Guide/Tutorial Archives - Great Scores Sheet Music Blog

Why am I struggling to learn the bass clef as a pianist?

Have you been playing the piano for a while? Maybe a month, or maybe 12 months? Are you finding that the bass clef, and therefore anything to do with the left hand is a drag? Well, you are in good company, as pretty much anyone who learns to play the piano struggles with this. The main reason for this is that on the piano you have to read two clefs at the same time, and that makes it rather difficult. Most other instruments (apart from the organ, or harp, for example) have just one clef, and you just have to read one note at a time. On piano we have to read several notes on the one clef (treble clef), and then the same again on a completely different clef, which is kinda similar, but everything is out compared to the treble clef. Jeez, enough to give anyone the heebie geebies. So it’s just not easy, and that part we just can’t change.

The other thing you may notice with the piano is that you never seem to have enough eyes to be able to look at:

1) Your fingers

2) The treble clef

3) The bass clef

Ideally you’d be a chameleon with 3 eyes that could train each eye on each section separately, but that sadly can’t happen. So what’s the trick? Well there is no trick, but several strategies you can use to make it work:

1) Learn the damned bass clef well. There is no way around it, you have got to know it. Practice just the left hand for maybe 10 min at the start of every practice session. Also, and this has worked wonders of many of my students, go to:

www.musictheory.net

… and go to Exercises and there you can set yourself exercise to read bass clef notes. Where this service is really handy is that you can specify the range you want to test yourself at – and this is where you can learn quickly. Start off with a really small range, say C below middle C up to G, no more, and no sharps or flats. Do that for a few days and you’ll know those 5 notes really well. Then just add in one more extra note, so expand the range from C to A. Do that for a few days, and so on. Gradually increase the range, and within a few weeks you’ll find that you can suddenly read the bass clef so much better.

2) Look ahead when playing. This is so important when you play the piano, as there is so much going on, you need to look ahead a bit to know what is coming, otherwise you can find yourself surprised by the number of notes in the next bar.

3) There is no rule of whether you should look at the music, or just your fingers. Anyone who tells you should look at the music all the time, or conversely look at your fingers all the time, is talking rubbish. Look at what you feel you need to look at at that point in time – your brain will tell you which needs most attention, and if you need to move your hands, your brain will tell you to look at them, so do that!

4) Part-memorise the left hand. There is usually less going on in the left hand, so it’s a good idea to part-memorise it, so what you pick up with your peripheral vision, or the odd glance onto the bass clef will suffice to be able to play the notes.

5) It’s ok to memorise everything. Yep, if you don’t need the music anymore, then don’t use it. Actors don’t go on stage with a script, do they?

6) Get someone to teach you the rudiments of functional harmony – that way you will actually understand what the music is doing, so rather than reading loads of dots, that actually have no meaning, you will understand why this chord is there, and what chord it is, and why it is followed by this other chord, and that the melody in the right hand is mostly just the chord tones you are playing in the left hand etc etc.

Follow some of the above, and piano playing might become a less stressful undertaking. After all, we want you to love playing the piano.

Which is the best instrument to learn first: Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar or Bass Guitar?

I Am often asked which instrument is easiest to learn. There isn’t really a straight answer for that, as it always depends how far you want to take your playing. Bass guitar is fairly easy to get going on, but some people cannot develop enough strength in their hands to press down the rather fat strings. On top of that if, you want to play like jazz legend Jaco Pastorius, then playing bass guitar is very difficult. By contract playing the double bass is very hard right from the start, as there are no frets (so you have no gauge of where to place your fingers, and for a long time you will play out of tune), and the strings are even longer and harder to press down.

Amongst the woodwind family, the alto and tenor saxophones are the easiest. Though soprano and sopranino saxophones are quite tricky.

