Heck, may've been hundreds of thousands of clicks, even. I might do the math if I'm ever that bored. Which I'll never be.

But on to greener pastures. How's the SE shit hitting the fan these days?

Why are you still a mod?

Sorry, I mean: why are they still a mod.

Tell me when it's all over. Then I might finally go read all those posts that you linked.

Internet drama is only funnier in retrospect.

@RegDwigнt Haha.

Yeah. Haha indeed.

Those are just a handful of people. Ignore them.

That was not a question.

About SE, the score of the FAQ about the new policy is approaching -900, I think.

Do not give dogs what is sacred. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs. They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.

No offense to present dog company.

I prefer the swine comparison, thank you very much!

Paarlen voor de zwijnen werpen.

The only dog involved actually did not trample or attack.

pigs are pretty cool too

Funny how it works.

We need to rewrite the Bible.

Probably not the best idea to start with Matthew 7, though.

I saw that QI clip the other week where Stephen Fry talked about that concilium that decided what stories to include or not include in the Bible.

And then read alound one example that didn't make it. In his Stephen Fry voice.

they're all good stories

Oh this one's a gem. I'm looking already. Hold on.

except the one with Lot and his daughters. that's kinda gross

> And, lo, suddenly there came forth from the cave many dragons; and when the children saw them, they cried out in great terror. Then Jesus [redacted the rest of this quote by popular request]

A++ Bible would read again.

@RegDwigнt You should have left out the punchline.

As in, add three dots after "Then Jesus" and leave out what follows.

I'm sorry, but the punchline had been left out for 2019 years now. I just couldn't wait any longer.

It makes the video more fun to watch if you don't already know.

Who watches a one-minute video anyway?

Also the video is above the transcript.

@RegDwigнt You know that means nothing.

Everything I say means nothing.

Did you know that Alexey Leonov died?

Word has reached me from the US of all places. From a trombonist of all people.

There. Fixed the quote for you.

The lengths I'll go to just to please you.

I didn't know him.

Well I didn't know him personally either. But I read his book as a kid.

Выхожу в космос, was the title.

@RegDwigнt That looks just like censorship, I like it. You were sensitive enough not to hurt my religious feelings.

Obviously it didn't say a word about what actually happened.

Something about the cosmos?

It only got declassified like 20 years later.

Not 20 years after the fact, 20 years after I had read the book.

@Cerberus "I'm exiting out into open space"

Much shorter in Russian.

Ah.

So yeah. What really happened in case you don't know just like I used to not know, somehow the Russians had collectively forgotten that there was no air in space.

So his suit inflated, like. Doubled in size. From the difference between the normal 1ATM pressure in the suit and the 0 ATM outside of it.

And the poor sod couldn't get back into the spacecraft through the airlock which was like the size of a cat door.

I don't remember what he had to do in the end, I'm guessing he eventually punctured the suit and let the air out or something.

Sounds horrible.

I only recall it took him many minutes if not hours bumbling around up there all alone in the blackness, trying all kinds of things none of which worked.

Rest in peace.

*pieces

Yeah I can't even type anymore.

From a quick glance neither the German nor the Dutch wiki say a word about any of that.

Or really about his space walk as such. Only mention it briefly in the introductory paragraph, but then talk about completely unrelated shit for the entire rest of the article.

The Russian wiki has lots of details. Apparently his misfortunes did not end with that. Upon returning to the ship, there was a leak of explosive gases or something so the tiniest spark from some electricity anywhere would have blown up the whole thing into pieces.

That's not good either.

And once the crew got the air mix to stabilize, they proceeded, as intended, to undock the airlock from the ship. But unlike intended, that destabilized the spacecraft so much it started rotating at 18 rpm. And they could never get that to stop.

Really makes you not want to go to space all that much.

You can drown in a bowl of soup, or break your leg by standing up from a chair. Dafuq you even need the space for.

But yeah the initial issue with the suit that I mentioned, he didn't puncture it after all, but considerably reduced the oxygen pressure until he could fit back in through the door.

And then once inside he disregarded all standard procedure and took off his helmet before the airlock was fully sealed because he was just sweating buckets.

("Standard procedure", of course, being a misnomer rather. As that was the first space walk ever. So basically anything at all that he did was the standard at that point. He was the one who set it.)

Oh and then after all the troubles listed above, the autopilot for the re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere decided not to work. So they had to land it manually. All the way from outer space to wherever on Earth they eyeballed was a good place to land.

And yet he lived.

To never tell the story.

Because world politics.

But yeah makes you understand why Russians would have vodka and guitars on the Mir.

You might go down any second, you better go down in style.

Wise.

In style and stupour.

Not quite certain how a word can be repetitive if you only use it exactly once.

Come here, let me demonstrate with this brick.

@marcellothearcane Hot Licks beat you to it, apparently.

