A walk too far

I have just returned from a walk I could have done without. My dog Milo saw a boxer on a lead. I called him to me. He ignored me and went for the boxer. The boxer's owner started to kick Milo in the head. I didn't dare restrain my dog for fear of being kicked by the other dog's owner. OK, Milo should not have been aggressive. I am furious with him but I am also angry with the boxer's owner for kicking Milo. It didn't help and it scared the living daylights out of me. Milo was fine and friendly with all the other dogs he had met that day. For some reason he did not like the boxer. Milo is going back to the dog trainer at the vet's to get some remedial training. I can't be doing with this sort of incident.

Grand Ambitions

I have been inspired by the Forum message board of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Forum members have got together to organise concerts at various venues across the country. To the best of my knowledge there has not been a concert in East Anglia and I am wondering such a concert might be feasible in my mother's village of Linton. The school there has a lovely piano. It belongs to the Linton Music Society and it is a cut above the normal school piano.

The drawback of this venue is that it is not that accessible by public transport. Linton is a village ten miles out of Cambridge but there is a good bus service and you can get taxis from the station. If you come by car it is close to the M11 so vehicle access is good. I doubt I would be able to make the necessary arrangements before 2007.

I have never organised a concert before but does that need to stop me? I am sure the other Forum concert organisers are amateurs too.

Opening the case

It ought not to be too difficult. All I have to do is to pull the stud fasteners apart, unzip the carrying case and undo the catch so I can open up the inner case. It would take me less than half a minute. From there I have to assemble my bassoon. That takes say two minutes. Not long. But something stops me.

I used to play the bassoon as a teenager but stopped when I fell ill. When I attempted to restart my studies a year ago I had a false start. Now it is hard to go back but since reading the happy accounts of late starters on the ABRSM's web site I've resolved to back to my bassoon.

Active Music Forum

I have just joined a new forum. It is run by the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. Some people evidently live permanently on the forum. You can tell as each person is assigned a ranking. I am just a newbie but frequent posters can be virtuosos or maestros. You can tell whether a forum user is in by looking at their on/off button. You can send messages to other forum users. It is an active site. There are different forums for different interests. There is a forum for pianists, strings, woodwind and brass. There is a student forum for school kids and adult learners have their own forum. Teachers do too and there is a cafe for general gossip.

I looked it up after reading about the forum in Libretto, the Board's magazine. Apparently forum members had got together to stage a concert. I gather there is going to be another one in Leicester very shortly but I am too late to enter for that. Every so often I saw the odd carping comment - usually in the students area - but in the adult learners section people are pretty supportive, especially to people taking up an instrument as an adult.

Some people are clearly fixated by exams, especially by the thought of getting a grade 8 pass. They don't sound too happy but then there are other people for whom the exam system seems to work. There are any amount of thrilled entries from people who have just taken their grade 1. People tend to append their exam record on the signature file. Some have diplomas galore but I think amongst the proudest ones must be ones who have just got their grade 1s and are as pleased as punch with what they have done. I think that is a good attitude for an amateur.

Amusing the Muse

Not much to report from today. I spent a couple of hours polishing a few harmony exercises. I find them utterly absorbing. I have always wondered ever since I was a kid how music was put together. Why do different lines of counterpoint resolve themselves when their complexity would seem to forecast a certain crash? Why is that certain sounds sound so sweet together while others are so discordant? How do chords in popular music differ from those in classical music. I longed for someone to teach me but no one did. Not at school and not in my private music lessons and not at the junior department of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama where I was a junior student. I don't know why I did not teach myself as I am doing now. Lack of initiative and also fear of the unknown. Harmony seemed awful complicated but like most things if you take it step by step it all begins to make sense. I would love to get to the point where I can write my own stuff. I have a cousin who is entirely self-taught. He is a busker and he makes a tidy some traveling around market towns in Shropshire. I think I take inspiration from him.

Archeological Dig

There are archaeologists at work in the Walks, my local park. They have dug a huge whole in the mount supporting the Red Mount Chapel. I just hope that they know what they are doing for safety's sake. There is a mechanical digger there and huge sections of the Walks are fenced off so you cannot walk by the water's edge as I used to like to do. But when one door closes another opens up. My dog Milo likes to dig holes in the mounds of earth left my the archeological diggers. I don't quite know what they will make of my dog's leavings. He likes to bury food he has scavenged and, if he has killed another animal, he will bury the corpse. He is a neat digger. He digs with his forepaws and then flicks the earth back into the hole with his muzzle. I have never seen him go back to a hole but maybe an archaeologist will uncover all the food is has buried.

My bookshelf of favourites

Every so often I like to rearrange my books instead of just shoving them into the nearest available shelf (or on the floor dare I admit it). I have decided to set aside the shelves in my bedroom for my very favourite books. To qualify these books need to be old favourites. I probably read them as a teenager and I have reread them many times. I have begun by nominating Jane Austen, James Joyce, Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy. A Midsummer Night's Dream will probably end up there as well. With luck I will have a shelf of books that I can turn to in my wakeful hours and open at any page.