A common question is which out of acoustic guitar, electric guitar or bass guitar students should choose. Well the choice between bass guitar or guitar is basically down to what you want to play. If you feel like laying down low grooves, playing very repetitive lines and being the foundation of the piece, then bass guitar is for you. Always try one out first, to see if your hands are big and strong enough to fret the notes. Your fingers will hurt for quite a few months when you first start practicing, but this does ease after a while as you build up pads/callouses under the skin of your fingers.

One of the fun things about playing bass guitar is that you can play along with your favourite pop/rock recordings quite quickly, and it can be rather good fun. As a random example, the bass parts for any U2 songs are really easy to learn. One thing you have to consider if you buy a bass is that you will also need an amplifier if you want any kind of volume. It is perfectly possible to practice on your own however without plugging into an amp.

If however, you would rather play guitar riffs, or strum chords andsing along, then bass guitar is not for you.
So it is then a question of whether to get an electric guitar, a steel string acoustic or nylon string acoustic. If your thing is rock or metal, then electric is the obvious choice, if you are more indie, then either, but for folk and ballads you’d want an acoustic. With an acoustic you are also free and easy, as you don’t need an amp to carry around. You can learn several easy open chord shapes on the guitar quite quickly and then strum along to quite a number of tunes. To learn all major and minor chords on the guitars is, however, not so easy as some chord shapes are quite painful to execute. Having said that, even some of the best know pop/rock guitarists don’t know all chord shapes (jazz, flamenco and classical players would, however), and that hasn’t stopped them from making great music. BB King, the legenrday Blues guitarist, famously asked the band members of U2 if anyone can play chords, as “I’m no good with chords”.

You can of course use and electric guitar, plug it into and amp, add no distortion (so have a clean sound) and strum chords and sing along – but it does not have the same sound as an acoustic.

So if you go for an acoustic guitar it’s a question of whether you want a nylon string or a steel string. Steel string guitars have that country sound to them, and can also (if they have an output) be plugged into an amp. Nylon strings have a softer, more flamenco/classcial guitar like sound. Out of the two nylon string guitars are easier to play, as the strings are less abrasive, and chord shapes easier to hold.

If however, you want to play rock guitar or metal riffs, then you will need to get an electric. Out of the 3 guitar types, electric is by far the most forgiving guitar to play, as the strings can be thinner, and there is less problem with not fretting notes 100% correctly and therefore getting irritating buzzing. So if you want the easiest guitar to ply, choose an electric, which in theory also gives you the most options.

Once you have decided on your guitar type, there is then the small issue of which model to buy. Let the fun begin!

Piano Buying Guide

Buying your first piano or keyboard can be a daunting task. You want to buy a decent instrument, but not pay to much. You also probably don’t know if you (or your child) are really going to like playing, so investing in an expensive instrument could be potentially costly. So here are a few tips to hopefully make the process easier.

1.) You could start on a keyboard first. There are pretty decent keyboards to be had for the £ 200-300 mark. Now these won’t have weighted keys, but they are all touch-sensitive these days, so it gives you a certain feel of realism. Weighted keys are electronic keyboard keys that include a mechanism inside the keyboard that makes it feel more like a real piano. When you hit a key on an upright piano, wood, metal felt and springs all start moving, and that gives it a certain touch, which you don’t get from a keyboard that has no weighted keys.

2.) Yamaha instruments are a safe bet. And that is true for any instrument. Yamaha pianos are ubiquitous. After the 2nd World War, as more and more French, Germand and English piano makers closed down, or had been destroyed during the war, Yamaha started cornering the market in student instruments in a big way. This means that 2nd hand they are also a good bet. The downside with Yamaha pianos is that on the whole they are very bright (not something I personally like), though there are some examples out there that aren’t. Their grand pianos don’t suffer from this exaggerated brightness.

3.) Calvinovas (By Yamana) are also a safe bet. As with upright panos, the digital keyboard market is dominated by Yamaha, and they are genuinely good instruments. On the whole they have weighted keys.

