Catching Up with Orchestra and More....

It has been a long time since I have written a post, and a lot to catch up on.

When I last wrote, I was in the Cape Community Orchestra, preparing for a concert. I was one of seven cellists, because the CCO is not an auditioned group and seems happy to take anyone. Even with seven of us, we seemed dwarfed by the brass section.

We had a couple of easy pieces, a couple of challenging pieces, and one nearly impossible piece (The Hebrides, by Mendelssohn). At first I concentrated on the Hebrides, learning a couple of measures at each lesson. That part was fun, seeing an impossible section suddenly become playable with the proper fingering. But, in between lessons, I did not find time to practice, so the work was for naught, or next-to-naught, because even if I could play those sections, I couldn't play most of them fast enough. I loved the music, and with sufficient time to practice, might have become more proficient, but "sufficient" time was not at hand.

Some weeks I didn't practice at all. I didn't even think about practicing. It is not like I though, gee, I should practice, right after I finish this pressing project. It just didn't even occur to me to practice, until I suddenly realized that orchestra rehearsal was the next day.

After a while, when I realized the concert was almost upon us, I changed my strategy and decided to work on the easy and intermediate pieces so I would be able to play most of the concert relatively fluently. For the Hebrides, I did what I could, often playing the first note of a 4-note run, rather than all of them. For me, this was a good idea, to focus on focusing: riveting my attention to counting, and getting the first note of each group of four 16th notes, so that, at least, I would know where we were. I didn't get lost, and that is a good thing, even if I didn't play every note.

I wavered for a while, but finally decided not to continue with the orchestra in the spring season. My work schedule just won't allow it at this time. But, more than that, I have found orchestra playing not to be conducive to working on a beautiful tone, or to getting every note, two priorities for me. It is too easy in orchestra to fake it during certain passages. With seven cellos overwhelmed by several trumpets, saxophones, and tubas, how beautifully one might play a particular passage is not really a concern (at least in the back row of cellos).

I think my focus, for the next "semester," will be on myself, my own playing. I haven't given up on ensembles though. I love ensembles. I will continue to play in the fiddle group (more on that in another post) and am seeking to establish a cello choir here, perhaps with a stray flute or violin (more on that later too--we are playing tomorrow at an informal concert at an assisted living center: 3 cellos, a violin, a flute, and an alto flute. We haven't really rehearsed. The concert is sort of an open rehearsal, but I expect it to be just dandy!)

Meanwhile, I am still playing with the beginning/intermediate piano students, to give them experience in playing accompaniment, and to give me practice in playing with a pianist. I noticed one time that one of the pianists complimented one of the students for being able to follow me when I stumbled, or words to that effect. I refrained from telling her that it was me who was trying to follow the pianist.

When I first started playing with a pianist, for my Suzuki book recitals, I had to memorize my Suzuki pieces and perform with the pianist. This was too much for me, to play from memory and know the piano part as well, and know how it all fit in together. I managed to get by, at least in the beginning, by blotting out the piano, and just playing, trusting the pianist to follow me. And she did. Now, it is nice to have a sense of the pianist and how a piece should sound when we play together.

Listening to the piano recitals has encouraged me to try piano again, and I am happy to say I learned "Joy to the World" on piano and played it at the recital last week at a nursing home. I play it incessantly now and am even thinking of learning another Christmas piece on the piano, before the holidays are over.

Have a joyful and musical holiday!

The Plan for May and June

After our orchestra concert the first week in April, I focused on non-cello things for a few weeks, maybe a month, and though I continued weekly lessons, there were some weeks when I didn't practice at all between lessons. One of those times. But my cello teacher was understanding, supportive, and encouraging.

I think I am mostly back on track now, or at least edging toward it. I have several performances coming up in June, so really need to buckle down and find time to practice every day. Well, most days.

The first event is a fiddle performance in mid-June. The group I play with (women fiddlers) is performing four waltzes, and I have written harmony (second) parts to three of them, to accompany the fiddles. The music is easy enough, but it has to be played from memory, which tends to take time, and it will be tricky playing the harmony, with everyone else playing melody. I will have to focus! This is in mid-June.