Figured Bass

I have discovered a new and compelling pastime - more compelling than sudoko. This diversion is harmony. I have been set the task of finding the chords to go with a given bass line. The notes of the chord are predetermined. Below each bass note there is one or more figure to indicate what notes should be used in the chord. However it is up to you how you arrange those notes. This is what is known as figured bass, a system of harmony common in the baroque period. It hasn't been used by composers after that period. You'll find it in baroque music but it is used now to teach harmony. There are quite a lot of rules about what you can and can't do an initially it feels really restrictive but if you stick at it you do start to learn how chords fit together. You learn what chord progressions sound like and you learn so well that you can hear the music in your head just by looking at the score. This is a very useful skill for a musician and, if you have the right mentality, it is loads of fun.

Donkey Liberation

You have to play three pieces at a grade exam. All three of my pieces are jolly and they are all in major keys. One of mine is by Handel. It consists of semiquavers from beginning to end and it is a test of endurance. Somehow or other I have to keep up the pace and not miss a note. Played up to the speed recommended by the Board it sounds quite virtuosic but I am not sure that I am going to be able to play it at that speed. The second piece is by Grieg. This is romanticism in full flight with lots of chromatic passages and fast broken chords spanning more than an octave. What I like about this piece is the way it goes right up to the top A on the keyboard and then finishes on the bottom A. However my favourite is definitely Le Petit Ane Blanc by Ibert.

Staccato semiquavers trot more or less right the way through the piece. The beginning section and the end section are mostly lyrical with a stacato semiquaver passage work in the left hand. These passages really soft with dynamics ranging from p to ppp but the middle section becomes loud and discordant. The first time I heard the piece I thought the middle section was atonal but having had a look at the score I see that Ibert was keeping well within the diatonic range. There is reason behind his discords. The piece just invites you to let rip in the middle and so that is why I have dubbed this piece the donkey liberation theme tune. There is one bottleneck where I can't seem to be able to play up to speed. I gave it loads of practice today. I think it is going to need a lot of attention over the coming months but the rest of this piece is shaping up nicely. I'm loving playing it.

Dog scrap

I usually can tell when my dog Milo doesn't like another dog but today I misread the signs. He had just frolicked playfully with Daisy, an exuberant golden retriever. I had realised that I had lost my dog lead and I was contemplating how I was going to get Milo home safely. If I stoop I can just about hold onto his collar but my stiff back doesn't like that sort of procedure. Luckily I had an ipod lanyard on me and I used this cord as a makeshift lead. Unfortunately Milo had begun staring at a dog that was staring at him. I thought they were going to sniff each other's backsides the way dogs do but in an instant they both lunged at each other. Me and the other dog's owner each pulled our respective dogs away. I heard a stream of invective from the other dog's owner. He wasn't swearing at me. He was cursing his dog. I didn't think that was entirely fair as my dog was just as much an instigator in this aborted dog fight but I wasn't going to hang around to argue. The thin lanyard ipod cord was digging into may hand because Milo was straining on the leash and I was worried that I would either lose my grip or that the cord would snap under the strain of a 13 kg whippet. Neither possibility transpired. I got Milo safely home but the scrap with the other dog left us both a bit edgy. He quietened down once he had his dinner. Peace was restored.

A new note

Today I indulged myself in some new music. With Aubrey, my music teacher and the venerable organist of St Margaret's, I do the classics but in my free time I like to play around with more populist repertoire so today I bought arrangements of West Side Story and Chicago. My sight reading is not really up to playing these properly at first sight but I can play well enough to get a sense of the tune. It is nice to play pieces with a bit of swing. It also helps maintain my interest. Aubrey has me study the same pieces for months. He is a perfectionist and this period of prolonged study does yield results. That is the way to achieve technical prowess but I like to explore the repertoire just for fin. I'm not an out-and-out highbrow. I think Aubrey would blanche if he saw some of my CD collection but as far as I am concerned with music variety is the spice of life. I like my pop and I like my classics.

Distinction

I am feeling very pleased with myself. I have just had the results from my Grade 5 Music Theory exam. I scored 98 out of 100. To pass you needed at least 66. To pass with merit you needed 80-89 per cent and to pass with distinction you needed at least 90.

According to the website of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music 21,509 candidates sat Grade 5 theory in 2005. You have to pass Grade 5 theory if you want to sit practical exams of Grade 6 and above so Grade 5 theory is the most popular of all the ABRSM's theory exams. Of those candidates 7,610 gained a straight pass. A total of 7,409 got a merit and 3,905 got a distinction. The exam was failed by 2,585 candidates. So, based on those figures I am in the top 18 per cent of candidates.

I am encouraged by this and I am determined to go on and sit higher exams but I note that the proportion of candidates passing with distinction in Grade 6 drops to just 3 per cent. I think this is due to the big leap between Grade 5 and Grade 6. Much of Grade 6 is preoccupied by harmony and you need a lot of skill to be able to sit down in an exam room and produce harmonic progressions. However I see it as a challenge. I have had a crack at my first few figured bass exercises. They weren't too bad but I will have to see what my piano teacher Aubrey makes of them.