Friday, March 25, 2005

Lingering fatigue

Last night was my first real practice session in four days and of course it sucked. Sunday - Wednesday all I was able to squeeze in were some scales and long tones and a small amount of work on my exercises.

I was very tired and discouraged last night but I forced myself to put in the full hour. I was kind of having fun by the end but when the hour was up I just stopped and went upstairs to bed.

The good news is that I was playing on one of the reeds I'm breaking in and the reed is working out pretty well so far. The sound is decent I think. The other reed I'm trying to break in needs some adjusting. I will clip its tip this weekend and maybe work on the back some. The bad news is that the reed I had been playing on is definitely heading towards its demise. It was already getting weak and I scraped it across a table by mistake over the weekend. I will still use it when I need something that plays very soft (like when I really don't feel like practicing downstairs).

Tonight should be a better session. I hope!

And I was so proud of pulling off the three late nights to study for my test. I hadn't been able to stay up late in a while. But I guess now I'm paying the price.

Zzzzzzzzzzz . . .

1 comment:

Hilda said...

Hi Rebecca! Welcome to my little blog. I'm so happy to see you here. :)

So you're playing in a community band after a year an a half? Congratulations! This gives me hope that by some time next year I too might be playing with others. When I first started this instrument I figured it would take me 10 years. I seriously thought that! Then I dropped it down to 5 to get into a little ensemble after I heard how good this young guy sounded in 6 years. But recently my teacher said it wouldn't take that long at all to get into a learning ensemble. So now I'm just trying my darndest to play in tune and get a better sound. How long does it take until you are consistently in tune? Does it depend mostly on the reed or both on the reed and embouchure?

D-flat major! *shiver*

You're lucky your teacher is making nice reeds for you. Though learning about reed making has been fun I wish that in the meantime my teacher would send me home with something good to practice on (rather than me having to depend on my unskilled scraping). I think it takes quite some time to get decent at reed making so a part of me feels at a disadvantage by starting this so soon. I don't know what I'm doing!

Best wishes to you too and hope to see you around.