Facebook inadvertantly casues the fabric of reality to shread itself and make an ungodly mess over several nearby galaxies

You may have noticed that for a while, Facebook has had a 'Like' option you can click if you, well, like something. The little thumbs-up thing.

Now, however, there has appeared another button next to it: 'Dislike'. (Actually, it's called 'I dislike this' but the sentiment is the same).

The thing is, in providing this seemingly innocuous option, the software developers may actually be endangering the very fabric of the universe. Let me elucidate.

Firstly, you used to be able to just like something. This was fine. But now you can both like and dislike something, and that's a massive paradox.  Because actually, you can't both like and dislike something, and now thanks to you the universe is going to implode and Lembit Opik will become Prime Minister, or something like that.

Having realised this, you might think that the best course of action would be to quickly return the like/dislike balance to a neutral state. So you quickly click (and thus split the infinitive for the second time in a paragraph) on 'Actually I like this' and 'Unlike'. All better, hmm?

Well no, it isn't. Because in order to get back to the starting position, you have to click both 'actually I like' and 'unlike' the thing in question, and that's the same as liking and disliking something simultaneously, and that's another paradox.  Now that you've done this, currently the only thing stopping Stow-on-the-Wold flying into the upper troposphere is the fact that up there the TARDIS is reversing the polarity of the neutron flow whilst Amy Pond is wearing something particularly flattering. This can happen. The neutron flow thing, I mean.

There are other possibilities. Supposing two different people posted the same thing, or somebody posted the same thing twice by mistake, and you liked one and disliked the other. That may be more than Superman and Doctor Who together could handle.  New York could be splurged all over distant galaxies by now.  Perhaps Amy Pond could get another gratuitous mention in this paragraph too. Who knows? Don't be the one who has to make everybody find out. Choose life. Choose only either clicking the Like button or the I dislike this button.

Facebook, you may just have caused the greatest danger to humankind since some scientists on the Franco-Swiss border started messing about with subatomic particles. At the very least, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the coming weeks, a small black hole develops in your offices and several unwitting employees mysteriously find themselves transported to the Norse Dark Ages.

My hovercraft is full of eels

I'm going to Hungary in approximately two weeks.  This I intend to be a fun, educational and valuable trip, a concert tour with my old university's student-run chamber orchestra to be precise, and one that may well be documented on-the-fly via this blog as long as Internet access is forthcoming. You may or may not know that I often turn into a prolific scribbler when on expeditions or adventures, and as around forty per cent of the entire operation will be spent travelling on a bus, I plan to spend at least some of this time writing an account of it, something which will probably end up half-way between a diary and a novelisation. Don't worry, it won't be too frank, and there may be funny bits too.

Following the 'remember to pack a Thermos flask and a change of socks' philosophy, I like to prepare thoroughly for any adventure, a strategy which usually pays dividends (we will brush aside the unfortunate incidents of that misread signpost in Kent, and accidentally driving up Harlesden High St with some dodgy characters about).  I have borrowed a Lonely Planet from the library, located our hotel and the transport links, and made an approximate plan for independent sightseeing. I'm slightly miffed that an extra concert on our 'free day' has now appeared on the schedule, scuppering my plans to go in completely the opposite direction (and, frankly, have much better views and much fewer German sunbathers) but it will enable my swanny-whistle to see some service in concert.

Now I should add that I've been to at least some of our planned destinations before, and as a result already posses a map (bus and tram route numbers slightly out of date; could be interesting) alongside the tour itinerary.  With so many details and interesting factoids already deliberated, cogitated and digested, really the most useful way I could prepare was by improving my Hungarian, starting from a baseline of next-to-nothing. And as they say on a popular Sunday-night messing-about-in-cars show - how hard can it be?

Now, arguably, I have understood a form of 'Hungarian' since I was 14, as until 1844 Latin was the country's official language (stop being a smart-arse, Simon - ed).  But with the dizzy heights of an Italian A-level amongst my past achievements, and armed with a Berlitz phrasebook, Central Library's copy of Complete Hungarian (+MP3 compatible double CD) and occasional reference to Wikipedia, I was naturally confident about mastering at least the rudiments of the vernacular.  I find that the logical path is to start with basic expressions (yes, no, please, thank you, beer, wine, taxi) before doing numbers (I can now count to egy milliard, oh yes) and then swearwords.  Lest this seem vulgar, I should clarify that these will be swearwords in English, declaimed after one has tried and failed to pronounce a word such as hangversenytarem*. 

