Tag Archives: wet weather

Day 149 – February 26th – Cloudy with light drizzle

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I’m not sure the weather forecast got it quite right for today – cloudy with light drizzle turned into pea soup with lashings of rain by the time it arrived in Elmsted! It was a good day for solid pracitising, and I got in a good five and a half hours…with the help of as many cups of tea!

Like I said yesterday, I had quite clear plans for what needed practising in the Copland Duo, and think that I did quite a good job of sorting them out. It’s a pity that there’s only time in class tomorrow for the first movement, as I really like the piece and would like to prepare it ‘properly’ for something. The second movement (I had a quick play through this afternoon) is stunning. Oh well, another piece to add to my wish list.

Back to doing a full three hours of warm-ups and technique, I was surprised today just how much I got through in the time. I remember back at the beginning of December I was still taking half an hour to get through Reichert No. 2 from memory. Now I can fly through that and quite a few of the other exercises with no problems at all. No. 1 from Boehm’s Twelve Studies is finally there as well, after many painful practice sessions! Both my memory and my finger speed are certainly improving, though I do still get frustrated with myself in class if I can’t keep up with some of the others.

Day 105 – January 13th – Even more time!

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Though Trevor was kind enough to take us to Tesco this afternoon, he still sounded very croaky and class has been postponed until at least Thursday. Shopping was a good reason to get out of the house, and I’m also glad that we’ve now replenished the stock of fruit and veggies – we’d got to the point of the fridge being rather bare!

On one hand, a break from the relentlessness of classes has been good, and allowed me to spend a little more time on technique without worrying about all the studies to prepare. On the other hand, it means that I’ve ended up working myself really hard now for five days straight, and am rather in need of a bit of down time that doesn’t involve flute playing! On the days that we have class, there’s a bit of a mutual agreement that we don’t practice, and often there’s a bit of a group dinner. I’m not sure what’s happened in the last few days – maybe everyone’s got a bit of the January blues – but nobody was keen to play chamber music yesterday evening and everyone has kept to themselves all of the time. It felt like our little outing today was the first conversation I’d had in a while, and even that was rather subdued!

Looking on the bright side, I have the perfect remedy lined up for tomorrow evening when I’m off to see The Theory of Everything with wonderful Sue from Hastingleigh. I’ll certainly be packing tissues, and am looking forward to it immensely. Beyond that, I need to remember that reading, knitting and even watching TV are perfectly acceptable ways to spend the evening when my lips and/or brain gives out!

I returned to the Eb scales and thirds today, and am pleased to say that they’re maybe 5% better than yesterday. A small improvement, but hopefully if I keep chipping away at it they’ll be flying along in a week or so. The Taffanel and Gaubert-style regular scales certainly are, though majors are still a bit faster than the minors. Another exercise that I’ve been practising a bit lately is the Perpetuum Mobile studies at the back of Trevor’s Complete Daily Exercises book. He’s taken a devilish little orchestral solo from Strauss’s work by the same name and written four studies which transpose the pattern of the excerpt through all the keys. Apparently one year he had two students who memorised the whole thing in a week and played it flawlessly at a really fast speed! I’m not up to that yet, but have been slowly edging the metronome up and the fluency is slowly increasing.

Though our piccolo masterclass with Patricia Morris was cancelled on Sunday, Trevor’s hopeful that it’ll happen in the next week or so. He asked us to prepare a few studies and some excerpts but left it open as to how much we work on – I’m assuming because there will be vary levels of competency with the piccolo in the class group. For studies, I’ve chosen no. 8 from Moyse’s 24 Melodic Studies as it has quite a broad range and requires seamless movement between the registers. I’ve been working on a few studies from Patricia Morris’s Piccolo Study Book, and will certainly be ready to play no. 3 (Furstenau) but am not so sure whether no. 7 will be ready by the time she comes.

In terms of excerpts, I’ve set myself a bit of a challenge. Though my excerpts in regular class are far from perfect, they’re usually quite good, and I seem to have a pretty decent knowledge of the orchestral repertoire. So rather than preparing one or two excerpts, I though I’d have a crack at the audition list for the Queensland Symphony Orchestra’s Principal Piccolo job which was up for audition in December. There were eleven excerpts on piccolo, to which I’ve added the Ravel Ma mère l’oye piccolo excerpts (there were also flute ones listed). Looking down the list, I was pleasantly surprised that I knew most of then, and had played all but two before in various contexts. A couple of them – the dreaded Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 for example – will need a lot of work to get them up to speed, while others seemed to fall back under the fingers very naturally. Perhaps an ambitious goal considering everything else that I need to work on, but it feels like a good one and for the moment I’m quite enjoying it.

Right now, though, it’s time for a cup of chamomile tea, a book and bed!