4.) If you have bit more money to spend, buy a Roland keyboard. If Yamaha are the VW’s of digital pianos (keyboards), then Roland are the BMW’s. They are just a few notches up in quality. But you obviously pay more as well.

5.) As with cars, be careful if buying 2nd hand (piano). It is hard to know what to look for when buying 2nd hand, and I’ve seen some reconditioned pianos sold at dealer’s shops that I wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole. On the whole large dealers can be trusted, but the mark-up can be huge. With pianos if there is a crack in the sound-board, you can still play it , but repairs are costly, as the whole piano has to be taken apart. The analogy in car terms I guess would be a head gasket going. The thing is it is hard for a layman to spot a piano for a cracked sound-baord. Best thing is the find a piano teacher in your area, ask him for advice/pay him to come along to look at the instrument you are interested in.

6.) Keyboards are easier to buy 2nd hand. As it is easier to work out if something doesn’t work!

7.) Having said all that it makes a lot more sense to buy a piano 2nd hand. As new ones are way more expensive.

8.) Rent to buy schemes can be very useful. Many music-shops offer so called rent to buy schemes. With these you rent the instrument for a set period, say 6 months, and if you decide you don’t want to continue, you hand it back to the shop. If however, you decide you like the instrument, the previous 6 months rental are taken as the first payment. This scheme works well for both customers and retailers.

9.) A good piano will hold its value. So even if you decide not to keep it, you will lose little if you sell (assuming you bought 2nd hand)

10.) At the very least you have to spend £2,000 for a half-decent 2nd hand piano. Ouch.

How often should I have my piano tuned?

Hello

I often get asked by my piano students how often they should have their piano tuned.

There is a very easy answer to that: twice a year, ideally when the seasons change (from warm to cold and vice versa). The reason being that when winter comes, the central heating comes on. This means that your house will usually have a much drier air to it, which will affect the piano. At the end of winter, once the heating comes off, the windows are opened, the central heating is switched off, sunlight might hit the piano and slightly moister air might surround the piano – and the wood will absorb this moisture.

Pianos are mostly made of wood, metal and felt, and the wood in particular will absorb and release moisture with changes in humidity and temperature. This will affect the tuning of the piano, and these changes mostly occur as the seasons change. So as a rule of thumb, October/November and then again around May are usually good times to call your tuner. He will normally offer to call you every 6 months to arrange an appointment anyway.

If you don’t have your piano tuned at these intervals the tuning of the piano will start dropping. This can create real problems if it is left too long, as the tuner can then not immediately tune it up to what is called concert pitch, as the added extra tension would make the piano frame crack. Unlike a guitar or violin or double bass, there is a huge amount of pressure on piano strings, something like 20 tons on the whole (iron) frame. This means that tuning up all strings would increase the overall pressure on the frame by too much, and the frame would break. Violins, guitars, bass guitars, etc are not made of metal, so cannot have such high string tension, and you can easily detune a guitar and tune it back up again without any worries, but this cannot be done with a piano.

I have also seen it happen that a piano has been left untuned for too many years, and the tuner simply cannot get it back up to concert pitch, as it has been left too long.

Unlike with the aforementioned violins or guitars, you cannot tune a piano yourself. You need specialist wrenches and other equipment (and piano strings aren’t freely available in shops), but more importantly it is quite a skilled and difficult job to tune a piano, and this takes several years of training.

If you play your piano a lot, and hit the keys hard, you may need to have the piano tuned more often, and if you are recording it, you will need to have the piano tuned just before the recording. In recording studios and concert halls pianos are tuned before every performance/recording, and I have seen it happen that during a jazz festival the tuner came on stage between acts to tweak the piano a little. Not a lot of fun to listen to.