The following weekend, I am playing with three groups during the arts festival: the larger fiddle group, the flute choir, and a flute, string, and keyboard group.

The larger fiddle group plays many tunes that I still do not have memorized, but I can usually play some sort of improvised pizzicato accompaniment.

In the other groups, we can use sheet music, and I am grateful for that!

The flute choir is playing trio 1 and 4 of the Haydn London Trios and Vivaldi's Goldfinch concerto (plus others in which I play flute), and we have not yet determined the program for the string group, but it may be a piece by Marais, Purcell (Golden Sonata), and/or flute sonatas by Marcello, in which I play the continuo. I have also played these on flute and enjoy them, particularly the first one, which I played recently (on flute) at church. In another context a flute-playing friend of mine remarked that she had played them when she was 10 years old. Ah, well.

In addition to that, I am working on a DeFesch sonata with another cellist, and, because it and the Marcello flute sonatas, reminded me of the Marcello piece in Suzuki book 4, I decided to go back and learn/polish that too. (I abandoned Suzuki about a year ago, to work on other things.)

Then, for intonation and related issues, I am working in the Piatti cello method. My teacher mentioned trying another duet with another of her students, and there is always something that looks interesting, so I am sure the list will grow.

But I am trying to focus.

Speed

The orchestra music is not particularly hard, but it is too fast for me in many places. My stand partner (though we have separate stands because I couldn't otherwise see the music!) and I talked about this last night at rehearsal.

I said I would continue slow(er) practice at home and hope to be eventually able to bring it up to speed. She said there were two schools of thought on this and the other one was to work on a few measures at a time and bring them up to speed.

This second method is making sense to me today. I am too slow in fiddle music too, so it would make sense to work specifically on speed in all areas of playing. I'll try this, this week, and would love any comments or advice as to how to increase speed.

Practice makes better

Ok, since Thursday or so, I have been practicing two hours a day, in an effort to perform adequately at our orchestra's upcoming concert (after failing to practice regularly for several weeks). Today, we had the rehearsal I was dreading, without the two "good" cellists, and I was feeling gloomy going into it, thinking that I would miss entrances (I had been depending on the principal cellist a lot) and, in general, stand out as incompetent.

Oddly enough, I didn't miss entrances--for two reasons. I counted, and the conductor, for the first time, possibly sensing our need, cued us on every entrance. Yes, there are a few passages that are still too fast for me, but I had a better sense of them, and stayed with the music, though not playing every note. And I understood the entrances better, especially on the one piece for which I do have the score.

We, the remaining three cellists, were not singled out for ineptness, as I had feared. It all went pretty well, or, at least, the conductor was kind. :-) He did mention intonation as an issue (repeatedly), but not singling out any particular section. Intonation is a constant concern of mine, but it is harder to obtain good intonation at high speeds.

Monday through Wednesday are long days for me, work-wise, but I hope to continue this practice routine. Who knows? It might work. And it was a good thing, in the end, to play without the two "good" cellists, a confidence builder, just when we needed it.

Two Steps Back can be useful

Dissatisfied with my intonation, tone, expression, musicality, you-name-it, I decided to go back to the beginning, cello-wise. More than two steps back, really. I wanted to play simple scales and exercises really well and be more confident about shifting, positions, bowing, etc.

My teacher suggested we start with Piatti, book one. After initial distress (why not book two, at least?), I calmed down and have been serene about cello playing and cello progress ever since.

Still, finding time to practice is not always easy. I have two very demanding, deadline-based, but otherwise unstructured jobs, family, friends, rehearsals, and "occasional" Internet time.

I was thinking of Marisa today when I went in for my lesson, trying to think of an excuse for not practicing that sounded different from previous excuses. My last-minute practice session late last night must have helped though, because all went well. I had a great lesson, and more important than that, I had a great time playing and loved playing those simple, now very musical duets with my teacher.

Isn't the cello lovely! (Maybe I will manage a little more practice time this week.)

