Who doesn't love a freebie?

One of my (many) little neurotic "things" is that while someone is working in my house, I feel like I must be working, too. (I would have made a terrible aristocrat in times past.) This week a very nice carpenter is here replacing the storm doors, and while he is doing that, I have been attacking the neglected filing in my music and hobby space.

OK, that's not quite fair. More accurately, I have been moving my stuff out of what is mostly DH's office space, and setting up my own space in one side of the open downstairs area. Truth be told, I have been mourning the loss of my previous closed studio to the gym a while ago, but am now ready to get over it and claim this area, even though I can't close the door on my practice time, as "mine." It's a combination music, stamping, blogging and study area. I have a table with two work spaces, moved the computer down, book cases and organizing cubes, the piano, and of course cellos, stands, and mirror.

So this week I emptied and moved some plastic file boxes downstairs and have been busily sorting, labeling and filing. I hope to get through the last four partial boxes of "stuff" today, which will then be the first time I haven't been living out of boxes since we moved here. Whoa. Major paradigm shift.

Now, based on the title of this post, I didn't start typing here in order to tell you all that, but rather to tell you what I found. I'm "pre-filing" the stuff from the boxes, sorting them into piles on the floor, and ran across a Shar flyer. It says that they have free sheet music downloads available, so I checked it out. Looks like they post something new every week, and this week it's the parts and score for a Mozart string quartet, k458, "The Hunt."

I love free sheet music. Did you know they were doing this? Great way to get folks to visit your shop every week.

And even better, now that I have blogged about it I can discard the flyer. Hehe.

Solos for Young Cellists

The pro hired to round out the cello section for our church Easter program recommended that I check out the series "Solos for Young Cellists," and specifically the piece Julie-O, which she thought was in Volume 3. Turns out she was wrong about that, but I couldn't tell until I had the volume in my hand, because I couldn't find a listing of the Tables of Contents. (One of my pet peeves when buying sheet music on line.) With a little more digging, I found vol 1-6, but not all on the same page. Looks like it might be in Volume 5.

The cool thing about this series (so I hear) is that you can buy a CD for each volume that contains the pieces played on the cello with piano accompaniment, and also the accompaniment alone, for practice purposes. Prices vary from $9-17 for the books (buyer beware!) and about $12 for the CD, so about $25 for piano score, cello part, and CD per volume, depending on taxes and shipping for where you decide to buy.

As another public service gesture, here are the Tables of Contents of Solos for Young Cellists.

Volume 1
Simple Folk Songs (8)
Scherzo, Op. 12, No. 3-Schlemuller
Forward, March!, Op. 14, No. 6-Schlemuller
Livi's Blues-E. W. Cheney
Fairytales-Squire
Clock Tower Bells-C. Cheney
Budapesto-C. Cheney
Gondola Song-Schlemuller
Concerto in C Major, III. No. 6-Vivaldi

Volume 2
Cradle Song-Squire
Berceuse-Jarnefelt
Drei Leichte Stucke-Hindemith
Running of the Bulls-E. W. Cheney
Nina-Pergolesi
Elfintanz-Jenkinson
At Twilight-Squire
Neopolitan Dance-Marcelli

Volume 3
Romance/Debussy
Bourree/Squire
Serenade Basque/Adorian
Sicilienne/Faure
Sonata in E Minor, Op. 38, No. 1/Romberg
Sonata in E Minor, Op. 38, No. 1/Romberg/Farrar (quartet arrangement)
Fond Recollections, Op. 64, No. 1/Popper
Harlequinade/Squire
Humoresque/Squire

Volume 4
Sonata in C Major/Handel
Suite Francaise/Bazelaire
Le Basque/Marais
Orientale from Kaleidoscope, Op. 50, No. 9/Cui
Etude-Caprice, Op. 54, No. 4/Golterman

Volume 5
Salut d' Amour, op. 12 - Elgar
Pieces form the 10th, 12th and 14th Concerti - Couperin
* Prelude
* Siciliene
* La Tromba
* Plainte
* Air de Diable
Adagio & Allegro, Op. 70 - Schumann
Mazurka - Popper
Meditation - Bridge
Julie-O - Summer/Cheney