Learning A New Instrument

I often get asked which instruments are easiest and hardest to learn. It’s a tricky question and the best way to answer this is: every instrument has a different learning curve. Now what do I mean by “learning curve”. Well some instruments are easy to get started on, but then get tricky when you try playing harder pieces. On others it is hard just to make a sound on, so that instrument is difficult from the start and has a steep learning curve that then gets shallower. There are several aspects to learning an instruments and whether you are better at one or another might decide which one is more suitable for you. These elements might be broken down int to these categories:

Note creation

Reading

Coordination

Physical Strength

Let’s take two very different instruments: the piano and trumpet and compare these. On the piano the note creation is very easy – if you dropped your cat on the keys, the piano would make a sound – if you drop your cat on a trumpet the trumpet would,however not make any sound, but there would be a howl of protest from your cat. Making a note on a trumpet is very hard. You need to press your lips together to form the smallest gap and force out a narrow and strong current of wind. I never managed to produce a note on the trumpet, but strangely played trombone for several months, where I did not struggle as much. This has to do with the fat that the lip tension on trombone (certainly in the lower registers) is much looser than with a trumpet.

Students first struggle terribly with making a note on the trumpet, and increasing the range to the upper register is a very slow and hard process. So you need to build up a lot of strength in your lips, as well as your buttocks and diaphragm, to be able to build up enough body tension to create a sound. The piano certainly does require you to build up strength in your hands and arms, but nothing like the trumpet. So looking at these aspects alone, you might think the piano is easier. But not so fast.

When it comes to co-ordination the trumpet is relatively easy – lip strength and the three valves have to be combined – so no huge feat in co-ordination. On piano however you have to learn to move fingers independently, something that at first feels very unnatural, and additional you will have to learn to independently coordinate three limbs (two ams and your right foot for pedalling).

When it comes to note reading the piano gets very tricky. On the trumpet you are only concerned with one note at a time, as well as only having to read one clef (treble clef). On the piano you have to read two clefs (treble and bass) and read a multitude of notes all at the same time – piano sheet music for that very reason tends to look quite scary, especially to beginners, who struggle to read all the information quickly enough.
I have learnt a number of instruments, some to a higher standard, some to a lesser, and every instrument has its own areas of difficulty. It is often stated that bass guitar is an easier instrument to learn, and generally I have to concur, though it depends on how far you want to take your bass playing. If you want to be able to play walking bass lines, slap bass, fretless and play like Jaco Pastorious (one of the best bass players ever), then the bass is a very difficult instrument. If, however, you want to play along to U2 songs, you should be up and running pretty quickly. Yes, you need to build up “pads” or scar tissue under your fingers and you need to build up strength in your hand to be able to press down the strings properly, but it is not anything like as hard as playing a double bass, where the distances are much bigger, there are no frets to tell you where to put your fingers, and the strings are much fatter and hard to play (if you are plucking them jazz style).

Of all the wind instruments the alto and tenor sax are certainly two of the easier options (the smaller cousin in the saxophone family, the soprano, however is pretty tricky to play). Note production on the sax is fairly easy, and the instrument is generally pretty in tune. The same cannot be said about the clarinet – though note production is not that hard, the instrument goes very flat at the top of the range, and mastering this is very tricky.

What about the guitar? Well, as I have noticed, you need different sorts of pads under your fingers compared to the bass guitar as the higher strings are very thin and end to cut into your skin more. Bass guitar strings are more abrasive by contrast. You need to build up a lot of strength in your hand and wrist to be able to play some of the trickier chords on guitar. The iinteresting thing though is that there are generally 3 types of guitars out there: electric, nylon acoustic and steel string acoustic. Out of these the electric is by far the easiest, so if you choose to start playing the guitar, I would start with an electric. Steel string is by far the hardest as it requires the most strength in your wrist/fingers to play the notes correctly.

So what about the drum kit? Note production is easy and there are few notes to read (there is no entirely universal system for drum notation though a few are used). All of that is true, but you have to co-ordinate 4 limbs independently, and that is very tough indeed.

Sometimes when people choose to start playing an instrument they simply choose the wrong instrument for them. They give up, thinking they are not musical, but they simply may have just chosen the wrong instrument for them.

Famous Themes From Ads/TV

There are many musical themes that we are familiar with these days outside of their original context, as they have been used in tv commercials or films, in a striking and memorable way. For example, a famous melody from a classical piece of music is known to most people in Great Britain as The Hovis Theme. Of course Mr Hovis didn’t write it, and in fact it was written well before the actual composer would have had the chance to enjoy a slice of the aforementioned bread whilst composing his piece. And as the composer was Czech, and wrote the piece in America, the connection to England is getting really tenuous. Never mind the fact that no-one else in the world would know what you were on about if you referred to “The Hovis Theme” to, say, a Canadian, or even tried to engage a Parisian in conversation by referring to “le thème de hovis”.

Other themes however have a more global recognition, for example the piece that is used at the start of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. In fact that piece is the opening section of the rather cumbersomely titled: “Also Sprach Zarathustra”, German for “And so spoke Zarathustra”, Zarathustra being the Persian prophet and founder of Zoroastrianism. No wonder people remember it as “the piece from 2001”. It was written by Richard Strauss, not to be confused with Johann Strauss II, who wrote “The Blue Danube”, which is also featured in “2001” but much later in the film, in the bit where the spacecraft docks with the space station dock, and the twoseem to be performing some beautiful celestial waltz with each other (The Blue Danube is, rather fittingly, a waltz).

The problem of course is, if you want to buy these tracks or play the sheet music for them, it’s a bit tricky to find them if you only know them by their popular reference. So here is a little roundup of some of the most famous ones and what they are actually called and whom they are written by:

The Stella Artois Theme – was actually written for the movie Jean De Florette by Jean-Claude Petit.

The piece of music they blast ouf of the helicopters in Apocalypse Now – is actually “The Ride Of The Valkyries” from Richard Wagner’s famous Ring Cycle.

The British Airways Theme is actually a piece entitled The Flower Duet from the opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes.

The aforementioned piece that accompanies a spaceship docking with a sapcesation in the film 2001 is The Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss II.

The Opening theme From 2001 is actually the opening theme from Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss (no relation to Johann).

The Theme at the end of Ocean’s 11 is actually Clair de Lune by Claude Debussy.

And finally The Hovis Theme is acually the Largo movement from The New World Symphony (Symphony No. 9 in E minor) by Antonín Dvořák.

We hope you enjoyed that!

Welcome To Our New Website

Hi everyone

Your new website look went live towards the end of 2011, and we just wanted to give you a little guide as to the new features we have introduced.

We have also added some new social media buttons.

The Google +1 button tells google that you like our site, so if you have a google account, and are logged in, please click on this – we’d really appreciate it. :-).

The facebook button allows you to like our site if you have a facebook account. We’d be thrilled if you clicked on this (as it helps us with our overall ranking).

If you want to share our homepage with your friends on facebook, then you can do that with this button:

If you want to follow our twitter feed then click on this button on our homepage:

The youtube button takes you to our youtube page.

We have also introduced some great new features on the song pages. If you really like a particular song you can now share this across facebook, twitter, via email or other social media with this button:

Lastly you can now leave your customer feedback on any songs and arrangements by clicking on the comments tab (no spam, please!). We would love to hear your comments on all our pieces, so feel free to comment as often as you want.

Hope you enjoy the new site, and feel free to send us your feedback.

Lincoln Jaeger

Axis Of Awesome – 4 Chord Song

I thought I’d share this great little video by the musical comedy band Axis OF Awesome. In a very funny way they explain how most pop tunes really share the same chord sequence.

Generally people always assume that rock/pop composers sit hunched over their manuscript paper trying to find great and original chord sequences – this could not be further from the truth. There basically are only a limited number of chord sequences out there, which is why you cannot copyright them – so you are perfectly entitled to take the chord sequence from Let It Be, and write your own melody over it. The net result is that many, many, many songs share the exact same chord sequence.