Orchestra!

We have spent all summer getting ready for orchestra season, after a series of three preliminary rehearsals this summer. There were endless e-mails over all sorts of things, publicity, music selection and distribution, negotiating with our conductor, fundraising events, etc. Finally, tonight, we had our first rehearsal. It was all worth it.

We have about 35 members--a great turnout; a few days ago we were expecting only 22. We have five cellists. I am sitting in the second chair, but only because the cellist who should be there preferred to sit farther back, and the other two cellists had already picked chairs in the back.

The first chair cellist is a friend, a professional flutist who also plays the cello. She was the one who got me interested in the cello in the first place, when she got some of her adult flute students together with adult student of a cello teacher and a violin teacher. I loved the sound of the flute and cello together and wanted to enhance our flute choir with a cello. (At the same time, my daughter independently decided she wanted to play the cello after we visited my sister and her family, and was intrigued with the cello one of her cousins was playing. So we, my daughter and I, started cello together.)

Our orchestra program for the fall is:

Handel, Overture to Agrappina
Vaughn Williams, Fantasia of Greensleeves
Tchaikovsky, Andante Cantabile
Telemann, Concerto in e minor
Bizet, Symphony in C

We worked on the Bizet tonight. This is a four-movement, 30-minute piece, and we only got through the first three movements in two hours. It sounded good to me though, and it not too difficult on the cello. The Greensleeves, which I haven't even tried yet, looks to be the most challenging, as most of it is in four flats, and there a lots of triple stops and some tenor clef. I will have to try it out this week, should I find the time to practice!

Midway, more or less

Just a quick update on my "practice every day in August" pledge. I have practiced all but two days, and those were days I was home only to sleep. I am feeling good about this, especially after going most of July without practicing at all. A couple of the days bare minimum practicing, as little as 10 minutes, but most days were at least an hour, sometimes 2, and occasionally 3 hours.

I am trying to focus on intonation and sound quality, not on repertoire, but sometimes the repertoire takes over for a while. I played with the fiddlers yesterday, so worked on some fiddle tunes this week, and I played both flute and cello at a church this morning, so worked on those pieces as well.

When I told my teacher earlier this summer of my plan to work on intonation and sound quality, using scales and etudes, she suggested a new book. I sighed because I have several scale and etude books already and had planned to use one or two of them. Finally, after a couple of weeks, I bought the book, A. C. Piatti's Method for Cello. Starting with book 1. Yes, I wanted to do simple pieces, but was dejected about starting on book one, all over again. She allowed that we could start midway through.

So, I started on page 1 anyway. I like the book, after all, and find I am learning things, even from page 1, and the point is not what page I am on, but whether my sound is improving, and I think it is. This is a completely different approach from Suzuki, of course, and it introduces some things, like G# and half position and key signatures up to 3 sharps and flats, much earlier. It introduces 1st to 4th positions, and ends with 5th, 6th, and 7th position, in tenor clef.

Extreme Cello: Mountain Climbing

It's hard enough to play the cello, but to play it on top of a mountain, after you have hiked up that mountain with a cello on your back, is quite a feat! The Extreme Cellists recently climbed four mountains with their cellos: Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England, Snowden in Wales, and Carrauntoohil in Ireland, and played trios at the peaks. These are the four tallest mountains in these countries, and they started from as close to sea level as possible, for a total climb of 14,581 feet of climbing.

The endeavor was called the Four Peaks Challenge, and it took place between July 21 and 30, 2008. The purpose of the challenge was to raise money for Aspire, an organization providing rehabilitation assistance for people with spinal cord injuries, and Mountain Rescue, in all four countries. They raised £3,573 so far, and are happy to receive online donations.

You can read more about their adventures on their blog: Latest From the Extreme Cellists and, of course, they would be happy to receive additional contributions. For more information, see their website at: Extreme Cello. This is only one of several extreme activities they have undertaken.

These people are inspiring; not only to they find time to practice the cello, they make time to hike up mountains, blog about it, and work for worthy causes. I will think of them, next time it seems like a Herculean task to just practice.

