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Oliver showed me his composition today, which I think was pretty good for an 8 year old. This is the first time I have used Noteflight which is a bit like google docs for musical scores; making the score viewable, searchable and printable on the noteflight site and producing an embeddable, printable flash score for websites and blogs.
It is able to import music xml from other score editors but currently doesn’t support midi input for editing or allow the export of scores once produced.
On a cold winter’s night that was so deep, over a hundred people gathered in the darkness of Chester Cathedral to be transported through four hundred years of music in reverence to the Virgin Mary. Whilst the time span was condensed for the duration of the concert which did not quite last four hundred years; the audience was treated to an hour and a half of music which was timeless.
The concert began in semi-darkness, permeated only by the glow of sixty six flickering candles and the plaintive sound of Jean Allain’s setting of Ave Maria sung by Becky Hay. A sequence of delightfully rhapsodic organ episodes followed, interspersed with plainsong floating ethereally from somewhere in the quire…
The Nave Choir will next be performing in concert on Saturday 14th March 2009 though this Christmas you can worship with them at the Nave Choir Carol Service on Sunday 21st December at 3:30pm.
As the frosty mornings are starting to set in and christmas parties are getting booked up, it’s time to prepare some festive music so today I’m looking at what is available. So many books are promoted as ‘easy’ piano music or ‘easy to play’ but ‘easy’ is such a relative term.
One of my favourites which truly is about as ‘easy’ as you can get is The Easiest Tune Book of Christmas Carols. Despite being in it’s fiftieth year of publication it is still one of the best. Whilst it isn’t decked with brightly coloured pictures like some of the more recent editions of christmas carols, it is easy to read, easy to play, the fingering is sensible and points where the pianist must change hand position are clearly marked with an apostrophe though the edition is designed to reduce the need for changes in hand position where possible.
The left hand parts are also very simple and guitar chords are also given.
I recently posted information about a low cost metronome from Lidl. This got me thinking about a number of other metronome devices I have used in the past. As a peripatetic music teacher I need to have a metronome with me all the time as many schools do not have one built into the piano. The most obvious option to save on carrying a seperate ‘black box’ unit around with me to perform the important metronome function is one integrated into a mobile phone, something most of us carry around wherever and whenever.
The option I have used for the past few months is Beats Metronome, a freeware application 
for Windows smartphone which is a very small download performing the basic function of a numeric keypad in which you enter the ‘beats per minute’ tempo you require then press start.
Prior to that I have used K Metronome for the duration of the trial period but found it to be a little over complicated and too fussy for what I needed and what I imagine most people would need. 
A nicer looking one for which I went as far as purchasing the license when the trial period was over was the Vito Metronome which is nice looking with a selection of skins and choice of time signatures. However when I needed to upgrade the ROM on the smartphone and reinstall Windows Mobile, the application would not accept the regestration key I had paid for and an email to the russian customer support service was fruitless.
Prior to owning a windows smartphone, I used a java metronome application on my Nokia 6230 from op111 productions. This works on any mobile phone which supports java applications (which is most modern mobile phones). It is feature rich but not over complicated like the K metronome mentioned earlier. However after the first three free uses the application costs 12.95 Euros, comparable if a little cheaper than a stand alone metronome device however once it’s installed on your old phone then as far as I know it is not possible to then transfer it if you upgrade your mobile phone without downloading and registering another copy of the application.
A further java option for mobile phones which I have not personally tested is available from metronomeonline.com though this seems to represent better value at only $5.99.
If you happen to have a standard web browser open and available while you are teaching/rehearsing then the flash web metronome at metronomeonline.com that looks and functions very much like a traditional stand alone Seiko metronome only it sits insde your web browser.
For apple Itouch or Ipod users, a nifty metronome application called Orfeo has recently been released by Chromatic Bytes. Having tried this out on a friend’s Itouch, I could certainly recommend it as it is very easy to use and features a chromatic tuner/pitch pipe and tap tempo sensing as well as ‘beats per minute’ entry, all for a reasonable (given the current £ to $ exchange rate) $9.99 from Apple Itunes Store.
Whilst many digital pianos have a metronome facility on board, many have no way of easily setting the number of beats per minute. I frequently recommend that every student of music should have a metronome of some description and this offering from Lidl doubles up as a chromatic tuner.
At £7.99 this is a must for every musician’s christmas stocking. Available from Lidl from 30th October
