £4.99!

I'll be placing an order later.  

I picked this up earlier in the year in the States, hoping to share at the AGM. As most of you know I never made it, maybe I'll just send then to Jem??

Anyone else see last nite's Apprentice? The task was to come up with a new biscuit idea, make it and design all the packaging and then pitch it to 3 major supermarkets.

Read all about it here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/work-bl ... re-biscuit
and here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/

The question is... as we on this forum are probably the Web's most unofficial officianados of the humble biscuit... what would you come up with???

Is this what you mean when the US talk about the Florida keys??  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12283835

Miss Brom, now 14 (and of course going on 21  :roll: ) asked if we could download the trial version of "Sibelius" the composing software, which as most of you probably know, is a manuscript based sequencer. I must admit to being more than a bit impressed (proud Dad etc.) at the results of her very first 3 or so hours. What amazed me was this was all done with a mouse, no midi keyboard, just clicking on the staves.

See what you think  

(dodgy midi instruments courtesy of an even more dodgy soundcard)

There must be out there lots and lots of synthesists who by no fault of their own are non technical (nothing wrong with that, and probably a good thing). However, I've sometimes wondered how do such folk manage when presented with the bewildering array of controls offered by the jolly old synth.

These days of course, with the advent of digital technology, scores of presets exist, and the novice can tweak at their peril with the comfort of knowing that they can revert to the saved default with a push of a button.

Back in the analogue days though, unless one had a crib sheet the learning curve of synthesis was probably a bit of a journey on uncharted and often discordant or sometimes silent  waters.

Even though I was never going to own a Mini Moog, I remember twiddling with its gorgeous control panel in several shops in London in the 70's. Having a bit of electronics knowledge I was able to drive the thing without much difficulty as the layout was very similar to that of an electronic circuit. I could virtually "see" the circuits underneath, the signal flow was logical, in general from left to right,  with words like amplitude modulation and pulse width being familiar rather than needing looking up in a manual or dictionary. The only thing that gave me any trouble playing with analogue synths was the row of white and black things along the front!

Then of course there's FM!

So Jem and all you other ivory tinklers, what I'd like to know is - how do you synth?, by becoming a technical guru, reading  the manual, or sucking it and see?

Amusing avian music from the Beeb

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainmen ... 539725.stm

Cue the puns......  

Watching the vids coming in from the Esoteric Evenings - Miss Brom remarks, "That's 'Rite of Passage'", er what, "No, I reply, It's Losers Day Parade"

"But it's the same!, more or less."

And yes, I had to think for a while, but by jingo she's right.
How DOES she do it? (This is not the first time) or am I the only one that hasn't made the connection?

 :?  

"Kino Theater" - I do like that!!

To cut a long story short, I realised last nite that I had incorrectly wired up the mini stereo we use on the family PC. Instead of the conventional speaker wiring, I'd managed to connect one speaker across L and R Pos, and the other across the L&R neg terminals. What resulted was a very weak sounding output which was missing stuff from the centre of the mix i.e. vocals!!

You can imagine there was lots of out of phase cancelling going on. A technique which is used to cancel out vocals I believe, but have never played with such a device - plugin - whatever. However, this particular method, i.e. using the output of the stereo may have given results different to those produced by commercial phase mangling gadgetry.

I'm going to try recording some existing stuff of my own using this method and then mixing/morphing the mangled sound and out of the dry mix to see what I get.

As I said probably done before, but maybe something to try, and it's not that expensive!
Oh- Please don't blame me though if you blow up your amp in the process!!

Miss Brom asked me a question last nite which I was not able to answer in any detail thanks to my ineptitude when it comes to musical theory. So I thought, I know a few someone's who must know the answer to this.

Since just before Southampton gig and then hearing it live she has been bowled over by DT's new track, "Rite of Passage". In particular the chorus. The way it lifts the song starting with "Turn the Key" culminating with the line "A Rite of Passage"  I mumbled that it seems to be a key change coupled with the vocal harmony, to which came the reply "Yes, but how do you do it?" This is where my twelve bar blues brain failed to do a turnaround and came to an abrupt end. For example, if you had your main verse trundling along in say C is there a set/easy/established trick that exists to produce that rousing almost anthemic feeling to the chorus that can be explained in relatively simple terms. Any help will be more than welcome from both of us.

Picked up Derek Sherinian (Ex Dream Theater KB)'s new album "Molecular Heinosity". Only managed to hear the first track so far. Very proggy and jazzy was my first impression. Can't wait to sample the rest of it.

Oh, Zakk Wylde is providing the six string input, the only name I recognise so far on the cast list.

[A proggy composer called Jem,]

Not original on the net, but as far as I know, not before played on these hallowed grounds. How about a game or six of Limericks.

Rules are simple, Frost*ies take it in turn to add ONE line to the current limerick. The lucky Frostie who completes the last line of exceptional poetry is allowed to start the next limerick if they want to. We all know that nothing rhymes with orange, and precious little with Godfrey, so try and keep it open - IF you think it's worth having a go. Comments are welcome, maybe just build the limerick in quotes, lines in bold?. I'm sure, being clever Frost*ies, we can make up the format as we go along.

OK, as I was here first      I'll kick things off with....

A proggy composer called Jem,

While I was doing unspeakable things with a roll of masking tape and a paint brush yesterday my ears tuned in to what was going on in the kitchen. A melodic guitar solo?... followed by another one, and another one which I would bet money on was Gary Chandler. WTF??? A quick dash brought me to the DAB which was as usual locked on Planet Rock. The gorgeous melodic widdling continued, but the display refused to announce "Whats Playing" (I hate that). I knew that Mr Wakeman hardly ever announces the name of the track he's just played so I was left with an empty feeling that I may never find out the origin of this .... Ohh there's lyrics... Hooray, I can google them...... "All around the world....."

AHA!!!    

I then probably knew what I was listening to. The Prog Aid CD, which features a load of our fave musos including mr JJ, which for some reason completely passed me by.

Now I want it. Badly!!!

A search of the web revealed , this site which links to the apparently defunct Prog Aid page.

Can any Frosties help??, does anyone know where I can get a copy of this CD or do I have to wait for one to come around on Ebay. If I do get one second hand, as this was a charity CD, I herby Promise to shove at least an extra fiver in a Comic Relief bucket to compensate.

[31st January 2009.]

Apparently the year before tax credits started a different allowance was available. Apparently, according to quite a few refs on the net not many people know about this.

You may be entitled to claim  £529 or even  £1,048.

It appears you are eligible to claim £529 if you have a child born between 6th April 1986 and 5th April 2003.
It also appears you can claim £1,048 allowance if one of your children was born between 6th April 2002 and 5th April 2003.

Another indicator seems to be that If your tax code on your April 03 (P60) finished with a H or T, you may have already had the allowance.

They say must action this by 31st January 2009.

The key to it all appears to be an inland revenue form 11ctc easily found online.

To the best of my knowledge this is not a scam or an urban myth, so could be worth checking out! There is a lot of chat on the net about it.

Be very wary of a site called taxcredits.org, it's an official looking site which offers you a form to fill in which looks legit. They appear though to be a private concern who will claim the money on your behalf, but keep a lot of it for their trouble, AND they will have all your personal details!

Video finally posted  

//http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zI43afTqbSk

With an audience shot or two at the end.

Following on from a few very important biscuit discussions at last nites get together at The Peel - with thanks to Twang for the plates of assorted biccies at the bar!!  

Anyway, I was very surprised to hear that other Frosties were unaware of the phenomenon which has appeared on the shelves of our local store.  

Ladies and Gents, I would like to announce.........