Hungarian - Magyarul - is part of the exotic-sounding Finno-Ugric language family and has little in common with English other than the concept of manipulating lips, tongue and epiglottis to make noises happen.  The alphabet, in particular, seems to have been carefully contrived to trick unwary English speakers, for practically none of the vowels are pronounced as they appear to be written. 'A' is closer to 'o'; 'i' is more like 'ee'; whilst the eight combined variants of 'o' and 'u' (namely o, ó, ö, ő, u, ú, ü and ű) sound closer to the lower registers of a contrabassoon than to any Latin syllable.  'C' and 'dzs' are relatively straightforward: they simply do not make anything like the noises you expect. In a further blow for well-meaning English speakers, the differences between vowel sounds are in many cases subtle but vital.  Hú and hű mean completely different things despite the 'u' being just different lengths of the same sound. The words for 'I would like' and 'I love you' are only a single consonant different (Hungarian has a very logical system of word roots, so this is perhaps not as foolish as it may appear) making the simple action of purchasing a train ticket (the word for which just happens to have an irregular, archaic, pronunciation) into a very real danger zone for the visitor. Further on, there is the terrifying arrangement of 'vowel harmony', meaning that prepositions (which are always expressed through suffixes) have to be chosen from several possible options based on the proportion of 'open' or 'closed' vowels in the word.  At least all other nationalities will share these same difficulties too...

Speaking of Wikipedia, the erstwhile source of (mis)information has a nearly hilarious story of several Hungarian phrasebooks from the nineteenth century containing the phrase 'My postilion has been struck by lightning'.  Naturally, I have already committed to memory this most useful of phrases, never knowing when I might find myself in command of a stagecoach in rural Transdanubia during an electrical storm. On reflection, it may prove more useful in the real world to substitute in the Hungarian terms for 'Renault Megane' or 'English tourist coach'; 'heat shield' and 'come unstuck'.

Anyway, if at any time this post appears to have facilitated humour at the expense of the noble Magyar language, I am doubtless that it will be reciprocated in mirth at my own attempts to express myself once in the country.

*'Concert hall' - a word which I might, realistically, need to utter, and which certainly wasn't just picked at random because it looked impressively long. It's pronounced something approximating to 'hongversheneetorem'.

Categorisation

As you may have noticed, one of the many noble purposes of ITM has been to champion the existence of composers who have, we feel, been unjustly neglected, such as this one and this one.  It would be very easy to saturate this blog with the lives and music of hundreds, nay thousands, of obscure figures in the vain hope of igniting a little interest in their output, but this seems both an impractical and an inadvisable course of action.  How can one be sure that any musician is actually worth celebrating?

To this end, and also fulfilling an earlier promise, I have prudently devised several categories in order to aid with the Neglected Composers series. This are designed as a quick field guide to determining the reasons for the aforementioned neglect (a printable leaflet version with diagrams, life cycle, conservation status etc may become available should demand arise) and allow the observer to determine the worthiness of hitherto unheard-of composers through five easy labels:

#1. 'Loada Rubbish': Composer's music is genuinely worthless; either over-contrived, formulaic, uninteresting, juvenile or in some other way considered by our good selves to be, in a nutshell, a pile of crap. Examples: I lack the legal clout to provide a full list, which is a strong hint that most of the exponents are composers still alive and working.

#2 'Of its Time': Music is either too obscure in conception to be appealing without specialist knowledge, too reliant on dead cultural idioms to make ready sense to modern ears, or boring due to subsequent repeated pillaging of ideas. Examples: all kinds of medieval chaps such as Anonymous I, II, III and IV, Hildegard of Bingen etc; most pre-Tudor folk song; increasingly musique concrete.

#3. 'Wrong Side of the Fence': Composer worked under insular regime, was in exile, imprisoned, or from territory with few cultural links to the rest of the world. This can also apply to certain periods of output from otherwise well-known figures. Examples: Tubin, Popov, Pavel Haas.

#4. 'They Liked it Back Then, But...': Music is popular/fashionable, even to the point of celebrity, during composer's lifetime, but inevitable dip in interest following death has turned into a nosedive of obscurity. Examples: Rubinstein, Salieri, Stanford.

