Random Thoughts

[webny99]

Now I do everything electronically, meaning half the time I forget to do it because I don't have a physical piece of paper on my desk reminding me to do it, so I pay more late fees because of that

I use my email inbox to do that, but of course that requires keeping a clean inbox, and I'm the only person I know who does that.

I keep a relatively clean inbox at work (anything that doesn't require follow up gets sorted/filed ASAP), but my personal email is a mess because I've never bothered to set up a proper sorting system. Perhaps that will change as I age.

[CoreySamson]

I've never written a check (or even had to write a check!), but I know how. I've noticed that many of the smaller transactions that checks would have traditionally handled are quickly becoming processed by electronic P2P payment services like CashApp, Venmo, and Zelle (at least it's what I've seen from Gen Z). I've used Zelle several times and it seems to work pretty well, but it does not take larger amounts of money.

[Roadgeekteen]

I hardly use email anymore due to the (many years long) lingering very bad signal to noise ratio.

Mike

Text messages are starting to go down that road. I'm getting really tired of unsolicited political messages. If you want a way to get me to vote for your opponent, start sending me constant political spam.

Well, after this November those should be far less frequent for you.

Not really. It'll just change which race it is (we have governor this year, then next year is Congress and one of two US Senate seats). Plus I seem to get year-round crap from out-of-state organizations or politicians. And it comes from both sides.

You might still get some, but next year's senate election in Virginia is not expected to be competitive plus your house district you live in is safe as well. This year the whole political world is tied into Virginia and New Jersey.

[Scott5114]

I use my email inbox to do that, but of course that requires keeping a clean inbox, and I'm the only person I know who does that.

I try to do this, but it's frustrated by the fact that the NVEnergy email doesn't actually say NVEnergy on it anywhere (the sender name is "DoNotReply"), so it's very easy to miss.

Well, after this November those should be far less frequent for you.

You would be surprised. I was still getting texts from the 2024 election well after the 2025 inauguration, since candidates were still in need of money to pay off debts incurred during the election. Some of those were from candidates who lost. (One such losing candidate hitting me up for money was some woman who previously held a mostly-powerless federal office, who sought a promotion and didn't get it. I didn't give her any money before the election, so I don't see why she thought I would after she bungled it.)

On the whole, I am happier living in a state where my vote actually matters, but there are some downsides to it, and the political spam is one of them. (It doesn't help that you can just download a CSV of the entire voter file off the state website, as required by law. Of course, that has its upsides too—I have a copy of said CSV, for the purposes of mining interesting names and street names from.)

[mgk920]

I hardly use email anymore due to the (many years long) lingering very bad signal to noise ratio.

Mike

Text messages are starting to go down that road. I'm getting really tired of unsolicited political messages. If you want a way to get me to vote for your opponent, start sending me constant political spam.

Well, after this November those should be far less frequent for you.

Not really. It'll just change which race it is (we have governor this year, then next year is Congress and one of two US Senate seats). Plus I seem to get year-round crap from out-of-state organizations or politicians. And it comes from both sides.

My problem has not really been the politicians, but rather the overseas scammers.   

Mike

[Roadgeekteen]

There was once a time on this forum when I accidentally welcomed someone 3 different times by mistake, which was very stupid of me lol.

[Max Rockatansky]

Apparently "tommyrot" is an actual word:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tommyrot

I had previously thought this was just something old people said.

[kphoger]

I had previously thought this was just something old people said.

I mean, you're not wrong...

[ZLoth]

Meanwhile.... I had to have my car serviced about a week ago. The place where I took it didn't have a place to set up a laptop so that I could do some job hunting browse the Internet, so I ended up spending four hours camped out at a local restaurant. They weren't busy, so I did order a sandwich and tipped a bit more than usual for occupying a seat in a cubbyhole corner.

[DTComposer]

handbell choir

Hey, by the way...

I've never been in a handbell choir outside of one specific church, and we all marked the sheet music with colored pencils.  (If my bells were E, F, F#, and G#, then I'd use four different colors and mark only those notes.)  But I've heard that such a practice is actively discouraged in "respectable" handbell choirs.  I assume this means it's considered something that only children or inexperienced players would ever do, whereas real musicians are able to just pick their notes out of the normal sheet music.

Is that true?  Is it discouraged or otherwise frowned upon?

