Of course, playing's the first thing I have to mention. I've had three gigs outside school now, so I'm slowly getting to be known, but it's going to take a while to get off the ground, especially in a city with so many strong casual musicians. Seriously, though, the average instrument owner in Termina seems two or three levels more advanced than the ones in Hyrule, and I've heard that it's because there's a lot of military retirees here... though, a stronger music programme in schools helps, for sure.
Either way, playing's being frustrating, as usual. Every lesson I hear the same piece of advice, and it's the same I've been hearing for years. I tried to explain to Obi-Wan what I'm thinking, and he's doing his best to help me, but I've really just got to re-program myself. When I play, I instinctively feel a need to end the current note before beginning the next one, and so the faster I go, the worse that is for air flow. It's like, for strings, at a certain speed, playing off the string just doesn't happen. I've really got to learn to keep fast notes on the string... and then, when I'm getting close to being right, the notes that are allowed to be off the string become uncharacteristically long. I guess it's just being able to switch back and forth, and being aware of which style to be playing at which moment... and not playing the wrong style out of habit. It's getting better, but it's still going to take a lot of work. After all, I'd love to play this some day, and that's just not going to happen the way I'm playing now.
We've got a pretty tank concert coming up next week, playing Britten's Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, and Handel's Dettingen Te Deum (and some Mozart I'm not in... and rumours of a Cage). That Handel part is BEASTLY... the trumpet basically plants itself on A5 for about half an hour. The thing is, I know I can do it... once. I just need to make sure I don't have any other playing commitments on concert day, and everything will be fine. Thankfully, it's written in such a way that you can play tank without destroying the other sections. Handel knew how to handle brass instruments. Note the distinct lack of pun. That was on purpose.
I've been having kind of a hard time getting motivated as of late. Part of it is probably due to the year off I took last year. Don't get me wrong, it was super beneficial and I'd recommend it to everyone thinking about grad school, especially in music. However, I really got used to not doing homework, and though I haven't missed anything yet (I was always really good at knocking off short assignments early), some of the longer projects are really a drag to start. I just want to get past the course work and to the part where I'm doing nothing but playing, is that too much to ask? Part of it is also probably that reading week was last week, and though it was nice to have time off and practice, I didn't get a whole lot of human interaction, which is kind of something I thrive on, though something at which I admit I'm terrible. Cascade never believes me when I claim I'm like the most antisocial person ever, and that's because, living in a house of technically six (though really two tribes of three), I kind of have to force myself to be social, for fear of the others thinking I'm a terrible grinch of a person. It's not really the same at school, and I'm really not good at getting to know people (I like to stick to two or three really good friends, and am not usually great at branching out past that), and so I end up kind of keeping to myself a lot. Which is good when I need to practice, but not as good for morale. I know, I make no sense. But that's how it is.
As a few of you know, I got really interested in competitive Pokémon back when Heart Gold and Soul Silver came out. The competitive scene is really not similar to the game, and if you bring in a team from the campaign and expect to play it like you did against computer opponents, you will suffer a swift demise. But, because musician and therefore have no time to breed and EV train and win all those Life Orbs and Choice Bands and Power Anklets and stuff, most of my battling I do on simulators. When I went to pick up my copy of White 2, I met a few people that are part of a fan club here, and so I went to a few of the sessions. There's a really heavy focus on the card game, though, which is something in which I'm really not that interested. I'll give it a few more sessions, though, see if anything I'm interested in happens, or if I end up getting to know any cool people. There's even another music student in the group, which is nice.
So yeah, all in all, life is life, and that's that. I submitted an application for our national youth orchestra today, which would be absolutely fantastic. Since the local youth orchestra here never emailed me back when I asked if I could do a distance audition from Hyrule, I've been without my weekend rehearsal commitment, and I kind of miss it. Oh, well, I'm in town now, so I can totally apply for next year. After all, I keep telling people, don't turn down a gig if you can help it. It's not really fair, in that I'm graduate and therefore have no courses, and a lot of the others are music undergrad, or music ed, with huge course loads. But, I'm usually decent at not getting burned out (last two orch rehearsals I'm calling the exception to the rule, it got kinda rough), so hopefully that'll keep up. We'll see, there's still a couple weeks left, plus all of next term. Time to kick it up a notch. Awesome mode, activate!
(Obi-Wan's suggested listening for a particular piece on almost every instrument's excerpt list for this season, check it out:)
