Good morning
Next month to austria, flat sorted
Old town, beautiful place in graz
Went to a friend’s wedding, nice ceremony
Suit, pirate’s hat
And graduation – 1:1 whatever that means
read love in the time of cholera with juice of one lime, equal this with gin, top with sparkling water.
YESSSSS HOPKINSON SMITH I LOVEEEEEE YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
“the best you can buy of these works – on any instrument” – Gramaphone magazine on his 2000 recording of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin adapted for Baroque Lute.
2 TRUUUUUUUU
omg why the seperation between the videos
LIFE AFFIRMING IN MANY WAYS
THIS IS!
Hello
05/06
1700 – Leave Glasgow to record on Isle of Cumbrae, Cathedral of the Isles
2200 - Start recording
06/06
0200 – Break for coffee and sustenance
0430 - Finish recording and go to bed
0700 – After luxury of 2 hours sleep travel to Glasgow
1000- Arrive Glasgow
1130 - After packing bags go to airport
1300 – Oh great, delayed flight and they insist on guitar in hold. <3 easyjet… time for yucky meal in airport
1530 - Arrive London
1730 – Arrive venue
1930 - After rehearsal performance begins promptly
2130 – Concert ends
2300 – Arrive back in ROSL bath bed yusssssssss
Oh my glamorous life xD
OK
I just thought I’d put up a few things that I’ve been given.
Firstly a link to a video of the IAMA conference, I feature somewhere near the end with a very fast Seville. Hmm perhaps too fast.
And a funny photo of me looking confused shortly before playing
Courtesy of Antonia Schroeder
OK I’m on In Tune BBC3 today, begins at 1630. Listen here live- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_radio_three
Anthony Hopkins is releasing album of classical music?
Oh noes here we go. Article complete with unfunny jokes here. Although perhaps it won’t be so bad? Apparently he’s already composed a bunch of scores for his own films, something I didn’t know…
On another note Christopher Hitchens died today 
(((((((((((( Vanity Fair taking the liberty of publishing his last article online (to have been published January 2012), embedded here. And a particularly well-crafted series of interview snippets follow:
Never be afraid of stridency
Richard Dawkins One of my main beefs with religion is the way they label children as a “Catholic child” or a “Muslim child”. I’ve become a bit of a bore about it.
Christopher Hitchens You must never be afraid of that charge, any more than stridency.
RD I will remember that.
CH If I was strident, it doesn’t matter – I was a jobbing hack, I bang my drum. You have a discipline in which you are very distinguished. You’ve educated a lot of people; nobody denies that, not even your worst enemies. You see your discipline being attacked and defamed and attempts made to drive it out.
Stridency is the least you should muster . . . It’s the shame of your colleagues that they don’t form ranks and say, “Listen, we’re going to defend our colleagues from these appalling and obfuscating elements.”Fascism and the Catholic Church
RD The people who did Hitler’s dirty work were almost all religious.
CH I’m afraid the SS’s relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.
RD Can you talk a bit about that – the relationship of Nazism with the Catholic Church?
CH The way I put it is this: if you’re writing about the history of the 1930s and the rise of totalitarianism, you can take out the word “fascist”, if you want, for Italy, Portugal, Spain, Czechoslovakia and Austria and replace it with “extreme-right Catholic party”.
Almost all of those regimes were in place with the help of the Vatican and with understandings from the Holy See. It’s not denied. These understandings quite often persisted after the Second World War was over and extended to comparable regimes in Argentina and elsewhere.Hitchens on the left-right spectrum
RD I’ve always been very suspicious of the left-right dimension in politics.
CH Yes; it’s broken down with me.
RD It’s astonishing how much traction the left-right continuum [has] . . . If you know what someone thinks about the death penalty or abortion, then you generally know what they think about everything else. But you clearly break that rule.
CH I have one consistency, which is [being] against the totalitarian – on the left and on the right. The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy – the one that’s absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes. And the origins of that are theocratic, obviously. The beginning of that is the idea that there is a supreme leader, or infallible pope, or a chief rabbi, or whatever, who can ventriloquise the divine and tell us what to do.
Go on.
Tell me that he wasn’t a Great Man.