I first learned handbells about 25 years ago as part of a Christmas caroling company in L.A. (six to eight quartets in the company, depending on how busy the year). Out of about 110 songs in our repertoire, about 25 were bells-only, and 35 were ring-and-sing - and you had about ten weeks to memorize the whole book. Since a lot of the singers didn't come in with instrumental experience (let alone handbells), highlighting was key to the learning process.

The handbell choir I started at my church has the same varying levels of expertise - a third of us had extensive handbell experience, a third didn't, but had instrumental experience, and a third were primarily singers with limited experience reading more than one note on a staff. I started them off with highlighting, and once they gained some experience, I let them do whatever helped them learn the music best (I also record all the bells, then give them rehearsal tracks with their bells panned hard right so they can pick them out).

I've heard the same thing that highlighting is "looked down on" by more serious groups, but to be honest, I still highlight, since I'm also conducting and the additional visual cues are helpful.

[Rothman]

That's rather bizarre that handbell choirs are so particular about their music.  In the meantime, orchestras and just about every other ensemble that performs with sheet music scribbles all over it.

[kphoger]

That's rather bizarre that handbell choirs are so particular about their music.  In the meantime, orchestras and just about every other ensemble that performs with sheet music scribbles all over it.

This is just spit-balling, but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that every player uses the same sheet music.  Moreover, the next time a choir performs the same piece, it might not even have the same number of players, so the bells would need to be distributed differently.  And even if they have the same number of players but not the same exact players, then the bells might still need to be distributed differently based on individual skill level.  All this means that your particular sheet music might be used by someone playing different bells the next time—so having highlighter marks the whole way through would be less than ideal.  This is fundamentally different from orchestra music, in which each player has sheet music for only his or her part (or perhaps two or three at most).

[Scott5114]

That's rather bizarre that handbell choirs are so particular about their music.  In the meantime, orchestras and just about every other ensemble that performs with sheet music scribbles all over it.

This is just spit-balling, but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that every player uses the same sheet music.  Moreover, the next time a choir performs the same piece, it might not even have the same number of players, so the bells would need to be distributed differently.  And even if they have the same number of players but not the same exact players, then the bells might still need to be distributed differently based on individual skill level.  All this means that your particular sheet music might be used by someone playing different bells the next time—so having highlighter marks the whole way through would be less than ideal.  This is fundamentally different from orchestra music, in which each player has sheet music for only his or her part (or perhaps two or three at most).

Which is why they should be handing out and marking up photocopies, not originals. (I never understood band directors who insist on handing out originals, and then being shocked and distraught that high schoolers rumpled them or marked them up.)

[GaryV]

That's rather bizarre that handbell choirs are so particular about their music.  In the meantime, orchestras and just about every other ensemble that performs with sheet music scribbles all over it.

This is just spit-balling, but I wonder if it has to do with the fact that every player uses the same sheet music.  Moreover, the next time a choir performs the same piece, it might not even have the same number of players, so the bells would need to be distributed differently.  And even if they have the same number of players but not the same exact players, then the bells might still need to be distributed differently based on individual skill level.  All this means that your particular sheet music might be used by someone playing different bells the next time—so having highlighter marks the whole way through would be less than ideal.  This is fundamentally different from orchestra music, in which each player has sheet music for only his or her part (or perhaps two or three at most).

Which is why they should be handing out and marking up photocopies, not originals. (I never understood band directors who insist on handing out originals, and then being shocked and distraught that high schoolers rumpled them or marked them up.)

Copyright issues.

Anyway, last night I was playing a piece new to me, but previously played by the choir. I was playing B4 and C5; the music was marked for G4 and A4. Ugg.

[Scott5114]

Copyright issues.

I think if any member of your choir rats your director out to ASCAP for making a photocopy for preservation purposes, you'd be well justified in kicking them out.

[kphoger]

Anyway, last night I was playing a piece new to me, but previously played by the choir. I was playing B4 and C5; the music was marked for G4 and A4. Ugg.

And, if I'm sharing sheet music with someone else, and each of us has four bells, and each of us marks our music color-coded to each note, then we'll have already used up eight colors.  You're the next couple is stuck with something like trying to use tan and black colored pencils for their notes and ignoring the rest.

I think if any member of your choir rats your director out to ASCAP for making a photocopy for preservation purposes, you'd be well justified in kicking them out.

