Fat amplification

In our church - like many churches, I suspect - we've had lots of changes in the music area over the nearly twenty-eight years we've been there. Originally there was just an organ, with occasional use made of a piano as well. Gradually the organ was superseded by piano, drums, guitar and various other instruments as the musicians came and went. The organist decided it was time to give up and went elsewhere - sadly - but it was increasingly obvious that not only was the time delay between the acoustic instruments and the organ a problem, but also the pitch aspect: it's hard to tune to an organ at the best of times, and quite honestly the other musicians weren't dead keen to do so. And it depended on whether the piano stayed in tune with the organ anyway. 

I played piano in the church for probably around twenty years (after having played it in our previous church for something like thirteen years). Eventually I was eased out in favour of keyboards. I wasn't impressed at the time, as the organist hadn't been in her day, but c'est la vie. So it goes. I think I'm reconciled now! 

With the increasing use of instruments that required amplifiers, we saw a whole range of amplifiers come and go over the years, until it seemed that the amplifiers swamped everything else in the church. (Some days they literally swamped everything, if things weren't going according to Hoyle.)

In our new building, the amplification is more under control than it used to be in the old church, or in the two buildings we used over a nineteen-year period until we built ourselves a new place. The amplifiers in the picture, which seem large enough, are nothing compared to the couple of huge ones we had in our last place. I was glad to see the back of them, as were the guys who used to have to put them in place each Sunday morning. 

As you can see, these are from the Fender family - they're officially called the Fender Bandmaster. They're probably fairly hefty to shift around, which is what solid roadies are for, but presumably they also give out a hefty sound. 

Ah, the good old days of acoustic instruments, when they only thing you had to worry about was tuning....

Meanings eluding me

If you see a phrase in this post that seems to lack good English language logic, don't be surprised. The Internet is full of surprises, and the lack of proper English is just one of them, though probably one of the minor ones.

Fender Telecaster musicians friend is a phrase which I've been trying to get to grips with for the last five minutes, and I'm wondering if it's poetry of some sort. I know what a Fender Telecaster is: an electric guitar (the kind that tends to obliterate other instruments when it's played). It's been around since the 1950s, apparently, and has been continually improved from its original state as a 'masterpiece of design and functionality.'

I'm not sure that the phrase Fender Telecaster musicians friend is a masterpiece of design and functionality, and the missing apostrophe annoys. It might work in its present state if translated into a foreign language where such curiosities are the norm. Maybe.

So is it poetry? After all poetry is a place where oddities of the language appear frequently. I came across just such a one this morning:

The heavy bear who goes with me,   

A manifold honey to smear his face...

I've been puzzling since what 'a manifold honey' might be, or why the line seems so at odds with normal language. Often such lines come right after repeated readings of a poem, or after you've memorised it and it suddenly clarifies itself when you least expect it. (I find this with poems by Les Murray, often, although sometimes certain lines of his elude me entirely, lines such as 

.....No one here will be

a visitor gnawed by lifelong celebration.

I have a rough idea what it's about, in the context of the poem, but it's by no means straightforward. However, that's the sort of thing you've got to take with poetry; it inhabits a language world of its own, one in which it surprises you by juxtapositioning words that don't like sitting beside each other, or wrenching the grammar around in such a way that you can't figure out a verb from a noun.

So perhaps what I should do is jot Fender Telecaster musicians friend into a notebook or file, and keep it until one day it suddenly decides it's the basis of a poem. (Though I think I'll be obliged to include the apostrophe, or risk my sanity.)

Fendering

As everyone knows, I'm sure, a fender bender is a colloquialism for a minor traffic accident, although when you put that phrase into Google Images you come up with a great number of shots of accidents that to me would hardly be classed as minor [see the image included here]. Considering how much excess there is to pay on any motor vehicle claim these days, and what it costs merely to replace a fender, some of these accidents must have cost around a $1000.

I put fender into Evernote to see what things would come up.  Interestingly enough there was a more than usually random set, though the number was small: just four. One of them was a photo of my grandparents' marriage certificate in which the name Charles, written in very 1901 handwriting, was mistaken for fender.  That was a bit of a surprise.

Two more photos had the same misreading problem, though not because of handwriting.  In one of them Evernote mistook the name Jenner for fender (admittedly the print is a little rounded on the page) and in the other the printed word render was picked up. Evernote does a very good job of picking up text from photos, but in these cases just didn't quite get there.

The last search response actually got the word fender, in the middle of this wonderful list from a delightful poem by Barbara Hamby called Ode to Hardware Stores: 

(garnet, production, wet or dry), hinges, wire nails, caulk, nuts,
     lag screws, pulleys, vise grips, hexbolts, fender washers
all in a primordial stew of laconic talk about football, baseball...

I'm not sure what a fender washer is, (nor a hexbolt, if it comes to that), but it's the only clipping I've got that actually contains the right word.

All of this by way of mentioning the Fender amplifier, made by the company, Fender, naturally. Fender are currently advertising an amplifier called the Vaporizer. I'm not sure if that means that if you sit in front of it you'll be vaporized, but it does sound a little ominous, even though the model in the picture looks innocuous enough.

We have an almost-vaporizing problem at our church: two sets of amps are seated on either side of the stage and though they face slightly inwards, if you sit at the right or left of the auditorium you get a full blast. One of the sound people said the best place to sit is right in the middle of the auditorium, in front of the sound desk. I might try it, but I suspect that if this is the best place to have the most moderate experience, then the sound people aren't actually hearing what most people in the place are hearing.  No wonder they don't take everyone else's complaints on board!


The fender bender photo courtesy of San Francisco Citizen

Not making time

Last night I made a weak attempt to impress my readers by showing that I could find out what some audio equipment names meant.  I'm not going to try the same thing tonight, even though Fender bass amps at Musicians Friend are on the menu, as it were.  Fender is a name that actually means something to me, though in a limited sense, as referring to guitars.  But obviously Fender have spread their wings considerably, and far more than musical instruments are part of their manufacturing these days.  Fender's history is quite interesting, and worth reading about if you have the time.

Strictly speaking I don't: I'm supposed to be practicing music for the Junior Singing Competitions here in Dunedin this weekend, practicing some nasty accompaniments to some clarinet music for a young man who'll be turning up to rehearse in the next week or so (I'm subbing for his normal accompanist), reading two books that I'm supposed to review, finishing off the Grimhilda! book, and a host of other things.  And that's apart from what needs to be done around the house in terms of day to day sorting out and maintenance.  Then we have to fit in time to go for a fitness/recreational walk (dog included), catch a bit of a kip, if necessary, and so on.

None of this has anything to do with Fender.