Start the week #73

We gotta get outta this place, or not, plus other ramblings

Jul 22, 2024

Including a brand new Inside Freedman Towers and Sax Chronicles update, with a guest appearance by Dr Tel

Greetings!

I was going to write a brilliant introduction, but as I’m suffering from a post-prandial plummet I can’t think of anything. So, enough of this persiflage, and on with the newsletter!

We gotta get outta this place

Every so often we think about moving, mainly because of all the high-rise apartment blocks springing up around us, which makes the traffic heavier and heavier. We always decide against moving because it’s so convenient where we are and we are pretty happy with our lot. It’s also very handy for the CityLit, where we are both students, and where I teach (see below). However, it did remind me of this song by The Animals, even though our part of the city isn’t dirty or sunless at all. I love the visceral scream at around 2:18. It’s 60-ish years old but still enjoyable I think. If I ever join a band again (see below) I’d like to include this in our repetoire.

Inside Freedman Towers

Incorporating the Sax Chronicles

Date: last week.

Me: I’m thinking of giving up the saxophone.

Elaine: What?! Why?

Me: Because there’s such a huge gap between how I play and how I want to play.

Elaine (who is a Grade 8 pianist): Oh, right! And I want to sound like Daniel Barenboim.

Me: Yes, well I do sound like Daniel Barenboim playing the saxophone, and that’s the problem.

Elaine and me: 🤣

As it happens, I’ve had a reassuring couple of experiences. The first was discovering that horrible-sounding notes were not entirely my fault. A key kept getting stuck open but I hadn’t noticed. The sax teacher1 fixed it for me.

The other experience was this. I’ve been reading The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, which I’ve been asked to review for Teach Secondary magazine.

One of the notes, written when Rollins was already famous and renowned, was about the fact that he sometimes squeaks when he moves into an upper register. So I thought that if even an accomplished player like Rollins experiences these issues, maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

In another entry, he says that it’s just when people are about to do really well that they start thinking about giving up. So I think I’ll adopt a Bhagavad Gita-like approach:

"Thy right is to work only, but never to its fruits; let the fruit of action be not thy motive, nor let thy attachment be to inaction." - Lord Krishna (The Bhagavad Gita - 2.47)

Next week we’ll be covering the blues, with which I’ve already been experimenting without knowing what I was doing from a musical theory standpoint. In preparation, we’ve been asked to come up with a blues name. Well, I’m very happy with the one I already have, which is Dr Tel :

Dr Tel at a gig. Signed copies available for a modest sum.

In one of my teaching jobs I established a blues harmonica society. This was an after-school club at which I taught Years 7 and 8 (approx. 11-13 year-olds) to play blues harp.

Blues harp in A minor. Photo by Terry Freedman

In the very first lesson I gave the kids a sheet containing an algorithm for choosing a blues name for themselves once they’d reached a certain level of proficiency. The sheet had three columns: a few fictitous names as examples, an attribute, and the resulting blues name.

For example:

Molly Jones — a bit overweight — Big Mama Jones, cf Big Mama Thornton:

Or..

Bill Jones — wears glasses — Professor Jones

Well, after a few lessons, a boy came up to me. Let’s say his name was Elroy Grimes.

Elroy: Sir, I think I might be good enough to have a blues name.

Me: OK, man. Blow your axe. Come on, make me cry.

Elroy: 🎼🎵🎶🎵🎶

Me: Oh, man, that was something else. OK, Elroy, you’ve earned yourself a new name. What’s it gonna be?

Elroy: Slim Boy Grimes, Sir.

Me: Fantastic! Don’t forget to tell your mum and dad.

Elroy went off beaming with pride! At the end of term, we gave a concert for parents, and everyone had a great time!

Pizza delivery

The square root of a sentence

When

Nathan Slake

wrote a piece called The square root of a sentence, I thought, “I need to work on that”. What is the square root of a sentence? The answer is2…

1×

0:00

-0:05

How did I arrive at that answer? Firstly, I took the phrase “a sentence” and converted it to numbers using a word to numbers converter.

Then I put the numbers into a spreadsheet, thus:

I put the numbers into cell C1. Then I copied them into column B (I could have used a formula to do it but I wanted to do it by hand because it was, believe it or not, slightly faster!)

The formula in Cell A1 says:

Add up the numbers in column B.
Return the square root of the answer.
Round the answer up or down to the nearest whole number.

They deserve a raise

The last time the internet was completely messed up was in the early noughties, when a type of virus called a worm was wreaking havoc. I was in charge of a team of school technicians at the time. One morning I walked into work, and the head of education called me into his office.

Head of Ed: I’ve had a load of headteachers complaining that they can’t access the internet, and they say your team is responsible.

Me: Really? In that case I think they deserve a pay rise, don’t you?

Head of Ed: A pay rise?!

Me: Yes, because the entire internet has been nobbled. If you think my team are so brilliant that they can bring down computer systems all over the world, then we need to hold on to them. Therefore I’d say a pay rise is urgent.

That was the end of that little saga.

My courses

If you’re interested, I’m teaching a blogging course again in November. In January, I’ll be teaching a course called The 60 Minute Writer. Both are online.