Every Day in August

I haven't practiced cello for a while, though I do play it occasionally. Yesterday, the first of August, I decided to make an effort to practice every day in August. My lessons start again in mid-September, and I have put Suzuki aside for a while to concentrate on scales and etudes (and maybe a little Scottish cello music, in the style of Abby Newton), to improve tone and intonation. I need to add orchestra music into this mix, but not until mid-September.

So, my plan is every day in August, even briefly. My work schedule remains busy, as is my entertainment schedule (I have four plays to review this week, and a concert and a reception to attend, not that I am complaining!). I am playing two flute background music performances with a woodwind trio and with a flute trio this week, 11 to 1 AND 3 to 5:30 on the same day, perhaps a little crazy. Tomorrow there is a 2-hour fiddle performance, also more or less background music at an art fair, that I am contemplating taking my cello to.

So, if I write here that I will practice every day, maybe I will make that extra effort to actually do so. I practiced yesterday, though not yet today, and am off to another art fair now. Later!

Practicing

I am happy to say I have been practicing. Of course I have been falling behind in other things. It's hard to keep up.

In the course of my work, I read Democracy in American by Alexis de Tocqueville recently. De Tocqueville spent six months studying the U.S. in 1831-32. He wrote that Americans were seized with a restlessness that compelled them to be busy at all times.

So being busy seems to be entrenched in the national character, not something that will ever resolve itself. I was talking about this at a recent rehearsal with a friend of mine who is retired, but busier than ever ("We can't say no," she said), but we both agreed that playing music was a remedy for, rather than a cause of, the general stresses of life. So, practicing is the answer, even in times of busy-ness, since it is, in itself, restorative.

and Happy Mother's Day, especially to all those busy moms trying to squeeze in some practicing on this day or any other. (The roses are from my daughter.)

Not practicing

I am finding it very hard to practice lately. There is simply no time.

I did have an opportunity to talk to a winner a major piano competition recently, and he said that the year he won, he had periods where he didn't practice for 2 months at a time because of other work commitments.

I am not about to win any competitions, but it is always inspiring to hear of people who succeed despite all the opposing factors.

Memorization, more or less

I finally finished Suzuki Book Three. Yes, it has taken me years, in part because my teacher not only insists on my memorizing each piece, but also my performing, from memory, all the pieces in each book with a pianist (at the same recital) before moving onto the next book. And memory means the ability to start at any point in a piece, know all the notes, etc., not just play it by rote. Memory is the first step in learning a piece; after that, you polish and refine. This is the way she teaches her young students, and it is the way she teachers her older ones. One is supposed to keep all previous pieces current, and I try.

It is difficult for me, all this memorization, but not memorizing is not an option with my teacher. On the one hand, I do think I learn the music better than someone who learns a piece and moves on, never to play it again. I think I am probably better off than people who skip around, or skip quickly through the books, not remembering earlier technique. It's not a race, I say, to reassure myself.

On the other hand, sometimes I think 98 percent of my mental powers and practice efforts go into memorization, and other crucial things about playing the cello, say intonation or vibrato, do not always get the attention they deserve. So, I tend to define success as "getting through the piece," not playing it musically.

Other factors conspire to slow my progress. I play two instruments and have limited time to practice; I play in numerous ensembles playing widely different types of music; I have big recitals, not just the pieces in the Suzuki books, but numerous ensemble pieces so that I can also perform friends (and so they can enjoy being part of the recital, not just suffer through my performances).

The memory thing, for me, has its pros and cons. I do like being able to play pieces from memory, not only the Suzuki pieces, but also fiddle tunes and other music, and my memory capacity much better than it used to be. But, memorizing can be very frustrating for me, and sometimes I feel that my head can only hold a certain amount of music memory (a lot more now than when I started, but still a finite amount), and trying to perfect one phrase causes another one to escape. I had a difficult time getting all the pieces in Book 3 to stay in my head at the same time, so I finally split the pieces into two recitals.

