Cadenzapalooza

First-time adventures in writing my own cadenzas.

I've decided I'm going to add tag-lines at the beginning of these posts, in case that seemed weird.  You know, so when I post the link on facebook, the first sentence that shows up under the title isn't about blueberry muffins or something....

So tonight, I finished writing out very nice-looking copies of the first drafts of my first attempts at cadenzas for the Mozart concerto, movements 1 and 2.  (I'll write one for 3 in the next few days.)  It was actually a lot of fun!  I definitely kept in the spirit of the game that I wrote about last entry.  At the beginning, I went to Blair in order to finish these cadenzas, work on reeds, and maybe practice a little.  Old mindset would have been worrying about reeds while working on the cadenzas and mangling reeds while frustrated I didn't have enough time to practice today.  New mindset said I have to write these cadenzas at some point, and if it takes a little longer tonight and I don't get to the oboe, that's OK.  Originally I was going to do them over fall break because I "wanted to have a lot of time" to do it, but I've come to realize that isn't the best mentality, and I can do just as good of a job in the middle of a school week as during a four day break.  I have to manage time according to quality of product, not quantity.

Well, about the cadenzas!  I got the part about deconstructing the themes into motives and piecing them together in interesting ways.  And I had a lot of fun snaking around different key areas.  The most difficult part for me was writing a "virtuosic" part - basically, interestingly noodley sequences.  Noodle, noodle.  I asked Professor Ploger about it, and today in Musicianship, we talked a little about sequences. She gave us a Bach Fugue (WTC Eb Major) to analyze and basically suggested that we will learn how to write best from studying fugues and written cadenzas and playing around with it ourselves.  So, I actually did give myself the time to just play around with chords and discover things for myself (learning-oriented) instead of allotting time to write the cadenza (product-oriented).  This afternoon, before embarking on my cadenza expedition, I analyzed the fugue in great detail - blue for statements of the subject, yellow for countersubject, and then identified how the motivic fragments played themselves out in the episodes (with more colors!  Green, orange, purple, grey!).  I also did a general harmonic analysis and a very specific one when it came to the sequences.  I learned SO much from doing that!  The noodley parts in my Mozart cadenzas are very Bach Eb Major Fugue inspired...

The other major difficulty I had was writing the cadenza for the second movement.  I found it to be a lot more challenging that for the first movement, primarily because the technique I used to modulate in the first cadenza is inextricably embedded in the melody of the second movement.  That doesn't seem to be too clear, I might just end up babbling nonsensically about this...but for example...I want to take the descending motive "la sol fa mi re do#"....well, what exactly do I change?  The melody already did a rather suave move from fa major to re harmonic minor.  So I ended up with a lot more embellishment, jumping octaves, and less harmonic adventure, but I'm still pleased at how it turned out.  The sequence is kinda nifty that I used because I actually come back to sol harmonic minor in a different way than I left it...

So, they aren't masterpieces, of course, but I am so proud that my first attempts turned out so nicely!  Can't wait to write the third movement's.  I know they'll be good, because I'm looking forward to some ingenious feedback from Professor Ploger and Professor Hauser.  Maybe I will show them to Dr. Rose as well...

The Excerpt Hat and Other Magic Tricks

I have devised a fun, new element to add to my daily practice. I wrote down all of the excerpts I'm working on/want to keep fresh on little slips of paper. I didn't count, but looking back I'd estimate around 25. Well, my original idea was to put them in a hat, but I didn't have a proper hat in the reed room (even though there is actually a box of hats in there, but no suitable hats for pulling rabbits out of). Instead, I folded the slips of paper and put them in one of the wine glasses from that time we played the Schwantner in orchestra. Uh, the piece involved the oboists playing pitched wine glasses, you know, filling them with a certain amount of water and then gliding a finger around the rim to make squealy ringy noises.

Okay, back to the magic excerpt hat. Er, wine glass. Magic Excerpt Wine Glass. The plan is that every time I sit down to a new practice session to pick a slip of paper, solfege the excerpt first, then give myself one chance to play it really well. And then move on. If I'm unhappy, I can practice it later of course, but part of the exercise is to really ask myself to play it well straight away, not allowing myself to practice hard bits first or play with a metronome first. Allllsooo, if anyone walks into the reed room or knocks on the door, I will ask them to pick an excerpt from the Magic Excerpt Wine Glass and then perform it for him or her.

You know what that means. If you're a Blair student, you should knock on the door if you're passing by and ask me for an excerpt!!! It'll only take 3 minutes or less, and if you have to run, you don't have to stay and listen! I may put a sign on the door inviting passersby in...

So another big thing I've been thinking about - particularly with all the exercises we do in musicianship, but also really with everything I enjoy doing - reading, practicing, etcetera - what it was/would have been like to do those things as a child. I dwell on this mostly because of how frustrating many of the exercises in musicianship are. It's already frustrating when I have a hard time getting the hang of something, but it is aggravated by my knowledge that if I were 3 or 5 or 6 and doing the same thing, it would be no effort at all to become fluent in the same concepts on the same level. I don't remember anything ever being difficult for me as a little kid. I either chose to learn something or I chose not to. For the longest time, I thought learning how tell time was really dumb and useless, and so refused to learn how. Same for learning how to read music...clearly got over that at some point.

Funny how one of those things that I refused to learn, I think, is standing way in the way of getting back to the me who refused to learn it: time. Wanting to get back to a mode of learning that is nothing but sheer fun, I have been asking myself what the differences are between how I approach things now and how I approached things then. Maybe these differences seem obvious to you, dear readers, but addressing it has really illuminated much in my own mind.

Childhood learning is pure play. It's characterized by a complete absorption in the moment and the task at hand with full value placed solely on doing for the sake of what is being done, as opposed to for the sake of achieving a long term goal or satisfying a requirement. There is no sense of (here are some extreme examples) "if I can't play this excerpt perfectly, I'll never get a job" or "it's so embarrassing that I've been in music school for four years and can't read this rhythm correctly the first time" or "i've got to read this book by tomorrow for philosophy class, i need to know the terms right now, i'll think about them later" or "i don't have time to practice (spends half hour of practicing thinking about the looming philosophy paper)."

Basically, in all the memories I have of myself learning as a child, I had no inner talking. No self-conscious criticism. The learning is done purely for the self, not for a teacher, a grade, acceptance into a conservatory, or to get a job. I'm not saying we are always thinking this way or only thinking this way. Actually, I'm not saying anything about "we" at all. Just talking from my own experience. I certainly do things I love for myself, but they are always colored by the ten million other things I am conscious of having to get done or the reasons why I have to be doing this specific thing now and what I'm doing it for. Even sometimes when I read for fun it seems that I'm doing it more because of the idea that I like reading more than I am actually enjoying the reading at hand in the moment.

As a child, I played, and accidentally learned while doing so. I remember reading, making a big chart of the multiplication tables and finding patterns, playing drawing games with my mom, writing stories, all without any regard for it "being good for me" or "making me smarter" or "making my future better." When I learned to read, it was practically an accident. Zero awareness of needing to learn how to read in order to be accepted as intelligent in the culture I was born in, or needing to learn how to read so that some day I could get into college. It was just something fun that I was doing. And with that kind of approach, I learned to read, which is now, I feel it is safe to say, my strongest skill out of every learned skill I have.

I don't know exactly how to communicate what I'm trying to say. I don't mean for it to seem like I'm always doing tasks as a mercenary for something or someone else. But in comparison to what it was like to be a child, I am. I feel like most people probably do in some capacity.

So my new goal is to approach everything as a child. To think of it as play. Ideally, before I start something is the only time when I will be planning ahead, thinking how much time I am allowing myself to play at whatever it is I'm doing (rhythm exercises, Bach, oboe, reeds, whatever). But after that, total engagement with the task at hand. No worries if I spend the entire half hour on one exercise or one excerpt. If I'm having fun...I don't care. Because if I'm having fun, the learning will be quality. Because I have sufficient wisdom to practice effectively. It's the times when I don't want to be in the practice room that I waste time notching up the metronome and practicing scales mindlessly. If I'm having fun, it takes a quarter of the time to get my scales fast and clean like I want them. I know this from experience. I'll have gotten WAY more out of having fun playing one excerpt for a half hour than from unhappily and trudgingly spending three hours running through the hour and a half of solo rep I'm working on.

