New beginnings and new tasks.

Well on Tuesday this week I received my first piano lesson with a local teacher and already I have learnt so much from the half hour session. Not only do I look forward to building up my piano abilities but I am also receiving help on music theory for my up and coming grade 5 exam in March 2010.
Later in the day I attended samba band Rhythm Wave at the college in which I carried on my snare and trombone duties. I was put on the spot half way through the rehearsal when Ronnie began asking me to play popular themes and songs of which I don’t really have the ear to just play one the spot. I suppose in developing my ear to hear the difference between pitches and intervals will help speed up the learning process of new songs and help me with improvisation and solo opportunities. Also because it is trombone and violin that are my main pitched instruments and both are fretless a good ear for tuning could become most helpful with my intonation.
On Wednesday my college band began to take initiative on our Beatles project and have chosen our set list for the December show. Whether this is due to the nearing pressures of the gig or the fact we have a new lecturer pushing us on I’m not sure, I would guess a bit of both really. In my drum class I began to move away from my sixteenth note variations and have started on the samba groove. I have always loved the style however my right foot is in desperate need for improvement if I am to be capable of playing the style with confident feel. I hope to pick up the basics in the next few weeks and hopefully will soon be capable of adding versatility to my playing to make me more employable.
Later on in the afternoon I set out with a colleague to have a traditional music rehearsal with my fiddle. The practice was very productive as our sight reading is improving and our sets of both reels and jigs are gradually becoming more in tune and unison. Although I love to play and sight read new pieces I find myself getting extremely frustrated when I make mistakes, almost to the point of stopping and starting the piece again. Controlling my temper is a major issue I need to work on as not only is this frustration affecting my performance but also my confidence to perform live. Playing to an audience with a minefield of an instrument will be one leap I will find hard to take.
On Thursday I found out my results to the previous weeks time signatures test and am glad to say I passed! Lets hope I can keep up this pass rate for the next few weeks in terms of scales and chords.
Also this week in graded unit class we were visited by head of music at Perth College Lorenz Cairns. Lorenz told a very compelling story of his life as a session musician and the diversities that came with it in terms of both his bass playing and singing. I found it incredibly interesting to hear about his step into the session world for as someone who considers the same career path its fascinating to hear about that “first break” that set the ball running and how it turned his life round. As there is no real step to step method that can be taken to becoming a session musician it is interesting to hear how others have accomplished doing this and Lorenz really helped to show that you have to jump at every possible opportunity you can get your hands on. He gave us a different aspect on becoming a session musician and talked about key abilities being good communication skills and the ability to forget about mistakes. I really took the ability to put mistakes over my head aboard for I remember countless times were I have beaten myself over small mistakes that has ended in a chain reaction. I am just going to have to change the mental aspect of how I look upon it.
In session skills this week we were a given a new track to try out which turned out to be quite straightforward for my band to play. Although it did not have any dynamic markings it gave me the opportunity to use, as I felt fit. I also got the opportunity to play the trombone part that turned out to be very difficult with countless high phrases. Gavin helped to show me that in a real show no trombonist would play all these phrases for it would just exhaust their lips in a three hour shows and so I would just play the important ones.
Well on Saturday I attended the second of four workshops into “making your on kind of music” lead by John Maxwell Geddes. This week we lectured upon the methods of programme music and harmony and how such small change can take piece to places you never considered possible and in the afternoon the Paragon musicians who had come to play the first sketches of our pieces so far joined us. It was an amazing experience hearing your piece played by the professionals and getting advice on arrangement and development by them and from an accomplished composer as well. This week we discovered the good news that our pieces would be played in front of an audience in the Glasgow university concert hall to help produce a fuller acoustic tone. Now I just hope that I can produce the goods!