The following EEC regulations affecting musicians came into use on the first of this month:

Most printed music will now have to carry a safety warning because the Health and Safety Executive considers that the sharps might be dangerous. It is thought that it might be possible to evade this by renaming them "blunts" and this could be tied in to the other change of nomenclature whereby, to conform to EEC standards, flats will have to become apartments.

To conform to race-relations guidelines, pianos and harpsichords will no longer be permitted to have segregated black and white notes - all notes will be grey.

It seems that the rule whereby up to two musicians were allowed to perform in pub without a licence is being misunderstood by some authorities. Application of the "Two in a bar" rule has meant that minuets, waltzes etc. are being banned in some areas but this is only a temporary problem (see below). Music is being metricated. In future all bars will contain ten beats, each of which may be subdivided into ten deci-beats. Octaves will disappear to be replaced by decaves, so 12-tone music will have to be rewritten as 10-tone music.

Although it is thought unlikely that the changes will cause any serious problems, the government has set up a heavily-funded new body to be known as Music Advice for Decimalisation (MAD).
D. Arrowsmith