I tend to go through phases with music--sometimes I'm really devoted to it, and other times it hardly crosses my mind to play, nevermind practice enough to perform in front of an audience, even if it's just an open mic. I knew this about myself already, though, and it's the reason I didn't attempt to make a career out of performing or songwriting. I don't know how long it will take for the inspiration to come back, although I don't doubt it will eventually. Lately I have had some different ideas for music, or styles of music, I want to write, but I'm still drawing blanks on new lyrics. Whatever I write next has to be somewhat distinct from what I've written before, partly because I don't want to keep saying the same things all over again, and partly because I'll need some new twists to hold my interest. Not that I'm saying anything real insightful here. Stuff gets boring if you don't change it up sometimes. Pretty basic concept.

Anyway, I recently found out that my boss will be retiring next spring, so in order to continue with my piano technician career I'll be moving early summer. The plan is to live back in NH with my parents while I take a correspondence course and work towards becoming a Registered Piano Technician (RPT), but I have no idea where I'll be headed off to after that. Boston area, maybe... but it really could be anywhere, including Las Vegas--where I've been several times and feels like home-away-from-home. Anyway, I'm not going anywhere unfamiliar for quite a while... but I do have a limited time in this area of NY, so I'm going to try and get out more to Lena's and the rest of the music scene, even if I'm not up to playing. I'm definitely going to miss it here, and all my friends in the area (most of whom I met through Lena's!), so I'd best make the most of my last several months here.

So while I'm sifting through my site, making updates to house the info about the new CD (and, admittedly, making updates in general, since I've sorely neglected these pages)... I came across a couple music things that I thought would be neat to have on my site, although they don't relate directly to the singer-songwriter thing.

First, if you don't already know, I've been playing pedal harp for 3ish years now. I played with the orchestra a few times--since harp is such a specialty instrument, that means you almost always get a solo or few. But one concert last year, my part was more prominent than usual... Violist Mark Ludwig, from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, was in residency and played with our orchestra as a soloist. We played a movement from Harold in Italy (Berlioz), where the violist and harp play a duet. I really only had one measure where I was the "melody," but my part was important enough that I had to sit up front by the soloist (even though I'd spend the other 10 minutes of the movement sitting there doing nothing, hahah). It was pretty neat, and I managed to play pretty well. Here's a clip of the part where I played...
Harold in Italy: Mvt I (clip)

The second thing...
for my orchestration class that same semester, our final project was to orchestrate a piano piece for the Skidmore orchestra. I chose "Bethena: A Concert Waltz" by Scott Joplin, and the result was pretty decent.

Some details about this track...

This recording is my orchestration derived from original piano score for "Bethena" [part of the goal was to preserve the composer's intent--melodies, harmonies, form, etc.]. The project was taken on for an orchestration class, and was sightread along with other class projects by the Skidmore orchestra on April 18th, 2006.

Please excuse the slight errors (wrong notes, uneven tempo changes, incorrect entrances, intonation issues)--the mostly-student orchestra did an excellent job playing this for only going through it twice! [This recording is of the second read-through.] Although there are a few minor changes to the score since the recording, they're probably nothing anyone but me (or a fellow orchestrator) would notice, and/or are simply to make it more readable/accessible for the players... oh, and that's me on the harp in the last few sections.

Instrumentation
Piccolo
2 Flutes
2 Oboes
2 Clarinets in Bb
2 Bassoons
2 French Horns in F
2 Trumpets in Bb
2 Trombones
Tuba
Harp
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Cello
Bass

my orchestration of "Bethena" by Scott Joplin

So there you go! I know this is probably not all that exciting for non-orchestra lovers, and it's also kind of old news... but hey, that's why it's in the blog, and not the news. I just wanted to have this stuff documented/available somewhere. :)

Not like anyone ever checks this blog anymore, since I haven't written in like a year... oops.

I'm already on my way--I just moved into a new apartment, on my own, that I'll have for the next year. In a couple weeks I turn 21 and finally enter the world of pink paper bracelets instead of markered black X's that take a few days to completely wash out of one's skin. I recently started a full-time job, as an apprentice for a piano technician who mainly restores vintage pianos. I love the job so far, and I love the apartment... but things haven't really settled to the point that it all feels real--and of course, I'm not truly independent yet.

I got a new driver's license today... I look pretty much exactly as I did five years ago. A lot has changed since I was 16, but in a lot of ways I am the same old me. I still have my head in the clouds much of the time, I'm still generally quiet and shy (even though I break out of that a bit around other musicians/songwriters), and I just... I don't feel like I'm really much different than I was 5 years ago, except for the situations I've been in and some of the skills I've collected along the way.

What I'm hoping is that I don't allow myself to hit a plateau... When I learn a new instrument I usually grasp it pretty quickly (minus French Horn... kind of sucked at that one, hehe) and progress with it pretty rapidly until I've learned enough to hold my own with it. But then the learning curve flattens out a bit, as if I've caught up to myself. And that's kind of how I feel about where I am in my life right now--as long as I can remember I've pictured myself in my twenties, in my own place, with my own job...

and now that I'm actually there (!), there's a bit of "now what?"
I guess figuring that out is the next step...

In this one, I was at this big monastery-like place with one other girl. There was a couple watching over us and teaching us, the man being the one "in charge." I'm not sure the word "God" ever came up but it was definitely implied that we were to be giving our lives up to some religion or universal presence or something like that. The man was skeptical that either of us would end up making it whole-heartedly through the initiation process... at some point he insisted something like "when you are here, if you do this, man means nothing anymore. This is everything." Whatever he said wasn't that coherent, but the gist was that we had to give up all of our friends and family and relationships... and when I realized I couldn't do that, I completely broke down in realizing that I had to leave. What was killing me about it was that whatever it was we'd glimpsed and were about to enter into was so beautiful, and I didn't want to have to let it go... but for me, the consequences were too great--I had no choice but to let it go and get back to my own world.

The whole tone of it was so distressed; I felt like I was losing something so important to me that I'd never really have again. There wasn't even the sense that what I was gaining by letting it go was necessarily better, it was just that I was incapable of turning away from the ones I loved... the ones who I'd started to see that presence through in the first place. But I wasn't really thinking about which was better... the sheer sense of loss was overwhelming, regardless of whether it was the right thing to do or not.

I'm not big on picking apart dreams and figuring out where each little thing came from in my waking life, but dreams like this that have such a strong "reaction" in them make me think a bit more... The idea of having to deal with a really emotionally painful loss either to get something better in the long run, or simply because there is no other way, seems more like some sort of heavy life lesson than a dream. It's just that in a dream the impact of it is more immediate and raw than it would normally be in real life (for me anyway... I tend to be pretty reserved), and so there is no avoiding or sugar-coating it--it's just there, in your face, refusing to be conquered by logic or convenience.

Sometimes I feel more solidly alive in dreams...
maybe that's why I write about them (or refer to them) in songs so much. ;)