#5. 'Who?': Composer has made little or no attempt at posterity - music either written for personal enjoyment, deliberately unpublished, or lacking in any commercial nouse. Either that, or too new to have yet reached a mass audience.  Examples: Sorobji, Gesualdo, scores of contemporary composers lucky enough not to be in Catagory One.

Rest assured, dear reader(s) that in future posts we shall continue to select only figures worthy of mention on ITM. Alternatively, the occasional post along the lines of 'Just Exactly What's Wrong with Morten Lauridson' may not go amis either.

Bordering on the ridiculous

Background music is an essential element of film and television - indeed, it has been since its earliest days, when an underpaid pianist would be expected to elucidate the film with variously a) ascending diminished seventh chords; b) ominous chromatic rumblings in the bowels of the instrument; or c) a jaunty rag-time tune, as a) Harold Lloyd, aided and abetted by the Marx brothers, hung perilously from some lofty pinnacle ill-conceived for such a purpose; b) an implausible stop-motion prehistoric monster emerges from a styrofoam crevice and c) after a Deus ex machina frees them from the hanging clock scene, Lloyd, Marx et al saunter off to find a whisky joint.  The prevalence of this proto-Gesumkunstwerk combination has not been diminished by the passing of time nor technological improvement; indeed music as a method of making very clear what our reaction to a visual cue should be is as important as ever. 

Nowhere is this less prevalent than in giving audiences an instant heads-up as to where the action is taking place.  From the earliest days 'eezee-locate' clichés were speedily developed and further honed by successive travel programmes and documentaries until quite a sophisticated repertory of aural manipulation emerged - none of it necessarily accurate in any respect, you understand.  Anyway, in keeping with my penchant for lists, a geographically comprehensive survey of 'location-sounds' is as follows:

Most of Europe can be provided for by the squeezy-box family of instruments, coupled with ostentatious renditions of the more recognisable national anthems.  England is obviously morris-dancing music (accordion and shaky-bell things), or else Arne's Rule Britannia!  France, however, has no national music (La Marseillaise aside) other than a Parisian-cafe waltz for accordion.  In Germany the same instrument will require the accompaniment of a tuba played by a comically overweight Herr in leiderhosen, providing a ceaseless oom-pah-om-pah accompaniment.  Switzerland is basically indistinguishable from Germany - indeed additional cowbells, alphorns and comedy yodelling are interchangeable between the two.  Russia, Hungary and the rest of the former Warsaw Pact are lumped into a sprawling concertina and-slightly-out-of-tune-violin musical culture (one synthesizer I played was possessed of a gloriously tongue-in-cheek patch entitled 'vodkaccordian') with optional national colour from the plucky-twang-strummy family of stringed instruments (cymbalom, balalaika, Lada handbrake mechanism).  Italy alternates yet more free reed instruments with bel canto opera in roughly equal measure.

A few exceptions are Greece/Cyprus (bazooki music or other guitar-like instruments); Spain (guitars/castanets/melismatic wailing in the Lydian mode - unless it's for the Hogarthian binge-disco hell of Ibiza); Ireland (pipes, tin whistle and fiddle combo, which can also do for Scotland at a pinch); and Scandinavia/Holland/Belgium, which are represented variously by more accordions, folky-violin, or tinny drum-machine pop.

Nobody has any idea what Portuguese music sounds like, so it's either the same as Spain or the safe option of a slightly different squeezy-box. 

On to Asia, and the musical stereotypes show no sign of letting up.  The Middle East (Palestine/Iran/Iraq/Saudi Arabia/Egypt) introduces a stalwart of 'I don't really know what to do' soundtracking, namely the (catchily titled) 'female wailing over ominous-sounding bass pedal' music.  This sees use in all kinds of scene-setting devices in documentaries, from the splendors of ancient Babylon to terrorists holding aloft bazookas from the back of an ancient Toyota.  Medieval Europe even gets a go if the bass pedal is sung by very deep and sufficiently monastic-sounding voices.  To my knowledge no actual music from the region sounds like this.  Moving eastwards, India (and neighbouring Sri Lanka) can be conjured up by sitar-and-tabla combo or by Bollywood rock-bhangra hybrids.  China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea and all other Far Eastern lands share an identical heritage of pentatonic reed-flute and plucky-thing music, a cultural appendage not helped by the catchy hook in disco classic Kung-Fu Fighting. 