Having done my share of arranging and printing music for church, I've always just ignored copyrights and assumed nobody else cared either.  But copyright issues go deeper and broader than you might first think.  For example, in our church band, there's not only the handing out of sheet music to consider, but also the fact that we might be live-streaming the service and/or keeping the recording up on social media accounts, the fact that the words are being projected onto a screen, etc.  The actual 'performance' of the music in a church service doesn't count as a copyright violation, but basically all other forms of reproduction do count.  In the case of photocopied sheet music, it might seem trivial, but the leader handing it out would then have to maintain control over what every person does with his or her copy afterward.  I agree that it shouldn't really matter much but, from the church's perspective, it's often worth it to just go ahead and pay for the permission—or absent that, to avoid any possibility of copyright infringement.

We're just now starting to learn to use click tracks, which is basically like an annotated metronome playing through the musicians' in-ear monitors.  One thing I didn't realize until we started using them is that we have to purchase rights to the click tracks in addition to the rights we've already purchased for the songs themselves.  Ugh.

[Rothman]

Anyway, last night I was playing a piece new to me, but previously played by the choir. I was playing B4 and C5; the music was marked for G4 and A4. Ugg.

And, if I'm sharing sheet music with someone else, and each of us has four bells, and each of us marks our music color-coded to each note, then we'll have already used up eight colors.  You're the next couple is stuck with something like trying to use tan and black colored pencils for their notes and ignoring the rest.

I think if any member of your choir rats your director out to ASCAP for making a photocopy for preservation purposes, you'd be well justified in kicking them out.

Having done my share of arranging and printing music for church, I've always just ignored copyrights and assumed nobody else cared either.  But copyright issues go deeper and broader than you might first think.  For example, in our church band, there's not only the handing out of sheet music to consider, but also the fact that we might be live-streaming the service and/or keeping the recording up on social media accounts, the fact that the words are being projected onto a screen, etc.  The actual 'performance' of the music in a church service doesn't count as a copyright violation, but basically all other forms of reproduction do count.  In the case of photocopied sheet music, it might seem trivial, but the leader handing it out would then have to maintain control over what every person does with his or her copy afterward.  I agree that it shouldn't really matter much but, from the church's perspective, it's often worth it to just go ahead and pay for the permission—or absent that, to avoid any possibility of copyright infringement.

We're just now starting to learn to use click tracks, which is basically like an annotated metronome playing through the musicians' in-ear monitors.  One thing I didn't realize until we started using them is that we have to purchase rights to the click tracks in addition to the rights we've already purchased for the songs themselves.  Ugh.

There must be free open-use click tracks out there...

[kphoger]

There must be free open-use click tracks out there...

Oh.  OK.  If you say so.

[mgk920]

A decade or two ago there was a Dilbert strip where character Dogbert filed a copyright on the snow that appeared on analog CRT TV screens when the sets were tuned to channels with no station signals.

Mike

[hotdogPi]

A decade or two ago there was a Dilbert strip where character Dogbert filed a copyright on the snow that appeared on analog CRT TV screens when the set was tuned to a channel with no station signal.

Mike

Something similar actually happened on YouTube with white noise. Two videos used the same PRNG and seed, so the second one got automatically flagged.

[DTComposer]

Anyway, last night I was playing a piece new to me, but previously played by the choir. I was playing B4 and C5; the music was marked for G4 and A4. Ugg.

And, if I'm sharing sheet music with someone else, and each of us has four bells, and each of us marks our music color-coded to each note, then we'll have already used up eight colors.  You're the next couple is stuck with something like trying to use tan and black colored pencils for their notes and ignoring the rest.

I think if any member of your choir rats your director out to ASCAP for making a photocopy for preservation purposes, you'd be well justified in kicking them out.

Having done my share of arranging and printing music for church, I've always just ignored copyrights and assumed nobody else cared either.  But copyright issues go deeper and broader than you might first think.  For example, in our church band, there's not only the handing out of sheet music to consider, but also the fact that we might be live-streaming the service and/or keeping the recording up on social media accounts, the fact that the words are being projected onto a screen, etc.  The actual 'performance' of the music in a church service doesn't count as a copyright violation, but basically all other forms of reproduction do count.  In the case of photocopied sheet music, it might seem trivial, but the leader handing it out would then have to maintain control over what every person does with his or her copy afterward.  I agree that it shouldn't really matter much but, from the church's perspective, it's often worth it to just go ahead and pay for the permission—or absent that, to avoid any possibility of copyright infringement.