Day 54 – November 23rd – Wet and wintry

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I seemed to get an incredible amount done today, probably because all there was to do was stay indoors and practise! I chatted with my parents and a friend in Australia in the morning, as well as sending in my Hatched application, but still managed all my practice hours before dinner. Had it not been raining, I would definitely have gone for a mid-afternoon walk, but alas this is England in November.

One of the things I haven’t written much about yet is my written project on the history of the flute, due just before Christmas. Essentially, this is part one of two, and we’re supposed to cover both the history of the flute to 1700 and ethnic flutes. The ‘paper’ (I don’t tend to use this word, but oh well) is 30-35 pages long, and we’re allowed to include pictures. Trevor gave us an example of one that he liked from a few years ago to have a look at, and this is where my inner academic kicked in. The example had no references or bibliography, wasn’t really formatted at all and didn’t reference any of the pictures that had clearly been copied from published documents. I was a little surprised that such a piece of writing passed muster, but then I need to remember that Trevor hasn’t been through the university system, and probably doesn’t consider that sort of thing as important as simply learning about the flute’s history. For me, I will write my paper to my own academic standards, partly because it matters to me, partly because it feels natural to write in that way.

As for how it’s coming along – I’ve done all the reading that I probably need to on early, renaissance and Baroque flutes, but still need to do a more research on the ethnic ones. Trevor has an impressive collection of books, and finding resources hasn’t been at all hard. The best selection of resources on ethnic flutes are a set of publications entitled Flûtes du monde, and their being in French means I’ve got them all to myself. I’ve made a start on typing out a first draft, and will easily make Trevor’s 30-page minimum. At the moment, I’m actually feeling that the problem may be keeping it below 35 pages!

I also had another big traverso practice session today, and am getting there with my Telemann Fantasia. The dolce movement is sounding quite presentable, and I’d be happy to play it in class tomorrow if asked. The allegro sounds good at an andante speed, and some of the runs are actually happening quite fluidly. We have our second class on Wednesday rather than Thursday this week, and I’ll definitely be able to play it by then!

Day 36 – November 5th – Whiling away the wet weather

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I meant to call this post ‘Remember, remember…’ as tonight is Guy Fawkes night and I have some lovely memories of going to see the bonfire and fireworks from when I was little. However, today has been soggy and wet, and the local bonfire night isn’t happening until the weekend. Instead, I want to use this post to mull on a slightly different topic – how to fill my time here through the winter so that I can be the musician I want to be at the end of it.

Despite the rain, or maybe because of it, I woke up early, but then decided it was probably not the best idea to get drenched going for a run. So I started practising early (my flatmates were both awake thought!), and as a result got five hours of flute practice done by 3:30pm. I kept a hopeful lookout for some better weather, but the best was an uninspiring light drizzle. I felt itchy, in need of things to do that would keep me excited – I’ve never been one for watching lots of TV shows and so that was out as an option for the afternoon.

I ended up filling my time with a few things, some more productive than others. I baked chocolate, date and hazelnut brownies, improvising a little since we’d run out of eggs, which both great fun and warming. The result was moderately successful, it turns out that substituting greek yogurt for the eggs results in a nice gooey texture, but isn’t quite as good at binding everything together. Looks like I’ll offering everyone a fork when we eat them tomorrow!

Chocolate, date and hazelnut brownies. Look and taste good, but somewhat lacking in structural integrity!

Chocolate, date and hazelnut brownies. Look and taste good, but somewhat lacking in structural integrity!

I’ve also achieved my daily goal on Duolingo, where I’m trying to learn German, and have almost finished reading Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw in preparation for out trip to see Benjamin Britten’s opera this Friday. While baking, I listened to an episode of the radio series National Contemporary Landscapes, which I did some work on at 3MBS just before leaving Australia but haven’t yet had a chance to tune into. I listened to a CD of Robert Dick’s flute music as part of my extra work for Trevor as well, and plan on doing some reading for my project later this evening.

One of the things at the forefront of my mind with this course is that it could be the last period of being a student that I have for some time. Of course, I’d like to do a PhD eventually, but who knows what the work/study balance will be when that comes round. I want to emerge from this course not only as an expressive, technically competent flute player, but also as a savvy, skilled, opinionated and thinking musician who can hold my own and create exciting opportunities in a competitive and demanding field. I’d like to be the flautist that other musicians want to work with, not only for being a good player, but also because I’m engaged, individual and can bring other skills to the table. I’d also like to continue to combine performance with arts work in a broader sense, be that through writing, radio, concert organisation or indeed something else.

Trevor’s course is very much geared to getting an orchestral job, and while many of the musical skills are essentially the same, I know that to make the best use of my time here I need to have my own professional development projects on the go as well. I suppose my conclusion is that there is plenty to do to fill my time, rather too much in fact! I just need to pace myself, decide what is really important to me and keep my long-term goals in mind. I definitely don’t want to waste my time here watching TV shows online (as a few are), but do need to give myself down time as well, whatever form that takes.