Phoebe oftens hangs with me while I practice

Just Because I Haven't Written An Entry....

...that doesn't mean I'm not busy.  I have been practicing everyday for no less than 2-3 hours.    Sometimes my practice will be an early morning one, sometimes it will be late at night or anytime in between.  My sessions are very sporadic and are broken up by things like cleaning the house, shopping etc.You know those necessary little irritations that keep all of us from doing what we really prefer to be doing.  In seven days I will find myself in Troy, OH for my third Gillacamp at Sound City Music.  This will feel a bit like a reunion and unlike my first year at camp I will be joined by fellow guitarists whom I will recognize on sight,  Leibert, John and Camille and of course our teacher Richard Gilewitz.  Jim Holifield, the principal at New Prairie Middle School commented to me in an email message that my guitar skills should be improving by leaps and bounds. It is pretty difficult for me to be objective about such things but I have found one way to do that.  Now last year at this time I had six tunes memorized, Echoing Gilewitz, Freight Train, Study for Margot, Dance, Silent Night and Spanish Two Step.  In the past twelve months I have increased my memorized repertoire to a total of seventeen pieces.  In fact, since this June alone, I have managed to add Prelude 1, Nocturne, Study in Bm, Anji and  Falling Slowly.  Trust me this is a definite improvement because memorization was a real stumbling block for me.  In fact, last year I religiously played 500 repetitions of Freight Train to try and burn it into my brain.  After those 500 repetitions it still was not there.  I admit I was really frustrated with myself.  Is my memory flawless?  Do I have to pull out the music and check up on myself or remind myself of a passage that is on mental mute? Yes to both questions. In fact I am writing this as a break from focusing on Echoing Wilderness.  I realized today that I hadn't played that piece for about two weeks because of new music I have been attempting.  Gillacamp presents its own new challenges.  Loch Lomond/Scotland the Brave, Take a Look At That Baby, Angels We Have Heard On High are on the syllabus.  Fortunately, we campers have been provided the music ahead of time and it is giving me some time to familiarize myself with the pieces.  I am feeling panicked at this point. 

I have only twelve days of summer freedom left before the school year starts.  I admit it will be difficult to put myself back into that daily schedule. I will adjust, but I know I am going to be tired and stressed.   It is almost scary to think that the Ireland adventure is only a month and half away as well.

Working Hard For The Most Part

Since my return from ODPCFF, I have been digging in on my playing. For example this morning (very early I might add, around 6:00am) I spent about 90 minutes playing primarily Walbert's Dance.  I have been attempting to incorporate a few nuances such as vibrato, volume variations, and paying strict attention to notes that are sustained.  What I really cannot stand is when I produce a note that buzzes in the least little bit or when I flub the note progressions in a passage.  David caught that I was not playing the artificial harmonics correctly.  I was adding too many bass notes.  Correcting this was part of my focus today.  David also caught a spot where the tabulature of the transcription had an incorrect note.  This doesn't sound like much of correction to make but I have been playing it wrong for over a year and that incorrect note does not sound out of place.  My brain expects the incorrect tone and now I must retrain it to expect the correct one.  It is my fault as well for not really looking at the notation.   So I have two clear corrections to focus upon and I made some progress today but it will take a lot more effort between now and Gillacamp to entrench the corrections.  I also focused upon a run that I particularly love in the piece but often stumble on.  I repeated the whole thing several times today and Friday night.  It is amazing how one's objectives evolve as you make improvements in your playing.  At least for myself, I constantly push to play better.  The bar keeps shifting up.  I particularly enjoy moments of complete immersion, when the music seems to have the control.  This does not happen regularly and it seems I must be "alone" for the magic to happen.  I recognize the feeling as "mushin" , the martial arts' concept of automatically reacting correctly with an empty/mu spirit/shin, actually a clear mind that is unencumbered with the process of making a decision.  It is a zen thing. In my case this cannot happen without the repeated practice of techniques and progressions.  It is partially a muscle memory thing that is of course fundamentally tied to the nervous system.  I believe that there are chemical synapses in the brain that actually are forming as one really learns something and repetition causes the pathways to strengthen. 
Yesterday John and I attended the Celtic Fest in Seitz Park along the St. Joe River in South Bend.  This was a very relaxing afternoon of lounging, eating Irish food provided by Fiddler's Hearth, and listening to some of our local Celtic influenced musicians present a relaxed concert of jigs, reels, ballads and personal compositions.  I have been feeling stressed lately and this was a good way to decompress.  I even brought my guitar along and  tested myself with figuring out chord progressions while I quietly played along with the musicians.  Having the guitar there also provided me with some practice time in between sets.