Funny Steven Osborne Diary
In the Guardian re: Gasp hard de la nuit (yeah I stole that from someone).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/29/steven-osborne-diary-ravel
My personal favourite is
June 2009
Chained to the piano.
Don’t you love the Guardian?
No?
How about Russian politics?
Yeah? I thought so.
PUTIN 4 2012 RE-ELECTION!!!!!!
Anyway, here’s Martha playing Le Gibet
Fees rise at RSAMD/RCS/?
So yeah just got a letter from the principal via mass email to ALLSTUD (all students geddit?) in the Royal Conservatoire (apparently we’ve to refer to ourselves as being from the Royal Conservatoire for at least the next year to get it into people’s heads – didn’t stop Tumelty in his Herald article after the name change doing so ololol. Also another more pointed article article” href=”http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/arts-ents/music-features/change-the-academy-s-name-but-not-its-soul-1.1109833″ target=”_blank”>here).
Tuition fees for 2012/2013 + undergrads from Wales, England and Ireland will be £9000 per year. Additional scholarships will be introduced to partly offset the introduction of increased tuition fees. Press statement being issued today I think. More info available here.
Don’t think I’ll ever vote LibDem again. My bad, sorry guys.
EDIT: 23/09/11, 11:50am
Student sit-in protest on ground floor at the moment re: fee rise.
Also note this paragraph on this page:
“What if you do not agree with our decision in respect of RUK fees?
There will be a review process. If you disagree with our decision we will be happy to have this reviewed – we want to make sure that we are fair and accurate in our assessment of student fee status. However, we would anticipate that the overwhelming majority of decisions will be straightforward.”
Also take into account lowest threshold for scholarship is still moderate income @ 25k:
| Residual Household Income | Royal Conservatoire RUK Scholarship |
| Up to £25,000 | £3,000 |
| £25,001 to £30,000 | £2,500 |
| £30,001 to £35,000 | £2,000 |
Cologne, by Alfred Brendel
The Coughers of Cologne
have joined forces with the Cologne Clappers
and established the Cough and Clap Society
a non-profit-making organization
whose aim it is
to guarantee each concert-goer’s right
to cough and applaud
Attempts by unfeeling artists or impresarios
to question such privileges
have led to a Coughers and Clappers initiative
Members are required to applaud
immediately after sublime codas
and cough distinctly
during expressive silences
Distinct coughing is of paramount importance
to stifle or muffle it
forbidden on pain of expulsion
Coughs of outstanding tenacity
are awarded the Coughing Rhinemaiden
a handsome if slightly baroque appendage
to be worn dangling from the neck
The C&C’s recent merger
with the New York Sneezers
and the London Whistlers
raises high hopes
for Cologne’s musical future
From Collected Poems of Alfred Brendel: Playing the Human Game
A friend sent me this today. It brings to mind Brendel’s last concert in Edinburgh, in the Usher Hall. After the first movement of some Sonata, the audience started to cough and applause followed a few seconds after. Brendel turned to us and held up three fingers: “This Sonata has three movements.”
After hearing this, the good ol slap-thigh-laugh-applause routine was carried out by many in the audience. Brendel was not amused and shook his head furiously while opening the second movement.
Coughers/Clappers/Whistlers/Sneezers and sons beware, you are noticed…
Mmmm so some interesting Delcamp friction…
EDIT (02/09/11): FABIO ZANON NOT BANNED ACCORDING TO COMMENT BELOW
It seems that Delcamp has been the subject of some debate on other guitar forums, apparently mainly due to the heavy-handed moderators.
First noticing it on this thread (“wasn’t it the case that many interesting personalities avoid this forum, because of bad experiences with it… I’m talking about Matanya Ophee, Frédéric Zigante, Fabio Zanon”), I followed a link to here, where details of other bad experiences were related in the comments at the bottom, my personal favourite being:
with ridiculous censorship, the low quality of knowledge of the moderators, what remains? Beginners being mislead by know-all wannabe’s, being mislead by … (Did I mention the holier-than-thou, let’s-be-friendly-to-everyone people ?)
Upon quoting this as “interesting”, I was informed by PM that my comment had been deleted by a mod. Ironic huh?