The whole of Spanish-speaking South America uses pan-pipes.  By contrast Brazil, which speaks Portuguese, is better evoked by samba music or jungly-drum things.  The Caribbean contains so many countless islands that it's easier to just assume everyone enjoys steel drums - apart from Jamaica (reggae) and Cuba (manic trumpet and conga playing).

It may be due to its dominant position in the global film and television industry, but the United States has managed to retain a surprisingly diverse selection of typecast musics.  From East to West we have big band jazz (New York); banjo-and-harmonica-blues (The South); more banjos, with the addition of guitars, autoharps and warbling singers (Appalachians and the Midwest); Motown (Detroit, particularly over footage of 1960s civil rights protests); stadium-rock electric guitars (anywhere, really) or chilled-out bass-and-synth cruisin' music (somewhere with a beach, roller skaters and mass-produced convertibles, viz. Florida/California). Canada generally gets by on rock tunes or 'ethnic' drumming.  Funnily enough, the hillbilly folk harmonica-blues can also be transplanted to Australia - throw in a didgeridoo if your viewers really struggle with geography (another variant of the 'ominous-pedal' genre).  Oh, and Hawaii is the only place on earth the steel guitar has ever caught on.

Finally, Africa.  The Islamic part of the continent is covered by the aforementioned 'wailing over pedal' style, occasionally augmented by one-string-bowey-instruments either tuned or de-tuned to Western equal temperament.  Egypt often gets its own sub-genre of harmonic-minor oboe-y things (again with obligatory synth pedal note - Korg must have made a fortune from Tutankhamen) although many of these lands have as their introduction the dawn muezzin crying aloft from a teeteringly high minaret.  Central Africa (Nigeria/Kenya/unspecified jungle kingdom) is as often as not drums and 'tribal' grunts, shoehorned into a 4/4 meter Westerners can understand (real African drumming exhibits strikingly complex rhythmic patterns and metric modulation) with occasional outings for mbira thumb-harps and xylophones (the above disclaimer also applies) or West African guitar-based pop (ditto).  The southern part of the continent (South Africa/Botswana/Tanzania) is blessed with a rare accuracy in background music, being accompanied by African choral singing (not that in real life this is absent from more northerly lands, nor is drumming from here).

Like all stereotypes, most of these cliches of scene-setting have some basis in reality.  More interestingly, they can actually become 'authentic' to a place simply by continued exposition.  I remember reading of a 'folk dancing' performance in Hungary which had almost entirely been invented for tourists and was largely contrived to fulfill their expectations of what Hungarian peasant culture was like.  Amazingly, this dance had been performed so many times and was so well-known that it had actually become an important part of the town's culture, despite being completely invented and having little basis in tradition. 

As an afterthought, the possible Gilbertian conclusions of this scenario are fascinating to behold, with significant potential for hilarity into the bargain. An enterprising producer could in theory fabricate a complete culture for some uninhabited island, or else deliberately assosciate it with some cultural artifact from an utterly different (but equally unfamiliar) location.  Entire tourist industries could spring up based on visitors flocking to see and hear total nonsense.

Possibly, there's a film to be made in that last paragraph.  If so I claim copyright.

One for the kids

Frankly, I think games console manufacturers have missed a trick.

By 'console' I speak, specifically, of the Wii (which I notice is now available in a 'Limited Edition!' red colour) and it's wireless controller. This clever little piece of electronic Japanese-ery allows the player to actually enact the movements their wish their on-screen avatar to make, rather than having to transmit their motor skills through pressing buttons. As a consequence, cars on the old Playstation that, despite one's most dexterous button-bashing, would always corner like Blenheim Palace, can now be made to follow the road almost effortlessly, without requiring the player to have the finger skills of a concert pianist. Sports games actually require a modicum of physical effort. Shooting games you can look down the gun. And so on.

However, one subject area remains untapped by the gaming industry, something the Wii was born for:

Conducting.

Frankly, the system is almost perfect for it. With a controller in each hand, the tempo and character of the music can be inferred by the console's motion-sensing system and translated into the playing of a virtual orchestra (who will, appropriate to Wii-person anatomy, lack legs and any apparent joining of limbs to body, but will still be able to hold instruments). Those familiar with the system will already have realised that the Wii controller is held in a near-identical fashion to the baton, further enhancing the learning curve for aspiring maestri. Players progress through several levels of difficulty, beginning with simple beat-keeping exercises (a Strauss polka or Sousa march), before progressing through larger excerpts of the orchestral literature which require multiple tempo changes and expressive gestures. (Additional bonus levels evoke more conventional beat-'em-up and shoot-'em-up gaming subjects, as the player uses the Wii controller first in 'negotiations' with the Musicians' Union over working hours, and then to dispatch airport security cretins who fail to distinguish between a trombone and a bomb).