But yeah. "Why does word X change the meaning of sentence Y" is always a delightful question to read.

Every word always changes the meaning to whatever the meaning of that word is.

Like, that's what words are for.

Nothing out of the ordinary, really.

But people keep asking.

@RegDwigнt if I replace 'meaning' with 'potato' in that sentence, does it change the potato?

Bach solo sonatas and partitas for violin are a great example of him pushing musical boundaries

@marcellothearcane Oh hat's off to you sir, that's really very gay.

(In that sentence, "gay" replaces "smart".)

Full four voice counterpoint on what was previously typically a melodic instrument

Did you assume my gender?

I always assume your gender first thing in the morning.

Usually it's different each time.

But sometimes you're gay two days in a row.

By gender I mean acrobatic skills

Yes, I also meant excavator. We're on the same page here.

@RegDwigнt well aren't I lucky

Anyway. Back on topic.

@RegDwigнt that was the vodka talking

I went to a concert just two weeks ago, one of the pieces was Glasunov's violin concerto.

Or one of his concerto's, no idea how many he writ.

A Russian violinist was playing.

Do you recommend?

I'm into Wieniawski's first concerto at the moment

Are Russian violinist particularly good?

When he finished the piece and went behind the stage before coming on again to bow to the audience, from where I was sitting I could clearly see a person behind the stage standing there waiting with a fresh pint of beer for the violinist.

Also are there any Jewish Russian violinists?

Wiesniawski is quite unplayable from what I've heard, but I've not heard much.

Jewish violinists seem to have dominated the list of greats

Anyway, in Glasunov, there was that cadenza, and I don't know what the heck he did there and how he did it, but it sounded like three different instruments at once.

And I do mean at once.

@RegDwigнt you know, if I was ever to perform a concerto I'd need several beers before

Like, even Bach has to make you arpeggiate chords and such.

And while it was going on

@RegDwigнt that sounds impressive

And all the voices move in the same tempo like. And the timbre is very similar because hey it's just one instrument.

But here he was playing three instruments at once. At the same time. Three different timbres doing three independent things at three different tempi.

I was like what the fuck.

And everyone around me was like chewing gum and reading in the booklet.

You only appreciate awesome violin playing when you try to play one yourself

@marcellothearcane Haha. We're not quite there yet. Remember this is the country Anne-Sophie Mutter is from.

So mostly people do behave. Also they're very very very very old people. Like all of them.

The kind of phones they carry, they need to be giant so they can hit the buttons. So giant they can't hold them up to film.

@RegDwigнt So when you said they were chewing gum, it was more likely that they were chewing their gums

@marcellothearcane well yes. IIRC I say something to that extent in my profile on MS. Or maybe elsewhere. Or maybe everywhere.

I do not believe in writing for instruments that I don't know my way around myself.

It can never be said enough

@marcellothearcane yeah more like mints.

And not chewing.

Yeah, you see a few people on musescore write thirds on the G

But they did talk a lot. All those old ladies.

For strings

Not possible

The cough sweets in the crackly plasic wrappers are the worst

It's possible if you really really quickly change the scordatura mid-performance and then change it back again.

What, you can't do that in half a bar? Noob.

Or borrow a viola

@RegDwigнt seen any of Eric Whitacre's virtual choirs?

Uh. I wouldn't remember.

Like, certainly not in person.

ted.com/talks/…

I do know the name from the various channels that I follow, but the last time anyone mentioned him was maybe 14 months ago or so.

Ugh that video won't play in this browser for some reason. Why do they even have a site of their own. They have a YouTube channel.

I'll go look for it there later tonight.

Meanwhile before I forget, I wanted to share a fun story.

I don't follow choirs, so I've only just come across him

Two weeks ago I was talking with my teacher about the various pieces I had arranged previously. But not had shown her yet because of the bus strike here.

I don't have a printer at home so I have to go to the office to print out the sheet music. And because of the strike I had spent that day at home and printed out nothing.

So anyway, I brought with me a piano book that I had as a child, with some of said pieces in there, arranged for easy piano.

One was Tchaikovsky, that Prilepa and Milovzor duet that I have up on MS arranged for two strings, two winds, and a piano.

So anyway, she actually didn't know the piece, and I said, yeah just sight-read the first couple bars maybe you know it alright.

By which obviously I meant she should just play the melodic line.

But she just played all of it. Chords and all.

Even some impossible thirds on the G string.

I was like come on, stop pulling my leg, Jesus.

She was flexing on you

And she didn't know it after all. It was her first time sight-reading it.

@marcellothearcane sort of, yeah, but the worst part of it is it wasn't on purpose.

That's very impressive

It's just what you do as a professional orchestra musician.

@marcellothearcane yeah I try to keep my calm. I'm getting a bit used to it, too.

But yeah. She then tasked me with arranging it for maybe two violins with a piano, for two of her other students to play accompanied by herself.

