mercoledì 20 novembre 2024

"the the' The The The Curmudgeon

 


"the the Eye see that My creater The nun nun Curmudgeon is making the the jokes about thE people in WhynewEtomato. the the This means that hE thinks that tha people up north are funnier. the the For Petes sake! Its almost enough too make me want to say tHe rosery. the the. Eye wonder if He feels the same about MoreError! hE the the plans to move to Ellington soon. Witch suburb will bee deemed funny enouf four the the him to live on. Hahataitai? hes two old too live in New town. maybe hell have to just keep moving a round! the the Thyme will tell."

martedì 19 novembre 2024

The The The Curmudgeon.

 


"Hi, were a new product from The Curmudgeon Ink stable and were very the the prowd to tell yuo that we had grammer and spelling lessons from Robert of the Holly Rosery.

One of our charmes is that we say "the the' a lot. The Curmudgeon bassed us on a charactor from Richards Bass Bag. the the' oops I forgot to say it much befour; Wee hop to become a favorit on the blog's. Prepear the the to be laufed a lot.

Watch this spade?"


lunedì 18 novembre 2024

"I'd rather be a naive member of the elect than a damned guy who uses big words like calumnious." Tent Horn



"For those who don't know the word I looked it up:

calumnious - adjective formal
(of a statement) false and defamatory; slanderous:
"all of these charges are false and calumnious" · "I was disgusted by their calumnious attack on my son's integrity"


That guy whose name is similar to mine likes big words. I guess it confuses the person you are talking to and makes him feel stupid when, in actual fact, you could have used more common words so that everybody understood what you are saying.

"I'd rather be a dumb member of the team than a guy who doesn't fit on the team and is untrustworthy."

Communication is important, especially if you are giving advice. Confusion doesn't really make you sound more intelligent. It just means that a lot of people miss your message.
Maybe it's time for me to give some advice to Robert of the Holy Rosary.
You won't convert people to your beliefs by confusing them. Good grammar helps to get your message across too. Bad grammar will not make you look super intelligent, even if you throw in some unusual words.

Thanks to Richard (of RBB) for lending me his blog so that I could give you this advice."

Tent Horn


Richard (of RBB) here now.

I accidentally left a bit off my music theory advice.
Here it is:



Pentatonic and blues scales.

The C major pentatonic scale has the notes C D E G A.

The relative minor (A minor) has the notes A C D E G.

The relative blues scale has the notes A C D D# E G.

Ciao tutti.

sabato 16 novembre 2024

"Yeah, just as well he (Richard) is not God or none of us would be here." said Robert of the Holy Rosary.

 Well, certainly not these two.

They'd be better off on Pen Island.

Okay, back to music theory.

Let's go back to C major, C D E F G A B (I've left the octave C out). The chord of C major is made up from the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes - C E G. If you added the 7th note (B) you'd get a C major 7th chord (Cmaj7). Chords can have extra notes added. C6 (C E G A), Cmaj9 (C E G B D) Cmaj9#11 (C E G B D F#). 

There are FIVE main types of chords - major, minor, dominant 7, augmented and diminished.

Here are basic forms of these chords, including the 7th - 

C major 7th: C E G B

C minor 7th: C Eb G Bb

C dominant 7th: C E G Bb

C augmented 7th: C E G# Bb

C diminished 7th: C Eb Gb A

A few notes (no pun intended): In the key of C the minor chord would generally start on the 6th note of the C major scale (A) and the dominant 7th chord would start on the 5th note - Am7 = A C E G, G7 = G B D F.  m=minor and G7 = G dominant 7th.

If you start a major scale on another one of its notes (eg. D E F G A B C D or G A B C D E F) you get a mode. There are seven of these and they all have a name. You can pull a 7th chord off each mode - notes used are 1 3 5 7.

1) C D E F G A B C - Ionian mode / Cmaj7 chord

2) D E F G A B C D - Dorian mode / Dm7 chord

3) E F G A B C D E - Phrygian mode / Em7 chord

4) F G A B C D E F - Lydian mode / Fmaj7#4 chord

5) G A B C D E F G - Mixolydian mode / G7 chord

6) A B C D E F G A - Aeolian mode / Am7 chord

7) B C D E F G A B - Locrian mode / Bm7b5 chord

There are a few scales that are a bit outside of the modal system. There are the chromatic scale, that we've looked at, the melodic minor scale, the harmonic minor scale, the augmented scale, the diminished scale and the diminished/whole tone scale. There are a few little tricks for using these diminished and augmented scales, but I'm simply going to show all these scales starting on C - the two minors are closely related to the Aeolian mode.

