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Topic: Tina Billett (Read 28896 times) previous topic - next topic

Tina Billett

I am so sorry to have to tell you all that I found out today that Tina passed away in January last year.

I think that because we all knew that her failing sight was preventing her from participating in one of her favourite activities, transcribing music into NoteWorthy Composer scores, we were probably not concerned that we had not heard from her.

Her husband, John, told me that she died of a heart attack.

Her website http://www.keyboard-creations.co.uk/ is supposed to be still up and running but it's not. This was one of the reasons that I tried to contact her today.  John thought that the site should still be up and running and so he will investigate why it is down.  He has given me permission to put more of Tina's work on the Scriptorium and so you will see that happening over the next few months.

We do already have some of Tina's excellent work on the Scriptorium but for those of you who are not familiar with her work, here are a few links :

Tina's Beethoven Files
Tina's rendition of Holst's famous Planets suite
Tina's Joplin Rags
Tina's Tchaikovsky files

I have offered our condolences to John. I shall be speaking to him again in the near future and will pass on any messages you may have for him.


Richard

Rich.

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #1 –
It seems odd to me to thank someone for such sad news, but thank you Rich.

I have long missed Tina's wit and in depth knowledge of things Noteworthy, and not so noteworthy ;)

Though we were separated by half a world I believe we had become friends, and to learn that her absence has become permanent has saddened me more than a little.

Please pass on my sincerest, if somewhat belated, condolences to her family.
I plays 'Bones, crumpets, coronets, floosgals, youfonymums 'n tubies.

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #2 –
A great loss.

Tony

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #3 –
Thanks for letting us know, Richard.
If you talk to John again, please pass on my condolences.
The body of work she left us is a wonder to behold.

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #4 –
Tina mentored me when I first stepped onto the forum - as I'm sure she did for many, many others. The forum has been poorer for her absence for the last several years; it is poorer still today, with the knowledge that she cannot ever come back. Thank you, Richard, for letting us know. Please add my condolences to those you are passing on to her family. As keenly as we feel the loss, they must be feeling it much, much more deeply.

Bill

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #5 –
I am sorry to learn Tina has passed away.  Thank you for letting us know, Rich.

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #6 –
That is sad news indeed.

I remember all the hard work she did: she submitted many a composition to the Newsgroup, where eager Eagle Ears could help her to finalise the work.
The most notable time was when she had trouble with "moving clefs" in a piece by Dvorák. I said "Play bars so-and-so.
Sounds right, right? Now, insert a bass clef in the same bars. Play them again. Now it's Dvorák!" or words to the effect. She was extatic and said things like "What would I do without you?"
It is now, sadly, time to think "Where are we now, without Tina?"

And, when the Eagle Ears Brigade pointed out some errors in works Tina submitted, those errors were, as often as not, *not* Tina's fault. One of her (my!) favourite answers was: "Must have been a misprint." She trusted the Eagle Ears and her own judgment more than the eyes of the editors. I will remember Tina for the benefit of the doubt she so often granted me.

My condolences!
Rob.

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #7 –
It's very sad, and what's weird is that I was just thinking the other day, "Tina hasn't posted in a long, long time".  My prayers are with her family.
John

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #9 –
How sad to learn Tina's death!

While I disagreed privately with her about how their first transcriptions were made, I found she was a parallel soul to me. She liked to do with NWC the same as I liked to do: transcribe classical works into NWC and MIDI. Now Tina is no more with us but her transcriptions will remain.

Let me express my hommage and appreciation to her in this forum.

Ramón
 

Re: Tina Billett

Reply #10 –
Perhaps I should come to the Forum more often - I learned of Tina's passing in the Newsgroup with great sadness. I now post here what I said then in response to Richard's announcement, in order to add a little to the tributes that others have already posted here.

Perhaps however the greatest tribute any of us can make to Tina is to listen to her work and in her own word "Enjoy".

*****************************************************
Tina, gone from us? Richard, I can scarcely bring myself to believe your
words.

Her ability to produce high quality scores was first class A* would have
been too low a grade for her. It was not just the ability to get the notes
onto e-paper but her surpassing ability to then turn those notes into music
for which she well earned her penname - Tinability.

Her work on Beethoven, that she succeeded with the Planets and Rachmaninoff
is great evidence of this. Perhaps only one thing stretched her too far, and
having seen her work here I can understand it but it was not so much a
limitation on her part but the limitations of midi and NWC that held back
her work on The Rite of Spring!

And then, who can forget the occasions when someone posted a request for
something and Tina would respond: "You mean [something like] this?" And then
her work on the mpc manual, her use of softfonts, her appreciation of the
new features introduced in NWC2 - GlobalMod! and the like - what a debt we
owe to her.

How hard her increasingly failing sight must have been for her, but how
valiantly in spite of this she pressed on. I am so sorry to hear of her
passing. And that we knew nothing of it for a year. God grant comfort to
John. And Richard, thank you for looking to include more of her work in the
Scriptorium.

Stuart
*****************************************************
PS Richard has put a copy of Tina's website, Keyboard Creations
http://nwc-scriptorium.org/kc_index.html, into the Scriptorium for us.
Stuart Moffatt