Recapping

It feels almost unusual to be home and settled for awhile.  Two of my travel-based aspects of the Lilly project are in the history book.  I thought it'd be useful to contrast the two festivals that I attended.   My original grant proposal was written with the intention to attend one of Richard's Gillacamps on Amelia Island, Fl.  The venue for that camp unexpectedly closed so alternate plans were formulated and my trip took me to the U. of Miami instead.  This was a longer trip so my husband was unable to attend.  Also my travel plans morphed into flying to Miami and Birmingham, renting cars and acquiring lodging.  As a solitary traveler this just made more sense, but it did have me hopping planes and limiting what I could bring with me, specifically the number of guitars(one).  It's useful to reflect on how I would have changed my approach to this trip.  I think I did pretty well but for one person I had too much to lug around.  My idea of shipping back my laundry and items that I no longer needed did work out beautifully and this was an excellent test run for Ireland.   Although shipping redundant items will not work for the up-coming Ireland trip. My Hiscox guitar case did a great job of protecting my instrument.  I actually observed the guitar being loaded onto airplanes twice and both times the airlines handled it respectfully.  Thanks Delta and American luggage handlers.  I noted that three of the classical guitar students at the MIGF also had Hiscox cases.
    Now in contrast the ODPC festival was an adventure shared with my husband and it served as a vacation break for him.  We drove to this four day event and with our Scion XB for transport we were able to pack it liberally.  In fact our clothing was packed into one medium sized case and everything else occupied the bulk of the space.  This included our cooler, two guitars, two mandolins, a banjo, a bodhran, video equipment, camera, and my trusty little Asus netbook.  We joked about how the proportion of clothing to "music stuff" was skewed in favor of the later.
    As would be expected the "expenses" of each trip were sharply contrasted.  My lone Florida adventure exceeded the fifteen hundred dollar mark to complete..  I am almost afraid to tally the whole cost.  There is no way I could have afforded this without the funds the fellowship provided..  My participation fees alone were around $350.  The fee for attending the ODPC funfest was a one time $5 fee for all four days.  One must keep in mind that the festival does run solely on volunteer efforts.  The only people making money were the vendors and those who were selling off their used instruments.  Of course we had hotel, travel and meal expenses.  ODPC was not free and it did reach into the $600 plus range. Again since our finances have been tight we could not have afforded this trip without my portion being aided by the Lilly grant.
    Now I want to contrast the "feel" of both events.  Here is what they had in common.  Participants who were dedicated and enthusiastic, teachers who worked very hard to engage and help their students learn, performers who were top-notch and well prepared for the performances they delivered, and venues that seemed perfect for the sort of event presented.
   MIGF and ODPC were quite different in flavor.  MGIF performances attracted both families and friends of the performers and folks from the community who would be characterized by middle class and above.  The audience was likely to be college educated(if they were old enough yet) and whose musical interests bent towards classical traditions.  The traditions of classical performances seem to revolve around maintaining a strict decorum of black clothing for the performers, specific ways to enter and exit the stage, little to no verbal communication with the audience(Mir Ali broke this commandment and it was quite refreshing) and a certain stiffness that comes from trying to accurately play a piece of music with respect for the composer.  This does not mean that personal expression was restricted, it just seemed to take a back seat to written music. Now I will admit that I was not familiar with much or any of the compositions presented so my analysis probably exposes that ignorance.  I was truly surprised that some of the performers had their music in front of them during the performance.  Now much of this seems to shatter when the Flamenco tradition creeps in and takes over the performers spirits.  Richard's participation in this series was definitely a mould breaker since his mastery of many traditions clearly results in his own interpretations of the pieces he has chosen for his extensive repertoire.   As he presented material to students who are nurtured in the classical tradition with material that expected them to experiment, they had definite difficulty.  Mir Ali, another master, who performs and teaches within this classical tradition did not fear bending the music to his own personality.  He has a special gift for arranging multiple performers, pushing them out of their comfort zones. 
    ODCP was definitely the "common" peoples event and families participated together often spanning generations.  The participants spanned the gamut of raw beginners to seasoned professionals.  Much emphasis is placed upon being able to develop the skills to jam together with other musicians.  Instead of inhabiting the hallowed grounds of academia this festival populated the local county fair grounds and had much of that atmosphere permeating it.  Great strides were made to make everyone feel welcome, young, old and all in-between.  It was a very fluid event with people and their carts of instruments, chairs(you had to bring your own) and accessories shuttling through aisle ways and in and out of barns with wonderful titles like "swine", "rabbit", "poultry" and "beef".  As one acquaintance described it, "looks like an exodus of refugees".   Neither bovine or bunny were in sight and the only birds spied were the occasional swallows and wrens that fluttered their ways in an out of the structures.  It is easy to feel comfortable in a situation such as this.  Certainly there is less stress about attempting new material and making the typical newbie mistakes.  Since there were so many people, most wouldn't even hear your clunkers.  The musical foundation for those who play chording instruments was learning the basic three chord progressions in the major keys and throwing in the occasional relative minor. The focus of this sort of event is trying to make it possible for the masses to participate in the joy of music.  Old Timey music dominated and Celtic traditions were an extremely strong focus as well.

