Category Archives: Words Words Words

Orchestra Begins

I’m sitting third chair again, as our missing section member is back after a half-season off. I miss second chair a bit because I learned so much from sitting with the principal cellist, but I won’t miss the feeling of being on the spot every week.

What was waiting on my music stand: Handel’s Water Music suite (which we played remarkably well for sight-reading; it helped everyone ease back into the swing of things after a couple of weeks off); Haydn’s 99th symphony (E flat major, a frustrating key for me because for some reason I only remember to flatten half of the A notes when I play it); a double violin concerto from Vivaldi’s Estro Armonico (hurrah, Vivaldi!); and a symphony by William Boyce, whom I knew was an English Baroque composer but not much more than that.

It is a wry truth in my house that whenever I have a new Haydn symphony to play, I don’t own a recording to help me familiarise myself with it. He wrote over a hundred of them. I own thirty, with two recordings of the 94th. With our tendency to play the later symphonies and my personal preference for that era of Haydn’s symphony-writing career, one would expect that I would have a good chance of owning whatever symphony we’re to play. But no: every time we begin a new Haydn symphony I have to track a new recording down. This is by no means a hardship; I enjoy Haydn immensely. It’s simply become a sort of running joke. (If you’re a geek and wondering: 1 through 20, 82, 83, 85, 92, 94 (twice), 96, 100, 101, 103, and 104. 80, 81, and 99 will soon join them. I love Naxos.)

As usual, I was simultaneously impressed and frustrated by my sight-reading. Overall I’m not bad, but when I lose the music I’m jarred out of the zone and never quite get back on top of things. Also, it was cold, so no one’s fingers were in top form. For once, I remembered to put my glasses on at the beginning of the night. I hate the folding chairs we have to use in the auditorium; I did something to my hip at the beginning of last weekend and it started acting up again last night after finally healing. I might finally have to look into a wedge cushion for proper support. Folding chairs are evil for cellists because they slope backwards and we have to sit forwards, so there’s a lot of stress placed in the lower back. If you’ve ever taken a really good look at how I sit in concert (yeah, right) you’ve seen that I angle the chair so that I sit on a corner of the seat. It hurts less, because the corners are relatively flat.

Also: Last night we got the numbers for the monies collected at the Messiah for charity. Are you ready for this?

There were two charities. Each charity got over $1700.

Yes, I blinked a lot too. That means the performance brought in almost $3500. How incredible, and absolutely wonderful.

Note to Self: Orchestra

Orchestra begins again tonight.

Maybe typing it out will fix it in my mind, because I have been forgetting over and over. It’s been a moderately unreal day; I think it’s the light.

I wonder what we’ll be playing for the next concert this spring. Getting new music is always interesting.

Quiet

The plan to “choose silence” and not waste energy on energy-absorbing things that don’t support a healthy mental and emotional environment continues apace. This means, by extension, that my commenting in general is going to decrease. If you’re one of my regular reads, it isn’t that I’m not reading your thoughts; I’m just not saying anything unless I can say something meaningful and say it right. One of my goals is to cut down on idle conversation, because I’ve observed lately by listening to others that it (a) consumes energy that can be better directed elsewhere, and (b) very often creates negative energy that gets spread around. And combating negative energy means using up yet more energy, perpetuating a vicious cycle. I want to spend more time thinking about the words I use, and that doesn’t make for very efficient light conversation. I’m also trying to cut down on the amount of negative energy I encounter, to further reduce the amount of stress in my life.

I still intend to use this journal to work things out, and to keep people up to date on what’s going on. Posting frequency has already decreased to a certain extent, as you may have noticed; it may decrease further, or it may not, as the plan requires.

Important Concert-Related Announcement

To all Random Colour and Invisible fans:

Due to an unacceptable rate hike from our regular venue, the double-band show on January 20 has been cancelled.

I know you’re all devastated, as you were deprived of our gig last fall as well. When we have another date we’ll announce it, but do be aware that because of various other commitments it won’t be until late spring at the earliest.

Thanks, everyone, for your ongoing support.

Back

The weekend was less stressful than I expected, probably because I made the conscious choice to be alone, to focus on me and my thoughts instead of getting caught up in idle conversation. (Or, in the words of another on-line journaler, I “chose silence”. Ivy, was that you? I can’t find the reference now.) Among other workshops there were two lovely guided meditations, a peaceful ritual, and lots of time in my room journaling longhand and meditating about various challenges and stalled areas in my life. I discovered a whole bunch of things and made a couple of personal breakthoughs; now all I have to do is follow up on them, which is not so easy.

Liam had an excellent time with his local grandparents, who stayed with him while we were gone. Knowing that they had such a good forty-eight hours together has opened up a lot of possibilities for us.

In Other News

‘Other news’, of course, being news wherein I do not obliquely express an unhealthy desire for a majority of the planet’s population to vanish. After the last post, I didn’t want to leave you all wondering what had happened to me over the weekend, as I’m going away and won’t be journaling. I wish I could say it was on a mini vacation, but it isn’t. So I hereby provide you with a short recap of what I did while Liam napped:

Plugged the microphone into the minidisc player. Clipped the mic to my music stand. Recorded a chunk of my hour and a half of cello practice this afternoon. Put the headphones on to check for recording quality.

Cue jaw drop. Wow. Just — wow.

I can feed the minidisc signal into a regular stereo and listen to it via the stereo speakers, and also record it onto a cassette, which means it’s analog. Therefore there must exist a way to feed it into the computer and transfer it to a digital file, because I know people do this with cassettes and videotapes and such things. It will be a project of mine next week, the researching of this. It likely involves cables that I do not presently own.

In the meantime — wow, both for the quality of the little stereo microphone I ordered and for the minidisc recording ability. Also, my cello playing does not suck. The purchase of these items may well be paid back by repeated use of them to convince me of this alone.