So the basic train of thought is as follows: I have fun when I'm practicing effectively. So if I think about practicing (and everything else!) as all fun and games, I'll learn more effectively from my practicing. I don't mean that one necessarily follows the other. Effectiveness and fun are co-constitutive aspects of genuine adult learning.

Okay, I'm babbling on and on and on and NOBODY is reading anymore, I'm sure. Except my parents probably. Hi mom. Anyway, none of this probably made any sense, and I'm sure I left out some key explanations or points, but writing it has certainly helped me understand what I've been thinking about recently. Aaaaand I had fun writing this entry, so THERE. I win.

Copycats

"But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self in not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself."

-Kierkegaard (via Anti-Climacus), The Sickness Unto Death (1849)

"...we have exhibited as a phenomenon an authentic potentiality-for-Being-a-whole which belongs to Dasein. With this phenomenon we have reached a way of Being of Dasein in which it brings itself to itself and face to face with itself...(In inauthenticity, Dasein) fails to see itself in relation to the kind of Being of that entity which is itself."

-Heidegger, Being and Time (1927)

Thought this was really cool.

Solfège des Solfèges, Miracle of Miracles

Well, just had a fight with a blueberry bagel and lost. But I'm eating it anyway.

Annnyway. I've been in a surprisingly good mood today, considering I have NO good reeds and just got back from a two hour dress rehearsal. May have had something to do with the epic progress Caroline and I made musically today!

We rehearsed Baroque stuff together right after my studio class (Caroline plays violin; we're doing Baroque chamber music together and we're the only two students in the Musicianship 7 class). Sitting next to each other without harpsichord, all of the sudden we could actually play in tune! It was miraculous. Something to do with finally having a decent reed, something to do with us having time to practice this week and feeling like we actually had time to prepare, something to do with sitting next to each other so we could actually hear each other and adjust. In Baroque music, I feel like once one thing falls into place, everything else comes and starts to settle along with it. So we made great progress on style as well, feeling larger beats and understanding the rhetoric more and more.

Then, after a luxurious dinner at Quiznos, we sightsang for about 15 minutes from the third book. SO many grace notes and silly little trills. It was so much fun to be extra dramatic about them.

Our chamber coaching went really well, and I wasn't frustrated the entire time and cringing at my intonation through it, which usually happens. Towards the end, I was getting sharp, but my lips were practically falling off, soooo...I forgive myself.

Afterwards, Caroline and I dedicated a solid, very productive chunk of time to rhythm. We're working on ridiculous subdivisions of the beat - 64ths and stuff (you know, hemidemisemiquavers and such things hehehehehe). But we were really getting the tough exercises that have different rhythms tapped and vocalized. And then we did some Bach, naming chords and inversions as Caroline read through, and then singing through again on scale degrees in the soprano. It's so much fun to work on this stuff with another person, especially when she's as nerdy about it as I am. Legitimately fun. I mean, I say it's fun anyway, but I mean fun like crossword puzzles or reading a novel fun. Practicing music exercises with other people is actually board games or charades fun. Okay, I'm babbling now.

I'm glad I could focus on the positive in this post and not just complain about my reeds the entire time.

Fall Break

Okaaaay. Grad school applications are stressing me out a little, so I've given up for now and am updating the blog to de-stress. I guess what is stressful about them is mostly that there are SO many little details and separate documents to fill in, upload, etcetera, and I'll spend a long time on it, and then look back and see I accomplished hardly anything. Just navigating the websites simultaneously is hard enough, and I keep double checking and cross checking the requirements out of paranoia. And trying to figure out a strategy for requesting audition dates is a nightmare. And I don't even know if my list is finalized yet. But the progress I made in the last hour has been good - I ordered transcripts sent to 3 schools and one to myself because UT requires it be scanned and uploaded as a pdf. What a pain. Why can't I just send you my transcript like every other school? Argh. And I have my rep list solid (as in the list of things I will be playing for the auditions). And I have 2 possible audition schedules that will allow me to get in all the auditions and not miss time from the London exchange program.

But enough about that. I'll feel better about myself if I reflect on what I've accomplished this fall break so far. I'll bold the bits that make me feel that I've been super productive. I've put in 3 hours documenting and spreadsheeting for the China tour. Went to the symphony Thursday night. Acquired 9 books for Ploger (4 from music library, 4 from annex, 1

from biomed) and printed an electronically delivered article. Met with Dr. Rose. Went hiking with Shelby in Percy Warner Park. Practiced some visualization and score reading for musicianship. Made a few reeds (none of them looking too promising however...) and practiced a bit. Reground three of my knives (they only needed an eensy bit of regrinding, so it didn't take very long), and they are sooooooo sharp now!!! Wrote a lot of emails have to do with China and other business, stupid little emails grrr. Booked my flights for my trip to Michigan for a lesson/tour in late November and for Thanksgiving. Made a pitcher of iced tea. Watched Jane Eyre with Valerie and Shelby. Cleaned my room. More impressively, cleaned the reed room. I CLEANED THE REED ROOM. I should post pictures later. Did my reading for Phenomenology. Picked up dresses my mom sent me (same dress, two sizes to try) from the post office, tried them on, and sent back the the one that was too big.

So I've done a little bit of work on a lot of things. I guess that does make me feel better, to see that I am balancing out all this work in a healthy manner.

I'm uploading some photos of yesterday's hike. Computer is slow. Also why did I take five million photos of the deers?

Also, on Friday, I had a really fantastic lesson with Professor Dikeman, the new flute professor. Did I mention that I had a lesson earlier with Professor Jackson, the new clarinet instructor, as well? I don't remember. But both lessons were such great experiences. I'm trying to

play for as many great musicians as I can in preparation for my grad school auditions. Ok, I feel like this post is dragging on. I'm rambling, but at least after I post this, I can cross off "update blog" off my to-do list!

Here are some more pics from hiking:

Old and New Music

Oboe highlight of the day: playing through the first movement of Mozart with accompanist in performance class. For the first time in a year, I felt like there were some good things going on, and I could admit to myself that I've made progress since I started it. For those that don't know, the Mozart oboe concerto is THE oboe concerto. It's on every orchestra audition, festival audition, grad school audition, and anything else EVER. And the expectations for it are astronomically high. So anyway, there are still lots of little bits to fix, like getting the trills into place and much more polishing, but generally, it's there more than it was. Must write cadenzas over fall break! Excited for that.

Warming up. I've been slipping lately. Must get back on that horse.

Oh, so of course as soon as I updated my blog the other day, I remembered about a thousand other things I am doing this semester that I forgot to mention. I'll talk about the most important one now - new music stuff. Most upcoming event is Trey's senior composition recital. I'm playing Mar de Lurin, a piece for oboe and guitar based on some really fantastic paintings. Professor McGuire is performing with me. We've already rehearsed quite a bit, since I used it as my audition piece for Peter, a violinist with the Royal Academy of Music in London, for the London Exchange Program in the spring. Anyway, it is a VERY beautiful piece, and y'all should come hear me and Prof McG premiere it October 23rd, 8pm!

Dr. Rose recently finished a solo unaccompanied work for oboe as well. Roger is premiering it soon - I can't wait to hear him play it! Dr. Rose gave me a copy of the score and I have been working on it as well. I hope to work on it and play it in the spring...it will probably be part of the London exchange program business.

I'm also considering putting on an Oboe Music by Blair Composers programme in the spring. Okay, so I need a catchier title. But I would love to perform works I've already put together as well as commission some new ones. Can I do this with grad school auditions and a recital? We shall see. But I am taking only 12 hours for REAL next semester. Or so I say now...I tried so hard this semester to cut back, I really did. I can stop any time I want to, I swear...