So, to get to the point of this post, I am delighted to say I don't have to memorize the Breval Sonata (because it is a sonata, not because it might be helpful for me to try to learn a piece before memorizing it, rather than the other way around). And, after a week with it, I am thrilled at my progress. The old (memorization) way, I would be two lines into it by now. But I am playing it straight through, with my teacher accompanying (sounds good that way). There are still parts to smooth out, and I have to get it up to tempo, but gosh, this is a nice change of pace.

I have to admit I never cared for the Breval until I started playing it, but was determined to learn it because it is often selected as the junior (grades 7 to 9) audition piece for state orchestra competitions. I do enjoy it now, and I am so delight to be finally playing, somewhat musically, at the 7th grade level (if not quite yet at the winning-the-audition level).

Slow month, blogwise

This has been my slowest month, postwise, since I started this blog. This will be my ninth post this month, much fewer than usual. It's not that I don't have anything to say; it's just that I have no time to say it. Or maybe that I have nothing bloggable to say.

On the other hand, according to Sitemeter, this shortest month is my highest month ever, in terms of people dropping in to read what I have to say. Perhaps there's a strategy there. Thanks for reading!

A quick update on my musical activities: I have a cello recital coming up soon. My good friend and violinist Laura is playing piano for me and coaching me, and I thank her!

My flute performance at church went well (the one where I slept through the rehearsal). I have another flute performance at another church (my own) on Sunday. This time, I am accompanying the choir, which I love to do, but I have not gotten all the entrances down yet. There is a final rehearsal just before the performance, when, I am sure, everything will fall into place. We have a wonderful conductor, and I need to rely more on him instead of my thus-far-ineffective combination of watching him, the vocal line, the flute line, and counting. (I don't have separate flute music for this, so am reading off the vocal score.) Going with the flow is the best option for this piece, about caring about the person whose hand you take at church.

There is a women's fiddle session on Saturday. I enjoy these because we are working on a limited number of tunes, we allow sheet music, and we generally play slower than with the larger group. It gives me a chance to try and work out some appropriate cello lines, though I never have enough time.

I need to practice! But, first, back to work....

Holiday

I slept until 11:30 am again today, second Monday in a row. I was up to 4:30 am working on a deadline, but allowing liberal amounts of time for making JibJab "Starring You" movies for dear friends and my for sister, whose birthday it is today. Happy Birthday, Diana!

At least I did not miss cello lesson again today, as I did last week. There is no cello lesson today due to the Columbus Day holiday. I've been taking it easy--it is good to take a break now and then, even if the work piles up while you meander.

I took a little extra time to practice the cello today, writing in some fingering for the church concert pieces. Until today, I had only sightread the pieces twice with the group, but hadn't found time to practice them at home. We have a rehearsal at the church on Thursday, and I am hoping to be reasonably prepared. Amazing how much a little advance figuring out of fingering helps.

Thanks to my friend Carol, who alerted me to its presence at the library, I have started reading The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax, a novel inspired by the life of Pablo Casals. If you read the Cello.org message boards, you probably know that Casals' autobiography/biography, Joys and Sorrows, is available to read online. I think The Spanish Bow is only inspired by Casals, not intended to be an historical novel, but it will be interesting to compare the two.

Learning and memorizing a tune

I attended a great fiddle concert tonight by the Kane Sisters, two Irish fiddlers. One of them, Liz, said she could learn a complicated tune in about an hour, by ear. Then, the next day she would have to learn it again. And keep at it until she had it down. It doesn't take her all that long: about five times playing the tune with her sister until they have it down. Less complex tunes take only a half hour (the first day).

This was reassuring to me, as they have been playing fiddle since they were young children. I can easily memorize a tune on the first day and almost completely forget it the next day. Yet, if I keep at it, it doesn't really take more than a few days to memorize a simple tune. Reliably playing it is another story.

Liz also said the first step was "listening until you are blue in the face." An interesting image! This is important. I used to do the reverse in a class--try to memorize the tune a few notes or measures at a time, before I really knew the tune well enough to sing it. It is so much easier to play a tune you already know.

