They Make a Gel to Get Rid of Those Scales

There's something refreshing about putting down a whole stack of repertoire, turning around, and picking up an entirely different stack of repertoire. It's cleansing for the mind. Of course, it means that I get a whole different set of headaches with the new repertoire.

Mmmm. I get to relearn the Firebird Variation. Now, the complete Firebird isn't really easy, but the learning the Variation is just asking for a brain tumor. There's something about the impossibly fast tempo (76 to the dotted quarter) that screams mosquito, not bird. Breaking out the metro-gnome and slowly building up speed and stability is actually quite satisfying. It's gratifying to see steady progress on something. The real difficulty comes when I've got it up to speed. Then how do I proceed? Am I playing the dynamics? Should I be creating elisions with other instruments at some points? My puny mind can't even dare to think about intonation at this point.

We've heard good reactions from our warm music last week at the Theodore Parker Church. I'm happy to know that the audience enjoyed themselves. There's talk about being a bit more active at the church in terms of more frequent performances. I think that would be lovely, but then again, I'm always up for performing chamber music.

Oh yes...I've been getting my salt licks...Er...Scales in. I've been spending HOURS playing scales each of the last couple of days. I'm hoping that I can carve enough time to continue this for a little while. I always hate the feeling that I'm just spitting out repertoire rather than growing as a musician.