Catching Up

So it's been two months, I've been quite delinquent, I think it's time to bring the blog back. Life has always seemed much less hectic when I've kept a journal or blog of sorts. It's a good thing to reflect on the day's activities and thoughts. The Pythagoreans lived under a strict discipline that incorporated review and reflection; upon waking, the Pythagorean would review the events of the previous day and plan for the day ahead before taking a meditative solitary morning walk.

Back at Vanderbilt and quite in the thick of things. Tonight I performed a Partita by Hertel on Baroque oboe with Professor Smith on his harpsichord recital, quite the honor. I played on modern oboe with organ at his church a few weeks back as well.

I'll bring the blog up to speed with a quick summary of my projects for this semester and prospects for the next.

I'm the orchestra manager for the Vanderbilt Orchestra China tour this December. We'll be gone from about December 20-January 3 or so. I have to deal with the visa applications, vaccination paperwork, bus scheduling, etcetera etcetera. This Wednesday I made a list of everyone's full legal name and passport number. 95 people, 9 digits for each passport number.

That's 855 digits that had to be perfect. Not a low-stress job, and with the harpsichord concert today, it's been a rather rough week.

Also, I'm helping Professor Ploger with her research. Right now I am compiling an extensive survey of the literature that has been written on musical intervals, from 500 B.C. to the present. For each article, I am also either copy/pasting the abstract or writing a brief summary. So far the document is a hefty double spaced 80 pages, and I have miles to go. But I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel - now when I look through the bibliographies at the ends of the articles, they're mostly articles I already have with only one or two new possibilities to look into.

I've decided to do a thesis next semester, so I'm talking with Dr. Rose (who will be my adviser) this semester and doing some preliminary research. The thesis will be in the spirit of my independent study last year, pulling together trends in philosophy, visual art, literature, and poetry with musical modernism. Still need to pick a central piece to focus on...

Oboe lessons as usual, musicianship as usual, performance class as usual, recital attendance as usual, orchestra as usual, Alexander technique as usual, reed class as usual...

Chamber music, but not as usual - Baroque chamber music! Caroline (violin) and I are working in a trio with Lillian, a staff accompanist. It's been a lot of fun, but I've been so frustrated with reeds (fixed now, thanks to the pressure of the CSmith recital and Prof Hauser's help) and finding the time to practice Baroque oboe. It's a bear switching back and forth, but I need to face that a little more boldly.

I'm in conducting class as well this semester. I feel silly.

And lastly but not leastly, my philosophy class is Phenomenology. We're reading Heidegger's Being and Time and Levinas' Existence and Existents. I absolutely love it, have been doing extra work by accident (of course), and the professor is SO cool. She's brilliant and lets me write papers connecting Heidegger's thought to music instead of just summarizing/explaining his concepts, which is the weekly assignment. I've only done one paper so far along those lines, relating H's concepts of Understanding, Interpretation, and Meaning to music performance, but

I'm looking forward to a 5-7 page paper every two weeks doing this sort of thing. It's fun!

And the Morgan is fabulous with Valerie and Shelby of course. Shelby and I came out victorious in a bidding war on ebay today for an antique toaster. Bear and 'Pard (aka Cleanser aka Sluggo) doing well, as you can see in the photo.

Now that we're up to speed, I'll start posting more interesting things!

L

Note to Self

Practice modern oboe tomorrow.

Do It Yourself Oboe

So I've been taking a few days off to do silly things - read House of Leaves, watched cycle 16 of ANTM, started on a painting but failed to get anywhere with it. But in that time, I did do some shopping around for some key oboe supplies that I needed to do some essential things maintenance-wise.

The other side of knowing how to play oboe is knowing how to take care of the oboe. So much of reed making and oboe maintenance is actually a very creative and inventive thing - there isn't one way to fix every problem, and there aren't tools designed for every problem either. Half the time it seems, our tools come from the hardware store or the craft store, and we have to come up with solutions ourselves.

The problem with all this of course, is that the modern instrument is extremely delicate. A half a turn of one screw can throw off an entire mechanism. A bent rod can be beyond the means of an individual to repair. And if anything is too messed up and can't be righted by the individual player, the oboe has to be sent off to a professional repair person, which not only costs $$$ but also, you lose your oboe for a few weeks or even a month or two. So any move made on the instrument must be very, very careful and command the repair person's entire awareness.

All this being said, you can imagine that young players are deterred from touching the instrument's mechanisms or trying to fix it in any way. At least I was, and understandably so. But my mom's paranoia made a much bigger imprint on me than it should have, and I am WAY behind in knowing my instrument as I should. I mean, that's part of the oboist's job, and sometimes one has to clean an octave vent before going on stage for a solo or fix a crack on the airplane. So my goal for this year is to shake off that residual fear and get some hands on experience. As I mentioned before, I was hoping to take the keys off my oboe during this stint at home. I still plan to do that, maybe tomorrow.

But before I could get around to that, a problem posed itself to me, forcing me to face the mechanics and take matters into my own hands. I took my modern oboe out a few days ago for the first time since Longy (didn't take it with me to Boston, hadn't played it in almost two weeks), and the octave key didn't work! Old me would have immediately sent it off to Carlos. New proactive me took the key off to see what was going on, and figured out the problem (I'll spare you the technical talk). I also talked to Jared and Carlos the next day, and both came to the same conclusion - the wood had shrunk. I tried the humidifier, but no luck so far. I might end up having to send it off to Carlos anyway, or maybe there's something Jared can do. But the point is, I was very proud of myself for getting my hands dirty and checking the problem out with no other oboists around! Bravery! And I didn't mess anything up, so I have a little more confidence now to build on.

The other do it yourself event I've been working on is the Baroque oboe staples. Baroque oboe, being much less widespread than modern, has even less tools designed for it, and thus even more of the do it yourself aspect to being a player. In one sense. In another sense, there aren't any keys you have to doodle around with, so that's certainly a relief. But, for instance, the staples I got came just as metal tubes. I had to prepare them myself (ie put string around them). But basically I had to figure out the method for doing so myself, and figure out where the string needed to be thinner or thicker or whatever in order to fit snugly in the oboe. Gonzalo talked through it once, pretty quickly, so I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing, but I think they ended up fitting very nicely and looking very lovely. I mean, not that it was a difficult sort of thing to figure out, but still, old me would have waited to get to Vandy so Jared could show me, despite the simplicity of the task. New me forged ahead and conquered!

Just to give you an idea of some of the weird things we oboists need as tools, I'll write up a list of the odds and ends I've been on a treasure hunt for in the past few days:

Teflon tape (I found pink!)

sandpaper

pipe cleaners

cotton thread (didn't end up using it, I found the nylon thread was a lot easier to work with)

beeswax

calipers

jeweler's screwdriver set

Yeah, it's really awkward explaining to the people at Lowe's or Michael's what I need all this for. Really, I promise that it's better not to ask...

Winding and Unwinding

Home! Got home on Sunday night. I've been taking some time to unwind a little. Things unrelated to music that I've accomplished: finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and finished cycle 16 of America's Next Top Model.

I love that show.

It inspired me to photoshop a picture of myself with various short pixie hair cuts, but I concluded that I don't think I could pull it off. :(

The final concert of IBIL was amazing! I had so much fun, particularly playing in the orchestra. I actually have felt that of all my playing so far, my playing has been best in orchestra. I feel that is true on modern oboe a lot too...I'm definitely a team player, and the extra push of inspiration and pressure I get from having to give the other musicians with whom I'm playing a really strong performance out of respect for their skill and practice time and dedication pushes me to places I wouldn't reach otherwise.

Fantastic after party at Cambridge Commons.