Giving the Johnson Octave Mandolin some attention

Picking my way through the melody of "Wayfaring Stranger".

Expectations Being Met

It's 10:00 pm and John and I have made our way to the hotel in Big Rapids, Mi to settle in for the night. Two days of the Original Dulcimer Players Festival are now history. We have spent the last two days shuffling our instruments to and from various sites within the festival venue. The setting for the festival is the county fair grounds outside of the town of Evart, Mi. Yesterday we attended workshops on music theory and Irish music. I have found that it is pretty easy to discern whether a workshop will meet my needs. Sometimes well meaning presenters just do not have their act together. I found that rather than politely suffering through a weak presentation, it is better to quietly exit and spend my time focusing on the music I am trying learn and perfect. John and I are pretty like minded in this respect and we are happy to search out a spare space within a barn to play our instruments.

The weather has been a bit of a challenge. Yesterday started out stormy but by mid-day clouds cleared enough to allow temperatures to rise into the high eighties and produce steamy conditions that my body just does not appreciate. Both of us were feeling heat stressed by the time early evening approached so we headed back to the hotel around 5:00 pm. After dinner I settled into about a two-three hour practice session which suits me just fine.

My favorite workshop from yesterday was the Irish session. It was taught by David James. He is actually from South Bend and is the resident expert on Irish traditional music. David is an excellent instructor who fully engages his students. His enthusiasm for Irish music is contagious. I confess a love for the genre as well. This affinity was sparked decades ago when as a curious teenager, I came across an album by the band Pentangle. The rhythms and sounds hooked me. Here it is forty years since that fateful find and I have a couple Irish tunes that I play on guitar daily and this coming September I will be heading to Ireland for the Clonakilty International Guitar Festival.
When all is tallied, I did actually manage something like 5 hours of practice yesterday.

Today we arrived on site at around 11 am. I abandoned my guitar comfort zone for the workshop portion of the day. I own an octave mandolin(larger and deeper voiced than it's little brother)and a workshop that taught a simple version of "Wayfaring Stranger" was my first destination. I like the octave mandolin because I can use fingerpicking techniques since the neck is both a bit wider and longer than a regular mandolin. I really enjoyed the experience and the instructor did a fine job and was genuinely enthusiastic. I actually did okay reading the notation and making the adjustments to the GDAE tuned mandolin.
The second workshop covered adjustment and setup of a banjo. The instructor was quite prepared with excellent handouts and he clearly had decades of experience.
The third workshop was conducted by David James and he did a superb job of teaching basic bodhran(Irish hand drum). I've owned a bodhran for about 6 months but was pretty clueless about the methods associated with playing it properly. My interest in this instrument is motivated by desire to improve my sense of rhythm and timing. My difficulty with those musical elements has been a constant challenge.
Once this workshop was completed we headed on over to the main stage and watched performances until around 8pm. Tomorrow promises to be another busy day of workshops, practice time and the intention of participating in some jam sessions. We expect to stay late into the evening tomorrow. If it is anything like last year, there will be jam sessions at several locations that will extend into the wee hours.

Tightly Focused Practice

On Sunday afternoon, I had my first lesson with Richard since The MIGF. Although it was brief, (we both wanted to watch the World Cup final), it was focused and contained enough guidance to give me a good working approach towards Prelude 1.

Today is not a particularly "exciting" day to read about. I really focused my practice upon two pieces of music, Nocturne and Prelude 1. Yesterday's lesson with Richard pin-pointed measures or parts of measures that I am likely to find challenging. My time was spent reviewing my notes from his instruction and applying those concepts to actually playing Prelude 1. It is a very new piece of music for me, I received it from Walbert about 6 days ago. After today's review it started to feel a bit more familiar under my fingers, but firmly situated within what I refer to as the "exploratory" stage. Richard has limited my practice to about the 2/3 point of the whole piece until I can manage the difficult bits. There is a left hand ring finger stretch that is a serious challenge. It is not completely out of my capabilities because I have managed it with a struggle. RG has challenged me to have Prelude 1 memorized in time for Gillacamp. Surprisingly, I have memorized the first page and some of the measures on the second page. This does not mean I can play the music with anything resembling confidence. Nevertheless, I should be able to commit it to memory by August 7th.. but it will surely be a work in progress, much like everything that I play. As far as Nocturne goes, I do have this one memorized but it still needs a lot of work. I am beginning to feel the piece, which signals a step of progress. I broke up my practice of the above pieces by playing through Dance, Study for Margot, Maison Blanche Exit Song, Anji, The Foggy Dew and Star of County Down.


