David McGuinness

Machine learning is a neat tool, but clearly companies are desperate to give “AI” credit for what human scholars accomplish in part because companies have bet the farm on the idea that human ingenuity is expendable. This historian is extraordinary and deserves the real credit.

Sunday Feature - Joining the dots - 200 years of Braille Music - BBC Sounds The story of Braille music and its impact on blind musicians over the last 200 years.

great to hear the unstoppable Matt Wadsworth in this feature on 200 years of Braille music notation https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002jst7?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

I visited their Cupar shop on Saturday - no stovies that time, but everything else was very much up to the usual standard

Me too. He sought me out backstage at the end and said "i just wanna shake your 'and". What a generous man - he knew that would mean a lot, as I'd told him earlier I'd been listening to his playing since I was a teenager. "Yeah, 50 years of knowin when to go 'boom'"

great, you've just reminded me of what I have to do this morning!

i walk past it all the time, a school pal lived in it in the 80s, and i still didn’t recognise it …

Ben Elton’s 11 year old son on vocals

Roland Space Echo onstage #totp

as of today, MUNGREL STUFF is available again on Bandcamp: over 70 minutes of 18th-century Scottish-Italian & Italian-Scottish musical experiments in all their ridiculous glory. Get it here concertocaledonia.bandcamp.com/album/mungrel-stuff

the organ in the balcony of St Salvator's Chapel, seen from below

the organ console, which looks as 1970s as it sounds

looking east along the chapel at floor level

my registration notes from the last time I played this organ in 1990-something

yesterday's organ tourism, at the 1970s-tastic Hradetzky in St Salvator's chapel in St Andrews, which my Buxtehude score reminded me I had played once before. Chris Bragg also showed me the amazing new Laidlaw Music Centre with its moving floor and reverberation chamber in the roof - wow!

in 1985 I took three members of Gamelan Sekar Petak to stay in a caravan in Poolewe for a week (Wilujeng was in our repertoire of course). Has this influence somehow lingered there?!

a view of the organ high up on the back wall of the Reid concert hall

DMcG sitting at the console with no shoes on looking quite pleased. He seems to have drawn all the pedal stops (without reeds) and the Hauptwerk chorus (without the mixture). The pedalboard is short and straight, so shoes would get in the way.

players view of the two-manual console with the maker's plaque 'JÜRGEN AHREND, LEER'

looking down at the hall from the swallow's nest. it's quite high up

today's organ tourism, on the wonderful early 18th-century styled Ahrend organ in the Reid Concert Hall, University of Edinburgh. I gave a recital on this about 30 years ago, can't remember what I played ...

Are you young, highly educated and driven, and want to contribute to our stagnant economy with its aging population and low productivity? Well out you go

Modern Times - Martin Parr: Think of England As another St George's Day passes, Martin Parr, the celebrated Magnum stills photographer, travels the length and breadth of the country to look at the English and how they see themselves.

well, this is both genuinely brilliant and properly hilarious. Martin Parr just doing what he does https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002j0v3

looking down at Ross Ainslie playing highland pipes from the University of Glasgow chapel organ loft

Tom Wilkinson playing Bach on the 1844 Broadwood piano in the university concert hall

a wide angle overhead view of Ross in the chapel

this morning: Bach on the 1844 Broadwood piano in the concert hall, this evening: pipe tunes with the organ in the chapel. Not bad for a Monday. #UofG

I’m sure Shanty the Golden Fish Portion was a long-running character in Viz

Mungrel Stuff, by Concerto Caledonia 20 track album

The whole album will be out on Friday 5 September but there’s a preview and pre-order on Bandcamp here. concertocaledonia.bandcamp.com/album/mungre...

So chuffed that this album from 2001 is available once again: a bunch of Scottish-Italian and Italian-Scottish music from nearly 300 years ago, and still one of the favourite things I’ve done, for the sheer joyful weirdness of it.

Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet The long-lost film featuring Billy Connolly’s 1975 Ireland tour captures ‘The Big Yin’ on and off stage, providing a captivating record of the comedy legend on the cusp of international stardom.

great to see this available again, with a powerful performance of Sergeant Where's Mine, and a truly virtuosic fart routine which the subtitler clearly enjoyed too. The assistant camera back in 1975 was Jan Pester who later gave me my first jobs writing music for TV! www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet The long-lost film featuring Billy Connolly’s 1975 Ireland tour captures ‘The Big Yin’ on and off stage, providing a captivating record of the comedy legend on the cusp of international stardom.

can I refer you to the following from 1h05 onwards www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

wow. i'd have to go up to the attic to check but I think this gig might be in my cassette collection, found at a record fair a very long time ago ...

photo looking across University of Glasgow memorial chapel from the organ loft to the organ chamber as the evening light comes in through the stained glass

nice to be reminded tonight of the joy of practising in a Gothic revival chapel on a summer evening

spotted my first PLASTICINE ACTION t-shirt in the wild tonight in the Three Judges ✅

From Tom Leonard’s INTIMATE VOICES 1965–1983 (Galloping Dog Press, 1984)

I played in the 'Eight Songs ...' as a student 40 years ago thanks to the peerless Alan Hacker, and every word is still burnt into my memory :)

A question people should ask themselves, but rarely do: What would you do if, tomorrow, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, and every other cloud provider you use closed your account without warning? Then maybe spend some of today safeguarding against that eventuality.

think ours is card but pretty solid - the red's very much faded from being in a window for a decade and more though!

If I remember rightly I gave our Dennis #1 to a mastering engineer in London who was a Beano devotee. My sister purloined both from a pal at DC Thomson

amazing - we also have a Dennis (in fact we've had two), but not a Wullie. I once carried him the whole way from Hyndland and nobody in the street remarked on him at all. That's Hyndland for you.

YouTube video by abcglobus CARDIACS - Recorded Live at the TOWN AND COUNTRY CLUB, London. 25 March 1988

youtu.be/KidL8T-Wzy8?...
Here's the link.
Saturday 26th July.
One night only.
Chat opens 7.00pm
Performance 7.30pm
#Cardiacs