@RegDwigнt that reminds me of TwoSetViolin

Actually I just finished that an hour ago. But then got distracted by clicking on the ELU tab by accident.

Are you going to put it on musescore?

@marcellothearcane well yes, fake it till you make it. They often talk about that. If you're sitting in an orchestra and haven't practiced and see the music for the first time during concert, you better be ready and willing to play them thirds on the G string the first time you see them.

My teacher sightreads some of the pieces I bring him, but I haven't ever given him anything with tricky chords in that he didn't know already

@marcellothearcane yes I was just about to start uploading.

Maybe I should go do that now.

You'll get one heart and one comment saying 'cool but have you tried boulevard of broken dreams?'

Which may be me 😛

Though by "finished" I really mean, no it's not for two violins yet as she requested. I did violin-viola-piano. Though almost all of the viola part can be played on a violin with no changes. There's just two or three places where it goes down to an F sharp. But I want to show her that first.

@RegDwigнt their best videos are when they play properly

Then we can still make the changes necessary.

@RegDwigнt What are the options for when it does that?

Add an octave?

Well at one point I do go down an octave. Like, actually deviating from the original score. So yeah. That one I could simply reverse back to what Tchaikovsky actually wrote.

The others I don't even quite remember anymore. It's been an hour.

Or an ad lib scordatura

But yeah lemme just show you. I'll upload it. Gimme a couple minutes.

Right ho

@marcellothearcane musescore.com/user/27897310/scores/5779046

Right. Actually, let me give it a listen myself. I've not done that yet. Maybe I forgot something.

Yeah will do for a first sketch. Two or three things I might still want to address, but the lesson is only on Thursday so I have plenty of time left.

Very nice

Is the bit where you go down an octave around bar 31?

@marcellothearcane Well of course. It's Tchaikovsky. By way of making fun of Mozart.

Is that what he was doing?

@marcellothearcane yeah precisely there.

Tchaikovsky stays up there.

And the rest of the low notes I plain invented myself out of think air. So should be trivial to get rid of them again to make it playable on a violin.

Is he a Russian hero? Like how Finland views Sibelius?

@marcellothearcane well that's what people say. He liked to include pastiches like this in his operas. Apropos of nothing. Just because he felt like it.

Like, this here is from Pique Dame. A dark and depressing story about gambling, debts, and bloody murder. Set in St. Petersburg.

But at the beginning of the second act, there's this intermezzo that has nothing to do with anything in the piece.

@RegDwigнt It doesn't sound very dark and brooding

Called "the true feelings of a shepherdess" or something like that. With people all dressed up in baroque costumes, singing very Mozartean stuff like this.

Is that your point?

Yes.

Aha

These composers, with their sarcastic compositions

That breaks the Code of Conduct

Like, could you imagine Wagner including some ripoff of the Zauberflöte in the middle of his epic broody dark stuff.

But Tchaikovsky totally would.

@marcellothearcane he sure is but probably not like Sibelius in more respects than one.

For starters, Finland really has just this one big name that everyone knows. And by "everyone knows" I mean "most people have never even heard about".

@RegDwigнt Like Stravinksy including a delightful rondo in the middle of Rite of Spring

Actually I have no idea if he does that.

Tchaikovsky is like God level of famous worldwide compared to that. At the same time and conversely, in Russia they have so many different composers that are all really great that he's just one among many.

Yes I see

@marcellothearcane well you can call it a rondo alright, except it's not in 3/4 but in like 17/113/6.

But delightful it very much is.

You only hear of Sibelius if you're trying to hear of him.

Well from my experience most people who know of Sibelius think he's some guy from the Silicon Valley who founded a software company to drive MuseScore out of business.

But yeah like who else can I name before I cast stones at others. Kimmy Hakkola. And, um. That's about it really.

Not that that wouldn't be enough, mind. Sibelius and Hakkola alone can pull a cart the size of a country alright.

@RegDwigнt who?

You can read a couple messages after that for a fuller picture. There's a link to the video, too.

But that's a full concerto so make room in your calendar for an hour or two.

These days I listen to it on Spotify a lot, on my commute to work and back.

I will have a look

Thanks

Right now I need to panic about a violin lesson tomorrow the which I have learned nothing for.

(Though really you should try and see it live if you get the chance. It's really quite a show for all the senses and in every sense.)

@marcellothearcane do you have to learn specific things? Or have specific homework? Or just milestones that you set for yourself, or some other thing.

@RegDwigнt I'm trying to learn the first movement of mendelssohn's trio

I've done the second

And I haven't made much progress

Which annoys me

Yeah you've been mentioning that before, but maybe that's just a thing you're doing on the side.

I haven't had much time to practice, because we're redecorating the house which is apparently very important

Spray-paint everything black. Done.

