Tonight was a lot of fun. I learned a new, much more economical way of playing a chord progression and got to try out the entire piece with my teacher playing the accompanyment. There were a few rough spots, but overall it was a great performance! This week, I'm going to continue honing my section, and maybe start experimenting with the accompanyment.
Often, before the lesson starts, we'll briefly chat about what we did that week, outside of music, or I'll share with him some thoughts about my studies that crossed my mind as I was practicing - basically just shooting the breeze while we get our gear and music out and prepped to play.
Tonight, after the lesson ended, I shared him with an experience I had in 6th grade band as we made our way upstairs to see me out. I remember the recital I had to perform in like it was yesterday, because it was one of the more embarassing moments in my life (you're about to get the extended version of what I shared with him):
That summer, shortly before school started, I had expressed an interest in joining the band. I wanted to play the flute, but my dad talked me into picking the baritone because he'd played it when he was my age and knew he could help me through any rough spots. Well, as the school term progressed, and we began learning more and more complex pieces, I found it increasingly difficult to understand any of the music we'd been given to learn to play for the upcoming recital. Rather than ask for help, I simply chose to avoid practicing.
During our performance, I played as much as I'd managed to learn, and then just stopped.
To help you better understand why that was a bad thing, picture this:
You're the conductor of a band full of about a dozen or so 6th grade students, one of whom plays the only bass instrument in the whole ensemble - me. The piece starts off without a hitch. Everyone's playing their assigned parts, and your baritone player beautifully pulls off a 2-measure solo involving 9 notes somewhere in the first 20 seconds of the piece. Nothing can go wrong, right? Wrong! Unbeknownst to you, your baritone player hasn't been practicing as much as he should've been. Suddenly, and without notice, your band has no bass. That's right, about one minute into a 5-minute-long piece, your baritone player simply stops playing and just sits there.
Unfortunately, it only got worse. Feeling pressure from the gym-room full of parents sitting comfortably in their folding chairs and in the bleachers in the balcony - not to mention my duty to the band and our wonderful, patient conductor - I decided to wing it.
That's right. During the last 4 minutes of this otherwise stunning performance, everyone in attendance was treated to one of four single bass notes, played completely at random, about every 10 seconds. I could almost hear our conductor thinking, "What... the.... fuck," behind a polite smile as he tried desparately to keep from laughing while he continued conducting the rest of band.
Mind you, the notes I played had no relation to the music we were performing. I just stared blankly at the music, trying to look like I knew what I was doing as I put mouth to instrument and blew.
When it was over, the audience gave a rousing applause as we left the stage, no doubt thankful that the aural torture they endured had finally come to an end. During the drive home, my dad told me how proud he was of my solo and told me he wanted so much to jump out of his chair at that point and yell, "That's my boy!" It's moments like those when you really cherish your parents and what they think of you.
There's an old saying, "He dances to the beat of a different drummer". My dad is often fond of modifying it when describing me, "He dances to the beat of an entirely different band". That night, through no ill will toward my bandmates or our beloved conductor, I pretty much said to hell with the band.
I finally have the chord progressions for Mazurka memorized! I'm nowhere near playing it as fluidly as I need to make it sound good, but I've made significant progress! Caprichos is also coming along very nicely, though I'm still struggling a bit with the last few measures.
I have a new domain name and web site, named after myself. I purchased it a week ago, and have finally got the web site up and running. I hope to have the journal moved over within the next few days. Until then, here's the new url:
Be sure to make a note of it.
I'm really happy with what I've done with it. There's no Flash or unnecessary design candy anywhere. I wrote all of the code and have created as basic, easy to navigate and read site as possible. It's clean, unabtrusive, and owned entirely by me (ie no ads!). Feel free to email me with any comments you might have about it.
The Journal link will bring you back here via a new browser window.
It seems the more complex the music I begin learning, the more difficult it becomes for me to learn, and the longer it takes to learn it. My teacher assures me that that's completely normal, especially given that I'm learning how to sight read music on top of learning how to play guitar. The only remedy is continued practice.
This week we did some more work with Mazurka and Caprichos. I've almost got Caprichos down, but acknowledging the sharps and remembering the chord progressions in Mazurka has been a real pain in the ass. There's also a couple of barre chords in Caprichos that are murder on the thumb!
Starting with this entry, I'm expanding the purpose of this journal to include entries that will cover odds and ends related to my personal tastes in music. Now that I've figured out that I can make a decent video recording of me playing, I'm also going to set up a separate section that will list every video I'll be recording of my practice sessions.
This week, I'd like to show you something I use for inspiration whenever I don't feel up to practicing. All I need do is watch about 5 minutes of this hour-long performance and I'm back in the swing of things again. It features a Classical guitarist from Croatia, named Ana Vidovic, and was recorded on January 7, 2004 at the Kennedy Center:
Finally, I've been a fan of Sarah McLachlan's music since the release of her album, "Fumbling Toward Extacy", in 1993. My respect for her just went up several notches upon watching the video for "World on Fire". Click on the link labeled watch: world on fire, located to the right of her picture: