So how was it on 1st clari

Didn't do much... played 1st for the Muppet Show theme and was quite pleased with my staccato at the top end of the clarion register. Articulation is something that I'm still working to improve.
After that I did bits of 1st when it seemed that the part was more important. Otherwise played 2nd as usual.

Sounds good. Well done sbhoa!

welldone sboha

More Copland

Jojo and I listened to the Goodman version, as conducted by Copland, yesterday. I think she was impressed

Had a sax morning - Naulais - Petite Suite Latine, Grundman - Concertante and Stop Chick arr Runswick. About to play clarinet and work on Weber No. 1 and whatever else takes my fancy!

Jazz workshop - playing a variety of tunes, some from music, some by ear. I did a solo at the concert at the end - it went surprisingly well

Nothing - nasty migraine type headache earlier this evening so evening off practise.

Hope you feel better soon Dawn

Get well soon, Dawn.

I'm finally managing to get my paws around the Finzi Fughetta. Played it in last week's lesson, with accompaniment, and it is beginning to sound like a performance . I'm working on improving my dexterity in the faster bits

I played it in my lesson too but it didnt sound like a performance.
I am working(particularly) on my runs (just before and after (4)) to make them sound even rather than rushed.




Hope that's gone DawnF. I know how it feels, I get maigraines too.

Saint Saens Odelette.... So graceful!

Thanks Barry and others - much better now but still a bit of background dull aching



I still have that one to look at - sounds like fun!!







Thanks. Only ever had 3 .... Started when I was pregnant. Thought it was a one off then got a repeat last year sometime and then this one which wasn't full blown but head ache alone not too bad but felt queesy and a bit of balance with it. Knocked me out for a good couple of hours. Then still ached when I got up and felt ravenous. Also slept like a log that night too ---- all symptomatic of migraine I think...

Rob Buckland's Brazilian Walk, when actually I should be practising The Quick Brown Fox instead, but I can't play the last high G, so it all seems a bit futile... Keep on plugging away I guess ?

Weber's clarinet concerto number 2 - all the way through - still needs a fair bit of work but the runs are slowly getting there. Still really struggling with the top B in mov 1 though. It just won't sound.


Also a piece in my kloze book ( It's the moderato - (page 154)) has gone from being an absloute "I can't do this!!!! " last week to an "I can't do this very well" and now "I can't do this very well - yet..." so at least moving in the right direction.

Also a good rehearsal with oldnotes earlier when we ran all our forthcoming concert stuff.....

I did that one for my grade 7. It took me ages to master that last note! Eventually I worked out that taking a tiny bit more mouthpiece in would do the trick. So I wrote "IN" on my score in the 2 bars rest to remind me to adjust my mouth and take in extra mp. It worked every time. The whole thing was great fun though especially when you get together with the piano. The hard part then was to not laugh out loud at the end in the exam as we had been doing in practice.

Practising the Finzi again today and the worst of the scales: F sharp minor, B flat minor, G minor...

I played first clarinet in orchestra last night!!! We were rather thin on the ground, one clarinettist was on holiday and the other one not well so I had a fab, if scary, time playing all the solos

Glad you are feeling better Dawn.

Got given Faure Sicilienne in my lesson last week and I can more or less play the notes and the rhythm accurately (apart from the last 2 lines which need more work and don't feel as logical for some reason). It was a pleasant surprise to find a piece I have never played before (only heard) as easy to get to grips with as it has been.

However, knowing the notes seems to make it easier to hear all the co-ordination problems that the slurs show up - which is frustrating as the accuracy doesn't seem to be coming back as well as note reading skills (or I never paid enough attention to care in the past - highly possible!)

Also played my other piece Bach Rondeau from 76 Graded Studies which I did for either Grade VI or VII, can't remember which with a metronome for a change to deal with the rushing feeling that I've been having. It improved, apart from the B-C trill which i keep on getting in a tangle with (no reason, it's not a hard trill) , then rushing to finish and getting ahead of myself for the next notes! Will have to keep working on that trilling that note generally, then try and do trill plus termination in rhythm before putting it back in...

Current aim is learning some pieces which are good for testing out flutes which I want to buy when I upgrade (hopefully in June). Sicilienne sounds like a good one for that, I'm considering the Syrinx as well as I love the sound of it on the recording I have and the notes aren't too scary. Need to think of some contrasting things to play as well or I'll end up playing nothing but French composers. Suggestions definitely welcome - probably around the Grade V - VII standard as I'd be optimistic to learn Grade VIII standard repertoire in time for June.

Well done! What pieces did you play?

A vicious 'Music Hall Medley' with loads of notes all falling over one another, interspersed with multiple bars' rest (15-2-3-4, 16-2-3-4), and a selection from Porgy and Bess. Lots of accidentals in that one

Well done Jazzy cat

And as for me....

Still murdering tackling the Weber concerto 2 at the moment and the kloze got a bit of a bashing too.

Had a look back at the Weber 1 tonight for a bit of lighter refreshment - amazing how a bit of space and perspective can make things fall into place a bit better isn't it - or playing something harder makes the previous piece seem all the easier.

Aw, Porgy and Bess is great! Nice clarinet solo (Strawberry Woman) in the wind band arrangement

Grade 6 (TG) scales. G# minor...I ask you...why?

I may re-write it out as Ab minor, it may make marginally more sense that way...

That's interesting : my clari/saxophone wired brain would go for sharps every time.

I'm not really an experienced enough recorder player to know what most people think is better on recorder...