In the video below they are singing in the key of E major, and the chord sequence is E, B, C sharp minor, A.

So if you look at the sequence neutral of the key, the sequence is I V VI IV – so the chords on the 1st [I], 5th [V], 6th [VI] and 4th [IV] degree/not of any major scale)

Therefore in the key of C major this would be the chords of C, G, A minor, F.
In the key of F major it would be the chords: F, C, D minor, Bb
etc…

The songs they sing are:

Don’t stop Believin’ – Journey
You’re Beautiful – James Blunt
Forever Young – Alphaville
I’m Yours – Jason Mraz
Happy Ending – Mika
Amazing – Alex Lloyd
Wherever You Will Go – The Calling
Can You Feel The Love Tonight – Elton John
She Will Be Loved – Maroon 5
Pictures Of You – The Last Goodnight
With Or Without You – U2
Fall At Your Feet – Crowded House
Not Pretty Enough – Kasey Chambers
Let It Be – The Beatles
Under The Bridge – Red Hot Chilli Peppers
The Horses – Daryl Braithtwaite
No Woman No Cry – Bob Marley
Sex And Candy – Marcy Playground
Down Under – Men At Work
Waltzing Matilda – Banjo Patterson
Take On Me – A Ha
When I Come Around – Green Day
Save Tonight – Eagle Eye Cherry
Africa – Toto
If I Were A Boy – Beyonce
Self Esteem – The Offspring
You’re Gonna Go Far Kid – The Offspring
U & Ur Hand – Pink
Poker Face – Lady Gaga
Barbie Girl – Aqua
You Found Me – The Fray
Don’t Trust Me – 30h!3
Kids – MGMT
Canvas Bags – Tim Minchin
Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
Superman – Five For Fighting
Birdplane – Axis OF Awesome
Scar – Missy Higgins

Easy – so all you have to do now is write a catchy melody, some lyrics and you’ll be rich ;-)!

Thanks to my Godson, Jean-Pierre, for introducing me to this video.

Lincoln Jaeger

The Selmer Cigar Cutter – A Classic Sax (Buying An Alto Saxophone)

Hi Everyone

I recently had the good fortune to buy a new alto sax. Well I say buy, I was actually trading/exchanging my beloved Yanagisawa s880 soprano sax for an alto. As my soprano was in good nick (though 15 years old) the plan was to trade it (hopefully) for something equally good 2nd hand, or pay a bit extra for a brand new sax.

Why was I getting rid of my soprano though? Well, I never really had the time to play it properly, and the soprano sax, let me tell you, is not the sort of instrument you can just occasionally have a blow on: it needs serious dedication. The intonation is a pain to get right, and it is very difficult not to make a sound like a squeezed duck. Even one of my favourite saxophonists, Branford Marsalis, in my opinion has certain duck-like qualities in his soprano sound, so what chance do I have to make the instrument sound good? Unless you play it all the time, it can seriously hurt your jaw, as the pressure you have to apply to get to the high notes is quite extreme.

So anyway, should I get a new sax or a second hand one, and how much would I get for my soprano? Well, saxophones are a bit like 2nd hand cars, there is little point in buying a new one, as a well maintained second hand sax gives you much, much better value for money, and horns last a very, very long time: dents, scratches, pads: all can be fixed and repaired (unless you decided to drive over your sax with a 2nd hand car, then it will only be good for hanging on the wall ;-).

But where to start? I stumbled across a very quirky sax repair shop just down the road from me in Hove (that’s on the English South Coast). The guy who runs it, Rupert Noble, is quite a character: deeply passiontae and highly knowledgeable about horns (here is Rupert with some off his many vintage saxes).