Since being home, I've played a couple hours each day of Baroque oboe. Yesterday, I again practiced while watching ANTM. I wouldn't normally EVER do such a thing where my attention is divided between practicing and something else, but I thought I'd give it a try for some specific skills and lo, it did have some positive effects. I think the biggest thing was that it gave self 1 something to do and talk about while self 2 took over the playing. I didn't work at all with music, just exercises. Primary exercise (basically a scalar long tone type exercise), scales in thirds, and then repetitive practice for some awkward issues, like B to C, Bb to A, Bb to C, F to E, etc. So the controlling, gossipy, negative part of my brain was focused on forming opinions on models and guessing who was going to be eliminated, while the part of my brain that can hear intonation very well and regulates my playing was paying attention to my intervals and finger motion. I definitely was not practicing without awareness. In fact, I'd say in many ways, there was a much more pure awareness. I never let an interval go out of tune without going back and fixing it, and overall, the pitch was fairly decent. And having the controlling part of my brain distracted, I could do some things much better - for instance, letting go of the reed in a way I've not been able to previously achieve, and getting a much cleaner finger control with very relaxed fingers. Of course, I can't rely on being distracted, and it's not a type of practicing I am going to do anymore, except on special occasions if I want to revisit the feeling of the good things that were happening. But I paid attention to how it felt when things were going very well, and when I was most both precise and relaxed, and now that I have identified the feeling, I will be able to regain it in my practicing (sans ANTM).

Interesting little experiment.

Started working on music today, spent a good portion of practice time on solfege (in French violin clef, hooray!). Also, tied two blanks and started scraping them, and shaped five pieces of cane. Probably about two of them are good, two of them decent, and one might possibly make a good reed. Too narrow at the throat, but still, I'll give it a shot for the practice scraping. These pieces of cane are three bucks each. Eww. Ridiculous.

I need to make a shopping trip to the hardware store before I can actually get a good jump into reedmaking.

Hmm, in other news, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell was a really fabulous book. I needed to read something fun. Not sure what I'm going to read next, but I did make a goodreads account! I listed as many books as I could remember since high school and the best ones from before that, but I left a lot out that I had from childhood on living social a while back. Woot.

If you don't get it, the title of this post, "winding and unwinding," refers to winding thread around reads and unwinding from a long week of hard work. Get it? Hardy har. I hate naming these things.

IBIL Update

I survived the concert last night! Hooray! I'm establishing a good pre-performance routine that includes Alexander and meditation.

I ended up basically making the reed I played on right before I went on stage - not making it entirely, but finishing it, at least. I feel independent! How did I suddenly develop the ability to make good reeds? I am still astounded how it suddenly clicked in May. Like, the mathematician works for days, but then the solution comes as a bolt from the blue when he's sitting at the bus stop thinking about something else entirely...finally, three long years of dedicated, frustrated reed making are paying off. Of course I'll have my future slumps and new frustrations, but I'm suddenly at an unprecedented level of comfort and ease, and it's a little bizarre. But I'm cerrrtainly not complaining.

I guess I finally have a little time to update about many of the adventures in Baroque of the last week. Tonight is the faculty concert, and there was a chamber concert at lunch today as well, but other than that, nothing in the afternoon. I'm fairly exhausted.

I've gone through a LOT of rep this week. 2-4 brand new movements per day, ornaments and everything, to be played in masterclass the next morning. On top of actually getting to know the instrument, making a type of reed I've never made before, and warming up every day. And learning the chamber and orchestra music, and reading duets and things for fun. Solfege has been really invaluable, and in my initial practice sessions with new pieces, I spent a lot of time at the harpsichord singing (not that the harpsichords have actually been in tune by the time I get to them, but at least I get a starting pitch and can check the general vicinity of intervalic relationships (that last phrase was absolute nonsense, but I'm going to leave it in here anyway because I kinda like it)).

I've also bought a lot of drinks at Starbucks. It's across the street from the dorm I'm staying in, on the way to the music building...

Other fun activities - orchestra, oboe band. Two chamber music groups. It's been incredibly busy, but I think it has felt that way mostly since until today, I spent nearly every free moment (before 9am, lunch and after orchestra at 5) practicing. Although we have had coffee and pastry breaks every day at 10:30 between master classes and chamber, which has been really excellent. Except for the lack of caffeinated tea. This herbal stuff just doesn't cut it.

Oh, and we had Wednesday afternoon off. There was a fabulous bowling outing involved.

I've had such trouble sleeping the past few nights because I've been so excited about early music. And music in general. And grad school. I have so many grand plans for next year, including an early music extravaganza recital in the spring. I have a ton of verrry exciting ideas. The most difficult bit I think is going to be getting some key people on board. Probably obvious who I am talking about, specifically........

Anyway. I think a nap might be in order.

Meditation on Intonation

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone.

Scale degree 7 is the third of the dominant chord.

Maybe if I repeat this to myself over and over between now and 8pm, my fa sharps will be in tune during the concert tonight.

Why are there ants all over my computer for the third time this summer? I don't understand.

So, topic for today, topic for this week, and for the rest of my life and yours: intonation. I'm struggling, and I suspect it is because I care too much and consequently am trying to control too much. That is, self 1 is trying to control too much and not allowing self 2 to do its thing, if I may use some Inner Game language.

I am going to make a list of things I know are true, but somehow when I play, I am prevented from trusting these truisms by the lack of trust I have in myself:

-There is a place on the reed where if I am using proper support and air speed, all my notes will be placed exactly where I want them to be.

-I know where I want every note to be. I know that I know this because I can sing them over a drone in tune. And when I sing a note over the drone and then immediately play it, it is immediately or very quickly, exactly where I just sang it and in tune.

-Scale degree 7 is not a leading tone. Scale degree seven is the third of the dominant chord.

-This does NOT mean it is a lowered third. Because that would imply that it is lowered relative to some arbitrary pitch value governed by a universal fudge factor. It means that scale degree 7 is a pure third above the dominant. Which means I will NOT think of trying to play "flat" every time I see an F# tonight. This means that I will simply match the third in the overtone series of re.

-Hiding my sound will not make me seem more in tune. Actually, it will make me sound more out of tune. Particularly, biting the reed will not hide my sound or my intonation. It will make my pitch obscenely sharp.

-If I keep an embouchure that is equally open and cushiony for all the intervals while voicing the correct pitch, I will play in tune.

-I will play ALWAYS on a G on the reed. This does not change across the range of the instrument. There are no high notes on the Baroque oboe. The Ab-Bb-C-Db exercise is for the modern oboe only. Forgettabout it right now.

Now, I know there's the right way to play the oboe where things are in tune, and I know that I know where things should be. At the same time though, I just found this spot today in my adventure with drones. The lips on the reed and the cavity of the mouth and the sympathetic resonance (that's a Gonzaloism) all have to be exactly right for the fa sharp in particular to be just so, and my body and mind are not trained to always find that spot right away on Baroque oboe yet. Gonzalo has told me over and over to be patient, fa sharp is the last note I will feel like I have conquered. I mean, for goodness' sakes, there are five fingerings for the lower octave fa sharp and seven fingerings for the upper fa sharp. I have been playing Baroque oboe for a month, and I am playing on reeds completely made by myself, literally zero adjustments by Gonzalo or anyone else. These are not excuses, and thinking these things over is not making excuses, and I should not beat myself over the head for "making excuses" if I think these things. It's placing myself as firmly as I can in reality so that I maintain a good relationship with my coach and my coach continues to help me and stay out of the way when it needs to.

Of course it's going to be frustrating that my conductors and chamber coaches keep telling me certain notes are sharp or flat when I know they are sharp or flat. It's embarrassing to think that perhaps the coaches and conductors think I can't hear that this or that note is out of tune, because I can hear it (which makes it feel much worse). The problem is, I hear it after I play it. I need to hear it before I play it.

But observing. Nonjudgementally. Observing nonjudgmentally when a note is sharp or flat is what I need to be attending to. And not worrying about what the coaches or conductors are thinking is the problem. And I shall.