The advantages are obvious: one no longer has to shell out to hire a full symphony orchestra and rehearsal venue, or the risk of egg meeting face for student conductors practising that tricky little corner in the finale of Bruckner Seven.

It will of course be necessary to have on the disc an appropriate selection of the orchestral literature, and more importantly for the computer to be able to interpret a wide range of gestures from the user. Fortunately the player will be able to use the setup menu to adjust the sensitivity of the motion sensors, which ranges from 'Klemperer' at one extreme to 'Bernstein' at the other. Be warned: the 'Gerghiev' and 'Rhosdesvensky' settings require additional CPU processing power.

As with any game, there exists the potential for all manner of cash-in sequels and 'expansion packs', and Wiiductor, as our creation shall henceforth be known, will be no exception. The 'Ba-rock! Expansion Pack (novelty wig sold separately) sees the player 'take on' the eighteenth century, first perfecting the Mannheim Rocket with a deft flick of the wrist, before progressing onto the court of Louis XXVXIVIIIII where the controller must be used to master double-dotted quavers without accidentally causing gangrene. The 'Stravinsky: Dissonance Unleashed' add-on culminates in perhaps the hardest level of all, the première of Rite of Spring in which aside from dealing with time signatures dreamt up by aliens, the player must dodge seats and other missiles hurled by the audience. (Gaming 'hack' rumour has it that completing this unlocks a secret level contining Le Marteau sans Maitre, which has been neither confirmed nor denied by the game's developers).

With the right development and marketing, I see no reason why this game won't be a best-seller. If ten million Chinese kids learn the piano, ten million Brits can wave the stick (even if it is comprised of invisible microwaves).

Why the choir organ is hardcore

Has anyone noticed that the height at which musicians hold their guitars has a direct correlation to the level of hardcore-ness in the music?

Think about it for moment. At the one end of the scale - the scale being both vertical and musical - (and not the sort you get in exams, idiot!) we have country and western/folk/hillbilly guitarists, who either place said fretted instrument on their knee via a footstool, or at least have it pretty close to their chin whilst crooning about farming and how they'd rather you didn't mention Taylor Swift. Classical guitarists tend to follow the same formula in Bach and Brouwer.

Next we have the average middle-of-the-road pop guitarist. As these somewhat shy and secretive creatures tend to be session musicians in a backing band, they prefer the rear of the stage where it's darker. Thus, the guitar is held in an uncontroversial middle axis position.

Finally, the bottom end of the chart, in more ways than one, is occupied by the rock guitarist. Despite being rebellious and non-conformist, rock music has many rules and conventions, one of which is that any fretted instrument must be held as low as possible. Presumably this enables the rock musician greater slouching ability and thus to be more 'badass'.

How does this translate to other instruments, namely acoustic non-fretted ones? Obviously many musicians have no choice as to what height they hold their instruments. If you're a clarinetist there's not really a great deal of quibble on whether part of the instrument goes in your mouth or not. (In fact by the logic as explained above, observing a schalltrichter auf! marking in Mahler or Strauss actually makes you less hardcore because the instrument is held higher...right? It's the exception that proves the rule). String players theoretically could hold their violin or viola lower down on their chest, baroque-style, whilst cellists can just not use the spike. But it's all still a bit arbitrary as the argument goes.

However, after some thought, I realised there is one non-guitar instrument on which it is quite possible to play genuinely low to the floor and thus be genuinely hardcore on. And I'll bet you can't guess what it is in the next three minutes.

Time's up - it's the pipe organ.

Let me explain, for the benefit of non-organists. Organs, unless they're very small and weedy, have at least two keyboards ('manuals') and often three or more. These are, for obvious reason stacked on on top of each other in a gently raked fashion to enable the player to switch effortlessly (less so in my case) between them. All these keyboards have names which we don't really need to discuss, suffice to say that the lowest one is known as the Choir Organ because it's got quieter stops for accompanying the choir. (Since my church no longer has a choir, this function is somewhat moot). And it's really, genuinely low down, practically on the organist's lap, which puts it in pretty much the same vertical territory as the hardcore metal guitarist's instrument. Move over, Matt Bellamy.