In Which She Admits To Being A Bad Blogger

Eek; I haven't imported the cello-themed posts form my main journal in five months. Some of that has to do with the fact that often I just mention cello in passing, but it also has to do with not having a lot of energy to write about it in detail in the first place, or do the physical cut and paste. I'm going to catch up and try to get back on the regular updating here as well as on my much more regular main journal. I apologise in advance for a slew of backdated posts that may show up in your RSS feeds, although if your feed is smart it shouldn't pick up anything dated older than two weeks or so. If it does, then hey, you get a huge dose of AutumnCello. I suspect I'll do monthly summaries and paste several smaller or brief cello mentions into one post per month. That should keep the roar on your RSS feeds to a minimum.

Weekend Roundup

I've been low on fibro spoons the past few days. Here's a brief recap of the weekend.

Friday: I moved my office around. HRH stopped by on his way to get more paint, and helped. The window is now at my back. I like the new layout; curiously, there is more room in the office now. We'll see if the fresh perspective helps the writing process. At least now people can't come in the door and watch what I'm doing over my shoulder. I managed to get twenty pages of Orchestrated edited, a minor miracle considering I spent three hours on the first page. I could see that it wasn't right, but I couldn't fix it properly, either. Cello lesson Friday night, the last before fall. The Suzuki book 2 review is officially over (yaaaaay!) although my teacher wants me to further polish the last two pieces on our time off. My summer homework: working through Position Pieces vol 1, working the page of exercises she wrote out, reviewing book 1 in thumb position, and looking at the first piece in book 3. Cool links of the day: Ottawa's NAC Orchestra puts music archive online; and I discovered Kevin Fox, whom I can only describe as a cellist with the voice of Elvis Costello.

Saturday: HRH headed out to do a half-day of painting to finish up Mousme's kitchen, so the boy and I made cookies, painted with watercolours, and watched video of Neil Peart. Friday afternoon I had timed a Craiglist query perfectly and snagged a used Rock Band set for the Wii, and Saturday after the boy's nap we collected it and set it up. The included USB hub, which is supposed to pull power from the Wii when plugged in, doesn't, so we can only use two peripherals at once till we find a powered hub. As no one is particularly moved to do vocals, this is fine for now.





We need another guitar peripheral so I can play bass while the boy rocks out on guitar (perhaps we won't plug his in). I'm not enamoured of the fret keys on the guitar; the red one seems to be stubborn on the lower frets, while the green is stubborn on the higher ones. I suppose I'll get used to it. (I am amused that I refer to them as 'lower' and 'higher' when they have nothing to do with the frequency of sound produced. Well, they'd be lower or higher if it was a real guitar.)

Saturday night HRH and I were supposed to break the Rock Band set in properly, but I was too tired and he couldn't really drum while the boy was asleep because the kit sounds exactly like my cousin Iain's practise pads used to sound when he practised for pipe and drum band (in other words, loud and sharp).

Sunday: We ran errands. Looked for a powered USB hub but couldn't find one for less than $50 so left it for now; picked up the silencer pads for the drum kit; bought Tal and Kristie's housewarming present (breadmaker!); bought an ice cream maker for us (something I've been on the fence about for two years). Picked up a couple of 4 litre jugs of water because despite promising there would be news on Friday, LaSalle still has us all under a boil-water advisory. Early lunch and nap, then off to beautiful, bucolic Hudson for a Very Important Orchestra Meeting, at which we did a recap of the year and the conductors we've evaluated. We chose our new conductor (thereby also approving the substantial fee increase) by unanimous vote. We'd intended the vote to be by secret ballot, but people were just so enthusiastic that it wasn't necessary. While the orchestra met, the boy ran around and around the gorgeous property, played with the dog and counted frogs in the waterfall/pond. Back home, made dinner, put boy to bed, set Blade up as the Responsible Adult On Site (Now With Rock Band) and headed out to an RPG, which hadn't met to play in, um, very long. Hurrah for fully-assembled parties, and action finally beginning. Feels like things are underway at last.

I'm so very excited about this new conductor. I think he can do a lot for us, and I'm looking forward to seeing how we can be better integrated into the local music scene.

