I acquired two more sponsors yesterday, both from musicians who are particularly inspirational for different reasons. Karen, to whom this afternoon's 20 minutes are dedicated, is a friend and clarinettist who worked locally as a peri teacher until last year. She moved back up to her native Midlands and is currently grappling with essays featuring long words and plenty of 'isms' as she retrains to be an educational psychologist. Clearly not one to shy away from a challenge she learnt the viola to a standard good enough to be back desk in our local orchestra (only the regular members will know how much effort that took…) and set herself the target to do grade 3 on the oboe when she realised she would have to teach it. Karen not only passed her exam with distinction but she got the highest mark of anyone I have known, 143 out of 150! Along with her donation came an invitation to beat that score so the bar has been set extremely high. With this in mind I went through the exam criteria this afternoon, starting with scales. The scale patterns are the same no matter what the key but to get the right pitch you have to change the levers. Here is the harp in neutral state, E flat major. (The red strings are C and the black ones are F):
To get B flat major you need to raise the A flat to natural by moving the lever. The sixth lever along from the left has been moved:
Still with me? Then C major needs A as naturals as before and the B flat and E flat levers are is moved to get B and E natural. Most of my pieces are in C major so this is how the harp looks most of the time:
The three pieces were played with a greater awareness on posture and trying to work out where my elbows drop, if there was a particular place where I'm losing it. Indeed there is and it's as soon as I concentrate on something else. I finished with orchestral pieces and would have practised again but Wednesday night is jazz band. My second inspirational figure will have to wait until tomorrow.
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