I briefly attended a fiddle session before tonight's concert, in which the same subject came up. One of the fiddlers said he memorized about a tune a week, but it took him about a month to learn each tune. Thus, he's usually working on four tunes at once, in different stages of knowing the tune. This makes sense to me, as it is more or less what I do, but sometimes I'm lucky to add one new tune a month.

Here's a link to a good summary of fiddle practice technique.

Later tonight, after the concert, I got a call from a woman at the Scottish fiddle camp that I will be attending soon. She wanted to know my cello level so the teacher could prepare for the camp. There are only 4 cello students, including me, of a total of 75 students, and we're all over 40 and pretty much on the same level (I hope! All the others have attended this Scottish Fiddle Camp before, so they are a bit ahead of me on Scottish fiddling styles.) Turns out we will be learning by ear. I had a nice chat with the caller (a fiddler) about learning tunes, and she agreed about the importance of listening and the ease of forgetting. She also said that the cellists attending are the nicest group of people you could ever hope to meet. Well, I already knew that about cellists!

Kids and Music

The other night in flute choir rehearsal, we were talking about our kids and how hard it is trying to start or maintain your own musical life when you are also taking the kids to music lessons, soccer practice, school plays and performances, etc.

I started the cello when my kids were 10 and 12 years old, and it has been a struggle at times, finding time for my own music, especially since my kids are quite talented, and I felt like some sort of impostor, tagging along. Well, driving.

But I only have two kids. My friend has six, all grown now, with kids of their own. They all took music lessons, and my friend started flute when her daughter tired of it. She told a funny story about practicing the flute in the ladies room of the ice rink while her daughter was skating.

She hit her first high "C" in that rest room, in Aspen, CO (Rocky Mountain high). Excited about her achievement, she asked her daughter, "Did you hear me? Did you hear me?" "Did you see me? Did you see me?" responded her daughter.

I love her dedication. I never went to such lengths myself, to practice, though I did bring work everywhere I went.

My kids are 18 and 21 now, driving themselves to their own gigs and activities. So, I have fewer interruptions, fewer excuses, fewer reasons not to practice, but I do miss those music lesson outings just a little. :-)

Practicing Outside

I practiced outside on my deck on Sunday, in the middle of the day. A beautiful day, and so quiet in the neighborhood that I think everyone else must have been at the beach, or toiling in the local tourist economy. At least no one yelled at me to stop.

A few years back we had a next-door neighbor whose son played the trumpet. They made him practice outside because they found his practicing inside annoying. Thoughtful neighbors! And so supportive of their child's musical development!

My son used to have his rock'n'roll band rehearsals, then his jazz band rehearsals here. Indoors or out, that would be enough to wake the neighbors, but no one complained. So, maybe a single cello is not so disruptive.

I once practiced outside in a public park prior to a lesson, but one of the groundskeepers kept talking to me about playing the cello, and it was hard to get any work done. He did say I could practice there any time though, so I plan to play there again. I love playing outside.

Memorization, Again

I gave my teacher a printout of the article on memory that Erin suggested a while back about why it is not necessary to memorize music. My teacher just laughed. This is not an article she is even vaguely interested in reading.

I've been grumbling about having to perform Suzuki book recitals (all the pieces in the book) from memory. I think I am focusing too much on memory and not enough on technique, intonation, and expression. Either I need to improve my memorizing skills or I need to focus less on memorization.

On the whole, I believe in memorization. I like having a repertoire at my fingertips; and I like performing fiddle tunes, and you can't use sheet music for that. But memory doesn't come easily to me. It requires a lot of analysis and repetition. Then, I tend to be thrown off a bit when I play from memory with others, especially the fiddlers when, sometimes, everyone is playing a slightly different version of the tune.

