Category: Uncategorized

#AcWriMo for a church musician

Byartsyhonker October 25, 2012 6 Comments
I'm not doing a PhD (yet), but over at PhD2Published it's that time of year again. AcWriMo is a sort of motivational gimmick whereby a group of people decide that in November they're going to get a lot of writing done, and then offer one another lots of moral support. My own take on this will be hymn tunes. I love writing them, and really enjoyed the ones I did for the hymnathon videos, but my...

Through a glass, darkly

Byartsyhonker September 14, 2012 0 Comments
I really like this picture, taken by best beloved in the course of a bunch of other pictures for the purposes of organ fundraising. More about the hymnathon will follow in the next few days. There's a month to go, so I'm not really doing very much else at this stage! Tarquin is going to come and disable some of the bellows to try and give us a few more months, as the organ is really not working...

Flash Compline Wednesday 18th July

Byartsyhonker July 16, 2012 0 Comments
There will be a Flash Compline service at 9.30pm on Wednesday, 18th July 2012, at Christ Church Greyfriars, near St Paul's tube - here's a map Music: We will use this setting of Compline. We will have a small number of spare copies, which you can purchase for £2 if you want to keep them, or borrow if you don't. Don't worry if you aren't a confident singer -- follow along with the text and see...

State of the Organ

Byartsyhonker July 4, 2012 0 Comments
So, I had a chat with our organ tuner, Tarquin Wiggins, on Friday. He'd visited on Thursday and found the organ so bad that he had to abort tuning. The four leather bellows needing repair are now leaking very badly, with the result that the system is losing pressure very easily. Parishioners at St Andrew's may have noticed the organ cutting out intermittently during the last hymn on Sunday; this...

Press release on Women in the Episcopate

Byartsyhonker May 21, 2012 4 Comments
Ruthie Gledhill has kindly put the press release at her tumblr. It is, she says, the worst press release since the Reformation.My understanding of it is as follows:Changes made to the draft measure:1) Clarification of the word "delegation" to mean legal permission to act as a bishop rather than sacramental derivation of bishoppyness;2) Inclusion in measure of guidelines stating that pastoral...

Flash Compline: Wednesday, 23rd May

Byartsyhonker May 21, 2012 0 Comments
There will be a Flash Compline service at 9.45pm on Wednesday, 23rd May, outside St James Garlickhythe, near Mansion House Tube station. Here is a map. Music: We will use this setting of Compline. I will have a small number of spare copies, which you can purchase from me for £2 if you want to keep them, or borrow if you don't. Don't worry if you aren't a confident singer -- follow along with the...

Give us back our NHS

Byartsyhonker March 20, 2012 2 Comments
Scum who don't know how to feel They're so rich they have to steal Eyes all glazed from looking west Give us back our NHS! We won't take rule for the rich While the poorest feel the pinch. There's no mandate for this mess Give us back our NHS! Words by @Eithin and @LosTheSkald, music by me. Please sing it, teach it to people, make videos, write more verses, whatever. It's under a CC BY-SA...

I hate cancelled services…

Byartsyhonker October 28, 2011 0 Comments
...so we are still going to have Evensong at St Paul's-in-the-Camp this evening.I have no wish to compete with the cathedral, but I also don't want anyone turning up thinking there is a service and then finding out there isn't one. That has happened to me so many times, in so many contexts, that I can't bring myself to take the risk of it happening to someone else.I do plan to attend the Evensong...

A bit about why I use the CC licenses I do.

Byartsyhonker October 15, 2011 6 Comments
When I write music I release it under a Creative Commons license. I usually use a CC BY-SA license, known as Attribution-ShareAlike. This means people can use it, without first asking me, as long as they give me attribution and any derivative works they make are shared under a similar license. If I am using CC BY-SA then they are free to earn money for derivative works, but since they have to...

Lost Link

Byartsyhonker September 8, 2011 0 Comments
Some time ago -- a year, two years? -- I came across an article on the technical demands of music. I think it might have been linked to from Elaine Fine's blog, Musical Assumptions (to which I commend you anyway), but I can't find it there.I remember quite clearly that it used a typing analogy, comparing playing music to copy-typing, but in a specific rhythm, in time with others, with precise...