Invigilation Ineptitude

Today I sat my AS Economics exam (AQA, both modules if you’re interested) and it wasn’t too bad.  At least the exam wasn’t.  The invigilation was diabolical (a strong word, yes, but barely strong enough for this purpose).

The way I see it, invigilators have four jobs:

1. Hand out the papers
2. Time the exam
3. Keep everybody quiet/stop communication etc.
4. Collect in the papers

Success in 1 out of those 4 is nowhere near good enough.

Module 1 was a success, invigilation wise, and it was at the start of Module 2 where it all started to go wrong.  The multiple choice answer sheets already had names printed on them, but the invigilator didn’t seem to realise this, so gave everybody the wrong sheet.  This took a good 5 minutes to rectify.  Then: “OK, time is 2:45, you may start”.  Hang on a minute – we didn’t have any answer booklet for the essay questions!  They eventually gave them out, and it was time to start.

Ah yes, time, the second of the invigilator’s tasks.  That’s the one that they really messed up.  Yeah, if you thought not giving out the answer booklets was bad enough, think again.  The exam is 1 hour 15 minutes, a mark a minute.  The invigilators wrote the time up on the board as 4:01pm.  Then, after completing a bit, I looked up again – it had been changed to 4:16pm – allowing for 1 hour and a half.  I wasn’t the only person to notice, but nobody wanted to point it out.  Eventually, it was changed back.  At this point, something had to be said.  “Excuse me, you’ve just changed the time!” somebody shouted out from the back of the room.  “Yes, I’m sorry, I got a bit confused,” the invigilator said, meekly.  Well, love, if you can’t calculate the time that an exam should finish, then you’re in the wrong job.  “You have until 4:01pm.”  So we were all writing to finish at one time, and then at the drop of a hat, it’s another.  It’s an absolute disgrace, and quite frankly the invigilator who made this almighty error should resign.  If she won’t do that, then she should be sacked, as she has failed in her job.

As for task 3, that wasn’t done too successfully either, as people were communicating to each other about the time issue.  And task 4, well, hopefully done successfully, but I wouldn’t put it past them to have lost all our papers, after today’s shambles.

It’s a terrible situation that shouldn’t have happened, and hopefully, heads will roll because of it.  It is not good enough – it’s our future that is being played with here.

Sibelius 6 Demo Review

I always find it very hard to review a demo of a programme, seeing as it is impossible to do any “proper” work on it due to the fact that saving is disabled.  However, for what I have tried, here’s what I think about some of the new features, with some miscellaneous points at the end.

Magnetic Layout

This is very good.  I will say that now, before I go on to criticise minor points, as it is very good, and deserves a great deal of praise.  I do, however, still have some small niggles with it.  When creating a dynamic marking for a low note, the dynamic marking is slightly too close to the note for my taste.  However, I see that this can be altered, and I will obviously play around with this kind of thing when I have purchased it fully.  The grouping of dynamics and lyrics are excellent, and will save me a great deal of time.  Also, the tool to “Optimise staff spacing” will be incredibly useful, as I always used to end up dragging the staves apart anyway.  However, opening old scores there are difficulties.  Objects that I had previously arranged to avoid clashes are now coloured red, which denotes a clash.  However, I’m sure that this will not happen to newly created scores, and I can’t wait to try composing a full orchestral piece with the new layout options to see its full potential.

