MaW’s Blog

Yesterday I received word that my recorder teacher has sent to the ABRSM my entry for grade 5 treble recorder.

The exam’s not likely to be until the first week of December, but I’m already scared. What with NaNoWriMo and practising for the exam, I think November’s going to be a busy month.

Now to make a chart of scales I need to learn and start playing them all three times a day.

Well what do I write? I don’t really feel like much has happened to write about, but then again I do feel that I should write something, at least to prove to all the Livejournal people that it is worth sticking their heads out of that particular little world to look at the rest of the Web from time to time. If only free LJ accounts acted as RSS aggregators…

But such issues aside, I do seem to be finding a lot of people on LJ lately including Ciry and Chili from NWTSweS, a great pleasure. I should have tracked them down a long time ago.

Supposedly I have a concert on Friday with the Society of Recorder Players. This is find and dandy, and I can actually play the music for a change (it’s tenor stuff and none of the tenor parts are particularly complicated — especially the tenor part for Country Gardens which, save for the occurrance of one dotted quaver, one semiquaver and one triplet, is so dull as to be difficult to practise. Unfortunately it is, as with many tenor parts, fairly important when you look at the overall sound of the piece).

Although I do moan about boring tenor parts, I am fairly grateful I’m not playing descant. Not only are descant parts frequently more complicated, but if you get something wrong… let’s just say everybody notices.

Now I need to get hold of someone from the SRP and find out what they tend to wear to concerts.

Today is the day for dancing for joy: I passed my grade 4 descant recorder exam with a merit! 127 points, which means only three from getting a distinction. I’m absolutely overjoyed and gobsmacked — I thought I’d pass, but I really didn’t think I’d get a merit. Wendy said she was sure I would, but I thought if I did it’d be by the thinnest of margins. Turns out that thin margin was the one between me and a distinction instead. If I’d just practised my scales more, I might have got that.

The recurring criticism was a lack of dynamic range, which is tricky to do on the recoder so I generally just don’t bother. I’m going to have to change that — an extra mark for each piece and in the sight reading could once more make the difference. Also, it’s nice to get nice comments from the examiner, and this set of comments was generally positive and all very helpful. I’m on top of the world!

My readers (yes all three of you) may have noticed a distinct lack of blogging lately. Things happened, I went a few places, saw a few films (_Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest_, and Superman Returns — both excellent), played the recorder some more, bought a new recorder even, and stressed a lot about my PhD.

It was to spare the Internet the latter that I didn’t post much in that time. Also at the moment I’m not entirely sure what I want to be using this for anymore, so things might be a little quiet for a while.

Then again, they might not! Why not come back next week and find out?

My final point is to note that it’s far too hot, and the place I live is too noisy. Mornings have not been a good time for me lately. I hate having to sleep until half past nine, but at the moment I’m just not getting enough rest because I can’t get to sleep early enough! Roll on autumn.

Okay so it was only the one piece I mucked up, but…

1. Be nervous
2. Get distracted by another person misplacing their music
3. Repeatedly count crotchets as if they were minims during the difficult bits

What really irritates me is that I played it just fine in rehearsal.

Other than that, it was okay with just a finger-fumble in the second piece.

But surely yes. The decision has been taken. I’m doing grade four descant recorder in the summer.

Scary, but ultimately satisfying if I pass.