I found this after following up the Matanya Ophee reference. My favourite here is:
one man’s twisted notion of himself as an arbiter of guitar issues. The end result of his stupid arrogant policies is that membership is reduced to the lowest common denominator, and the discussion level is pitifully pedestrian infantilism.
This year Mr. Ophee was nominated for a GFA lifetime acheivement award - he is not a person to be sniffed at, and it’s ridiculous to delete him from a forum… He also looks like Santa Claus on holiday 
Some selected Delcamp agonies:
http://www.gprotab.net/forum/topic.php?id=1625
http://guitarra.artepulsado.com/foros/archive/index.php/t-3851.html
And as usual someone took it slightly too far and made a youtube video about it
Elysium III – Rock Diva
Wow so there’s an interesting CD that was reviewed in the Muso magazine (Hazel Davis). Nice and abrupt start to it: “Let’s jump straight in; most things about this CD suck”. This crossover stuff is of course central to a lot of what the guitar world has. It can be self-indulgent, which is forgivable, but it seems that Rock Diva is not in this category.
So I’ll sum up the article in Muso, which I agree with on all points. This whole idea of the ‘classically trained musician’ generally results in some kind of a reverential reflex being prodded in the nation’s psyche – “Being Classically Trained means you must be good at it – whatever ‘it’ is – and we certainly don’t pay the same sort of respect to those who’ve slogged for years over a bass guitar.” What’s gone wrong with Elysium III (what kind of a name is that?) is that in singing Life on Mars and You’re the Voice etc etc etc, they have not only made the classical world pop an aspirin and go for a nap, but the Rockers too. I’m not sure if even a calculated attempt at getting both worlds to heartily not want you could have been more successful than this one.
In essence: “Anyone who has to call their album Rock Diva probably isn’t one. Secondly, nobody is allowed to cover Bowie’s Life on Mars. Not even good people have covered Life on Mars. Because…you just don’t.”
And if you thought their last album was any better:
Excuse me while I grab a bucket.
Wow some interesting links here
My friend emailed me a page from the NY times on piano competitions, but it’s all relevant to guitar competitions. I mean it’s pretty obvious, but people forget how it’s so very hard to become well known unless you’ve won a few of these. These guys who win are a particular type of player – they’re the standard player who avoids controversial interpretation and plays it safe. There’s no daring, and the interesting players who risk it all are never those who win.
Look at Bozhanov…
Yeah I know huh.
Now look at the comments.
God damned competition mafia. Back in the golden age of guitar this stuff wasn’t so common, you could get gigs by simply being heard, and being good. The bitch of it is that playing it safe, being nice and getting a brown nose pays off.
The other link is this one, which is kinda entertaining.
My sister
My diary normally:
Before
***Riyoko finds diary***
And after
And again
Oh and again
???
Funny? Yeah maybe not but I thought it was xD k so she’s fundraising at the moment so she can get to go to Ecuador for a conservation trip, help her out here – http://riyokoforecuador.wordpress.com/
As I pointed out before, her blog is much prettier than mine:
Anyway instagram eh? Got a new phone and tried it out, then realised it was facebook.
Before instagram
After instagram
But I’d left facebook about a year ago. So anyway, got rid of it and tried pixlr-o-matic which apparently is instagram + few other hipster things – social networking aspect which works much better for me.
I guess what it has over instagram is that you can layer a few effects
Anyone watched house of cards? Ian Richardson epic actor:
Even the longest, the most glittering reign must come to an end someday.
Epic lines from a satire.
Wow bad jokes from top commenters though haaaaaaa
LOL SLAP THIGH
In other news I have retired as head of the Green Party.
well maybe i looked like her in this picture more when I was younger…
Oh yeah ok this is the last bit but this Sun article made me laugh and cringe and everything so much. Read Here. Although I mean, it was the Sun, right…?
Half convinced to 4chan him xD
But of course much outrage in scottish and general press so don’t worry, he’s catching some hassle.
September 7, 2012 | Categories: Photos, Thoughts, Video | Tags: Caroline Lucas, Riyoko, Diary, Instagram vs Pixlr-o-matic, Youtube top commenters, Nicola Benedetti | 8 Comments »