I opened up one previous score that I had difficulties with layout in the past: an arrangement of I am what I am from “La cage aux follies”.  This is just an arrangement for solo voice and piano, but the piano accompaniment is incredibly complex, using a great deal of two part work in the right hand.  In Sibelius 5, I had to move second part rests out of the way from lower first part notes myself.  This was enough of a task on its own, but then they clashed with the dynamics and other objects below the stave.  I wondered if Sibelius 6 would handle this any better?  I recreated one such bar in the piano part from scratch in Sibelius 6.  On entry, this was what it looked like.  The second part rests have not automatically jumped down to align with the range of the notes in the second part.  For the most part, this doesn’t matter too much, but in the final beat there is the unsightly clash with the tie in the first part.  This has not been altered by Magnetic Layout, or recognised as a clash by turning the rest/tie red.  I then selected “Optimise staff spacing” and manually moved each rest down two “notches” by the keyboard, leaving this effect: This is much better, and easier than this effect could be achieved in Sibelius 5, but I was half expecting Sibelius 6 to remove the need for the manual work and jump directly to the second step.  I then inserted articulation markings and a dynamic marking, leaving the following view: This is quite clearly unacceptable, as Sibelius cannot avoid these clashes.  At least the dynamic marking is coloured red, so the programme realises that there is a clash, more than can be said of the clash between the first accent and the stem of the left-hand note.  Selecting “Optimise staff spacing” leaves this, an improvement, but still not quite right: Iwould move the dynamic marking down myself to make this finally acceptable, but I cannot, it is snapped into the collision with the accent.  I therefore have to turn off Magnetic Layout to move it, and avoid the clash.  This scenario comes up many times in this arrangement, and I’m sure that this is not an uncommon problem.  Sibelius 6 deals with it better than Sibelius 5 did, but the Magnetic Layout is still lacking, as I was hoping for an automatic solution.  If this has to be done for every bar (although admittedly the Optimise Staff Spacing option only has to be done a few times), then it can become very time consuming.  This is disappointing for me, as it was the type of problem I hoped would be solved.

Revisions

I cannot comment on this, as they cannot be created in the Demo as this constitues saving.  Looking through the example scores, however, it looks like a very useful feature, one that I will use a great deal.

Other features

I must admit that I haven’t really looked at the other features in any great detail, as I will not use them as much as the two above.  A few other points of note, however.  The keypad now has an extra view, for Jazz engraving, and this means that the default view’s shortcut is now F7, as opposed to F8 previously.  I had always assumed that F8 was chosen because it was the end of the set of four F keys on most keyboards, therefore making it easier to find.  This is obviously no longer the case, and I find that quite disappointing, as it was certainly how I found F8 quickly.  The bright side is that the new view is very useful, saving plenty of time with repeat bars and arpeggio figures.

I am not too big a fan of the pale page numbers in the navigator – it makes it difficult for me to see the page numbers – nor the extra buttons on the playback bar – it is a bit too long now – but these are minor niggles.  A final point is that I think there is a bug in the Panorama setting – this is seen, whereas previously the names were full and not chopped off.  It seems to happen at certain vertical positions on the page, with it being OK at other points.

It almost goes without saying that once again Sibelius 6 is a joy to use, and a great product.  These are little niggles, and despite these I will be upgrading.  However, I still feel that my earlier post is justified – it feels as if there is no giant leap forward in this version.

Sibelius 6

It came to my attention today that Sibelius 6 was announced 9 days ago.  It was not unexpected seeing as they usually release a new version every other year, and I was writing a similar blog post about Sibelius 5 two years ago, but the past two years have flown, it seeming like no time at all since I upgraded last time.

The feature list on paper looks fairly strong, with Magnetic Layout being the main feature, and Revisions also looking very useful (although the comments could turn out to be the Ideas Hub of Sibelius 6 – barely used).  I actually came up with the idea of a Revisions-type feature when doing my AS composition exam, and I know that I will find it easier to keep track of files with it.  Also there are plenty of features with sound (the AVID family helping out here, and ReWire looking like the answer to several people’s needs), but I cannot see myself using these, as I use Sibelius as a notation programme, with no need for complex, life-like sounds.  The piano and guitar screens seem just a little bit pointless, and I have tried similar features to conducting your own score and singing music in, with Finale family products, and it is not very efficient.  It also seems to me that the majority of new engraving tools could previously be “faked” or utilised via plugins, for example, inserting cautionary accidentals.

Whilst there is undoubted improvement in each Sibelius version, it does seem now that the majority of the new features are “power toys”, only to be used by a small minority of Sibelius users.  And whilst some of the more mainstream features, such as the Ideas Hub in Sibelius 5, and the comments in Revisions in Sibelius 6, appear useful at first, I never find myself using them.  Equally, whilst I found Panorama in Sibelius 5 and Magnetic Layout in Sibelius 6 useful, these features alone are not worth upgrading for.

For me, with the introduction of Dynamic Parts in Sibelius 4, Sibelius became the perfect notational package.  It was simple to imput notes, text and other symbols.  Easy to manipulate what had been imputted, and easy to arrange the layout of a score so that it looked professional.  Dynamic Parts meant that parts needed almost no work, and they could all be printed with just one press of a button.  At the time, whilst there were still small niggles that annoyed occasionally, I wondered what “killer feature” Sibelius would come up with for versions 5 and 6.

