Photo of the day: Cooking stuff

I cooked my "DrGaz's nice Italian-style tomato & basil sauce with pasta" earlier.

I got my grade 1 Piano!

Well I got my grade 1 piano! I wen't to my piano teacher's house and picked up the certificate this evening. I did pretty well - I scored 127/150 - a merit. I was only 3 marks away from a distinction.

Here is a transcript of my marks and examiner's comments:

A3 - "This was in a suitably lively tempo. Dynamic contrasts were effective and vivid. The R.H. fingerwork was strong (a couple of semiquavers aside). Although balance between hands was sometimes uneven (L.H. tended to dominate), this was characterful". 26/30.

B2 - "You judged the tempo well. Dynamic variations were mostly convincing. There was a slight hesitation before the second half. You recovered promptly and projected something of the mood here". 25/30.

C1 - "Opening staccato patterns were crisp and even. Fingerwork was largely even and strong, aside from fleeting exceptions in stave three. The dynamic range was appropriate. Another well prepared account". 27/30.

Scales and arpeggios - "Your scales were prompt in response and mostly even. Arpeggios and broken chords fared similarly (depite some uneveness in L.H. patterns)". 17/21.

Sight reading - "You started accurately. There were subsequently stumbles and rhythmic errors. You kept going, giving a clear outline". 15/21.

Aural tests - "Small slip in "B", otherwise assured". 17/18.

Additional comments - "An impressive start to your piano playing - well done today!"

2008 Nicola Bryant calendar: August

Yes folks! It's August - and as usual Nicola's here to brighten things up a bit. I hope you'll enjoy the latest installment. I actually nearly forgot to do it. Phew! That was close. Only four months left. Will I run out of material? I hope not, but I might be scraping the bottom of the barrel soon. I wonder if I could book Nicola herself for a photoshoot to keep me going until December...


INSTRUCTIONS: Just click on the above image to open the larger 600x600 version in your internet browser. Then right mouse click to save to your PC. When you've done that just make it your desktop wallpaper. Bingo! You now have some saucy pics of Nicola to keep you company throughout 2008!

New banner

For absolutely no reason at all I can't resist buggering around with my "DrGaz" blog banner now and then. Depending on what date you read this it may or may not be at the top of the blog right now! Otherwise here it is below. I was going to do a major overhaul, but got bored and decided to leave it for a rainy day. Instead I just adulterated the existing version - messed around with the colours and bunged in a few more random images.


Just for the hell of it, here are some of my old versions:

Photo of the day: One hell of a view

This was the view from my window for the last 4 days (click to enlarge). It's Nice in the South of France. Please excuse the my dodgy Photoshop job - you can clearly see that it's a composite of 5 photos. I have to say it wasn't exactly the cheapest 4 days of my life, but to wake up to this every morning for a just a few days made made me forget about my wallet entirely.

DrGaz's Music: Maybe Next Time (on piano)

Here's my piano version of Ritchie Blackmore/Rainbow's "Maybe Next Time". There are a couple of slight mistakes (I still haven't managed to play the whole thing perfectly). This is the first guitar solo. I also have a guitar version that you can watch here.

Photo of the day: Metal Mushrooms

Some mushrooms... and they're made out of metal.

Photo of the day: The Bike of DrGaz

Earlier today I stopped off on the nice new cycle bridge on the way to the library. This is my bike - it's held together with bits of sticky tape. It's been so windy today - it was really blowing a gale when I took this photo. Cambridge is generally quite windy, which as a cyclist drives me mad as it makes pedalling really hard work.

I dropped of 3 piano music books at the library. They were a week overdue and I had to pay around £4.50. An unbelievably huge fine! I though library fines were pathetic. It doesn't seem long since I recieved fines to the order of 5p and 10p for much more serious offences.

Photo of the day: Green stuff

I left a plant pot full of water on the balcony two months ago. It is now full of green slime (see photo). Maybe I will post another photo of it in a few weeks time so that you can see how this stuff develops

Photo of the day: Grand piano

This photo of the day is hot off the presses - taken less than an hour ago. It's the grand piano in chapel of Churchill College, Cambridge and I was bashing it this evening. My piano teacher organises a bi-annual "adult pupils' soiree" there and I went along and knocked out out a couple of tunes.

It may seem from looking at the photo that no bugger showed up, but that's just the angle I took at it. There was actually around 40 -50 people in the room. I played "The Old Cuckoo Clock" (one of the pieces I did for my Grade 1 last Saturday) and my own piano version of "Maybe Next Time" by Rainbow. Here is a link to my guitar version of the song. I hope to make a video of my piano version soon to put on YouTube.

This was a seriously nice piano to play - so expressive. Yamaha certainly know how to make them. As good as my digital Yamaha Clavinova is, I fully understand that there's absolutely no subsitute for an acoustic piano. One day I will have one. One day...