The Realm of Photahsiamirabel

Liberals, Conservatives and a Strange Calm....

Sat, 15 May 2010 09:17:00 +0000

A strange calm has settled over the tiny part of Britain I inhabit. After the comments heard for months about the dire consequences of a Conservative win in the May 6th election, people are carrying on as though nothing has happened. They are keeping Schtum! Could it be that the coalition with Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats is keeping those fears in check? Is Nick trusted to rein in the green eyed monster of Tory cuts or have we just seen nothing yet?

From a personal point of view, I found such an alliance, however noble in concept, was beyond my ability to stomach. I remember too well the 1980s. I am also aware how young Conservatives treat democracy as a "game to be won" where "winner takes all" and I wonder if this is the calm before the storm! True there are Facebook groups against the coalition and equally true there are many left wing Lib Dem supporters up in arms about it, but the inner ranks of the party are toeing the line. This is after all, the first taste of real power in 90 years and faith in Nick's ability is universal in the Liberal Democrats. As I campaigned with him in 1999 and fully understand his charisma, this is NO surprise to me.

My thoughts on this sunny Saturday, having resigned as Lincoln Local Party Chair and now relieved of the responsibility of party office is that time alone will tell. Activists are not sharing their thoughts with me, I feel almost as though I have been sent to Coventry. I guess my views are beyond the pale - sorry, no, I think EXPRESSING them is beyond the pale. (Strange in a Party like ours!) Even Vince Cable has been brought on message, so I will wait and see - and hope I am wrong about the consequences five years ahead.

In response to someone urging Vince to break away - a silly idea I believe....

Liberal voters traditionally do not flock to split parties, they flock to Labour or Conservative. Personally I think Vince was right to talk with Gordon Brown, but the Labour Party didn't really want to deal. They felt beaten, bruised and ready for a rest to lick their electoral wounds. It would have been difficult getting enough Labour and Nationalist support for one thing, and for another they KNOW how unhappy voters will be with this Liberal/Conservative coalition.

The glittering prize of course is AV - but then nobody is happy with that system. Tories will certainly campaign against, Labour now have little motivation to adopt it, and if Lib Dems campaign against it (preferring STV) we might be able to put our MPs in a broom cupboard after 2015....

The Labour Party now just have to sit back, prepare for 2015, and watch their membership grow as Lib Dems get fed up with Tory cuts.

Follow Lisa on Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/persimew

On a more personal level, (perhaps appropriate to the present mood) Leonard Cohen has always been a great favourite of mine. This great Canadian singer appealed to me even as a child. He was only 31 when he released his first record in 1967 but he seemed so old and wise! I learned to love his dark poetry and gravelly voice through that 1967 recording. His voice had a magical personality that struck you right in the heart!

I was in British Columbia last year and we all sat watching his live concert from London. The performance was mesmerizing. One of his greatest songs is Hallelujah.Here I show you how you might play it on the guitar and pay tribute to the huge talent of Leonard Cohen.

http://www.squidoo.com/hallelujah-lyrics-and-sheet-music

Mozart and Sibelius - Just a Speculation

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:23:00 +0000

Well, how can you have Mozart and Sibelius together unless they are in your CD collection? Apart from arranging Mozart in the style of Sibelius? That would be rather grand, but I don't intend to go there, too much music of my own to write in too little time, BUT I have heard it speculated about!

What would Mozart have done with sibelius software? Do you know, I don't think Mozart needed it. I think that Mozart had one of those Asperger genius type brains that consider all possibilities simultaneously. One of the type of genius brains that could become a grandmaster at chess, or tell you without thinking for longer than 15 seconds not only what day of the week Elizabeth the First was born on, but precisely how many hours elapsed between her birth and Elizabeth the Second's!

Wouldn't it be something to have a brain like that? Well, yes, but it would be so very, very noisy! I know when I compose (with sibelius) the themes bounce around for days afterwards and I can't think or sleep straight. Think what that would have been for Mozart! That is some internal orchestra!

All the best from Me!

http://www.squidoo.com/sibeliuscomposer

Hermit-ically sealed in online publishing?