  • Melodic minor - up A B C D E F# G# A down A G F E D C B A
  • Harmonic minor - A B C D E F G# A
  • Augmented (whole tone) scale - C D E F# G# Bb C
  • Diminished scale (starting on a tone) - C D Eb F Gb Ab A B C
  • Diminished scale (starting on a semitone) - C Db Eb E F# G A Bb C
  • Diminished/whole tone scale - C Db Eb E F# G# Bb C
Have fun working through these.

If you have any questions, you could try The Curmudgeon (aka Peter) he HAS played the bagpipes.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

I remember this phrase from my school days. It popped into my mind this morning. I thought, "This is evidently why Catholics eat lots of takeaways."


Nae, but seriously folks.

At the moment there are quite a few people trying to explain the entire music theory system on Facebook. I, and many other people, have spotted many mistakes in their thinking. Some are posting huge diagrams of chords, modes and scales. Gosh, if I didn't know about music theory, it would be enough to make me want to give up.

They're really talking about the structures that make up Western music - the type of music that comes originally from Europe. In Europe, sometime around 1750 (I think), a system called Tempering was invented. This was a man-made system where twelve notes were evenly spaced. 

Pianoforte

There are seven different white notes and five black notes on the pianoforte. These simply repeat at different octaves (higher and lower sounds). The black notes each have two names because, before tempering, they were slightly different notes. 

The twelve notes are called:

A    A sharp (#) or B flat (b)    B    C    C# or Db    D    D# or Eb    E    F    F# or Gb    G    G# or Ab

If you play the white notes in this order - C D E F G A B C - you get what is called the C major scale. There are two notes that don't have black notes between them. This happens between B & C and E & F. The distance between these two sets of notes is called a semitone - the two notes are right next to each other. The other notes all have another note (black in this case) between them. When you have to skip one note to get to the next note, we call this distance a tone. 

Here is the shape that makes up the C major scale - tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone.

If you were to start on another note, and keep the same pattern of tones and semitones (remembering that each note must have a different letter name), we would get another major scale.

Take a bit of time and check these three out:

G A B C D E F# G

F G A Bb C D E F

F# G# A# B C# D# E# F#

Wow! That last one has an E#! Where is that?  Remember that I said each note must have a different letter name? Well, E# is really the same note as F. That little trick is called enharmonic - when a note can have two names. Hey, don't get hung up on that, I just put it in to show you.

There is also a scale that contains all the possible notes. This is called a chromatic scale. You just play all the notes (C C# D D# E F etc.) one after the other.

Okay, that's most of the simplest stuff covered. Obviously, Robert knows all this - it's really simple stuff for him. Peter probably won't have read it. Hey, the only instrument that I know he has played is the bagpipes, an instrument that missed out on tempering - listen to when a piper tries to play something like a pop tune. You'll hear some very unusual notes!

Just as a side note, on sheet (written) music a lot of the instructions are in Italian. You'll see words like allegro and forte. A lot of English speaking people will tell you that these two words mean fast and loud. They actually mean happy and strong. I think that this makes a big difference to how you play music. I'd much rather aim for happy than trying to rush everything. 

A thing I'm also into is playing your instrument like a singer. Just think of a tune and play it. A singer can do it, so an instrumentalist should be able to do it too.

Ciao tutti.

venerdì 15 novembre 2024

A man walks into a bar. He says, "Ouch!"

 Okay, it's Friday.

I have been keeping an eye on the blogs around these parts. I can tell you that Peter is replacing all his toilets and Robert is standing up for Catholics. Why is Peter replacing all his toilets if he is planning to move soon(ish)? God only knows! Hang on, Robert, said in one of his recent posts, that God can't always see how things will pan out (no pun intended).

It appears that you can save money,
when moving house, if you keep your
toilet(s) clean.

I spent yesterday toddler sitting and will do a few more hours today.



Male toddlers seem to have more energy than anyone else on the planet. I did about nine hours yesterday and came home exhausted. The last toddler I looked after was this one's father but it doesn't take long to get back in action with things like changing nappies, keeping them under semi-control and putting them to bed. Hey, and you do get quite a lot of cuddles, which is a bonus.

I did manage to get twenty minutes of violin practice done yesterday. I also did a lot of singing to the little chap - The Wheels on the Bus and ABCDEFG are two of his favourites. He has a really nice singing voice and is very accurate with his pitching. I think that great pitching is helped by the fact that he sings for the sheer joy of it and doesn't give a toss about what anyone else is thinking of him. There is a lesson for every musician there. You da man, Harrison!

I wonder if Peter will be replacing his baths and showers today?


 

I see that Robert is blogging under a new name. 