You won’t find a single new horn in his shop, but many vintage ones and many others that are currently being repaired. Whilst I was in his workshop a very happy succesion of musicians came and went to have a chat, a cup of tea, try out some horns, and have broken ones repaired or serviced. Someone should write a book about this place. To say it has character is an understatmenet. Anyway, moving on, I got to try out (i.e. submit poor Rupert to my very rusty sax playing) some vintage, basic Yamaha altos, an old Toneking (Keilwerth), SML (Strasser-Marigaux), vintage Yanagisawa (though they were sold under a different name in the US) and a Selmer Cigar Cutter (a.k.a. Pea Shooter, Super). The Yamahas were very easy to blow, but lacked a little character, but are highly recommended for beginners as the tone production was simple and easy. The three others were all different, each with their own personality. I was going to have to come back for a second try to decided which one I might want to purchase.

A day later I headed up to London to check out some brand new horns, just for comparison, and some nearly new ones. A Selmer Mark VII (Circia 1981), new Yanagisawa A901 and various new Yamaha Models.

The difference between the nearly new/new and vintage saxes was indescribable. The vintage saxes at Rupert’s shop had warmth, character and sheer class, whereas the new ones felt like playing a piece of plastic. Now the sax isn’t my first instrument but even I could tell these differences immediately. The contrast between the Selmer Mark VII (circa 1981) and The Selmer Cigar Cutter (circa 1930), was especially interesting to note. Here were two saxes form the same maker, one sounded like a playground toy (Mark VII), the other like a work of art (Cigar Cutter). Yet the Mark VII was substantially more expensive. The only very slight downside was that the Cigar Cutter had its lacquer coming off – in fact it looked as though it had been re-lacquered at some point in its life, and this was now coming off. But to anyone contemplating buying a vintage sax: this does not matter one bit. In fact some argue that saxes sound better with the lacquer removed. If need be you can have the whole sax stripped of its lacquer or even have it subsequently re-lacquered: but if the sound is great, don’t mess with it.

Amongst sax players it is a well known fact that Selmer seem to have stopped making good saxes some time in the 70s. The theories as to why this may be abound (just check out various internet forums on this), but logic tells me that more and more machines were used to finish the products, rather than using expensive craftsmen, corners and quality of materials were cut in production, etc, and suddenly you have a less superior horn.

So in the end it was the Selmer Cigar Cutter I went for. It seems to have layers and layers of sound in it, and suited my more soft sound on the sax very well. After all, my hero Paul Desmond played a Selmer Alto, though a Super Balanced Action (circa 1951), so a model 20 years younger. Here is my new pride and joy:

The reason why that particular version of Selmers altos were nick-named Cigar Cutters or Pea Shooter is due to the design of the octave mechanism (see picture). Their official seris name is “Super”. The Super series ran from 1931 to 1935 and was followed by the Balanced Action Series.

So anyone contemplating buying a vintage sax: go for it, as long as you can try it out first (never buy any instrument without trying it out first) and buy it from a reputable shop.

Oh and by the way, playing an alto or tenor is a million times easier than paying the soprano.

Hope that was useful :-).

Lincoln Jaeger

Scorch no longer supported by Safari

As reported on the 23rd of July on the sibelius blog, Apple have unfortunately decided to no longer support Scorch within its Safari browser.

Mac users who are using either OS 10.6 or the brand new OS 10.7 and have updated to the latest version of Safari (5.1) will have to use the free Firefox browser instead. You can download Firefox for free here.

Users will not have to install Scorch again after uploading and installing Firefox.

Please note that Firefox automatically opens in 64 bit Mode – Scorch is still a 32 bit application, however. Once you look at a Scorch score, Firefox recognises that it needs to switch and informs you with a yellow bar that is needs to change to 32 bit mode. Please click on the button “Restart in 32 bit mode” and Firefox will then automatically take you back to the same pages as before, and you can then view Scorch files and print them.

Mac users on OS 10.4 and 10.5 are not affected, as they are on an older version of Safari, which supports Scorch. OS 10.4 and 10.5 are not compatible with the latest version of Safari, so users cannot update to Safari 5.1.

Lincoln Jaeger