Happy Woman Magazine DIY Piano

Bored on a Friday morning, we were casually searching through Google articles on how to build your own piano... When we found this! A genuine article from Happy Woman Magazine, this made us laugh so much! We'll be taking very seriously into account their tips and kiln when we start building our next piano ! Thank goodness there are experts out there.

Richard
Oposium




Build Your Own Piano!!!
By Sharon Grehan-Howes

What you will need:

Lumber- a lot for a big piano less for a smaller one.
220 piano strings or good quality twine
Pressure bars
Tuning bars
Hitch pins or
Screws and wing nuts.
Felt or an old coat
Cast Iron Plate
Tools

The sawn lumber should be be slowly seasoned and dried in a a climate controlled kiln. If you are building a very small piano your oven will probably do just fine.

Choose the less good looking wood and glue planks together to build a soundboard. Leave them to dry and season. Before the soundboard can "speak" the wood fibers must be stretched: do this by bending the soundboard and glue a series of ribs to the backside. Then mount the soundboard to a wood backframe.

Sound is sent to the soundboard by the vibrating strings through bridges, over which the strings are stretched.

You will have to notch the the bridges first. The front of the finished soundboard will have a pinblock where you will mount the tuning pins. As well as treble and bass bridges, but skip this step if you're running out of time.

Mount a cast iron plate to the soundboard/backframe assembly. (You will need to put a hole for each tuning pin in the cast iron —you may need need help with that) as well as pressure bars and hitchpins, these will guide and anchor the strings.

After the plate is mounted drill holes into the pinblock guided by the holes in place or close enough.

Now you move on to stringing— this is usually done by a skilled stringer, so if you have one around by all means use him/her. If not just wing it.

Hope FM radio advert for Oposium

In order to raise the profile of our headline concert at Centre Point Church in Winton next month, Hope FM, Bournemouth's first community radio station are airing a 30 second advert for us about the concert! Starting on February 2nd 2009, the advert will be aired 5 times a day every day and beamed across Poole and Bournemouth.

If you want to listen and download the advert, we've uploaded the mp3 here.

>> Oposium Radio Advert



Feel free to distribute as you like!

Peace always,

The Oposium Admin Team

Dorset Unsigned Music Awards 2009 Launch Party attended by Oposium

Oposium attended the Dorset Unsigned Music Awards(DUMA) 2009 Launch Party, on Saturday 24th January. Amongst others, Oposium caught up with Hope FM's Sheena and Derek Dayman [pictured below].

The party was a great event with various press present and Oposium were also able to have their photo taken by Steve Cook from Seeker Photography (one of the official sponsors of the Dorset Unsigned Music Awards).



Peace Always,

The Oposium Admin Team

HMV Store Release for Oposium!

Oposium can reveal that along with commercial release onto Itunes and all major internet digital distributors, 'Life Under The Sun' will also be available to buy from HMV in Poole.



We will be adding to this list of shops over the next couple of months leading up to the release date which will be revealed very soon! Oposium will also be making appearances in store to help promote the album.

We're extremely excited to be able to release in HMV as the store is one of the largest CD & DVD retailers in the UK.



Peace always,
The Oposium Admin Team

Poole Lighthouse Mayor of Poole's Civic Awards Performance for Oposium

Photos taken from our Poole Lighthouse concert last Friday are up. Oposium performed roughly a 2 hour set of jazz with swing versions of tracks from Life Under The Sun. Performing to over 400 VIPs including Robert Syms MP and the Mayor of Poole Councillor Mrs Joyce Lavender.



The full photogallery can be found here at http://www.flickr.com/photos/31075590@N06/sets/72157612757741668/



Oposium would like to extend their thanks to the Mayor of Poole, and the Mayor's Secretary Jo Clements for inviting us to perform. Thank you for a very warm welcome.

Richard, Sam, Scott and David
OPOSIUM

Official iLike Page for Oposium

Oposium have now got their official iLike page going. Come, find us and and add us in on your Myspace, Bebo or Facebook pages by iLiking us!



Our iLike address is;

www.ilike.com/artist/oposium



Peace always,

The Oposium Admin Team

Gasputin - new saint for Gazprom!

Following protests in Tbilisi over the ensuing gas crisis in Georgia, we thought this piece of art was not only very funny, but also raised awareness of the increasing plight of many Georgians. Georgians are set to face one of the coldest winter in decades, amidst heightening tensions between Georgia and Russia. Explosions that happened on Sunday cut off gas and electricity supplies from Russia to Georgia and Armenia. As a result, Georgian political rhetoric has accused Russia of trying to destabilise the country. Georgians have taken to nicknaming the Russian president Vladimir Putin "Gas-Putin", or Gasputin putting an ironic slant on the whole situation.



Peace always,

The Oposium Admin Team

Brand New Online Store for Oposium!

Oposium.com is proud to announce that the new Online Music & Merchandise Store is now up and running!

All of the tracks from the Oposium debut album 'Life Under The Sun' are available to be previewed and downloaded as well as the new Official Oposium Fan Caps (as modelled by Czech model & star Michal Miksovsky (previous modelling has included T-Mobile).

All releases will be available from the Oposium store first before becoming available on other commercial sites.

You can go directly to the store at store.oposium.com or follow the link in the main part of the page.



In other news, there is a correction on the previous post. Oposium will be performing on 28th February 2009 at Centre Point Church, Winton, not Kinson as written. Tickets for the Winton concert are available online now from boxoffice.oposium.com.

Peace always,

The Oposium Admin Team

Poole Lighthouse (Poole Arts Centre) Wessex Hall Concert for Oposium

Oposium have been invited to play Poole Lighthouse (Poole Arts Centre)'s Wessex Hall next Friday January 16th 2009 for the Mayor of Poole's Civic Awards Ceremony. The band will be playing jazz/swing versions of tracks from Life Under The Sun to the 1500 seat capacity venue.

"Poole Lighthouse is a fantastic venue to play as it's certainly the biggest venue in Poole..." explains Richard "...I had the luxury of playing solo at Poole Arts Centre two years ago so it's great to be able to go back with the whole band and perform."



Out of all of Oposium, only Scott hasn't yet played on the Poole Lighthouse stage. Sam performed the first movement of Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto 4 years ago and Dave appeared last year with DYO and a 24 piece jazz band. The Poole Lighthouse stage also boasts a full length concert Steinway grand piano.


^Above, Richard plays Poole Lighthouse, Wessex Hall January 2007.

The concert at Poole Lighthouse comes as Oposium continue with their mini-tour of the largest venues in Poole, having now played at St Mary's Longfleet and PURC in the last two months. February will then see the band perform at Centre Point church in Kinson, Bournemouth.

Oposium Admin

St Mary's Longfleet Routes To Roots Concert Thank You!!

Just a shout to all who were involved one way or another on Saturday for the concert at St Mary's Longfleet; we had an amazing time and were so grateful to everyone who turned out!! So thank you - in particular to Clive Garton who organised so much, John on sound and Tim Piper with the video feeds - but also to everyone who organised the cafe and setting up the stage through the two days! We couldn't have done it without you :)

Also, big thanks to all the bands who supported us - Once October, View 93 and Not About The Heroes !



Pictures from the concert are available here >>

THANK YOU all again!!!

Richard, Sam, Scott and Dave
OPOSIUM