So much of this is the mindset. There's nothing to be afraid of. There is literally no reason to be anxious about playing out of tune or rushing such and such a spot. Today in chamber rehearsal, people (including myself) kept making remarks to that degree - "I'm worried I am going to rush this spot" etcetera. Finally I said something about it - that if we know how we want to play it, there is no reason to hypothesize about what could go wrong. Someone else said that it wasn't so much fear as professional concern. I mean, I know what she meant, and she's right to the extent that we do need to be involved (duh). But since the word "concern" can have two meanings, and one of those meanings is emotionally charged, I don't entirely approve of the terminology. I know that's awfully picky, but this is important to me in my own quest for mental discipline right now, to think about these things in just the right way so that I fully comprehend them, and when I'm teaching in the future, I want to communicate my personal philosophy about performing in the clearest, most concise way possible. "Engaged" or perhaps "highly conscious" or "highly aware" works a lot better for me than "concerned." Instead of "I'm worried we are going to rush here, let's run this spot and try not to rush," I think the better approach is, "Let's be extra conscious of the tempo and pulse here, we want it to be precise and energetic." There's no negative emotion or positive emotion in this latter approach, merely a statement of the goal and a call to notice how that goal might be better achieved. Chances are, that spot will be in tempo next time and not rush. If it does rush, this can be stated without a value judgement.

I only make such a big deal out of this because the extent to which I have engaged in this type of thinking is the extent to which I have improved both my musicianship and my emotional health, particularly over the past year. The discipline that I lack in this area (as evidenced by my recent freak out moments/rehearsals about intonation) leads to physical tension and a worsening of the problem.

After I said the bit in rehearsal today about not being "afraid" of anything, I suddenly played 300% more in tune. Surprise surprise.

Errrr

Blarg I have a lot to write about but no time to write! Must...practice...early tomorrow.

I LOVE MUSIC.

That is all.

Today's Entry

I'm posting two entries at once - don't be confused, the last entry I wrote yesterday but couldn't post until just now because I didn't have the internet.

Played in my first Baroque orchestra today! Eee! It was...so. cool. I'm a little frustrated with myself because I know I was playing scared - it's hard not to do when everyone sounds so much better than you and the ornaments are coming at you waaaay too fast to read. But I've learned so much from the experience already; just sitting next to the verrrry good bassoonist is extraordinarily enlightening.

F#, I am playing so scared of F#. Least favorite note.

I survived the sonata in master class! I played the first three movements, and all things considered, it wasn't terrible! I'm polishing a little more but also taking on some new music, including music in French violin clef. Yay! The ornaments are surprisingly hard in FVC, I'm not sure why they should be. I'm reading by interval. But somehow the ornament part of my brain is wired to the treble clef, seeing the notes on the page. WWPD? (What would Ploger do?) I'm not visualizing the ornaments probably. Should visualize the ornaments probably.

Mmm, popcorn.

Baroque dance class continues. There was a lot of hopping around today. I was pretty ungainly. Baroque French dance, and subsequently the music, requires a good deal of elegance, poise, and grace, none of which are inherent aspects of my...person. My mother will certainly attest to this.

But tonight, what an excellent surprise! I was practicing, and Gonzalo and company came in to the room I was in because they needed to use the harpsichord to read some Couperin. They invited me to stay and listen, which I did (DUH). It was beyond amazing. I absorbed so much from just listening and following along with the score. Gosh, the ornaments. All in the fingers, not the wind, Lindsey. Remember that. Blarrrrg and the harmony, it was just soooo good.

Also we worked on reeds today. I tied two blanks. I'll keep you updated on how those turn out...this is a very unorganized blog entry. My brain is kind of unorganized but filled with intense French Baroque ornaments right now. Whee.

Yesterday's Post (I didn't have internet)

Well, no internet yet tonight, so I won’t be posting this until tomorrow at least.

So I have arrived in Boston! Specifically, Cambridge. I’m here for the International Baroque Institute at Longy (aka IBIL) for the next week.

After orientation, we met in sections. Gonzalo handed me a French sonata and said, “Here, you can play this in masterclass tomorrow.” This was at 9pm. And there are only three of us, so the slots of time are pretty big – meaning, more than one movement. Meaning, he and I are expecting me to have the entire thing learned by 9am tomorrow.

So! Perfect study in Learning Music Quickly, a point of extreme interest for this blog. So I can’t resist writing about what I’ve done so far tonight, even though I really need to get to bed (if I wake up at 6, I can be practicing by 7:30…).

I practiced a lot yesterday, so it was actually a very good thing that pre-orientation I had only practiced about an hour, because by the end of the second hour, my chops were a little eeeh and I was biting a little (eeeeeh). Probably more than a little. (That’s bad, if you don’t play oboe and don’t know what I’m talking about.) So that second hour started at 9:15ish, when the oboe meeting was over and I was left standing in the room with this sonata by Andre Cheron. Immediate fight or flight response (choosing fight of course) was to dive irresponsibly straight into trying to play the music at tempo with all the ornaments. Dumb of course. But I was saved actually, by the harpsichord maintenance team, or whoever they were, who came in after about five minutes to put together a harpsichord in that room, and I moved rooms. It was enough time to clear my head and say to myself, “Here’s an opportunity to learn something quickly the correct way, so take it.” Luckily, there was a fully functional (but radically out of tune, alas) harpsichord in this new room (much easier than playing a half step lower than you are singing solfege on the piano).

So I sang through movement by movement, and in logical chunks, I’d go through the rhythm, sing it (using the piano to check intervals I wasn’t totally sure of, but surprise, I wasn’t ever off, I don’t think), and then attempt to play it. I made it through the entire piece like this, leaving off the ornaments, and on the fast movements often playing something slowly once and then speeding it up. Then I started to go back to the beginning and work on first shaping the phrase the way I wanted it (still starting with singing the solfege until it sounded the way I wanted, then playing it), and then adding in some ornaments. But I didn’t even make it past the first half of the first page when the security guard came in and told me the practice rooms were closing.

It was 10pm. What? What kind of practice rooms close at 10pm??? I take Blair for granted, I guess.

So I came back to the dorm (about a ten minute walk, I was impressed that I can already navigate around here, haven’t gotten lost yet. Well, the first time I set foot in the town doesn’t count, but I’m just saying that every time I’ve had a general idea of where I wanted to go after that, I haven’t been lost). I went through each movement all the way through, two times each for just singing rhythm without the ornaments (including the inegalite, which I sure hope I am using appropriately, probably not). After that, I spoke solfege in rhythm, without ornaments. The solfege is really important for getting the groupings and the phrasings just right – things suddenly make sense, which they don’t do if I just start playing on the instrument and barrel through, trying to get the right notes. So then I spoke through with ornaments, which is a bit more of a challenge. That’s the hard part. It is particularly challenging because it is a matter of both getting the rhetoric correct and getting the fingers to be extremely graceful and not blurble or slam down or wind a note at the end of a gesture because it is a cross fingering, and it might not come out…or something.

So hopefully this will all pay off tomorrow, and I won’t be so dead tired that I can’t function. I woke up at 4:45 this morning to head to the airport. Had some rough sleep on the plane (but long sleep, almost the entire three hour flight, surprising for me) and then napped when I got here for about two hours. We shall see. Luckily, there’s a Starbucks across the street.

Oh yes, the other thing I have been meaning to write about. So yesterday I was watching America’s Next Top Model. You laugh, but this is very relevant! (I was also practicing Baroque oboe at the same time, which might not have been entirely healthy, but we can discuss that later…). So (cycle 16, if you’re interested) one of the first challenges for the girls was with a prominent acting coach. The challenge was basically, to face the “inner critic.” When I heard this, I had to laugh because this is such a familiar concept to us musicians (at least us musicians at Blair and us musicians who have read Inner Game of Tennis and probably everyone else). In The Inner Game of Tennis, the author talks about Self 1 and Self 2, Self 1 being the voice that rambles on and on, trying to control everything and getting in the way of the performance (tennis, music, anything really). Professor Ploger’s name for it is the “coach,” that is, pretty much the same thing – the berating voice that is the biggest obstacle for any performer.