Volume 6
Song Without Words, Op. Posthumous 109 - Mendelssohn
Sonata in C Major, G. 4 - Boccherini
* Allegro
* Largo
* Allegro
Piece pour violoncelle, Op. 77 (Papillon) - Faure
Prayer from "Jewish Life" Suite No. 1 - Bloch
Eclectic Suite (Pops' Cycle) - Forsyth
* Potpourri
* Song of Light
* Ripsnorter Finale

(I haven't been able to find a listing for volumes 7 and 8, but will append them when I do. The Alfred Publishing site only lists CDs for these volumes (with no contents!), so I am surmising the sheet music may not have been published yet.)
(Update: it took a lot of digging, but I found links on Carey Cheney's web site. I'd still prefer to see them all listed on one page - so here it is!)

Volume 7
Concerto in G Major, F.III, Nr. 12 - A. Vivaldi
* Allegro
* Largo
* Allegro
*!*Divertimento - Haydn-Piatigorsky
* Adagio
* Minuet
* Allegro di molto
*!*Vocalise - V. Persichetti
Andante - C.P.E. Bach

Volume 8
*!* The Bee - F. Schubert
Tzig, Tzig! - W.H. Squire
Sonata in E Major (1st & 2nd mvmts.) - F.Francoeur
Restful Woods - A. Dvorak
*!* Capriccio - Lucas Foss

*!* denotes copyright permission is still under negotiation.
(I'm not sure what this means, since pieces from the earlier volumes also have this annotation, but they have been published and are available for purchase.)

Aptitude test

You Should Play the Violin

You are highly intelligent, and mastering difficult subjects never intimidates you. And while you may not be musical yet, you have a good ear - and you're sensitive to subtle differences in music. You are dedicated and studious. You have a great work ethic. You study well under a teacher, and you don't mind repeating tasks or following instructions. Expressive and moody, you are very likely to convey a variety of rich emotions through your music. You are definitely a passionate person... passionate enough to truly love the violin. Your dominant personality characteristic: your high intelligence Your secondary personality characteristic: your sensitivity

What Musical Instrument Should You Play?

I saw this on Maricello's blog, and of course I had to try it. I came up with violin on the first try, but wanting to explore other option kept going back to the questions to try different combinations of answers. I got violin almost all the time I answered that I wanted to play in a symphony, plus harp, piano, and lots and lots and LOTS of accordion with other combinations of answers. I think that whomever wrote this quiz could use a good music appreciation course. His/her knowledge of instruments appears to be very limited. Or perhaps they think the accordion is funny, so engineered the quiz to return that answer most of the time.

It reminds me of my first screening for musical aptitude. I was about five years old, and I sat with a man who asked me lots of very silly questions. The one I still remember had something to do with the voices of Mama Bear and Papa Bear, and where spatially you would put their relative voices. Well, I was getting suspicious of this guy and his nonsense, so feeling sure this was a trick question, I motioned that Papa Bear was high (with one hand up) and Mama Bear was low (with the other hand well below.)

Silly me. What instrument did they pair me with? The accordion. You know, the 'cello works that way, too, but this was pre-Suzuki and they didn't start kids on 'cellos at that age. I remember how easy it was to learn to play each hand's part, and how impossible to play them together. Of course, the teaching method went something like "Wow, each hand sounds really good. For next week I want you to play them together for me." Right. When I finally got around to taking piano lessons in much-later adulthood I was partially convinced I would never be able to play hands together. Thanks Pat, for for getting me past that fear. The teacher is so important.

One of my earliest scarring memories has to do with that accordion. The shop where I took my music lessons had an accordion band, probably 20 or 30 of us. After one performance I tripped on my way back to my seat and must have skidded 20 feet across the tile floor on top of my accordion. Great sled potential. Of course, everyone laughed. I'm sure it was pretty funny seeing a cute little girl with an accordion almost as big as she was skidding across the floor. And of course, I was mortified. I think the roots of all of my performance anxiety issues are in that evening.

