So this week, your music information specialist found it necessary to post links about the Edinburgh Festivals, Glasgow’s Piping Live (and the launch of the Piping Centre’s ‘Noting the Tradition’ project, which I attended), and various research-support projects that I’ve come across.  Like #phdchat, on Twitter.  There’s also a #phdchat wiki on pbworks, and now there’s a blogspot blog, too.  I feel a bit like an octopus, reaching out to grab all these interesting ideas to pass on, in the hope they’ll appeal to our staff and student readers.

This is all well and good, but eventually I reach the stage where I feel I’m constantly connected.  It’s all useful stuff, but the more I draw into my web, the more I feel I’m only engaging with things at the most surface level.  At this point, I need to turn the computer and mobile phone off before I go bonkers!  Mind you, http://WhittakerLive.blogspot.com is looking good these days, and I like to think interest in it is increasing.  I’m also getting to “know” quite a few people with similar professional interests to my own.

At the end of my week off, I find I’ve got quite a bit of domesticity done, burned a few calories at the leisure centre, not to mention writing a conference report and turning a presentation into a journal article.  Result!  If I could just find the strength of mind to keep away from the internet for the weekend, I’d probably feel more rested when I get back to the office.  Being a workaholic isn’t always a good thing …

I was determined to provide audio clips for my Minstrels and Metaphors paper at IAML 2011 in Dublin this week.  I engaged a thoroughly modern minstrel (one of our students). We rehearsed, and I booked the studio.  Unfortunately, even modern minstrels have human frailties, and mine lost her voice 36 hours before the recording session.

I texted back what any self-respecting professional would say: “Don’t worry about it – I’ll sort something out.”

And I did – I sang to my own accompaniment. Problem solved.  Apart, that is, from the fact that I’m not a trained singer.  I don’t like the sound of my own voice, so I disliked the majority of my tracks.

However, I discovered an out-of-print CD with a couple of the Thomas Moore songs, and Hyperion helpfully provided me with an authorised copy, within just 24 hours.  So there I was, all dressed up and ready to go.  Two recordings of my piano-playing (perfectly acceptable); one of my self-accompanied singing (tolerable); one of my tracks strategically dropped;  and two very nice Hyperion ones.

Off I flew to Belfast, chaired a session, proceeded south to Dublin, and dived into the second conference.  Twenty minutes before the appointed hour, I presented myself at the podium of an absolutely huge auditorium (400-seater lecture theatres are larger than I’m used to!), and handed over the discs.

The machine swallowed the first one, refused to recognise it, play it or eject it.  (Did a higher power cause this to happen to spare my blushes?)  The moral, of course, is to save the track to a memory stick and embed it in the PowerPoint.  I could have kicked myself.  The disc was finally ejected and handed back to me after a further two presentations.

I suppose there are some things that you just learn the hard way!  It was fortunate, to say the least, that another speaker had coincidentally played one of the Irish songs that I would have finished up with, so the audience had already heard what Moore’s songs sound like.   At any event, I will know better another time.  You can never be too well-prepared.

The positive side was that I had more time for the presentation, which went like a dream and was favourably received. Thank heavens for that! 

(I’m preparing the paper to submit to the Editor of Fontes, but in the meantime, readers might like to visit my web-page on Minstrels and Metaphors - it’s a page I added to our performing arts blog, WhittakerLive.)