Is your child musical? Is mine?

Gosh, it's all happening today. I got my flute out a while ago meaning to see if I could still produce any sound at all, and while we were waiting for cakes to bake (a subconscious impulse as I'd completely forgotten that I need them for I Fagiolini tomorrow!) Anyway, there's a tuning fork in the case and Sasha was playing with it, so I played an A and asked if Sash could sing it. Sash didn't want to. (I wonder if the pitch was too high? When we were singing this morning, I was asking for higher notes but Sash seemed only able to use chest voice.)

Anyway, then I played an A on the flute, asked Sasha which note was higher and which lower, thinking as I did that I've never had a very acute ear and I couldn't actually tell myself. But small confident person said without hesitation "That one", pointing to either the flute or the fork, I can't remember which - anyway we tried a few more times and Sash did the same each time, giving the answer as though it was *really* easy. And you'll have spotted, of course, that I had no way of I telling whether the answers were right or wrong as I didn't know! When I went from zero to grade eight flute in eighteen months in 1979 to 1981, tuning it was the only bit I was rubbish at. You can imagine what my violin playing sounded like.

Anyway, it's a funny little miniature tuning fork I bought in Switzerland, and Sash was having trouble getting it to sound, so I went and got the full-size one. That was bought in the same shop, and I'd always wondered whether the titchy one might be a bit gimmicky and not actually in tune, so I sounded them both at once and asked Sash which was higher and which was lower. And lo... Sash said something about silly mummies - "They're both the same sound."

Then pointing at the smaller one - "I can't hear that one." I think that meant the two notes were so blended you couldn't tell the difference. So maybe that interference thingy you're meant to be able to hear when two notes are different (and that's the thing I've never been able to hear, so no wonder I can sing so flat without noticing) wasn't there and so there was no way of distinguishing the two sounds.

I'd love to hear what other musicians think. Have you tried this on your kids? Have you found any other fun things to try?

Oh, and the other big question: now that we know (unless that's changed?) that it's caused by early proximity to a keyboard instrument and isn't inherent, are you going to make an effort to give your child, or an effort to not give your child, perfect pitch?

Rugged

Gosh, I have been quiet. I had meant to boast about carrying Sasha back from Whittlesford station the other night, but needed to gather statistics - we don't have scales in the house. We finally visited a well-equipped friend and I discovered that my very solid child weighs 16kg. (You have to remember that children are always much heavier when they're asleep, but then the differential increases with their age.) According to Google the distance is 1.7 miles. I had a sling, and tried to arrange Sash to be vaguely symmetrical, as it's asymmetry that does your back in. It was partly that I didn't want to pay for a taxi, partly that it was after 10pm when all the Sawston taxi drivers go to bed anyway, and partly sheer bloody-mindedness to know whether I could do it. It wasn't too bad at all, in fact, and of course I felt gloriously rugged too. Self-reliance is very satisfactory. But is it universally so, I wonder, or do some people just not find it to be so? Is there also pleasure in being a parasite - well, that's a little harsh: does it feel good to be a wuss?

Last week I was at the Church Hall, about four minutes' walk away, and asked a woman with a baby of about six months old if she'd like to come back to my house for a cup of tea. She wasn't sure, because she'd parked her car somewhere else and didn't have her pram with her. I stood there and just nodded because it took me about five minutes to work out what she was saying - she couldn't carry a tiny baby a few yards. But in any case, words would have failed me.

It's that time of year again...

... and my mum has given me a flamethrower for my birthday.

It's a little more tame than I was envisaging. I'd thought I'd be striding through the vegetable patch in my combats torching our eight-foot nettles, but, sadly, it's more like making a crème brulée. There are lots of fun-busting instructions on the packaging about how you don't need to incinerate the weeds, just warm them up enough to damage the cell walls. Bah. Having followed all this to the letter, though, I notice that the clumps of grass on our drive seem largely unaffected by the stipulated light toasting. I figure that gives me licence to be more vicious next time.

Sumer was icumen in

This is odd: I though this blog couldn't show pictures. Now I spot a huge button to add a picture. Duh and double-duh. Anyway, here's a reminder of the glorious summer we had back in spring -- and a touching cross-species relationship too...

Requiem for a concert

Phew. It's taken me three days to recover enough from our local music festival to write about it. We ended the festival with a performance of the Brahms Requiem in a transcription he did himself for piano duet -- we used two pianos, as we hadn't been sure which it was meant to be and the hire charges turned out to be almost the same. It should have been one -- or was at the first performance in 1871 (done because the venue wasn't big enough for an orchestra) -- but the editor of the score had made suggestions for extra octaves if you had the luxury of two.

I left choosing an outfit till an hour before the start time so as to have something to panic about other than my solo. I'm back to how overweight I was before I got pregnant, which is as much as I've ever been. As I buy all my clothes second hand and aren't too bothered about a snug fit, I generally have a range of sizes, and so it proved. A quite liked the look of the one I had to pour myself into, but my mother pointed out that the zip was straining and sanity prevailed. Sequins have amazingly little give, you know. I didn't want anything hampering my lung capacity -- that opening phrase demands every ounce of oxygen if you're not to snatch a breath in the middle (it's a sublime tune, 'Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit'). Anyway, it was all worth it, because I Did It In One. I was really quite pleased, as I didn't even always manage it in rehearsal. What with thinking about breathing, mood, a wide domey shape in my mouth (Berty speak), relaxing my tongue and not sticking my chin out, I fear that once again singing it in tune may have been pushed out by lack of memory capacity, but the people I asked who I expected to be candid said it hadn't been flat. In a week or so, when the buzz has worn off, we'll listen to the recording. I'm still not sure I woulnd't rather have the warm cosy glow of a memory happily distorted by the adrenalin rush, though.

An excellent group of singers, too: it's so lovely to listen to the exposed entries and not cringe. One needs all those choral society memories of fuzzy basses, histrionic tenors, wispy altos and strangled sopranos in order to appreciate really good singers. We did it with thirteen -- three to a part, plus an extra soprano to spare my blood pressure. They really were rather fabulous.

What can we do next year, though? Does anyone know of any good stuff that can legitimately be sung with piano or two-piano accompaniment, or have we exhausted that category? (We've done the Rossini Petite Messe Solenelle (piano and harmonium) and Carmina Burana (two pianos and percussion).) I guess we'll have to start thinking about a small orchestra, whether modern or baroque. Oh lord, it's going to be hell to organise. Ah. And there is one other requirement: if I'm going to fix the thing, it would be nice if it had a soprano solo. Wouldn't it? (Sniff.)