Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

Mostly for my own:

Today: first, rehearsal with Verity of those Dowland songs. A couple of samples of what we've been doing here and here.

Later, meet Krisztina for lunch at Regent's Park. Looks like it's going to be reasonably good weather.

In the afternoon, some guitar practice, hopefully, as well as a couple of errands.

Later still, a couple of lessons here and, later-later still, maybe the LGS meet at Zeitgeist -just possibly.

Good night at Dusk & Dawn. Somebody already mentioned the similarity with the old Tanze Macabre venue in Soho -a tiny basement.

Before that, a good rehearsal with Verity running over some John Dowland lute songs (on guitar, of course).

Today, lessons, lessons and birthday drinks at a bar relatively near.

Still enjoying playing with Notion, the music score writer app on the iPad, although the interface is rather Windows-like and it has the usual annoying buy-in-app 'features': "You want classical guitar? well, that's an extra couple of quid. You want 'solo' violin, or a percussion section? Well, that's another..."

So far, only exercises for my pupils, a rather predictable guitar piece and a string orchestra doodle have come out of all that playing with it, but who knows and it's fun (and I even learn and re-learn things along the way). Interesting times, though, when you can be writing a sonata (or a song) in the Tube -and listen to the results straight away. I imagine my music teachers would wince at that. You weren't allowed a piano in the room in composition exams, you had to be able to hear it all in your head. Which makes sense, but it still is so much better to actually hear it.

I expect only one person in my flist will get the quote in the subject title... :P

Playing with a Korg iMS-20, an iPad reproduction of old 80's synthesiser... fascinating toy, but every bit as mindbogglingly  complex as I remembered that kind of beast  to be. The sequencer that comes with it is a vast Russian doll puzzle that looks at first like just a row of buttons and when you look a little deeper.. well, that's how those things used to be. Would have to sit down for many hours for a long time, tweaking stuff, to get music out of it -and I probably won't have the time or the energy. Fantastic toy, though.  Oh, toyses that make noises, we likes.

After finishing aliasrob 's lesson, the last one of the evening, went to the local Japanese restaurant (recommended) for a bibimbad... struck conversation with a girl, part of a family having dinner, who had a Nikon D5000 camera -they turned out to be a half-Itailan, half -English family who live in Sabine, north of Rome and sing in a choir specialising in folk music from Italy and Eastern Europe and we had a long conversation about music making , Italy, Venezuela and photography. As they left we found ourselves chatting with a couple at another table who asked about the music conversation they'd overheard. They themselves turned out to be musicians, singer-songwriters and he is or has been a classical guitarist.

I like this neighbourhood...