365/365 Talented Boy by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA We are finishing off 2017 by visiting some good friends near Banbury. They have four amazing children – from 2 to 16 years old – and are some of the warming, most loving folks you could meet. Their second child
357/365 Top 100 by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA My favourite music magazine, Metal Hammer, have been doing a ‘Top 100 Albums of the Year’ thing for a while now. These things are always contentious as they’re drawn from the mixed preferences of the mag’s writers, but there’s always
“117/365 No snowman” by rutty is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA When did Frozen come out again? It seems eons ago, and yet the songs persist. They’re some of the catchiest songs ever produced for film and they refuse to go away, even when new films with catchy songs follow after.
I generally love how music is transcribed onto the page. The musical stave is a beautiful thing, with its notes, accents and Italian terms. Sometimes us musicians like to augment the page with personal tags, something to remind us that a certain passage requires a particularly delicate touch or extra
26th January 2015 The test piece for the 2015 Regional Championships Second Section has this little bit of horror about halfway through. The composer, Kevin Norbury, no doubt had a bit of a chuckle when he wrote this. Brass banders often struggle more with sharp keys. I know I much
Ruby is utterly obsessed with ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen. To be honest, so am I (just a little bit). I think it’s one of the finest, catchiest songs to come out in many a year. This amazing video has been doing the rounds for a while, but it’s worth
Dave is turning, originally uploaded by rutty. 59/365 This is my rehearsal copy of our Area piece: Berlioz’s La Carnaval Romain. I’ve been moved onto second cornet for this and rather enjoying the experience, although I have to sometimes think what the heck those notes under the stave are. Can
Music was my first love, originally uploaded by rutty. 3/365 …and it will be my last. One of those difficult-to-answer philosophical questions is something along the lines of “would you prefer to go blind or deaf?” If I just had to choose (neither option sounds great fun to me) I
Unpleasant Medicine I think it’s significant that there’s no consensus on the larger-scale significance of environmental threats; indeed, our responses are severely polarized, as if these are debatable matters of opinion rather than ones with quantifiable facts attached. Eyjafjallajoekull can potentially continue to erupt for years, massively disrupting long haul
France’s anti-piracy goon squad pirates the font in its logo Boing Boing Hapodi, the French agency that’s in charge of the country’s new anti-piracy scheme (if someone you live with is accused of three acts of infringement, your whole household is taken offline and added to a list of address
So, Christmas is nearly here. The goose is getting fat, or at least it’s getting ready for pickup from the local farm shop. There’s no escaping it: I get to play a lot of Christmas Carols. It’s not that I dislike Christmas or anything but after 30-odd years of playing
Cleaners ‘worth more to society’ than bankers – study Hospital cleaners are worth more to society than bankers, a study suggests. The research, carried out by think tank the New Economics Foundation, says hospital cleaners create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid. It claims bankers are a