In the past year, while I was practicing at school, I had been focusing on building a better relationship with my coach. We were really on bad terms, and I hadn’t even been noticing how mean my inner coach was being to me, how much it was affecting not only my playing, but my overall happiness. I spent a lot of time, particularly first semester, both paying attention in order to notice my coach’s negativity, and literally having conversations (mostly in my head, sometimes out loud, don’t institutionalize me haha) with my coach. I was forgiving, made offerings of friendship, was gentle. In years before, when trying to deal with the negative voice, the (inappropriate) response I gave was always equally negative; I knew thinking these things were not doing me any good, but I didn’t know how to fix it – “Don’t be stupid, why are you thinking like that? If you think like that, you’re never going to be any good. Now play it right this time and stop beating yourself up.” Ironically of course, just another form of beating myself up.

But the gentler, patient approach worked really, really well. I’d say my coach and I have an excellent relationship now. Except sometimes the coach is lazy. Well, okay, a lot of times the coach is lazy. So that’s my challenge now, and particularly for the next year – I’ve gotten the coach to stop hurting me, but the coach doesn’t always put out the effort to help me in the way I know it can. And that’s largely on me. I think more Alexander and possibly (hopefully) yoga are in order here.

I do want to finish describing the ANTM challenge though! Because I think I will do it sometime possibly, it sounds like a good idea. So the acting coach had an easel with poster paper and markers set up behind each girl, and after he described the concept of the inner critic and they all understood it, he told them to turn around – 15 minutes to draw their inner critic. Then each went up on stage to face their inner critic in front of the other girls (the acting coach held up the poster and played the part of the critic while the girls had to confront the inner coach and tell it what’s what). Good idea I thought.

Which reminds me of something else I should mention, since the girls definitely weren’t gentle with their inner coach. There does have to be a definite degree of dominance – gentle, yes, but firm first. Resolute. Stare it down. Let it know you are in charge, and you won’t be putting up with its nonsense anymore.

Recommended Reading: The Inner Game of Tennis

Recommended Viewing: ANTM

Color and Texture

I finished two paintings today!

The first was a painting I started last summer. I didn't do much at all to finish it - yesterday added in a layer of some stripey pyramid stone looking things, and today I painted the edges. It's interesting to reflect on my own painting "style" in context of some of the "research" I was doing this year in my independent study. One of the observations made by Dr. Rose was that Realism and Impressionism are connected philosophically by their preoccupation with the medium itself. Both seemingly contradictory movements are characterized by a primacy of material which evidences the belatedness of these styles. Anyway, the point is that I definitely embrace this primacy of materials. I am fascinated with the way that paint mixes, the texture of the acrylics, the three dimensional qualities that one can attain by heaping mounds of paint on a canvas. I wake up the next morning after I work on a painting, and the first thing I do is examine the previous day's work extremely closely with my nose inches away, touching all the interesting areas where the paint is textured. I love that particular tactile sensation. I'm interested in the way the canvas takes paint (there are even some brush strokes in this first painting that didn't fill in the entire canvas, but I find it very beautiful) and the way paint takes other paint. I like letting the materials do the work for me.

So here is my first painting, an abstract. It sort of makes me think of space and the Creation. I'm putting in pictures both of the entire canvas and of some interesting parts up close that I like. Too bad y'all can't really get the effect of the texture, it's my favorite element of acrylic painting.

Painting #1

Detail, cool blobs

Detail, nifty orb

Detail, demonstrating how I painted the edges of the canvases

Detail, more nifty brushstrokes

I think my dad is going to put this one in his office.

Below are some photographs of the second painting. I usually don't try to represent real things when I do arty stuff, but this scene is part of a really crazy dream that I had that resulted in a sort of compulsion to release the energy of it onto a canvas. The dream was so intensely vivid and with so many more details. I started wanting to put half of it in this one painting, but then I realized I could really only put about a twentieth of it in one painting, or it would be too much all at once. But the good news is, I have all this material in my head for several more paintings, if I so wish. Yay. But all in all, I'm pretty pleased with how they both turned out.

Painting #2

Detail, waves arriving at the shore

Detail, sky, the storm fading

Detail, horizon and a wave

Detail, the city in the distance

Anyway, mostly practiced Baroque oboe today. Read some of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Dr. Rose sent me a fantastic epistle in response to my response to Tom Jones. It's going to take a while to write a response...and of course every time he sends

me an email, he recommends about 10,000 pages worth of reading or 8 hours worth of listening...after JSMN (which he recommended earlier this year) (800 pages), I'll probably go for Clarissa (by Richardson) (one of the recommendations from the last email) (2,000 pages).

This post wasn't much about oboe playing I realize, but I hope y'all were interested anyway!

Geckos and Things

I have returned! From a glorious couple of days in Key West. I have a henna gecko. Henna courage gecko.

I practiced a lot of Baroque oboe today! Not very organized practicing, but just playing through a lot of music. I really want to have a lot of rep under my belt for when I see Gonzalo next, I feel like he will expect me to. I've been plundering IMSLP for pieces, but it is very difficult because there is so much Baroque music and I don't know what is super interesting and fun besides the standards we always play on modern oboe.

So far I've been working on:

Telemann Kleine Kammermusik, Suites 2 and 5

Telemann Sonata in a minor

Vivaldi Sonata in c minor

sort of the 2 Handel sonatas...but they're in Bb and g minor...will work more in the keys of Bb and g minor. Right now, Bb is my least favorite note...

I think I'm going to pull out the Hertel too.

It's been good for me to just be reading through movements, not allowing myself to stop. I think I was sounding pretty good today!

On another note, I finished Tom Jones and sent an epic email to Dr. Rose about it. Writing emails to Dr. Rose is exhausting.

:P

Oh yeah, I forgot.

Don't look for any more posts or eartraining continued blogs until Monday.

I'm going to the Florida Keys.

Heh heh sayonora, suckers!

Epic Eartraining Post, Part 1

So here's something new and interesting. I'm going to blog - as I practice - eartraining.

I haven't gone through my new practice sheets yet, so I'm going to do that now, but as I go, I am going to write about some of my experiences in more detail. On my record sheets I have an area set aside for "observations" but since this is an initial trial run and I won't be using the sheets today (and it will be a comprehensive run, going over every skill), it will be a good opportunity to reflect in detail on my strengths and weaknesses.

So I started off with some Alexander, about 20 minutes of constructive rest and some shoulder moves (both of these are on my daily warm up for oboe routine, I'm hoping to get them in every day).

If you aren't familiar with it, constructive rest is an exercise from the Alexander Technique in which you are lying on your back, knees bent, and with your head resting on a large book or something equivalent. While this position in itself is highly beneficial for the body, a very conscious, directed constructive rest can be extraordinarily rejuvenating. Two things are key for this, I think - focus and nonjudgemental observation. First of all, the mind needs to be kept in check - focused on being present in the body and not wandering off. However, if the mind does wander, it is essential to merely observe this wandering thought and let it pass by. No point in berating yourself for lack of focus - that's just bad vibes with the inner coach (inner coach being a Plogerism). The other facet is observation. The first part of constructive rest I learned was to observe the body, beginning with the toes and working up and then when I finish, starting over again. Which foot has more weight on it? Where is the most weight? How does the foot make contact with the ground? Etcetera. And after making progress in that, one begins to add several types of subtle moves or exercises to the repertoire.

So that has been very refreshing. I am targeting a couple of areas right now, including my lower back (giving it permission to release from an arched position), releasing my knees away, and my neck/shoulders. Already, in only three days of focused Alexander, I can detect a huge difference.

I began my eartraining Odyssey with rhythm, and the difference that the preceding Alexander work made was already strikingly evident. Normally when performing rhythm exercises, my desire for precision and accuracy becomes physically manifested as extreme tension in my upper back, arms, and particularly the tops of my thighs (are those quads? I think?). I'm going to keep reminding myself to release the knees away, and to put any tension in my hands (the metronomes).

Longy 5s (mm50) and 7s (mm40). All the work I put in last semester really payed off. Coming back to a skill, it will take a little time (but less time than before, each time!) to get the Nerf ball back up the hill (um, another Plogerism, I'm still not sure of that metaphor, why a Nerf ball?). But I am evidently in a very good place here. I absolutely nailed the 5s first try (both 2-3 and 3-2), and the 7s with only a few mistakes, but no hesitations. Excellent.