Happy Extra Snooze Day

I was gypped. I spent my extra "falling back" hour last night awake. As far as I'm concerned, the worst peri-menopausal symptom is this sleep disorder, which differs a little from classic insomnia in that falling asleep is OK, but you wake up frequently through the night and often can't fall back asleep. I can take the hot flashes and night sweats, but I hate feeling sleep-deprived.

So last night at 1 or 2 am, depending on whether you are a before-bed or an after-I-get-up clock changer, I hit the snooze button on the radio for three 20 minute segments. I had hopes that I would fall asleep and not leave the radio on, which means I am not yet devoid of optimism, I suppose. In addition to a forgettable Strauss waltz I heard Elgar's Enigma Variations.

We're playing the E.V. in concert this Wednesday, so had our last rehearsal on Thursday night. It was pretty close to disastrous . We had serious problems with the transitions between sections, having never done them before. The violins crashed and burned on the variation with the fast eighth-note leaps up and down and all around the fingerboard. (That part reminds me of the second violin raindrop entrance in the 4th movement of Beethoven's Pastorale symphony. They crashed there, too.) The bassoons kept screwing up their entrances, apparently counting-impaired. The principle flutist complained that her pianissimo solo sections were being covered, and Maestro told her that the best we could hope to achieve was a fairly uniform mezzo forte, so she needed to play louder. I take that as an admission that this piece is too hard for us given the amount of rehearsal time allotted.

And I discovered a forgotten variation that just happened to be mostly a cello soli in tenor clef. (No, not Nimrod. The other one.) Evidently we rehearsed it once early on and it went well enough that we never returned to it, so it didn't get "starred" later for extra attention in my practice room. Oy. I'm cramming now.

So being awake last night wasn't a total loss. I hear so much more in a piece after I've worked on it for awhile. Not only that, but I know where all the snake pits are and can take pleasure in the professional navigation through them. I should probably get out of bed and start practicing now.

NaBloPoMo (Gesundheit!)

Not been so good at blogging regularly lately, have I? It's not so much because I am so busy I don't have time to write, though I claimed so a couple of weeks ago. I am busy, but I've been writing while busy before. I think it's more likely to be because my blog is pretty much about two things, foster kittens and learning the cello, and I have impediments in writing about both of those topics at present. I have no new kittens since I'm still under the ringworm quarantine, and I have hours and hours and hours of cello or music things waiting to be digested, organized, and transcribed. Sounds too much like work to me.

So I have decided, with NaBloPoMo in November, to simplify that task. (Hey - check it out! NaBloPoMo is on Ning!) I'm going to try to jump start (restart) my blogging by committing to a post every day in November, and to do so each day I will be writing about one (just one measly) thing I have learned in the last few months about playing the cello or music in general. I think I've found a small enough bit that I can do it without being overwhelmed, but we'll see.

As a preview of coming attractions, this is my material:
* A two-hour master class and one-hour private lesson with Pedro de Alcantara, cello and Alexander Technique teacher and author of Indirect Procedures: A Musician's Guide to the Alexander Technique (Clarendon Paperbacks).

* A three-hour hands-on string education session with Phyllis Young, Professor Emeritus of Cello and String Pedagogy at UT Austin and author of Playing the String Game: Strategies for Teaching Cello and Strings.

* Ten hours of didactic sessions with Edmund Sprunger, a Suzuki violin teacher with a Masters in Social Work, and the author of Helping Parents Practice: Ideas for Making It Easier.

* Hours and hours worth of cello lessons with Peter Howard, recently retired Principle Cellist of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

* Four hours of chamber music coaching with members of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

* Many hours of Alexander Technique lessons with Lauren Hill, who trained at the Urbana Center for the Alexander Technique in Urbana, Illinois.

* Tidbits from my voice lessons with Andrea Leap and maybe my piano lessons with Guna Skujina.

* The opportunity to see Zoe Keating, former cellist in Rasputina, perform live this past weekend.

I told you I've been busy.

For my sister

I saw this on Violinist.com and couldn't resist.

First voice lesson 9/19

This is going to be fun.

Last night was my first (ever) voice class. While I did sing in school choruses through 9th grade, I can't remember ever having any physical or technical instruction on how to produce music with the voice. Classes actually started last week, so I jumped right in without any introduction to speak of. While that has the advantage of leaving no time for worrying, I am glad I have some musical background, without which I would have been utterly lost.