We're just now starting to learn to use click tracks, which is basically like an annotated metronome playing through the musicians' in-ear monitors.  One thing I didn't realize until we started using them is that we have to purchase rights to the click tracks in addition to the rights we've already purchased for the songs themselves.  Ugh.

I am very diligent about reporting our song uses to the appropriate agencies - both for my church and the youth choir I work with. As much as I dislike the middlemen involved who get a cut, I want to make sure the composers and arrangers get as much of their fair share for their work as possible.

When you buy most copyrighted choral music nowadays through JW Pepper, Hal Leonard, etc., you pay maybe $2.99 per copy, but you have to buy a minimum number of copies (usually 10). So we will always buy the correct number of copies, but we will often make photocopies (especially for our younger singers), and keep the originals (as well as any copies that come back relatively clean) for future performances.

Related: the musical theatre royalty houses make you erase absolutely everything out of their music before you return it, or they fine you (not always, but it has happened to us). Concord Theatricals (which is a conglomerate of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Tams-Witmark, and Samuel French) heard the complaints, and said - hey, we'll print out your own copies of the script/music. You can mark them up to your heart's delight, no erasing needed! The materials arrive with your theatre's name and performance dates at the top of each page.

BUT you still have to return the materials, whereupon they're shredded and (ostensibly) recycled. So now, instead of making everyone erase their scores, they just print 5,000-7,000 pages every time someone produces one of their shows. 

[kkt]

Copyright issues.

I think if any member of your choir rats your director out to ASCAP for making a photocopy for preservation purposes, you'd be well justified in kicking them out.

But that wouldn't stop the copyright holder from suing the school.
For that matter, if it's a public school there might be some legal troubles involved with kicking out a student who made a true statement to the copyright holder.

Every once in a while I read about a high school drama director who decided to save some money by photocopying a script in the library for all the players, rather then buying copies of the script and performance rights.

[DTComposer]

Copyright issues.

I think if any member of your choir rats your director out to ASCAP for making a photocopy for preservation purposes, you'd be well justified in kicking them out.

But that wouldn't stop the copyright holder from suing the school.
For that matter, if it's a public school there might be some legal troubles involved with kicking out a student who made a true statement to the copyright holder.

Every once in a while I read about a high school drama director who decided to save some money by photocopying a script in the library for all the players, rather then buying copies of the script and performance rights.

It happens quite a bit, especially with youth theatre, summer camps, and elementary schools. On one hand, I get it - even in professional theatre, royalties were among the single biggest non-people expenses I had to pay, 'cause the Cole Porter estate's gotta get theirs.

Upthread I said I wanted to make sure composers and arrangers got paid fairly, and I mean that. But I do have an issue when I'm paying the same royalties on Anything Goes - a 90-year-old show by a composer who's been dead 61 years - as I am on Fun Home - a 10-year-old by a composer who's very much alive.

Meanwhile, there was the church in Texas who produced Hamilton (whose rights are very much not available), complete with fairly professional-looking sets and costumes - but changed the lyrics to make it a Christian show - and live-streamed the production...

[Scott5114]

But that wouldn't stop the copyright holder from suing the school.

One thing that I have learned from my current job is that the average person has zero understanding of or respect for copyright law. If a copyright holder actually sues a school over photocopying a score, the negative publicity they would receive for that would probably put them out of business. It's the moral equivalent of beating up an orphan and stealing their lunch money because they spelled your name wrong.

On one hand, I get it - even in professional theatre, royalties were among the single biggest non-people expenses I had to pay, 'cause the Cole Porter estate's gotta get theirs.

Professional theater's goal is to make a profit off of ticket sales, so I think that's probably fair game to be sticklers about copyrights over. It's not fair if someone else makes money off of your IP.

A high school marching band is lucky to have anyone at all even watch their show rather than hitting up the concession stand at halftime; it's not like they're bringing in the big bucks. Likewise a church likely doesn't see collection plate totals skyrocket when their choir puts on a performance.

[Roadgeekteen]

But that wouldn't stop the copyright holder from suing the school.

One thing that I have learned from my current job is that the average person has zero understanding of or respect for copyright law. If a copyright holder actually sues a school over photocopying a score, the negative publicity they would receive for that would probably put them out of business. It's the moral equivalent of beating up an orphan and stealing their lunch money because they spelled your name wrong.

I mean Disney went after a daycare for using characters on the wall, which Universal took full advantage of by promoting their properties.