I tried an experiment a week or two ago. I memorized a fiddle tune, Coleraine, on the flute, to compare the memory process and to see whether it would help or hinder learning the tune on the cello. I memorized it easily the first day, forgot it by the next day, re-memorized it and solidified it over the following few days, and can now play it well. I had never memorized anything on the flute, and it seems to be a very different process than memorizing on a string instrument. When I memorize a fiddle tune on fiddle or cello, I tend to visualize the fingerboard as a grid and think about finger placements on the grid. Most fiddle music on the fiddle is in first position, requiring no shifting, so this works well. Most fiddle music on the cello does require shifting, so it is a little different process. I think about where the shifts are, the bowings, where there is a scale fragment, a fifth, an arpeggio, etc.

With the flute, I found I thought more about note names. No shifts or bowings to worry about, and the pitches are more dependable. It also helped that I could play the tune on the flute--no learning needed, only memory work.

Then I switched to the cello to see if I could play the tune on the cello just from my knowledge of it on the flute. To some degree I could. Curiously I forgot the G#'s that I had focused on in the flute version. Just knowing the tune better helped a lot, though.

Why go through this, you might ask? Well, I have been thinking of memorizing a few fiddle tunes on the flute so I can play flute with the fiddlers on occasion. I have 4 or 5 tunes memorized on the flute now, and have learned several of these on the cello. I think the flute memory work is helpful to memorizing on the cello. At least it does not seem to be detrimental.

As for Suzuki music, I think I will change my focus a little. Instead of memorizing first, polishing second (the Suzuki way), I will concentrate on the learning, intonation, and polishing. I will continue to memorize, and to analyze the music in preparation for memory, but will try not to make memory the major focus of my work. It is not easy to make this transition, but I will try.

View from my window (or stuck inside)

I am inside working, but our cat (Buster, Milo, or Elmo, depending on which family member is talking about him) is outside, enjoying the sunshine, or perhaps contemplating a small tasty rodent.

I haven't even practiced very much, and I missed a performance yesterday and a rehearsal today. But, all in all, I am feeling happy and serene; centered, if you will. Today, on fairly pleasant work, if not on cellos. No lesson tomorrow because of Memorial Day, so no get-ready-for-lesson-related stress.

Memory talismans (talismen?)

It has been a busy week, work-wise, with little time for blogging. Still busy, probably right through the weekend. The joys of self-employment.

I have been re-reading Music for the Joy of It, Enhancing Creativity, Skills, and Musical Confidence by Stephanie Judy (who plays multiple instruments, including cello). This is a great book, full of information and advice on learning, practicing, and performing for amateur musicians. I bought it maybe 7 or 8 years ago and read it then, but am finding much of interest, lots that I forgot, or just seems more relevant now.

The following quote from the book is probably not the best example of useful information, but given my obsession with memorizing, it struck me as worth considering:

"If you are getting ready for a performance, it can help a surprising amount to practice your memory work in the place where you will perform. That's not always possible, of course, but as an alternative you can use a talisman--perhaps a special necklace, a scarf, or a belt that you put on when you practice and plan to wear when you perform. Suzanne McGrath learned this trick from her teenage daughter:

Kathryn always studies for exams wearing the same shoes that she's going to wear on exam day. I used to laugh at her for being superstitious, but she persuaded me to try it when I was getting ready for a recital. I kept my concert shoes next to my music stand and slipped them on when I worked on my recital number. (Kathryn absolutely insisted that I must never, never wear them for anything else or the spell wouldn't work.) And you know what? It worked! I had this very eerie feeling while I was playing that if I forgot anything, it would be down there in my shoe somewhere! At one point I even started to giggle because this idea struck me funny. But I'll definitely do it again."

There are lots of other more conventional and musically serious tips, and I am trying them all. My teacher has suggested, more to her younger students, practicing in a special scarf, not for memory, more just to make practicing a special time, so I am kind of up for this one.

So, I am playing four pieces for memory at my next recital. Should I have four talismans? Scarves are a little warm in the summertime. I'm not much of a shoe person and I don't wear shoes at home. I like the hat in the above illustration, but it might be a little too dramatic. Perhaps a sparkly ring, shining with the true vision of the music. Four sparkly rings. We'll see.