Am going to fire this straight over to the Significant Other Penguin who has all of the skills required to understand it - I have none but it makes for interesting reading regardless. They are the sort of irritating person (as I suspect you are too) who can pick up a new instrument and be semi-fluent within a matter of weeks - and I suspect their background in the oboe and piano means they'l understand words like embouchure and Ionian Major - who I suspect is not a military man from a moon of Jupiter - even if that is where my dystopic fiction brain goes.

I love reading people writing about the things they love - you can feel the warmth coming off the page. Either that or my MacBook battery is faulty. :o/