The only bad thing about the weekend (other than being short on spoons) was buying rechargeable batteries that would only work in a proprietary charger not once, but twice. Two different brands; two different sets of tiny tiny fine print. Not amused.

Right; on to editing.

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* The original post at Owls' Court
* Owls' Court: the main journal
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Orchestra Update

We had a general meeting of the orchestra membership last week, something has hasn't been done in at least eighteen years, possibly the entire life of the group. There have been some changes. They're growing pangs, really, because for three decades our original conductor Andres helmed the group, having founded it and maintained it on his own. When we lost him so suddenly and tragically the group needed to develop some guidelines and new methods out of thin air, and we're still working them out as we encounter obstacles. One of the things we're refining is our method of selecting and reviewing conductors. Our most recent conductor's term has ended, and we're now preparing to audition three new conductors over the upcoming season, one per concert session.

This happened some what precipitously, because we didn't have a clearly defined review system in place. The point is, most of us expected to be somewhat adrift for the first while due to the unexpectedness of the event and the timing, but to my surprise at this general meeting the exec revealed that we not only had a guest conductor in place, but we had a programme and our first concert date scheduled. This is going so well that I can't help but suspect our decisions in the matter have all been the correct ones. Not only do we have our first guest conductor scheduled, but we've had a call from the director of the WIYSO expressing interest in one of the future guest spots, as have a couple of others. There were some suggestions from the membership too, revolving around multiple performances of the same programme in different areas instead of a single concert, raising membership fees to generate more available capital with which to pay conductors (thereby enabling us to attract higher-profile directors), and communication suggestions (especially an interactive website with a members-only section to enable us to share ideas and receive information). The plan is to have a different conductor for each of our three concerts in the upcoming season, to evaluate each, and then vote on one to invite back.

From what I can remember, our first programme will consist of a Mozart divertimento for strings, the Iphigenia in Aulis overture, Haydn's 104th symphony, and a Vivaldi concerto for four violins with continuo (our prize for the winners of the Lakeshore Chamber Music Society's concerto competition). Our first rehearsal is on September 17, and our first concert is on November 22. We'll have to be really focused and on the ball with this new conductor to prepare a concert in that period of time. This will happen naturally of course, as everyone will be hyper-aware and paying very close attention to the new director's technique. New blood to stir us up will be good. I'm looking forward to exploring music with a new director. One of the things I realised through this summer mini-crisis about the orchestra leadership was that I was focusing on my own satisfaction with my technical performance in a concert and extrapolating that to measure the orchestra's overall performance, which was wrong of me. I was also shifting my personal focus to technical improvement because I wasn't getting artistic or interpretive satisfaction from the overall musical experience. The orchestra really needs to grow and develop musically now. We'll see what happens in the coming weeks.

Apart from that, musically I've been kind of on hold. I've been playing songs and such, testing my treble clef reading, but the 7/8 search and the mystery cello repair hasn't moved forward. Why? Because my luthier and I miscommunicated about vacation, and he wasn't gone the first two weeks of August but the last two weeks. Had I known I would have brought him my cello for its tune-up and the mystery cello as soon as I got home from our trip. Ah well, everything ought to be back to usual now that it's September; I'll call him Thursday. With orchestra only beginning two weeks from now, there's time to take my current cello in for adjustments, new bridge, new strings, and a quick repair to the soundboard crack, and get it back in plenty of time. Otherwise, I can always test another cello out and use that!

I find that my initial 'no I should upgrade the quality/level of the cello I'm using' is ebbing to 'something equivalent in a different shape would be just fine'. Which is a good thing, really, because it's assuaging a lot of the 'OMG so expensive where will I find the money now!' jitters I'm having. I'm interested to hear what the luthier will have to say about the mystery cello, too.

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* The original post at Owls' Court (this is condensed from a longer, more general post)
* Owls' Court: the main journal
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Introductory Post

This is a parallel blog to my main blog at Owls' Court. This one will reproduce my cello- and music-themed posts. If I figure out how to import all my older posts in those categories then I'll do that as well, although I suspect Blogger can't do that. In the meantime, here are the direct links to my previous and ongoing posts in these categories:

Cello category

Music category