Scribal Terror

Ethel Waters, getting sick and tired . . .

For Lisa, with thanks for the Della Reese.

Banjo tune

Something special to start off the day after Christmas, from the John Quincy Wolf Collection of Ozark Folksongs.

O Holy Night with Michael Crawford

The original Phantom of the Opera. His pianissimo is sweet, but every now and then the timbre of that forte sounds like it's going to bring the chandelier down on the cherubic little backup singers.

Air guitar teaching aid

Yep, it's an inflatable fake guitar to practice your air guitar moves before you're ready to use nothing. Tokyo Times.

Gravitacion for Christmas

Gravitacion is a superb medieval and renaissance music group based at Millikin University in Decatur IL. Now go visit their website and listen to the audio clips. If the soprano, my friend Sherezade Panthaki, doesn't make your knees turn to water, your ears need work.

The Gravitacion CD can be ordered here.

Gravitacion is a superb medieval and renaissance music group based at Millikin University in Decatur IL. Now go visit their website and listen to the audio clips. If the soprano, my friend Sherezade Panthaki, doesn't make your knees turn to water, your ears need work.

The Gravitacion CD can be ordered here.

Gravitacion is a superb medieval and renaissance music group based at Millikin University in Decatur IL. Now go visit their website and listen to the audio clips. If the soprano, my friend Sherezade Panthaki, doesn't make your knees turn to water, your ears need work.

The Gravitacion CD can be ordered here.

Watch this little girl play

here

Misheard song lyrics

From "Be Not Afraid"

If you pass the raging otters in the sea,
you shall not drown . . .

From the Doxology

Praise Him all preachers. Here we go!

From "Lord I lift thy name on high"

From the earth to the cross,
my dead toupee

And many more, here.

Pavarotti, RIP

Stuff.com reports:

"The great tenor Luciano Pavarotti died today at 5am (3pm NZT) at his home in Modena," Pavarotti's manager Terri Robson said in a statement. "The Maestro fought a long, tough battle against the pancreatic cancer which eventually took his life. "In fitting with the approach that characterised his life and work, he remained positive until finally succumbing to the last stages of his illness."

Lest we forget, here is the voice in its prime, in a duet with Dame Joan Sutherland:

Three ways of listening to Shakespeare

"It was a lover and his lass," by the Deller Consort, Maxine Sullivan, and Cleo Laine, via Minnesota Public Radio.

Going sharp

An article in News in Science on the possible genetic component in perfect pitch has a bit of interesting information about age and the perception of pitch:

"As people get older, their perception goes sharp. If a note C is played, and they're 15, they will say it's a C. But if they're 50, they might say it's a C sharp."

"This can be very disconcerting for them," Gitschier says.

The most commonly misidentified note, based on the study, is a G sharp.

That may be because G sharp is overshadowed by A, its neighbour on the scale, they say. A is often used by orchestras in the West as a tuning reference.