Thus far they have not impressed me, whilst being useful steps forward, none will revolutionise the way I notate music, such as Dynamic Parts did.  I have absolutely no interest in the sound toys and some of the more gimmiky ideas put forward (has anyone actually used the Ideas Hub?).  There are a couple of features I would love to see included, such as a feature (or plugin) which alerts the user to a layout clash after scanning the score, as clashes will still undoubtedly happen with the new system, or an option to export all parts and a score as separate Scorch files, in one button click, as at present one has to extract all the parts first, before exporting them all individually.  I would also love to see a book about the art of music engraving, telling the user whether to put, for example, the tempo text or the espression text nearer the note.  I, for one, would find that very useful.

But, I expect that we all have our own wishlist, and that is Sibelius’ problem.  The “backbone” of their product is perfect, and has been since Sibelius 4.  They now have to develop the product in a new way, and as a result of their aquisition by AVID, they have spent a lot of time, effort and resources on the audio side of scores.  They have also put in main features that would appear to a wide demographic, but are a bit thin for all of them (such as the Ideas Hub).  I’m sure that they will generate plenty of sales with this new version, but the question has to be asked: what will be the “killer feature” in Sibelius 7, and will it be a “must buy” for the average musician, as Sibelius 4 was and, I would argue, Sibelius 5 and 6 are not.

Lunch Queue Resolution

I have got more to write over Christmas, but I felt that I really should say that the school has now nailed the lunch queue problem.  They have been far better at handling the Sixth Form, and we can wait until after the Lower School have gone in, but there is now far more respect between the member of staff running the queues and the students.  All is well, but it was still a good rant!

The Lunch Queue Conundrum

I think I’m overdue a rant, so here’s one for September.  I’ll begin, however, with a bit of background.  At my school there has always been a problem with lunch queues.  That being that they are just too long!  Many different solutions have been tested (namely giving lower years priority) but they all seem to discriminate against the upper years and have been happening as I’ve gone up the school!  However, in January, the school seemed to have cracked it.  The area known as Donachers (no, I don’t know why either) was transformed into a dining hall for the specials, baked potatoes, soup and sandwiches, thus splitting the traffic.  It was good, because when I needed to get into and out of lunch quickly (namely for music rehearsals) I could go there and have lunch in no time.  It wasn’t perfect but it was a good solution.

However, at the start of this acedemic year, the school authorities decided to improve Donachers even more, making it a full dining hall and split the traffic by year group.  In the first week, it was excellent with it being just for the Sixth Form.  There were little queues and the whole vibe was excellent.  School had finally cracked it – problem solved.  The other half of my mind told me “too good to be true”, and indeed that was what it turned out to be.  For the main dining hall was still suffering from severe queuing, so for this week Donachers has been opened to the Lower School too.  This means that they have priority between 12.35 and 12.50 and between 1.15 and 1.35.

After the blissfully short queues of last week, this has come as a nasty shock to us Sixth Formers.  The stupid thing is, that even without Donachers being extended, we could have entered the main dining hall at 1.35 last year, maybe even earlier.  Plus, in reality the food is running out by the time we get there, and all extra-curricular activities begin at 1.40.  It seems that the school hasn’t thought this one through fully, as this is actually even worse than what we had last year.

I can see the other side of the argument, and I’m sure that if I was in the Middle School I’d be grateful for the change.  I don’t blame the Lower School, or think that we are in any way above them, but we didn’t have this preferencial treatment when we were in Year 7 and 8.  As a compromise, how about having Donachers for the Lower School at 12.35, when the majority of them have their lunch, letting one class have priority in Donachers at 1.10, before letting the Sixth Form in at 1.15?  This would work far better than the current situation which is stupid.  I sincerely hope that this is just another test, and that something fairer to all comes in very shortly.

A Trip to London

On Sunday I departed for two excellent days in London, mainly based around the BBC Proms.  On arrival at South Kensington tube station, we had some initial trouble in finding our accommodation (the e-mail from Imperial College telling us that they had changed where we were staying had not arrived), but we soon discovered that we were staying where we wanted to originally, before we discovered that there were no spaces there – right next to the Royal Albert Hall.  So after settling in, I went with my father to the first Prom of Bach Day – Simon Preston playing the organ.  Rather thrillingly, we viewed this from a box, so I had an excellent view of his hands and the sound was (of course) magnificent.