I've decided I want to get it to a level I am comfortable with playing in a trio

Since I haven't played with anyone else apart from my teacher before

@RegDwigнt apparently that isn't an option

So I'm focussing on that piece currently

The way to deal with panic is, ironically, to practice less. But make it more targeted. Identify one problem at a time, work on it until it's fixed. Sometimes that only takes five minutes. Sometimes five days. But you always make more progress faster overall.

It's more pages than I've done before and is a massive stretch for my current level

Well at least you don't have to memorize it. Unlike stupid pianists who think they have to do that for some reason.

Once I can play it, I'll be able to do it from memory

Yeah that always comes with the territory.

I can play fairly well from memory (better than reading)

My point is more like, that's one worry to scratch off your list.

The challenge is getting it in the memory

Oh I see

I mostly do it the other way round. I start playing pieces by ear and see how far I can get. Then at some point I start writing things down.

I'll wing it and see

Usually works

My teacher is sometimes quite cross with me for that. And for good reasons. The intonation greatly improves when you're looking at sheet music.

Otherwise I'm just eyeballing half the notes. Or earballing, as it were.

My biggest issue is bow directions apparently

From what I understand that may stay that way for a long time if not forever.

Sometimes they aren't immediately obvious, and it's not until you run out of bow a few bars later that you realise that slur was there for a reason

Haha yeah.

At least I'm not in a section. Then it really matters.

@RegDwigнt Great

Also I always run out of bow faster than I actually do. As in, I'm only using the middle half and then it's danger danger, reverse reverse.

I move mine too fast

Massive sweeping strokes when you need to keep it short

@marcellothearcane but that's part of what I mean. By saying it will stay your problem forever. Because every concertmaster will have their own bowings and you have to be able to turn on a dime and adapt on a whim.

Sometimes midway through dress rehearsal before concert.

Horrors

I don't have plans to join any orchestras, so hopefully I can avoid that

@marcellothearcane I love moving mine fast and using the whole bow. But I never do that unless I consciously force myself to. It makes for such a better sound. But if I'm not paying attention, I use like one inch of the hair in the middle.

And then I wonder why I sound like I'm stepping on an untuned cat.

But yeah. It gets better every day.

You just have to do something, anything at all. Just play three notes a day. That already is better than playing none.

Was there a twoset video about how people that use more bow are better suited to strads, while those that use less are better suited to Guarneris?

@RegDwigнt how do you tune a cat?

@RegDwigнt True. I do unless something goes horribly wrong

I enjoy it so I make time

@marcellothearcane I don't recall that one. I used to watch every video of theirs but then they started uploading like one a day and I stopped being able to keep up.

I will catch up occasionally by watching a couple in a row, but for the most part I just pick and choose and watch like one a week.

I think it's that one

I got annoyed by all the constant roasts

So now I only watch if it looks like they're going to play

Oh I remember that thumbnail but I didn't watch it.

Some valid points about how it's more the musician than the instrument

@marcellothearcane I cherry-picked some of those and they were fine. But yeah all the longer videos with the Reddit memes got a bit too old a bit too fast.

They always roast the same things - bow hold and bowing, fingering, dubbing, and unlikely scenarios

The ones with the luthier are interesting too

Oh those were great.

He was great.

Quite a character.

The person that does the editing is quite funny

Anyway, I'm going to go to bed now

Hope the teacher likes the Tchaikovsky

Okie-dokie. Don't panic.

If you panic, play it backwards. Then play it forwards again and marvel at how good you actually are.

Nighty-night.

@RegDwigнt Thanks for the tip!

Adios

@marcellothearcane I'll watch it.

Adios!

Yeah I have a lot of those tips in the ol' bag o' tricks.

I'm always on the lookout for new ones.

My teacher is a good source for a wealth of those.

But I also constantly discover new ones by trying to teach people myself.

@Cerberus they're really quite good and knowledgeable. And funny. I talked to them in person in Frankfurt.

But yeah now with a million subscribers on YouTube they have to cater to a somewhat more common denominator at times.

But that video right there is really good. I like.

Also Jesus Christ, they're at almost 2mil subs already. Only got over 1mil just a few months ago. It really is an exponential curve on YouTube.

> If I could describe this piano piece in one word, it would be "fire." This piece is a fantasic emotional ride of passion and darkness, and it takes the listener on a wild adventure of expression. The groovy rhythms that make up this piece become more and more addictive through Vine's intentional use of repetition. This is an incredibly sonorous piece that explodes spontaneously like fireworks.

That's not one word, mate. That's 53 words.

@RegDwigнt Cool.

@marcellothearcane I must admit I could barely hear any difference between the violins.

I'm no musician.

Hey guys!

What is the meaning of "Scrub in"? A teammate has seen the phrase on Gray's Anatomy. What is the meaning? Sorry for my bad English. Thank you!

What is the sentence?