I am exceedingly busy

So on Thursday I had work/rehearsals straight from 9am-9pm and was late to a rehearsal because I had to eat a sandwich because I hadn't eaten anything that day. Oi. Then I was up until midnight working on my scholarship application. Friday was a bit less ridiculous, I actually had a lunch hour, an hour break, and I only rehearsed from 10am until 7pm. So not nearly as bad...

So the things that are taking up all my time are these:

*Work: they still make me tea and they always have cakes. It may not be a terribly stimulating job, but I do like the cakes.

*London Contemporary Dance Project: our dress rehearsal/performance is on Monday in the Music hall at GSMD. Our real performances will be in a week in a half at The Place which is the performing hall for the LCD School and they have proper lighting and all that so it will look cooler there. The rehearsals have been really interesting though- the ones on Thursday were in the largest room in the practice annex where I used to have percussion class with Neville way back in the first term. The ceiling is really low there so it was fairly amusing watching some of the tall dancers stretch my placing their hands on the ceiling. Not really conducive to high jumps...

The rehearsals today (Sunday) were in the music hall (and with costumes!) and that was nice because it was easier to watch the dancers and see what it was actually going to look like. There have been a bunch of scheduling issues though which means that over the past week there have been five different pianists. Not ideal, but it was nice to see some of the pianists that I've talked to before but don't see frequently.

I really like the other musicians our the little band. There is Pedro the Portuguese percussionist, Jose the (also Portuguese?) blond flautist (he can be pompous, but always has his heart in the right place and once I got enough sleep and food in me I discovered that he is actually hilarious even though at first I just sort of wanted to kick him.), Ellie the super cool saxophonist- I want to work with her some more I think she is really neat, Andreas the accordionist, and Naomi who is a very good pianist but clearly even busier than I am. We're a good bunch.

It has been nice to work with the dancers and choreographers but it has also been frustrating because the little glimpses that I see of the dances that I am playing for (3 of 5) look really good and I want to watch them! But I am playing and need to look intently at the music otherwise I will get horribly lost and they will have to stop dancing anyway.

*Composition class- I love and adore composition class. Fraser Trainer, the tutor for this particular little module, had had us writing backbones for pieces. A backbone is an element of a piece that is pre composed. It can be a couple of chords, a few rhythmic lines, a melodic shape, whatever. We have been writing two line rhythmic backbones. The assignment was to write a pair of rhythmic lines that went together and were between 5 and 8 bars long. Then we brought them to the group and had 20-30 minutes to put notes to the rhythms, arrange the ensemble, and create a structure that could be no more than 4 times around the backbone. So a very short piece of music- usually under two minutes when we were through. But even though they were short pieces they had to be fully thought out and realized.

Because they were rhythmic backbones the immediate reaction all of us had was to write something that was rhythmically interesting and/or complicated. I wrote one like that first and then I remembered that pretty much everything that the Baltimore Consort does is based on a backbone of sorts. The dance music of the renaissance was rarely (if ever, don't quote me on any of this) written out in an orchestrated or arranged sort of way. I know that Mark frequently has the renaissance ensemble at school do a whole piece made up of variations on an 8 bar melody. You can change the instrumentation, you can change the register, the ornamentation, the harmony, etc. And while frequently renaissance music is rhythmically interesting, a lot of time that is not where the interest comes from.

So I decided to run with that and I wrote a very simple pattern in 3 (6 8th notes, 3 quarter notes, one dotted half note- repeat.) for the top line and basically a drone for the bottom line. I found I was humming it to myself though so I drew a squiggle representing what shape the notes I was singing took. (A spiky little mountain range sort of squiggle)

When I got up to lead I made Emma chose the notes for the melody with no instruction other than the squiggle. I didn't want to determine what sort of key we were in or even what sort of mood-I just wanted to see what she would come up with while still following my mountain range squiggle. Heather and Tara- our cellists- have this odd ability to play exactly the same note without trying to- so I had them close their eyes and play the drone bit. They came up with a very pleasant harmony that was totally coincidental. Jo gets this great atmospheric sound from blowing through her tuba and then depressing the valves but without getting a pitch so it is this rattly/airy sound- so I had her do that intermittently and then I had Caroline and Kate do trills in thirds on their flute and oboe respectively.