Well, it seems more positive than calling yourself 'Robert the sinner'.

Peter could change his blogging name from 'The Curmudgeon' to 'Peter of the New Toilets'.

Yes, that works for me!

Well, I'll have to leave it there for today.

See you.

Richard, user of toilets.

mercoledì 13 novembre 2024

The invention of the 'Half Post'.

 


"HELLO! DO YOU COPY?"

This is the title that The Curmudgeon (aka Peter) has given to his new creation - the Half Post.

Let's take a look...



"I note that Richard of RBB has been running out of ideas ..... sorry, I realise that that's a given and you're no doubt aware of the fact if you've unfortunately checked out his blog.

If you did this and also checked Robert's blog you will have noticed that the doddery old guy has been writing comments using my initials - TC - pretending to me. While I can understand his aspiration it is a bit sad that he feels that he needs to do this to get attention."

Okay, that's generally fair enough, except for a grammatical mistake (TC - pretending to me.). All I can say is that it has been a bit lonely around here lately with not many people leaving comments - though Robert the sinner did leave one about farting that I had to delete because it wasn't funny.
He also takes a quick shot at a woman he calls 'The Old Girl'.

"It's raining today so I'll stay indoors to sort out boxes of stuff. The Old Girl has been junking just about everything she has including old photographs and newspaper cuttings.

I managed to take a pic of this before it went into the rubbish. It was from the Christchurch Press in the mid 1990s. I like it for her cheesy smile."

And then, that's it. End of post.

It's like a Classical sonata that just has a theme or two, but no development or recapitulation.

"I would never have stooped that low!"

So, what do we learn from this post?

Richard (of RBB) put up a few comments that he signed off as TC. 'The Old Girl' threw out a few old things that she didn't want anymore. Peter has been sitting on his bum, doing bugger all. He couldn't even write a post with a bit of substance.

Think about it. Roberto wrote this...

"Seven verses every Catholic should know.
1 Timothy 3:15
St Paul identifies the Church as" the pillar and bullwork of the truth".
No protestant would say this. A protestant would say instead that the bible is! A bullwork is a defense. If you want the truth go to a Church. There can only be one Church therefore. If there were many then how would we know which one tells the truth. To protestants, the Church is invisible and known only to God. This is Catholic ecliasology. Catholic teaching.
2. 2 Thessalonians 2:15 "Hold fast to your traditions ..Greek ( protestants replace it erroneously with "teachings") that were taught to us by word of mouth or by letter".
The bible is not enough then. That is why Catholics include Tradition.
3 .2 Peter 1:20 ":no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation."
Protestants interpret the Bible themselves. Every interpretation is by individual protestants. Every protestant is his own arbiter of the truth, their own pope. Catholics have a chain of leadership starting with the apostles and proceeding down through their descendents.
4. John 20:23 Jesus breathed in them and said receive the Holy Spirit, whoevers sin you forgive..."
Protestants twist this ( isogessis) and say it means teach. After the apostles preach the sins are forgiven. But this is adding to the original text. Catholics use exogessus and extract the truth. In the old testament people went to the priest for the forgiveness of sin. With an appropriate animal sacrifice. Likewise in the new testament it is a priestly function.
5. Rev 12, 1 and 2 and 5.
This woman is clothed with the sun and moon at her feet, she's in heaven...wearing a crown.. brings forth a child....Jesus. A heavenly queen who gives birth to Jesus! She struggles against a red dragon (Satan). So this describes Mary, the Blessed Mother. This is not symbolic. These are real individuals. Satan, Jesus and Mary.
6 2 kings ch 13...on relics.
Man touches bones of Elija and is healed. So the practice of relics in the Catholic church is justified.
7 John 6:53
"Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man you will have no life in you". This is not a metaphor nor the way the first readers interpreted it They took it at face value in AD 90s. John knew how his readers would interpret it."

Okay, it's a load of shit but there is some advice that TC could take:
  • Go touch the bones of Elija!
  • Eat the flesh of the son of man or you will have no life in you.
  • Satan, Jesus and Mary are real, but you're still better off insulting them than 'The Old Girl'.
  • John 20:23 Jesus doesn't use possessive apostrophes (Jesus breathed in them and said receive the Holy Spirit, whoevers sin you forgive.)
  • (Every protestant is his own arbiter of the truth.) That's not the best approach, according to the other, and more famous, Peter.
  • St Paul identifies the Church as "the pillar and bullwork of the truth". Our Peter doesn't even own a bull. Not even a cow, for that matter.
Okay, I've only touched on six points, but these are ones that Peter (aka The Curmudgeon) needs to think about.

A word of advice to Peter...

Let's write full posts in future.