Nothing too interesting to report in performing Starer. From now on, for the sake of the brevity of the blog (too late), I am only going to write about things that I think are really worthy of mention.

Now, in performing Starer sightreading then immediately taking dictation (a few bars at a time for now), the interesting bit is that the longer held values are where I make mistakes. The busy parts are easier to remember, because I'm more conscious of them, probably because they look more intimidating. Brain tends to dismiss quarter notes and half notes. Which is exactly where I should be paying attention as a performer, since those are places where the audience's brains will also dismiss quarter and half notes if I'm not careful enough to make them interesting! Hmph.

O look it's raining outside. Might I say pouring? Might I say the old man is snoring? Nah, my dad is at work.

Anyway, just did some scale degree improv. Something that is a huge weakness for me. I always sort of hide in group improv in class, and if I have a solo turn, I can get away with a few very uninteresting bars. I'm always ashamed of how uninteresting my improv is, but I know it is partly because I'm not comfortable enough with pulling the scale degrees out of the air. And every time I go out on a limb and start sounding interesting, I am naming some other degree than I'm singing (I mean, at least it's always a degree in the correct chord...). I'm sure Prof Ploger would tell me this is happening because I am not visualizing the keyboard with the names of the notes on it. I'm sure she would be correct. Well, this time, using the handy technology of my electronic mini baby grand in the house, I recorded a chord progression and then played it back while singing improv to it. This was kind of neat, because little lights go on above the keys that are being played, so I could see the outlines of the chords as I was improving. Of course, if this were only happening in my head. One step at a time. I'll keep at this skill, it's definitely in need of improvement.

Ok, mayhaps that is enough for now. My brain hurts, and besides, my mom just came home. Part 2 coming soon. And probably parts 3 and 4. This might take a while to get through the entire practice sheet I made...

Harnoncourt, Leonhardt, and Acrylics

Today has been quite the fabulous day.

Got to work on my painting almost immediately after waking up. Scrounged around in the garage and found the easel and set everything up outside next to the pool. It was unbelievably hot outside, loved every second of it. Hooked up Naxos on my computer into the patio speakers and blasted recordings of Bach and Rameau featuring Harnoncourt and Leonhardt. I worked until the heat was unbearable, then I jumped in the pool. Perfect temperature. Not too cold that I had to ease my way in, but not uncomfortably tepid either. Got out worked some more, went back in the pool, etc. My mom came home after a while, but predictably, as soon as she put her bathing suit on, the clouds came out and the daily afternoon thunderstorm started threatening.

Moved back inside, and I've spent most of the rest of the day listening to the recordings of reed class and oboe class from BPI and taking notes on them. I've only made it through the first two days, but listening back has been so beneficial. First of all, to objectively see the progress that was made in such a short amount of time is really astounding. When I was actually working on learning the instrument that first week, it felt like I wasn't making any progress, like nothing good was happening. But looking back, I can hear all of the good things that were happening, and happening very quickly. I can hear myself fixing tons of tiny little details I probably didn't even consciously think about when I was playing the second time around. Secondly, I was noticing listening back how immediately and comprehensively I notice what was going on, which notes were sharp or flat, what musical critiques Marc was about to give in the recording. So...if I can hear that quickly and correctly listening to a recording, why I am not hearing that quickly and correctly when I am practicing? I mean, I do hear a lot. But not as much as just now when I was listening to the recording. The answer, I think, is that when I am practicing, I think way too much. I also care way too much. I think both of those things, overthinking and overcaring, get in the way of allowing my self to trust my ear and do its thing as it has been trained (overtrained in fact) to do. Etcetera etcetera.

Practiced Baroque oboe for a little while in between listening to the recordings. Was a good thing to do, with a lot of the basic info fresh in my mind. I'm still hung up on scales and long tones, but I really don't want to play music with less than fabulous support/technique/articulation.

Crazy thunderstorm this afternoon. I think lightning actually hit our roof at one point, I definitely heard something creak or crack.

I edited a clip of Kill Bill last night to make a reed making spoof, but then Facebook wouldn't let me upload it because of copyright infringement. Sad. Oh well, I'm probably the only one who would find it amusing anyway...

The Ultimate Warm-Up

My main project since getting home (and after that post yesterday) has been to compose an extensive, rigorous, and comprehensive warm up routine for oboe. I've had various versions of warm ups that I've made in the past three years, composites of various teachers' recommendations and my own special formulas.

But yesterday, I was inspired to create an even more in depth warm up for three reasons - first, I wanted to incorporate some of the ideas and concepts that I have acquired from my studies this summer, second, I wanted to reorient the focus of my warm up to really target those areas in which I need to improve before grad school auditions, and third, I wanted to see how much I could make a daily warm up truly integrated, to not just get my oboe playing warmed up, but my mental processes, my listening, and my entire body.

So I started by expanding the sheet I had already, adding in some of the great warm up exercises I've gotten from teachers over the summer. Just glancing over the list, I count a total of 14 different teachers that have influenced the list or given me one or more of the exercises. It's amazing that I've been privileged enough to have worked with all of these top teachers.

In terms of targeting specific areas, I am really focusing on my breathing and being relaxed and open. These go pretty much hand in hand. So far, all of the teachers I have worked with in the past couple of months have all given me the same basic critique - tension. And most of the time, even just mentioning it gets me playing ten times better because I've done a lot of work in Alexander, enough to really help once I am conscious of the tension. But the issue is staying conscious of my body and of tension. So I am going to be focusing heavily on incorporating more Alexander into my practicing, as well as being a little more dogmatic about doing Alexander before I start practicing. It's much easier to ignore that part of consciousness in practice, because believe it or not, to do it right does take an enormous amount of mental energy. It's easy to be lazy in that respect. I plan on doing yoga as well, when the school year starts.

This morning, the difference constructive rest made before I started practice was phenomenal. I had really gotten a little twisted up, particularly in the past couple of days (traveling, tired, everything finally catching up to me was finally taking its toll). But after some seaweed arms and shoulder moves and such, I was feeling a lot better.

One major change in how I'm making these warm up routines - I'm adding a record sheet. Often it is difficult to keep track of things - which scale haven't I focused on lately? What exercise have I been avoiding? So I've made a series of questions for each day that I will fill out as the warm up progresses, to keep track both of what keys I'm covering and such, but also to keep me accountable. It's so easy, particularly in the middle of a busy semester, to say "I'm feeling so tired this morning. I really don't want to work on F# two octaves today..." and then keep putting it off and putting it off because surprise, I'm tired every day. The record sheets will force me to be honest with myself about covering weak areas in my practicing and not constantly revisiting things I'm good at.

Each day, I have a questions asking "Items Skipped?" So if I have limited time and decide to skip my minor scales, for instance, I will look back the next day and not allow myself to skip them again - in fact, I will spend extra time on them, if possible. The record sheet also has room to record which number exercises I've done in Barrett (or Ferling) and what keys I transposed them to that day. I also have room to record areas I had trouble with - what scales I wasn't as adept at, for example.

Using the first oboe warm up/record sheet pair as a model, I created a Baroque oboe warm up and record sheet as well.

Then, I did the same for eartraining. The eartraining practice sheet is a lot more complicated than either of the warm ups, since I have incorporated all of the material I have covered ever into it. Obviously I won't be able to practice every single thing on the list every day in eartraining, so the record sheet has been composed with a little bit of a different strategy. For a new skill to really solidify in the brain, one must practice it three times in three days. So for each skill area (eg interval training, heptachord shift, score reading, sightsinging) I have created a series of questions, which occurs three times, under the headings of day 1, day 2, and day 3. I can print out as many of these as I'd like, so once I fill out a page, I'll just print another (note to self: it would be good to make these double sided). For the eartraining record sheets, the most important part of each series of questions is "Observations." I also frequently include "Primary Causes of Error" as a question as well as "Weaknesses."

So are these sheets actually practical? Well, so far today I have tested the oboe warm up, and it seems to be very excellent. I only made one or two adjustments as I was going through it. I hope today also to be able to test out both the Baroque oboe warm up system and my eartraining practice system, and make enough adjustments that I will be ready to print out all three and start using them tomorrow. At any rate, it was very helpful to go through all of my eartraining material and review while considering what areas I need to focus on.