Sat, 30 May 2009 17:00:00 +0000

Well, how busy can one little guitar player get in high days and holidays? :tongue:

Just so you know if at all interested I have just published my Vaughan Williams dissertation "On Wenlock Edge - 100 Years On" More details about Vaughan Williams here including links to videos and other worthy things including some great sites....

http://www.squidoo.com/OnWenlockEdge100YearsOn

You can link directly to the book and preview it here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/on-wenlock-edge---100-years-on/6523704

Other books I have written have been selected by www.amazon.com (the international amazon site, not the UK one) - the details are here:-

http://www.squidoo.com/PhotahsiamirabelsGuitarAndWords

The books are here:

http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Reef-Octo-Pieces-Young-Guitarists/dp/B002AD9FPQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243459831&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Reef-Lisa-Marie-Gabriel/dp/B002AD3YR6/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243459879&sr=8-7

http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Christmas-Carols-Guitar-Ensemble/dp/B002AD9FZG/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243459879&sr=8-9

http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Christmas-Carols-Guitar-Solo/dp/B002AD7NNW/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243459879&sr=8-11

http://www.amazon.com/Whisper-Romantic-Eye-God/dp/0955984807/ref=sr_1_13?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243459879&sr=8-13

On the website below you can link to sheet music and listen to MP3s I have composed and arranged:

http://www.squidoo.com/sibeliuscomposer

And finally (for today) the Immortal Works of Oliver and Laetitia Tadpole are now once again available in print (for the first time since 1986!)

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/tadpoles-illustrated/7209008

I could go on.... but I won't.... the cats need their supper and so do I!

Have a lovely evening!

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Creativity, Content, SEO and Balance....

Fri, 29 May 2009 08:38:00 +0000

Well, don't you just love it when you make a blog post that disappears? It just illustrates the point above. With internet publishing you will probably spend twice as much time on the nitty-gritty of trying to get noticed as you do on the main purpose of creating and sharing ideas....

I am a musician, and the democratization of the publishing process via the internet is the promise of a foot in the door! In reality, it is a hard slog, especially when you are doing it in your spare time and others are doing it as a job. I would rather just make the music, post it somewhere and let it sell itself, but it ain't-a-gonna!

Take Sibelius for instance (www.sibeliusmusic.com) a great site which is presently in a ferment (or torment) of upgrading which has left the little guys to flounder. Under the previous system your peers could vote you into prominence as a composer and arranger on the Top 10 board and there was the commission board where you could bid for work. On the new site the Top 10 is now a degenerate mess of unchanging hymn and anthem arrangements from one store which has so many meta tags in its store heading that it takes as much space as 4 usual store ads!

Now eventually the overworked technicians may address that problem, but in the meantime what was one of the largest shop fronts for new compositions on the web has stalled. Stores manned by those already in the publishing industry are getting vastly more coverage than those manned by independents although the fees are the same. The scent of SEO manipulation, or of friends in the business at Avid? Who knows? Anyway, I am happy to muddle along selling a bit here and a bit there and one day, who knows, I might just cover my rent! They say "let us know if you think it is unfair" but nothing has changed so far in respect to Ave Maria Top 10s or some stores' over-exposure at the expense of others.

What I was greatly pleased to discover however is that www.Amazon.com have selected some of my guitar books for distribution. This is both a surprise and an honour. My books have no ISBN, so I could not put them up, but Amazon have taken a "punt" on me and that means something!

Here are some links....

http://www.amazon.com/Songs-Reef-Octo-Pieces-Young-Guitarists/dp/B002AD9FPQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243587362&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Tunes-Flute-Fingerstyle-Guitar/dp/B002AD9G3M/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243587362&sr=1-2

http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Christmas-Carols-Guitar-Ensemble/dp/B002AD9FZG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243587362&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.com/Traditional-Christmas-Carols-Guitar-Solo/dp/B002AD7NNW/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243587362&sr=1-5

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Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), Joe Satriani and Coldplay in battle over Rachmaninoff riff....