We started with physical warm-ups:
* Roll head forward to strech neck, then to each side
* Drop head to chest and roll downward to hang at hips
* Roll back to standing

Breathing warm-ups:
* Pant like a dog
* Hiss out for 8 counts, quick inhale (relax to breath in) and repeat
* Same, for 12 counts

Vocal warm-ups:
* Sing zzzz in monotone for 8 counts, inhale, repeat
* Same for 12 counts
* Sing arpeggio with continuous zzzz, do - do sol mi do, where first do-do is an octave jump upward. Continuous meaning without discreet jumps to notes, just a continuous motion of tone toward and over them.
* Same exercise with either tongue-rolling trill or raspberry lip-blubber. (I can roll my tongue all day, but can't blubber worth a darn.)
* Same exercise using the words "I lo-ove to sing." Discussion of centripetal motion. Physical experience of same by swinging arms counterclockwise in large circle to facilitate octave leap. (An exercise involving randomly throwing a stability ball around the group was scrapped because we focused too much on the ball and not enough on what we were singing. Adults. Bah.) The goal was to make that octave leap in a smooth motion, no jerking from one note to the next.

We spent some time listening to recordings of vocalists that others had brought (evidently the assignment from last week.) I'm not a big vocal music fan, so it was very interesting to listen to singing as music, the same way I would study a cello recording. It was very exciting to start making connections about how tones become music. You'd think that is such a simple thing, but it's taken me a long time to be able to hear those nuances.

Next, singing last week's assigned piece, Amazing Grace. Important points:
* Open vowels, short consonants. Achieve this with very open mouth for vowels (exaggerate) and short closing for consonant. It felt a bit like chewing, and reminded me of one particular choir member in my last church who had a very lovely voice, but always looked like she was chewing the words. However, it was very effective. I found my throat opened considerably when I opened my mouth to sing those vowels, with a remarkable improvement in overall tone.
* Sing through the phrase, using the centripetal motion concept. Not blocky note-to-note movement. I can't tell you how exciting that was. This is exactly what I have been trying to achieve on the cello, with varying success. It was so cool to hear it happening without being buried in the technical "how." There's a lot to explore in the idea of making music "in the cracks" (i.e. between the notes, referring to the cracks between piano keys.)

Finally, we ran through the piece for next week, I'm Beginning to See the Light, circa 1944, by the committee of Harry James, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges and Don George. New topic entirely. No big vowels. Short notes with swing and lots of bending, overt and implied.

My morning practice today was very interesting. I worked on my Bach invention (piano) first, and had intermittent interest from John, Cricket, and my newest foster, Serengeti. But when I started singing every cat in the house was sitting at my feet, watching and listening. Now, I'm not going to speculate on why they are so drawn to me singing, but this is a great piece of music. It just makes me feel happy.

Two weeks until the next class, and I can hardly wait.

Beating Retreat

Again, in the courtyard at Hopetoun House. Retreat involves the marching of the pipes and drums onto the field and maneuvering into a circle, to facilitate the playing of several tunes, then regrouping to march off the field after a salute is exchanged between the individual we would identify as the drum major and the presiding official.

Hopetoun House

Taken at the meeting's final soiree at Hopetoun House. Still searching for fiddlers in Scotland. I'm thinking the search may be more fruitful in Appalachia.

A little cello news

Taking a break from Harry Potter. Whew. I don't know if I can stand this amount of intensity in every chapter. BTW, PFS, I had pre-ordered my copy from Amazon back in February. Love the convenience of having it delivered to my door, even though it means I'm 12 hours behind when I start reading. And I actually didn't have a chance to start until evening, which is why I'm only half-way through. Sleep is important. One of my favorite Harry Potter memories will be the anticipation of the book arriving by courier on release day, as I have done since 1998. Which book was that?

All of my past week was not spent flogging the computer issues. I had a pretty busy play week, too. On Friday and Saturday I got together with special music buddies to play cello trios, sonatas, piano trios, and string trios. The highlight was playing through some pieces written by Roger Bourland in the last decade or so that I had recently invested in upon Elaine Fine's recommendation. We read the cello quartet, with me alternating between cello 2 and 3 since we were short one, the piano trio, and one of the sonatas.

