music is my entire life…

From about three weeks ago until mid-June, at least. School has been sort of on a break….in the last week i have: practiced (of course!), done occasional chemistry and French, and managed to do quite a bit of Latin during downtime in the orchestra room.

My band concert was last night, the climax of months and months of rehearsals, and, as predicted, astoundingly mediocre! Actually, mr. swinehart said it was one of the best concerts he’s ever heard this band do, so either it was better than i thought or the band is usually worse. Apparently all three groups are on an upswing this year (according to the teacher, who might be a little bit biased….) and that rarely happens. Dad got numerous photos, in most of which I’m either looking away or talking, plus i am sooo pale that under the stage lights i look ill, so i won’t share them right now. mom has decreed that i will be wearing makeup to the orchestra concert next week, because “Ryan is no tanned person himself, but you made him look like he just spent a week in Florida!”. i personally would rather just make Casie and Joe look tanned, but i already have to wear a cummerbund, so…..

If anyone is curious, the hat this year was Mickey Mouse.

Speaking of which (actually, we weren’t speaking of this, but i want to share it and “speaking of which” is a nice segway, don’t you think?) i got my audition results back, and I’m fifth out of twenty, which is not great but not bad either (top 25%!), and better than i expected considering that i had to start one song over and my cumulative score was 160/200. I’m the highest freshman.

This week is insanely filled with my concert, Ben’s concert, practicing for the concerts, half-day rehearsals for the concerts, on-stage rehearsals for the concerts, possibly school, and on and on. then once the concerts are over we have the recital to prepare for and I’m filling in for the school quartet.

So, i guess that this post is just a really long excuse for not blogging as often as i want to.

 

A Preview

Tomorrow night is our high school band concert. Here are some sneak peeks just for you:

• Expect us to be mediocre. DO NOT come with high expectations, because you will be disappointed. There will be some songs that are very good. There will be some songs that are very bad. There will be several songs that are mediocre.
• It is anticipated that the percussionists will drop something. This is normal. Do not be alarmed: it is a Band Tradition. I have never been in a band concert that did not feature a percussion incident. Usually it’s only a dropped cymbal or a stick that slips out of someone’s hand, but for really special performances the drum set also comes apart.
• There will be a ridiculous amount of French horn solos. Roughly five, most notably the one that consists of one note. By the time you realize it’s a solo, it’s over. I am a freshman, which means that I will be playing second horn, which means that I have one solo, which equals four notes, in “Resplendent Glory”. It will be truly resplendent. I may or may not also be playing along with the “solo” in our closer, the “Disney Medley from Hell“.
• There will also be other solos played by various instruments, all of which are much more interesting.
• By the way, our closer is, as stated above, the Disney Medley. I hate it. I don’t really like our opener either, come to think of it!
• Three pieces will be conducted by our Student Conductor. They are the “Canterbury Chorale”, which is SLOW and finicky, “March Bou Shu”, which is a pretty fun song, and “On Wings of Eagles”, which I like but I only got last week so I’m not that good at it.
• My very favorite piece is sort of in the middle. It’s called “Seafarers”, as recorded by HMRM (name that acronym!). It’s a medley (yes, another medley!) of sea chantey type songs, such as “what do you do with a drunken sailor” and “blow the man down”. Also, “Shenandoah”.
• Donations will be accepted for the “band scholarship”. Whatever that is.
• Senior Recognition has been reduced this year! Underclassmen are very happy about this, because it means half an hour less we have to sit under really hot lights wearing unattractive cummerbunds.  Instead of speeches they’re running a slide show.They did this at the chorus concert and it was half an hour shorter than last year. I’m not sure how the band is doing it, but the orchestra seniors will each have their own slide, complete with their college plans, in addition to the “fun” pictures.
• I’m sure that there are at least two other pieces I haven’t mentioned yet, but I can’t remember them.
• So, there’s your concert preview, in black and white, and you can decide whether or not you want to come.
• There is no senior band tradition, as far as I know.

Coming later this week: ORCHESTRA PREVIEW!

A Very, Very Important Question

Is it weird if you keep all your music sorted by type and then in alphabetical order? For example: all orchestra music goes in your folder, where it is sectioned according to ensemble and then a-z; sheet music is organized by Christmas, fiddle music, etc, and then alphabetized, and so on.

Or is that perfectly normal and everyone else is a slob?

Because apparently some people think that’s strange. However, some of those same people tend never to be able to find anything. So perhaps, organization is good?

What about if you also keep your schoolbooks in alphabetical order? Is that abnormal?

Help please.

 

 

Great Names for Bands

Sophie and I were talking about this recently. She says that if she has a band, she would call it the “Angry Monkeys”. I’m not sure where she got that, but it does make more sense that “Pink Floyd”. If I had a band….hmmmmm. I probably will never be in a band, because of several reasons: 

a) I don’t sing well enough to want the entire world to hear me. In fact, once at church some kids and I were singing one of those stupid kid’s songs like “100 bottles of beer on the wall” or something, when a guy who I was in choir with for three years turned to me with a look of suprise and said, “Hey, I never heard you sing before!”. Either I don’t sing loudly enough or he had blocked it from his memory.

b) I don’t play keyboard well at all, despite a couple years of lessons.

c) I cannot play the guitar either. I did have one percussion experience, when I was 11. Playing the triangle. I got to play an important melodic phrase, namely “ding”.

d) I hate improv. It drives me crazy. I can’t do it. And as I type that, I can hear all my music teachers in my head saying that there is no such word as can’t.

e) I have an aversion to hip music lingo such as “riff” and “gig” and “lick”. I feel stupid saying them.