Once the final applause had died away, we nipped over the road to the Royal College of Music’s Britten Theatre, to hear a “Proms Plus” talk by Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Evangelist.  This was excellent, and you can hear it again at the BBC Proms website.  It was then time for the Passion itself – another excellent performance which you can see in its entirety on the BBC iPlayer.

So, then to bed at our excellent accommodation at Imperial.  We began Monday morning with a short visit to the Science Museum before returning to the Royal College of Music to partake in the BBC Proms Family Orchestra.  Although at first this seemed a little basic, I soon got more into it and by the end, I was really enjoying myself.  The highlight was the performance of a new piece by Errilyn Warren, featuring her brother Byram, and excellent jazz trumpeter.

After lunch, we made our way across to the Royal Albert Hall itself, to rehearse and perform.  The stage was spacious and easy to see (maybe even better than Snape Maltings in that regard) and the sounds epic.  As we were about to go on for the performance, we all had the opportunity to meet Roger Wright, controller of BBC Radio 3 and Director of the BBC Proms.  He stayed to listen as we played a very short tune from Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”, the new commission and an improvised Dr Who theme.  The applause from the audience of about 50 was rapturous and a great time was had by all.

But there was no time to rest.  Next to the Britten Theatre again to hear Michael Morpurgo and Julia Donaldson in the BBC Proms Children’s Literary Festival, hosted by the excellent Ian MacMillan.  You can hear the discussion on the BBC Proms website, and it was excellent fun.  Despite Michael Morpurgo and Julia Donaldson’s excellent responses, the show was stolen by Julia Donaldson’s husband, Malcolm, who played the guitar and made excellent animal noises.  Once the discussion was over, I went over to meet Michael Morpurgo, who signed some of his books we’d brought with us and upon exit, Ian MacMillan signed by Radio 3 flyer and posed for a photo with me.

So, I’d been to two excellent Proms, performed in one other and met a whole host of famous people.  What a couple of days!

Olympic Titles

As we all know, for this year’s Olympics, the BBC decided to use an animated monkey for it’s titles.  While many like it, many also do not, including myself.  This led me to wonder what the titles would look like if the BBC decided to go for a traditional live-action set of titles.  Hence this video.  It couples the pre-titles sequence from The Games Today (which was originally captured by ratpackmanreturns) and new music by talented young composer Tim Gosden.  See what you think, and drop in a comment.

Exam Results Predictions

I know I haven’t written for ages, but don’t worry – I’m not dead!  I’ve done all kinds of things, from work experience to holidays to orchestra tours.  Now it’s time for my GCSE Results on Thursday.  Here’s what I think I will get, and I will see how alike the real results are!

I already have:

• Maths: A*
• English: A*
• Additional Mathematics (FSMQ): C

I expect to get:

• English Literature: A (an A* would be nice, but not sure that my essays were very good – then again, if the examiner liked my style…)
• Biology: A (I mucked up my ISA and the final exam didn’t seem to go too well – still a chance of an A* though)
• Chemistry: A* (Lovely final paper, and got an A* in all the other modules, so should be OK here)
• Physics: A* (Final paper was a little tricky, but all my other modules were A* so hopefully…)
• History: A (Don’t think my final essays were up to scratch, but still in with a chance of an A*)
• Latin: A (chance of slipping to a B in this one, but I put loads of work in – the language paper was very hard, the poetry paper was average and the prose paper was very easy, so not sure quite what to expect)
• French: A (managed to sneak an A in the mock, and I can’t have done any worse this time, can I?)
• Music: A* (my best subject, I got full marks in the coursework and if I don’t get an A* then something will have gone seriously wrong)

That would leave me with 5 A*s and 5 As, which I would be pretty happy with.  If a couple of the As turn into A*s, then that would be even better!

NB: Additional Mathematics is a Free Standing Mathematics Qualification, not a GCSE.  There is no A* and it is marked to A Level standard.  A C is pretty highly looked upon and is generally considered better than an A* at GCSE Maths.