I'll also be finishing filling out Prof Ploger's Musicianship Self-Evaluation today, and maybe revamp the eartraining practice sheet to better reflect the areas I need to work on.

http://marianneploger.com/testyourself.html

So anyway. I'm very excited about all of this. Other than that, I am hoping to get out to buy some canvases today, because I have several paintings in my head that are prodding at me, wanting to be actualized. And I am in a very painty mood. Here's a picture of the last painting I was working on last summer, it's not quite finished yet...

Home, Home On The Range

Back in Florida! Finally. After six weeks, it feels very good to be home. I slept 13 hours last night. Haven't done too much today, but have gotten a lot of little things done, like emails and such. I also added some glitz and glam to my metronome. It's pretty snazzy.

Was all excited to gouge a ton of cane today until I remembered I don't own a dial indicator. Hopefully I can find an affordable one in the next couple of days.

I don't have all too much to write about in terms of learning or oboe since last time. Mainly frustration at all the annoying little things one has to do, like writing emails and ordering cane.

Here's a list of things I have accomplished today:

finalizing order for Baroque cane

ordered Baroque staples

sent about 3,000 overdue emails

called my cousin about housing in Boston

opened up all my packages, including my gouger

showered

unpacked a little

uploaded the rest of my photos from the past two weeks

fixed my reed supply box that the airlines broke

bedazzled my metronome and cutting block

Ok, I guess I didn't accomplish that much...sigh. Practice?

Last Day

Tomorrow - going home! (insert Dvorak 9 mvmt 2 here)

Had a great lesson this morning with Mr. Sorton, played Barrett stuff. Practiced, hung out with Carlos in his shop and watched him do stuff to oboes. I really need to do some experimenting with my oboe, take it apart and put it back together and adjust it and whatnot. Some real hands-on stuff. Hopefully I'll have time for that next week when I am home! That'll definitely be a good experience to write about in here...

Reed class was pretty epic today. I finished ten reeds. Of course, I'll have to readjust them all tomorrow, but heck, that is a lot of reeds. I've never made so many reeds in one day (of course, they were all the blanks I had tied yesterday, so I wasn't exactly starting from scratch). And they were all pretty darn good. I don't know what happened. All through this school year, I needed Prof Hauser to be finishing my reeds - I could hardly ever play on a reed he hadn't worked on, even if it was only a little bit. Then, after being home about a week and a half, I literally woke up one day in the middle of May and discovered I could make reeds really well. Apparently this is what happens. And I am thankful it did. I think it has something to do with my gouge being a little funny this last semester, so when I finally had a good gouge, the improvement in my scraping suddenly became drastically evident. Not complaining at all.

So no one really wanted that much detail about my reeds. Haha, sorry.

I can't wait to go home, sleep in my own bed, make reeds out by the pool, practice all day! Hooray! It's really been a fantastic six weeks of travel, festivals, and institutes though. I'm so happy that this summer turned out the way it did. :)

Georgia On My Mind

Hi guys! I finished BPI (Baroque Performance Institute) last Sunday, so I haven't been updating. I had originally intended to just blog for those two weeks, but I think I will keep it up. I've actually heard from some people that they were reading this blog for real, which is really cool! I had no idea anyone would actually check it out, much less follow it! How exciting!

I'll definitely have a lot of interesting things to write about - right now I am at an oboe camp in Georgia for a week, and in a couple of weeks, I'll be attending the International Baroque Institute at Longy. This Baroque thing is kind of addictive. Next year I'll definitely be keeping up with the Baroque oboe, so I'll keep everybody updated on that. And I'll have grad school lessons and auditions, so it might be kind of cool for those a year or more younger than me to see what that process is like. I'm also hoping to put on a big Baroque historical performance recital at Blair next year, so I'll write about what those struggles as well.

So let me go back a little and wrap up BPI! The final concert went really well - I performed in a trio sonata, a piece (supposedly) by Handel. And we opened the concert with our dance class performing the minuet that we had learned. Kanad (my lovely dance partner) and I rocked that minuet. My second lesson also went very well - Gonzalo is really a fantastic teacher.

After that final (again four hour) concert, there was a small get together in this crazy house with crazy cats. Pictures on facebook eventually. Crazy gamba collection.

I've been at Oxford Oboes since Sunday. It's an oboe camp for middle and high schoolers, and each day there are masterclasses, reed class, and chamber music. During the masterclasses, some students split off into smaller assigned groups for different classes (like English horn class) or have individual lessons. I've had so much fun here so far. Most mornings I've been in the masterclasses. When younger kids are playing in the masterclasses, I I only hear a little that I haven't heard before about oboe playing, but it has been such a great educational experience in pedagogy. I find myself really paying attention to how the professors approach different aspects in the music, what kinds of explanations work best for different ages, that sort of thing. Really important stuff for when I'm teaching later. When I was playing in the masterclass, the professors often brought up something I did well and explained/demonstrated it for the kids, a really good tactic, I think.

Love that the professors play the accompaniment (on oboe, often a bass line) along with the kids playing the solos. I can really hear in their sounds a huge increase in confidence, and they take more risks. In my lesson with Dr. O, we ended by playing through an entire Barrett sonata movement together, and I found myself gaining a lot of confidence and taking more risks as well. And just having so much fun! Wish I had recorded that.

Today I coached a sextet of beginning middle school oboists.

Yeah, you try that sometime. You can't even imagine.

But what an interesting experience, trying to figure out what they can relate to, trying to figure out what ideas are most important for them to be exposed to, not wanting to talk way above or below their level, but slightly above it, or at least at the ceiling, to challenge them but to keep them interested...teaching is hard. I've also been working with the students often at reed class, and it's really crazy having to dissect something you've been doing so long that it's permanent muscle memory in order to explain it to an ADHD middle schooler. ie tying reeds. And I didn't really realize how far I have come in reed making until seeing the beginners and intermediates. Reed making is one of those things that is so frustrating because it feels like I'm never making any progress (oboe playing too, for that matter). But to see how awkward it is for the beginners to hold a reed in one hand and a knife in the other reminds me of how natural it is for me to hold a knife or scrape a reed.

What a weird thing to be good at. Life is weird.

Oh yeah, and the other thing. Chamber music. Thirteen oboes in my chamber group, and I am the appointed leader. Why does this keep happening to me? Haha. Not complaining though, I guess somebody has to do it. I was so worried that we weren't even going to be able to stay together for the first rehearsals, but somehow miraculously around Wednesday, things started to really shape up. These rehearsals have been so much work. A very different kind of work than I am used to in rehearsals. First off, keeping everyone focused. Come on guys, every time we stop playing is not an opportunity for you to practice your part on your own or tell your neighbor a story...and I don't wanna be the bad guy or the band director. It's a very difficult balance to find!

But everyone has simmered down a lot since the first day, and there's a lot less chatter and a lot more focus. It's weird to go from group discussion of purely musical elements and subtleties like in college to directing people on how to play rhythms and things like that. There were a lot of transitions and things that we had to work through together, and a lot of spot work that took up a lot of time. The first two rehearsals, we had a professor come in for part of it, which was really helpful. I was particularly thankful not to have to be the bad guy for the entire rehearsal and to have someone with authority backing up what I was saying. I mean, I technically have authority officially, but it is an odd thing to only be a few years older than the oldest of the group. Particularly since I how I look could still pass for 17 or 18 if one didn't know I was actually old.

Gosh I feel really old here. There's an incoming college freshman here who was born in 1994. What's up with that? Sooo old.

But anyway, I suppose I'm doing an all right job organizing and waving my arms around a lot. The piece is coming together nicely, and we are even playing dynamics now! And sometimes we look at each other! Little steps.

So that seems like enough for now. Kind of a long post, but I haven't updated in a while. But I will continue to update from now on, expect a new blog every 1-3 days! Good to hear a few of you out there are reading it! :)