A whole day at home today! I had a lesson with Cathy, one of my adult pupils, but I enjoy these lessons during the holidays as we chat and have a catch up, as well as getting some work done. Cathy's husband plays with the Cambridge Wind Band so will be performing on Sunday. Cathy is going to be at the concert so I will see her again there. She also sponsored me and while she was filling in the form I raced through the first few bars of Showing Off! She seemed particularly keen to get away after that but I think that was because she had to get back to college to supervise some students.
As my free time is quite rare I had planned to sepnd it wisely. The priority today was having a good practise sessionas I'd had a donation yesterday from Derek, clarinettist, soprano sax player in Palace Band, and a composer. I am seeing him later on in the week to work on his latest composition that I am hoping the band will play but today's practise session was dedicated to Derek. Derek enjoys all types of music but his own works are influenced by jazz styles so I spent more time on Manha de Carnaval identifying the chord patterns and working out how my finger technique needs to develop so that I can bring out the melody a little more.
The rest of the day was spent catching up on admin tasks and looking through music to arrange for future projects. When you go and hear a concert or attend a playday or course a huge amount of preparation will have taken place. The music needs to be planned, sourced either from a publisher, or more common for me, arranged to suit the group. If it is an arrangement parts need to be printed out before being distributed, and as is often the case with my line of work, rare and odd instruments may need to be catered for. I love and loathe this side of things. I enjoy the planning, deciding which pieces to try out on my various groups and I enjoy the puzzle of working out which instrument should take which line, and deciding if it is too easy or difficult. However making sure the parts look neat, have all the right dynamics in, printing, having a problem with the printer, running out of ink / paper / patience is the troublesome side of it all. Today I decided on a piece by Johann Strauss to do at a future playday. I have the score so had a quick look through and arranged the first bar before getting stuck and putting it away for another day! I'll leave it until a week before I need it. Nothing like a bit of pressure to ensure it gets finished!
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