It ended up sounding like a placid theme song for a vaguely threatening children's cartoon show from Korea. I was very proud of it.

*MapMaking project- we are finally getting started with this project in a practical sort of way. We have now had two sessions where all the the musicians involved (the 9 of us first year leadership students, a few composers, and a few assorted other instrumentalists) play together specifically works that the composers are trying out on us for the project. It has been sort of vaguely interesting- but at this point in the year and especially with all of the work that we have been doing with the composition class and our creative ensemble (Oh, we have a name now! We're "Nine Lives" 'cause there are nine of us, you know.) it is a little boring to just sit there and do whatever someone else tells you to do without having any sort of creative input.

The 9 of us (well slightly less than that due to illness and other engagements, but it was supposed to be all nine of us) went out for drinks on Saturday because we decided that we always work really hard with each other and that what we really needed was time just to hang out. Of course we ended up discussing what we've been working on and we've decided to stage a coup with the MapMaking project and bring our own ideas in because all of us (certainly me) are very interested in actually being involved creatively with this project as opposed to being essentially the hired band for other people's ideas. Just so not appealing any longer.

*Creative Ensemble- we, Nine Lives that is, keep volunteering ourselves for gigs that require us to write more material which requires us to create extra rehearsals for ourselves. This makes us busy and tired. What we're working on right now (a piece called "sixty-one") is based on a 60 beat cycle and variations therein. If you have 60 beats you can have units of 3,4,5, and 6 (I suppose also 10 and 20, but we're not dealing with that). So we are playing with that concept and working on making a piece that is much more static (especially dynamically) than what we usually write. Usually our pieces end up being a giant crescendo with lots of crunchy chords and while that can be neat- we're all getting a bit tired of it. So it has been fun to work in this other way but it does require a lot of counting, a lot of remembering, and just basically a lot of focus- because it you get off by one beat you can't get back on... (doo doo dooooo- sounds like a tag line for a horror movie about a renegade roller coaster)

"Fridays are Tough" or "Yay for Lunch!"

This morning was a struggle to get out of bed. I don't know if you've noticed this, but I've been quite busy recently and tired to the point of titling posts "tired." Also, I had lost my notebook, which was a great concern as it is full of important information, yet doesn't have my name on it. So I was worried, and tired, and *maybe* a bit cranky.

Then our tutor didn't show up. Which was terrible because it was supposed to be Pete Churchill who in addition to being one of the most amazing musicians in the world to work with, is also leaving the school after this term- so we were all really eager for his lesson. Alas, we suspect that he was never told that he had a lesson with us.

So this morning was crap. We sat like lumps in a windowless room and discussed an in house performance that we are going to do on Dec. 13th. I volunteered to play Poucha Dass because it is a great piece, and it will force me to actually practice (which is a good thing indeed.)

We thought that since we are supposed to be doing a performance, we might as well write something to perform rather than getting on stage and sitting like lumps the way we were doing. Nick and Jorge started up some samba rhythms and we practiced improvising over the chords that Nick was playing.

Man-oh-man was I not feeling it. Eventually I gave up and put the bass down and started doing some samba based body percussion with Jorge, but then my chest got all painful where I was slapping it so I tried singing along Kate and Caroline's little melody and yeah, still wasn't feeling it. Also, I was really worried about my notebook.

Lunch was a welcome, welcome break- since we had no tutor and were being good productive students anyway, we decided to take an hour and a half, which was perfect. (Okay, by the time we got back to work it was like two hours, but still.) A break and food and a bunch of emailing had made me feel much better so after lunch I bounded in to the room and played some riffs from Poucha Dass which spontaneously spouted a marvelous free improvisation that lasted over half an hour. It was totally clicking and grooving along and there is nothing better than that.

