learning how to play the french horn

I am having a hard time relearning the french horn.  I wasn’t that good of a player to begin with.  The problem is consistancy!!  I am having a hard time getting through my excerpts without making mistakes.  AND ANOTHER THING… I make mitakes in different place every time grrrrr.  this is what the horn is supposed to sound like.  Here is a clip of my horn teacher playing in the Canadian Brass.  REALLY CHEEZY VIDEO

I don’t feel like doing anything today!

I am glad it is still summer because I don’t feel like doing anything today!!!!!  I have watched TV, had coffee and surfed the net, NOT TODAY WORLD NOT TODAY!

Great day at the uni

I had a great day at the university today.  I met with my advisor and she was really professional, kind and informative.  She had a big package of materials for me for first term.  She gave me my graduate teaching assignment which will be in the conducting class.  I will be pre-marking tests for all of the students in the class.  They all have to pass the pre-test before they go on to their in class exam.  I also will have to mark their form and harmonic analysis tests.  Crazy!!!

I recieved the wind ensemble scores for first term.  She told me to study them because I will be starting sectionals in a week.  We will be playing:

1)  Sea Drift by Iannaccone

2)  Scherzo from Alla Marcia-Vaughn Williams

3)  Hammersmith by Holst

4)  Commando March by Barber

5)  Fram a Dark Millennium by Joseph Schwantner (crazy good!!!!)

I also got an idea of what my schedule will be like.  I have private lessons, ensemble, and instrumental seminar*, research skills, and some electives tba.

*Instrumental seminar is going to be an extension of my lessons to work on score study, analysis, repertoire, and rehearsal techniques.  FUN!!! I AM SUPER EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!

Great meeting!!! Great first impression!! and I am stoked about the year!!

ORIENTATION

I have 3 days of orientation coming up…..THREE.  There is an orientation for the music department, there is an orientation for the graduate department and an orientation for graduate teachers assistants.  WOW!!!!  Let the learning begin!!

what is your favorite wind ensemble tune?

I have been doing a lot of listening lately.  I have hundreds of wind band recordings and I have so many favorites.  One of my favorite tunes for wind ensemble is The Child’s Garden of Dreams by David Maslanka.  The 5 movement work is VERY difficult and requires an ensemble with a lot of experience.

This is some information on the work taken off David Maslanka’s website:

A Child’s Garden of Dreams was commissioned by John and Marietta Paynter for the Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble. It was composed in the summer of 1981 and premiered by Northwestern in 1982.
The following is from Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung: “A very important case came to me from a man who was himself a psychiatrist. One day he brought me a handwritten booklet he had received as a Christmas present from his 10-year-old daughter. It contained a whole series of dreams she had had when she was 8. They made up the weirdest series of dreams I have ever seen, and I could well understand why her father was more than just puzzled by them. Though childlike, they were uncanny, and they contained images whose origin was wholly incomprehensible to the father…In the unabridged German original, each dream begins with the words of the old fairy tale: ‘Once upon a time.’ By these words the little dreamer suggests that she feels as if each dream were a sort of fairy tale, which she wants to tell her father as a Christmas present. The father tried to explain the dreams in terms of their context. But he could not do so because there appeared to be no personal associations to them…The little girl died of an infectious disease about a year after that Christmas… The dreams were a preparation for death, expressed through short stories, like the tales told at primitive initiations… The little girl was approaching puberty, and at the same time, the end of her life. Little or nothing in the symbolism of her dreams points to the beginning of a normal adult life. When I first read her dreams, I had the uncanny feeling that they suggested impending disaster. These dreams open up a new and rather terrifying aspect of life and death. One would expect to find such images in an aging person who looks back on life, rather than to be given them by a child. Their atmosphere recalls the old Roman saying, ‘Life is a short dream,’ rather than the joy and exuberance of its springtime. Experience shows that the unknown approach of death casts an ‘adumbratio’ (an anticipatory shadow) over the life and dreams of the victim. Even the altar in Christian churches represents, on one hand, a tomb and, on the other, a place of resurrection – the transformation of death into eternal life.”

I selected five of the twelve dreams as motifs for the movements of this composition:
I. There is a desert on the moon where the dreamer sinks so deeply into the ground that she reaches hell.

II. A Drunken woman falls into the water and comes out renewed and sober.

III. A horde of small animals frightens the dreamer. The animals increase to a tremendous size, and one of them devours the little girl.

IV. A drop of water is seen as it appears when looked at through a microscope. The girl sees that the drop is full of tree branches. This portrays the origin of the world.

V. An ascent into heaven, where pagan dances are being celebrated; and a descent into hell, where angels are doing good deeds

Listen to the work: http://www.esm.rochester.edu/ewe/sounds.php

What is your favorite tune?  Do you have any info on it?  I would love to hear from you!

A few things that I forgot about university…

1)  Line ups-Everywhere you go there are line ups.  It took us an hour and a half to get a student card today.  In addition, that was apparently a short wait for a student card.

2)  Buses-I haven’t been on a bus in a 5 years.  Cold weather, smelly people, boring long rides,.. good times.

3)  Frosh week,..I am worried.

4)  Student discounts!!! YAY!! Bottomless symphony pass, cheap tickets everywhere!!!

5)  Lockers-I am going to have a locker, not an office…..weird!

6) Taking the class not teaching the class,…weird!

7)  How much work goes into making a nice sound on a french horn!

Wine glass yahtzee!

We had 4 wine glasses (blue ones) with wine charms.

1)  did not have a charm

2) has an evil saxophone charm

3) has a starfish charm

4) has a crown

Abbey’s tail just killed #1.  I avoid #2 like the plague but I wouldn’t be sad if Abbey’s tail “accidentally” destroyed it.  This is what I call a wine glass yahtzee.  I realize a true yahtzee would be if all of the wine glasses were destroyed but even if one saxophone is destroyed the world would be a little bit happier,…. kinda like when you get a yahtzee.

I got a job,.. yee-haw :(

I got a job today teaching group guitar lessons. It was a really long interview and the questions were really tame.  It won’t be enough to pay the bills though,..so I am still looking for work.  Anyone hiring?  Maybe I should continue forgetting my resume in random places around town.  I applied at the library today,..  I hope to get a call in a day or two,…I will let you know.

What a fluke!

Today was a pretty plain day.  I fixed my french horn, and cleaned the house blah blah.  Until the phone rang……. There was a fella on the other end who found my resume on the photocopier.  He told me he owned a large music store in London.  He told me he is looking for a group guitar teacher and he I can teach out of a store that is less than 5 minutes from our house.  I have to go by his store tomorrow to chat with him about the job.  I will let you know…

AMAZING

Here are the rules:

1)  If you choose to click on this video you MUST watch the entire thing.

2)  Make sure there is no background noise!  Headphones are preferable.

3)  No visual distractions!

4)  Enjoy!  Incredible!