After reading, the universal consensus was that these are really fun pieces. They are technically within reach of good intermediate cellists, but will benefit from some thought and elbow grease. Everyone wanted a practice part so that we can work on them in the future.

On Tuesday and Wednesday my orchestra had our summer noon concerts. Both concerts were outdoors, on different parts of the University grounds. We split the music I listed earlier between the two concerts, with some duplication, and on both days had more scheduled than we actually got through. It was a lot of music, and I can admit here that I was not very proud of my playing, especially the second concert. It was very hot, we were on concrete, and under the tent the heat seemed to reflect off the ground to be trapped there with us. I was physically exhausted.

There was a light breeze that kept us from being completely miserable, but no stands were blown over and we only lost a little music here and there. We don't have the luxury of punching holes in orchestra parts to stabilize them in a notebook, though if I was in an outside seat I would have copied the music and put it in sheet protectors, similar to what Maricello described in one of my comments. (BTW, I have never seen fold-out sheet protectors, but they would be awfully handy.)

Since I had to use the principal's music, I didn't have the sheet protector option, but did have my choice of clothes pins or wind screens. I've used clips in the past, and find unclipping, turning, and reclipping to be an intolerable bother. Might as well not play, as long as it takes me. I chose the wind screen, a 12x18 in piece of plexiglass that sits in front of the open part. The brachial strings don't like them, but for cellists it's not too bad to grab the screen with the bow hand, move it to the side, turn the page with the left hand, then replace the screen and resume playing. I can usually do it within 6 measures, but did have to apologize twice for slow page turns. (You'll appreciate that, L8.)

Orchestra season is over, to resume in September. Cello lessons resume in October. I'm waiting to really want to play before I resume an intense practice schedule. Occasionally I wonder if one of the reasons I don't feel much like playing is that I don't have a very good cello to play on. My replacement is still waiting for the varnish to dry, somewhere in a very wet summer in England. In the meantime I'm practicing my cello desultorily, but spending more regular time on my piano lessons, which end next week, and a little ear training. I'm thinking about trying a beginning vocal class in the fall. And I'm enjoying summertime.

Wishful Thinking

I grew out of the belief that reading Mademoiselle would make me gorgeous by my mid 20's, but even at my more mature age continue to battle with the magical thinking that if I just buy the right book I will become smart. Unfortunately, DH shares that fault. In medical school we had one complete shelf for neuroanatomy books, and another for biochemistry texts.

Every time I take up a new hobby you can read clear evidence of it on my bookshelves. I would estimate I have 20 linear feet of computer manuals and how-tos, and maybe 8 linear feet of music texts. Previous hobbies (ice skating, wind surfing, squash) have been recycled at library book drives.

The music books are harder to estimate, as many are over-size and are filed in a pile on the bookshelf. And I'm not sure I can accurately estimate the amount of sheet music I have. At least 4 file drawers and several shelves, plus 20 or so CD volumes. It boggles the mind.

I try to keep it in check, but have yet to completely shake the habit of buying sheet music on spec. "Oooh, this looks interesting... I think I might be able to play it someday!," and it doesn't seem to matter whether I am browsing at the store or on the internet. The only reliable solution is to refrain from browsing.

So, yesterday I stopped at the sheet music store on my way home from my AT lesson. My specific goal: to find a volume of elementary canons and fugues to play on the piano. I love fugues, and my appetite to learn how to play them was whetted by a little 5-finger canon we worked on this week. Lovely warm-up, transposed to major keys last week and minor keys this one. I was hoping to find some graded work to span the chasm between that and Bach 2-part inventions.

The good news is that I invested in a number of very interesting-looking volumes (shades of PFS here).

The bad news is that I believe there is exactly one elementary fugue in all of these volumes. Which I am greatly looking forward to playing. I think I am going to end up writing my own and playing them. Perhaps I can write out some of the simple canons in my string books to learn with two hands on the piano.

Too bad I didn't think of that before I went to the store.