<HTML>In a message dated 6/19/02 11:00:53 PM Central Daylight Time, Keith writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I love you, Bill. Whatever you do, I endorse you being you. I wouldn't have you change for the world. <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">...Let's see you come up with something worth considering for a change...</BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Bill Bremmer</BLOCKQUOTE> Maybe you've got me there. I know I'm not as prolific as you, but I hope I've managed to offer maybe one thing during my entire time on this list or to the piano industry in some fashion. Hey, I was just funning with you, man. You opened this huge door in your last post, and I just had to walk in. Bet that bucket over his head will help his voice, neh? Peace friend, Keith McGavern</BLOCKQUOTE> Well, as it turns out, I was happy with the way the Don Quixote performed tonight.  He is a tall, thin person, to the point of being gaunt and with beady eyes but has quite a deep voice.  I am less tall and have a much fuller build like a football player's.  While I have a very wide range which allows me to sing much of baritone literature, my voice is generally thought of as Tenor. While I would have liked to play that role and I think the director had me in mind because he asked me to sing it first as he did last year, the guy they chose looks more like the character and has a more appropriate voice for it than I do.  My looks and voice fit the character they eventually offered me perfectly.  They took a long time to make up their minds about it.  Ironically, it is the role I originally thought I would get until I started thinking that I might get to do the lead role. Last year, the same company had me do a Baritone role because I fit the character.  I was told the role was a show stopper and there was the potential to do as they say, "steal the show".  I was encouraged to do that if I could.  That meant doing the best singing and acting I could, not trying to adjust my work to anyone else's.  They loved what I did and asked me back again this year as they have for many.  I have a lot of good friends from those connections. I took the opportunity to interpret the script in a way which shocked some people but which was also very funny from a role that most people play very conservitavely.  This had the effect of "stealing the show".  I even had to reassure the guy I was playing against not to take what I did as an actor personally, that it was only acting.  He picked up on that and it made his role more interesting too. So, this year, they gave me a role which is meant for a Tenor and although not as prominent as the leading man and lady, it is next to it but not in all scenes.  I actually am supposed to mock Don Quixote's singing, so I did.  And man, did I mock it.  It got great guffaws from everyone, including the Director.  The guy playing Sancho, the sidekick which can be and often is a show stealer role, said to me afterwards, "Man, you're gonna steal the show!" This all means I did well and I also did what you said, Keith, to all work towards a common goal.  If the secondary roles are not played well, it drags down the whole production.  When they are all played extraordinarily well, each moment of the production carries, the audience's attention.  No one leaves feeling the show "dragged" and that there was static movement and action. To answer Ken Jankura's question, the guitar tuning I used is like the Vallotti temperament.  There was a lot of discussion about it which you should be able to find in the archives.  The American Society of Luthiers has a website which has a document forbidding anyone to tune the guitar in any way but ET.  But just like with the piano, what happens in reality very often is different from theory. What I did was set the guitar's pitch to A440, then carefully tempered the strings by ear.  I rounded the results off and created a program in my SAT.  The following is the exact program of the way the guitar was tuned for The Man of La Mancha in 1992. All values are read on Octave 4 E2: -4.0  A2: 0.0  D3: 2.0   G3: 4.0  B3: -2.0  E4: 0.0 You can also use half these values and get a "Victorianized" version of it. E2: -2.0  A2: 0.0  D3: 1.0  G3: 2.0  B3: -1.0  E4: 0.0 Once, I saw a classical guitarist from New York tune this very same way.  He took a lot of time on stage between numbers getting it exactly right.  I wouldn't hesitate to use either one of the above on any guitar.  These are, however, the ONLY two sets of deviations possible except if your tuning skills and ETD are capable of halving the figures again. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> </HTML>