Crash

It's been two days and already equal temperament makes me uncomfortable.

So, I completely crashed today. Napped three and a half hours. Straight through dance class (well, my alarm went off in time, but there was no way I was getting up at that point). But I really needed it. I haven't gotten a full night's sleep in three weeks now. This morning was a real struggle, especially during the Music of Bach lecture, at which point I almost fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Had been a little irritable all morning and not really accomplishing what I wanted to be accomplishing with Baroque oboe in class.

I keep wanting to complain to myself that it's impossible to play stylistically correct while I'm still worried about the mechanics of the instrument. But I know that's an excuse, and that kind of thinking is NOT going to help me. When so many notes inegales start coming all at once though, my brain turns on panic mode, I get all tense, and nothing works mechanically. Wait, that isn't true. It's not true that nothing works mechanically. I just don't sound as beautiful as I would sound were I relaxed, open, and resonant. Hopefully, I will get to bed early tonight, and start mornings off with some Alexander from now on.

One of the major challenges for me with technical passages - in Baroque oboe playing, you don't blow equal air into all the notes. On modern oboe, a good, fast, steady stream of air will get me nicely through any crazy passage. But on Baroque, that strategy breaks down. In fact, it seems easier to get all the notes out if the beginning of a difficult phrase of inegalite is really lengthened and blown through, but the subsequent notes are played on hardly any air, relatively speaking. It also sounds better, not forced or driven. It's difficult to get into this mindset, but I just have to keep gently reminding myself.

Overall, I think I have been doing a pretty good job of being non-judgmental about my playing in practice and class. Class is much more of a challenge to achieve this state of mind for me because there is an external judge (my teacher) who does place value judgments on my triumphs and failures. The importance to me of his approval sometimes gets in the way of actually doing something the way he wants it to be done. I will focus more on being wholly observational in class of my own playing the way I am in the practice room. The real danger in the practice room is unconsciousness. There's so much to think about in playing this music on this instrument that instead of keeping an awareness of everything, I focus too narrowly on one skill to the neglect of other, basic skills. Or I just space out. Spacing out = not good. But I suspect that largely has to do with my lack of sleep, since it is not normally a problem for me.