Monthly Archives: January 2012

That C#m thing

I’ve been wondering if it’s not time to go dig that thing out and see if anything shook loose while I had it stuck in the back of the freezer. Probably not, but it might be interesting, eventually. Still, it was pretty emotionally cold.

Continuing, continuing …

Nice melody, needs accomp … No idea where it’s headed, but I know where I need to wind up in the end. Par for the course. Need to keep the destination in mind so I can “foreshadow” it in this middle section … if it counts as foreshadowing if I know where I want to wind up and hence am doing it in reverse. Rearshadowing?

Looking forward to the weekend.

It’s easier to edit than to write.

At least I keep telling myself that. Just get some stuff down on the page, just write something. Just write something. You can always edit it later. *sigh* I do have to just think about it more — not wait until I’m sitting at the piano to just have an idea. Ideas come when they come, and it’s not at your convenience.

Taking weight off the viola

I really do have to see if I can take some weight off of the thing, up to amputating the scroll if it’s possible. It’s really just too heavy is the thing. The intervals aren’t a big issue for me anymore; I seem to have learned how to reach them without major issues, at least on the top three strings. (Using the pinky on the C string is always nasty on a viola unless you’re Kim Kashkashian.) It’s just the damned weight of the thing anymore. :-P

I know I need to bring it south again, just to have the chinrest properly dealt with. And while it’s there I can ask him about removing weight.

Disorientation

Man, it really isn’t possible to write and woodshed at the same time — at least not without a winning lottery ticket or a senile oil baron on hand. I am disoriented entirely on the viola as of late, and mostly because I haven’t been playing the damned thing. I’ve been making some slow headway on the Eb/F# thing as well, which means shedding on the piano isn’t happening, either. I’ll start on Hanon and something will come to me, and I just stop dead, fire up MS, and start poking and playing the same 16 measures over and over a thousand times while something stirs up.

I’ve been managing to keep “Pompe vane di morte” and “Dove sei?” in my fingers as well, as much as I can. The “Se fiera belva ha cinto” variations are sort of next on the stack, and I started humming the sinfonia to “V’adoro pupille” last time I watched “Cesare” as well. I can see an entire set of nothing but Haendel aria intros with variations in my distant future, but for now between the six-flat thing and doing the rest of “Dove sei?” I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Where this will leave Hanon and the viola is another matter. I so wish I could have kept going with structured lessons on the viola, but every day that goes by makes it clearer that doing that and writing/arranging at the same time was just not possible, not with a 10+-hour-a-day job unrelated to music.

New chin rest verdict

1) It’s much, much better.

2) It’s still not exactly right, no surprise since it’s mostly symmetric but not entirely.

3) I do need to bring him to the luthier to get the throat of the rest dremeled out a bit. It’s baaaaarely clear of the tailpiece, but chin pressure alone would be enough to have them touch, and the cork isn’t quite thick enough on the left side.

Anyhow, I’m happy with it. :-)

That blasted chin rest

I’m going to do it. This weekend. I’m going to do it. I’ve got a three-day weekend coming up, so if I have to, I can go to my local music store and have them get me out of trouble. But I’m going to see if I can’t change out my chin rest and get that Flat Flesch on instead of the Guaneri I’ve got now. Wish I had a dremel so I could do a little tweaking of it, but it’s probably better that I don’t.

And once again, it’s down-periscope and a deep dive into the ocean of flats this weekend … I really do just want to force myself to come up with something, so I can at least feel like I have a foggy idea of the overall structure of something, instead of feeling like I’m flailing at mist. I am beginning to realize that those gorgeous 32 measures of six-flat work that starts in F#M (whatever) and ends in Ebm isn’t the Big Finish that I thought it was, or doesn’t have to be. It does after all, swerve into Ebm at the end, and without anything really telegraphing that. I could work past that point.

Okay, so I’m out of the closet as a hockey fan now.

Two of my favorite players from two of my favorite teams in the history of the club:

The man on the left came home with his shield. The man on the right came home on his. And I love them both for it.

People don’t understand what that saying means. Coming home on your shield doesn’t just mean getting your ass whupped. It means that you are welcome home if you win, and welcomed home if you lose … but only if you gave absolutely everything you had to the effort. Everything. You can lose and be given a hero’s welcome, but only if you left it all onstage. With your shield, or on it … but you’d better not come home without it. And that team brutalized themselves for that second place finish. They worked harder to finish second than the Oilers worked to finish first.

In a way, it was almost more problematic for subsequent Flyers teams for Poulin’s crew to be so unimaginably gallant in their defeat. For me, they defined what it means to come home on your shield. They set the bar so high that at this point, the only way a team can come home after a second place finish and get anything from me but contempt anymore is if they come home dead. If you get off that plane and you can walk under your own power, you didn’t try hard enough.

(This is why I’ve got nothing to say about the 96-97 crew. They came home without their shields. Pfeh. With `em or on `em guys — otherwise, keep walking.)