Tue, 05 May 2009 14:47:00 +0000

I am sorry to double post my blog, but this really made me smile. :tongue:

I am presently interested in music rights because of a book I am writing so it was quite ironic to discover this little gem:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/may/05/coldplay-yusuf-islam

The offending snippet of tune is based on the piano riffs some 5 minutes and 20 seconds into the song. The song in question is a very long folk/jazz opus full of acoustic guitars and Cat's snatchy vocal sighs that runs in at about 18 minutes in total. (Yusuf Islam is perhaps better known as Cat Stevens....)

"There's been this argument about Coldplay stealing this melody from Joe Satriani," Islam told the Sun. "But, if you listen to it, it's mine! It's the Foreigner Suite. It is!"

However, Joe Satriani is suing the British band, claiming that the same melody (Viva La Vida) is really If I Could Fly, an instrumental recorded in 2004.

In my humble opinion, all of them need to listen to Rachmaninoff. (Or perhaps they did and then jazzed it up a bit!!!) Shame he is too dead to sue anyone.... he could have been extremely rich with all the accidental quotes from rock, pop and jazz bands if only he'd been alive enough to pursue the music rights!

Oh well....

Wasting shoe leather on Boots....

Sat, 02 May 2009 18:28:00 +0000

An interesting couple of days, during which I discovered that Boots the chemist no longer sells sodium bicarbonate. Is this another manifestation of the nanny state I ask myself? All these innocent people wanting bicarb for non-allergenic household use and now unable to get it because someone might ingest too much sodium? Hrrrumph, I say.... HRRRRUUUUUMPH!!!!

So meanwhile all the deadly poisons customers might accidentally or intentionally ingest remain on the shelves and poor old baking soda is fast decried a social pariah - as was vitamin C powder - possibly for similar reasons??? ;-) I guess icing sugar and non-fragranced talc will be next for the chop.... So before I head off to the Republic of Ireland to order 25 kilos of the stuff to make my postage economic, I thought I would have a little whingelette here.

As an aside, anyone who is interested in composing and publishing music on line might appreciate this link:

http://www.squidoo.com/sibeliuscomposer

OK.... so after many hours slaving over this hot keyboard (believe me, the letters are wearing off!) I must finally get lunch or supper or whatever....

Enjoy your Bank Holiday, but don't get indigestion, and if you do )or you need to deodorize the fridge or the cat box) don't waste shoe leather visiting Boots.....

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News from the Realm of Photahsiamirabel

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:10:00 +0000

Hmmmm what's with these categories? It doesn't say. Nevermind.

This is Lisa, from the Realm of Photahsiamirabel, just letting the world know I still exist! Those who are in day to day contact with me will know the past six months have been personally challenging, but all is well. I thought my frequent absences from various on-line communities needed some comment, so perhaps a blog is overdue...

Where do I start? Anyone who writes poetry will know how it takes over your life, as a musician and a poet I am doubly driven of course as the two Muses continually fight over me and somewhere in the middle I have to work for a living and maintain a family life.... Well, life presents challenges and the symbol for crisis is opportunity, so I know all these things are meant and will serve their purpose.

Today I added a new poem to the April Awakening page. It is a homage to the innocence of my lifelong childhood and my beautiful parents. In this blog I can update when and where I add new poems of course.

In the meantime, I have published a fair bit of music both in book and download form, which I hope is attractively presented and useful. Amazon has my poetry on sale.

Lulu

http://www.lulu.com/photahsiamirabel

and Sibelius

http://www.sibeliusmusic.com/cgi-bin/user_page.pl?url=LisaGabriel

have my music. I am very cheered by the encouragement I have received from my godmother, Josephine Austin, who is very much respected as a poet and by a few local sales of my book. I have a book on Vaughan Williams in the final stage of preparation and am going through the permission and licensing process for music examples and I am exploring Twitter and Squidoo to try and get "out there" which I am told is the most important thing.

My squidoo lenses are:

http://www.squidoo.com/guitarlincs

http://www.squidoo.com/PhotahsiamirabelsGuitarAndWords

http://www.squidoo.com/sibeliuscomposer

I am also recovering from the muscle spasm in my back that poleaxed me following my return from BC last week....

I will keep you posted!

With Love always,

Lisa