When I was younger and just playing the descant I would probably have said I didn't mind either...but then I probably only had two of each to manage.

I think with treble, flats are more common that sharps in 'real music'. The instrument is 'sort of' in F, as you know, so it already has one flat, sort of.
The thing is, with Ab minor everything is flat (well, in the natural minor). That I can cope with more easily than trying to think of five-sharps-plus-some-double-sharps - everythings flat and I just have to think about what notes 6 and 7 are doing!

I see. The same logic I have with C# major...

The melodic version of this is the only scale I can't play from memory on the oboe. (And even though I can play the "straight" harmonic scale, I can't play it in thirds or in the version where you return to the tonic between each note). I have tried it as G# and as Ab but neither seems better than the other.

I'm not sure I could get my head around Ab minor on any instrument as I strongly see minor keys in relation to their majors.

You just need to think in Cb major then

I have to say, in the G5 scales it did get easier once I'd clocked that almost all the scales I was playing were there as paired relatives, e.g. A major and F# minor.
And then of course in G6 they take that little help away (well, there are two pairs [4 sharps, and 0 sharps/flats], but the rest are 'unpaired')

In fact, now I look at them that way, it looks like they are mostly sharps...
4 sharps - E major, C# minor
5 sharps - G# minor (but can also be 7 flat Ab minor)
6 sharps - F# major
none - C major, A minor
4 flats - Ab major
(plus a chromatic, a pentatonic, a whole tone, a dominant 7th and a diminished 7th )

With the melodic minors I tend to think of them as being the major scale of the tonic going up with a minor third and the relative major coming down. So really I would like to think of G# minor as Ab on the way up and G# on the way down but I can't seem to make the intellectual change from flats to sharps.

Logically I ought to have the same problem with C# and D# but don't. I *think* this is because on the oboe G# minor is a twelfth (whereas the others are two full octaves) and I can't seem to make a change from flats to sharps mid-octave. Also the fingering from 2nd C# and above are all cross fingerings which I still find rather awkward.

Not been practising anything yet today (though I do think my employer ought to provide a practice room for use during lunch breaks ), but am looking forward to having a good session this evening after a good lesson yesterday:

- I made a minor breakthrough with improvisation (only very minor, but it made me feel a lot braver about the whole process), and now have to try it on some other pieces from the Grade 1 jazz syllabus.

- my teacher was very positive about my latest effort at composing a duet and thinks I should look to extend the piece

- we got through my first attempt at playing a new bop duet with only a handful of stalling points: a major advance on previous efforts from the same book

- I seem to be making headway with my D#-F# slurred interval at last Conscious attention to hand position and more work on scales and arps still needed.

And there are 2 bank holidays coming up, which means more time available for practising!

I whole-heartedly agree that employers should do this!


Being at work all I can look at is silly-buses, and this is what I find about 'double named' scales...

In G5 I did Db major. In G8 it appears again, but this time listed as Db/C# major.
The G6 G#/Ab minor appears again at G7 and G8 but as only Ab minor.

Talking about "double named" scales...
On a couple of occasions my teacher asked me to play "si bémol majeur" which I mistranslated to myself as "C flat major" (instead of B flat major)

Each time this happened I thought this was a very bizarre way of asking for B major, wondered why he was trying to catch me out but didn't query him and just played B major

And of course he couldn't understand why I played not just a few wrong notes but completely the wrong scale.

Faure, Mozart, Delibes all with Gedall. Nice day.

I second that! Why is practice so much more enjoyable with someone else?

Thanks for the great bacon baps for lunch .

Weber Romance and Pollacca

and the Kloze all went surprisingly well in my lesson!!


My teacher was very impressed

When I couldn't help but as with a smile "Did I do good?"

His answer was "very" (More )

We also realised that I'd been going for just over a year and when I said i could tell I'd improved a lot in that time he emphatically agreed AND..... This is the real :yay; for me ..... he said I've the potential to go a lot further too!!!



(sorry bit overboard on the smilies..... )

oh no looks like the overuse of is spread through an additive Vandoren are using. I thought this was a Barry post when skim reading!

Regarding the sharps v flats thing and recorders I'm much happier with flats than sharps but any above 4 melt what's left of my brain. Then again I'm odd in that I'm a little happier with flats on clari and sax which is unfortunate given their rarity.

sorry

I have made a start on Rutter's Suite Antique. Obviously , I have started with the easier 2, and will work up to the Waltz at a later date. I love the Chanson with the piano...........very pretty. Also good for high notes which is a weak spot. I can get them, but don't seemt o be able to read them quickly, so this will be good practise.

I'm about to go and practise the bassoon - I have a new Weissenborn study to learn, and I haven't touched the instrument since orchestra last Friday.

Just seen this : like it, CJB

Well I am going to practise our duets for Dyrham - one of us has to .

Pity you are not going to Solari's Baroque Day - you could have helped andante_in_c and me with the Rutter pieces .

More on the Rossini : as it stands, there's an awful lot for Antony Pay to pick apart...

You have to make sure that you leave teachers something to do you know......

I'll try using that phrase at the masterclass. I'll let you know if it works. Or not...

Might try it out myself some time....

Well, if I try it first, I can then tell you how effective it is

My teacher uses it with me quite often:
"If you could play everything perfectly straight away, I would be out of a job"

And in a classroom situation, when I'm the teacher (a bit like your masterclass since there will be other people watching) I often say: "That's a really interesting mistake and I'm sure lots of other people have made it as well."

I got side-tracked and still haven't practised... right, I really will this time, as soon as I log off. No sneaking to the piano to practise Grieg!