I popped out to Coffee in the Wood on Saturday morning, to get a flat white on board before our regular 10:30 Skype chat with mum. Andrew of the Old Street Big Band was there along with his wife is Gemma and daughter Lara, neither of whom I recall meeting before. (Little Lara was eating a chocolate croissant that was wider than her jaw, and eating it sideways. She looked like the Joker from Batman after a night on the tiles by the time she had finished. I was utterly beguiled.)
Muso-chat between me and A ensued. I told him about the Cigar Box Guitar Build and Play Workshop John and I are going on in November (passim) and he tipped me the wink about the video above. (It's actually a BBC production, but "this programme is not currently available on BBC iPlayer." Why not?)
I was telling him a daft story about tuning my guitar to the hum of the fridge, but couldn't remember if it was closer to a B or a G so I just pulled B out of the air.
"Concert A is 440 Hz" he mused, "so 55 Hz will be an A as well. Our electricity current frequency is 50 Hz, which means, surely that fridge hum is closer to a G (a bit sharp)."
Absolutely right! I had got confused with the USA's 60 Hz supply. That is not a person in 10,000 who would have known. I just happened to have opened my big mouth in front of that one in ten thousand.
Music also came up in our chat with Mum. Charlotte Church has been in the news lately, which reminded me of a family legend: to wit that Mr Carter - my sister Caroline's piano and voice teacher - after a long and storied career that included gigging with Django Reinhardt, decided to cut down from two girl students to one and chose Caroline over Charlotte. (I was long gone by then, Caroline being 19 years younger than me. Catholics eh?). Apparently it is true.
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