Ten good names for bands, courtesy of my family:

• The Angry Monkeys
• The Seraphim
• The Walloons
• Wildebeest Rampage
• We Had Too Much Beer One Night and Decided to Form a Band, Despite the Fact That We are Rhythm Impaired Middle-Aged White Guys (or WHTMBONDFBDFTWRIMAWG for short.)
• The Opera Failures
• (insert name here) and Syncopation
• Dissonance is Awesome
• Leave Now (short for “leave now if you don’t want to lose your hearing”)
• The One Lyric (this could be interpreted as “the one true lyric that is so deeply poignant and meaningful that you will remember it the rest of your lives”, or it could be interpreted as “we are supremely unimaginative so we will just use one lyric for all our songs, and it will engrave itself on your memory and play incessantly for the rest of your lives”. Your pick)

 

 

Help us out….leave a comment!

By the way, does anyone else really HATE “Seasons In the Sun”?

 

Mea Culpa

I know, I haven’t posted in over a week. It’s been busy, on top of which Sophie watched the Sound of Music last week and my brain has decided that instead of thinking rational thoughts it will just play the soundtrack over and over.  It is shocking, but I actually know all of the words to “Sixteen Going on Seventen” and “Edelweiss” and “The Clock in the Hall”.

I am really not wanting to do school this week…grrrrr. Ben just finished his math and will not stop bragging about it. Plus I can’t play my horn this week cause the string on the back of the second valve wore out. PLUS in orchestra (or as swinehart calls it “orch”, which somehow to me says, “dork”) we are doing the Disney Classics MedleyFrom Hell. If I have to play It’s a Small World After All again I might die. In the band version of Disney Classics there are at least three different styles of playing that song, including polka and mariachi. Who exactly came up with the idea of mariachi It’s a Small World? Not to mention putting it in a piece of music that they will sell at exorbitant prices to high school band directors? And including in that music such annoying repetitive songs classics as “You Can Fly” and “Zip a dee Do Dah”? And were they drunk at the time? I need to know.

I don’t mind the band Disney music as much though because I hardly have to play; it’s mostly either rests, keeping-the-beat kind of notes, or Ryan Solo notes (there is a ridiculous number of horn solos. Most of them only last one note. I actually have one. I play four notes. Over two measures. It will be the highlight of my career I’m sure.) , but I’ll definitely be glad when this trip is over. Only 25 more rehearsals until our concert, so that’s only 10 rehearsals for me. Then there’s the recital, at which I will be playing half of the Bach Double because I somehow lost my mind and agreed to polish it up for my brother. Also a slow extremely finicky Handel Sonata.

 

I know that this is incredibly boring and you probably aren’t reading it anymore. My life will revolve around music and school for the next two months. I’m sorry. Coming tomorrow (I promise): Ethel the Singing Cow.

The Back of My Head

and other random thoughts.

While I was looking through My Pictures this evening, I realized that for some reason we posess a plethora of pictures (Alliteration: the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables) of the back of my head. So here are some of those pictures, interspersed with random thoughts, because I can’t think of anything else to write about.

This is the back of my head last summer. I made a deal with Sophie that if she let me play with her hair she could do whatever she wanted with mine. Her design involved a ponytail plus lots of butterfly clips.

You know what I really hate? My picure uploading tool. It’s taking forever for the next photo to load.

Here we go:

This is me running from the law. The law was armed with a digital camera, as you can see.

Another thing that bugs me: keys with more than 4 sharps or flats, or more often, excercises with more that 4 sharps or flats. Those are so pointless.

This is the back of me and Ben and Sophie hiking last fall.

My mom took this one last month.

I need a haircut.

This is me doing chemistry (Apologia!) this winter. Notice the flying plastic baby statue that appears to be attacking me.

Mom made that.

That is NOT the back of my head. That is the back of my band teacher’s head. You’ll notice he’s wearing a stupid hat- apparently it’s a school tradition that for the finale of the winter band concert the director must wear a stupid hat. I did not make this up. It’s sorta like the tradition of the Marine Band playing for the President, only on a smaller scale. A WAY smaller scale.

This is the side of my head at that same concert. I’ve run out of back-of-head shots that aren’t almost the same as the ones I already have.

I would put a photo of myself at last year’s band concert, but I faced front in that one.

Anyway, now you know what the back of my head looks like.

Orchestra today….

Public Service Announcement: This is one of those semiboring posts about other people’s everyday lives. Feel free to skip it.

I have decided to join the orchestra! Today I went in to talk to Mr. Swinehart and play for him. As per his request I played something I had perfected. I chose the Seitz concerto no.5. Do you think it’s cheating if you’ve known it since you were ten? I also brought in some stuff I was working on, and we played that. Then I sightread some things from the recent orchestra concert, which went suprisingly well. Sightreading is not usually one of my strong points.

I found out that he does blind auditions with Mr. Pauling, which I’m very happy about. I think that will make it quite fair. Actual auditions for sections will be in two weeks. Apparently I have to learn a two octave scale (easy peasy) (Is it dorky to say easy peasy? It sounds like something Rachael Ray would say.) and then sightread a short piece. Keep your fingers crossed!

Question: Why on earth do we twist our fingers together to signify hopefulness/good luck? Doesn’t that seem strange?