Emma had done some really neat electronics stuff during the free improv so we decided to record each of us to do some extended techniques on our instruments for her to sample. It was handy to hear what everyone else was coming up with too- since we had absolutely no guidance nor supervision we went a little nuts: playing the oboe into the tuba? Why not, it might sound cool! (It did, it was also LOUD)

When it was my turn I was thinking about doing some tapping on the side of the bass, but since we had a real live percussionist in the room I made Jorge come over and use the bass as a drum, and that sounded great so I tried to do a bass line at the same time.

I think we're on to something here. Kate got up and started dancing and that then was the starting point of our next free improvisation. (Um, the bass/drum- not the dancing. Though now that I think of it we could use her dancing....) Jorge and I need to work a bit more on it because as it is the bass is moving a bit too much for me to be able to be terribly in tune or accurate about what I'm doing- but I think with a little practice it could end up being kind of awesome. We could get Tara or Heather to do something with the bow as well...

So now we're all excited about our ideas for the Dec. 13 piece and hopefully we'll be able to convince Nathan to let us work on them and flesh them out into an actual structure during our creative ensemble classes on Thursdays.

I've been researching how to put audio files on to the blog, so if this all works out- I'll put the performance up online...nice, huh?

Whee!

Oooh, I'm still having fun.

We had Creative Ensemble part Deux today. Nell Catchpole, the tutor for this term had asked Andreas (Accordion) to bring in some Scandinavian folk music and oh my gosh is that stuff weird- there was clearly organization and a clear rhythm and all that, but I could not for the life of me follow what on earth they were doing- so I'm going to give Andreas a blank CD so that I can listen to it. A lot. So weird. (I can't even have it going through my head yet it was so alien to what I'm used to.) (but I *liked* it.)

Nell wanted the Scandinavian folk music because she thinks the melody that we're working with is reminiscent of the style. I don't know about that, but I'm glad to have been introduced to it.

This week Tara, Heather, and I were given the task of harmonizing a new melody that we again learned by ear. (I like Nell's melodies, but she is a violinist and her melodies are anything but idiomatic to the bass. I have to play them in a middle-to-high register in order to really hear the notes that are being played, and then I end up skipping all over the fingerboard in these giant leaps. At least my thumb position is getting a good work out.) Tara and Heather are cellists so our sounds melded really nicely together. Nell made us promise not to harmonize intellectually but instead to use our ears as much as possible.

The first thing we did was have Heather play the given melody while I dropped down a 4th. We messed with it a bit so that it wasn't entirely parallel fourths (but mostly was still). It gave the harmony a nice, vaguely Gregorian sound. Then Tara took over the given melody, I played what we'd decided on for the lowest line, and Heather played around with random notes at a very slow tempo and we'd all say when we really liked what came through. We took over 40 minutes to harmonize four bars but it is super cool (except for the last note/chord. That still needs some work).

I really enjoyed working with Tara and Heather- the collaboration went much more smoothly and team-workerly than last week. (Team-workerly, it's a technical term.) We all felt like we'd really contributed which I think is an key aspect when collaborating on something. (Oh: I'm pretty sure we all felt like we'd really contributed, but I suppose I should be specific and say that *I* really felt like I'd contributed. Can't speak for Heather and Tara...)

Nell recorded each groups' contribution and she's going to send us mp3 files. I'm hoping that I can figure out some way to put those on this blog, and if I can then you'll see them soon. (Anyone have any advice on how to do that?) If not, then I might forward the files to interested parties.

Also- I've been talking to Marvin Perrot who is the musical director of a baroque band/orchestra in the area. I'm going to play The Messiah with his group (which includes my flatmate Latana, which is how I found out about it) at the end of November. He is very keen that the group be a vehicle for getting experience soloing for each of the musicians/singers so he said that if I had any renaissance to classical solos that I wanted to do that he would find a place on a future recital for that.

"Tuneful Tots" is a toddler music education class on Sundays that is looking for a new teacher to take over a class starting in January so I contacted the other person at Guildhall who does the teaching and I'm going to meet up with her on Tuesday during lunch and then hopefully set up a meeting with the founder. So that would be totally neat if it worked out (because it is paid!) (and cool). They already have the curriculum all worked out, they just need a qualified teacher. Keep your fingers crossed!