Tomorrow, I will have to at least begin to organize myself for the ODPC Festival. We will be leaving for Evart, MI sometime on Wednesday. I will probably pack clothing, essentials and do a bit of shopping for refreshments on Tuesday. I always wait until the last minute to pack instruments. A packed instrument is an un-played instrument. The festival events begin on Thursday and extend until Sunday morning. John and I hope to be participating in workshops and jam sessions. I only worry about the weather since a major heat wave is predicted to hit us on Wednesday. Perhaps a three hour drive north will take us to cooler conditions.... There is a guy offering a fingerstyle clinic, so I may pop in and see what he has to offer. Judging by his write up his right hand technique is limited to p, i and m. and with "banjo" style finger picks.

This festival is something that John and I will participate in equally but with different focuses. I do plan on packing my octave mandolin and the tin whistle to give them their annual workout. We did really enjoy the atmosphere of the event last year. Lots of nice people and virtually everyone is a musician.

Sometimes You Just Have to Accept The Inevitable

I couldn't help but surrender to the same rays of sunshine that immobilized two out of three cats.

A Delayed Reaction

Yesterday, you know that point in time past, and not the Beatles tune(well actually the tune is quite interesting too) was an interesting day. It began with the receipt of new music as I mentioned earlier and was an erratic affair of fussing around the house and playing guitar. I did manage a solid 3 hour guitar session in the afternoon that was interrupted by John returning home from work and the realization that our couch had reached the unacceptably corroded phase. We went out and purchased a new one that will join our household sometime on Saturday. I think I'm going to enjoy relaxing on a sofa that doesn't have a cracked frame, collapsed cushioning and general deterioration from 15 years of wear and tear. Since the living-room is my practice zone I will get a lot of use out of this new couch. The drive to the store took longer than the choice of the new piece of furniture. So this ended up being an expensive day because, I also sporadically ordered a couple of Peter Lang CD's. Actually the ordering part was a gut reaction but the discs are on my Richard Gilewitz's Required Listening Library List. I ended up staying awake all day and stuck myself in bed at the "early for me in the summertime" hour of 1:00am.
Today, I ended up arising at 6:30 am this morning. Grrrr, another measly 5.5 hour nap. No sense fighting it although. Later on I was pleasantly greeted by two more Walbert arrangements, Julia(Beatles) and Air on a G string(Bach). I have this feeling I am queuing up the next 10 years of repertoire development. By noon the Peter Lang CD's arrived, gotta love Amazon.com. In fact, The Thing at the Nursery Room Window is providing musical background as I compose this installment.
I did manage more time with Prelude 1 today. I'm still focusing on the first 2 pages, just not comfortable with the phrasings yet. It seems every new piece of music challenges my brain to coax my fingers to properly react to new picking and fretting combinations. I guess this is one of those blatantly obvious observations. It is my hope, that as I go through this learning process, it will be easier to make the connections. More specifically, I am still working at internalizing Nocturne and I spent some time with Maison Blanche, Accordion Bells and Study in Bm.
Now here's a hilarious irony. Prior to leaving for Miami, I purchased additional and specific insurance for my guitar. I received a letter today saying that the company is rejecting my application for the insurance because they do not insure instruments used by "professional musicians". I think I will need to phone them up and let them know that PROFESSIONAL musicians are paid "hundreds of dollars a year" for their services and "travel all over the world and Alabama" to perform. Whereas, Yvonne Desrosiers has actually traveled to Alabama and even Florida and Ohio to play guitar, she pays for the privilege and therefore doesn't qualify as a professional. I think Richard will vouch for my lack of professionalism. :) I can see a difference, I hope they can too.
Sometime around 1:30 pm, I just could not resist taking a nap, a delayed reaction from my sleep deprivation. Well that has refreshed me enough to manage being alert during today's Fire Arts workshop and coherent enough to put some words together into readable sentences. You gotta love spell checker although. Excuse me.....I hear something.... Yes my guitar is calling my name, apparently it gets lonely and cranky if ignored for about four hours. I'm going to get in some more playing before my next "nap".

Fresh Music for the Butcher

I received an installment of fresh compositions from David Walbert yesterday. Actually it includes his arrangement of "Yesterday" by Lennon and McCartney. The first piece in the group that I am putting my attention towards is Walbert's Prelude #1. It's a very pretty piece and because I frequently listen to Richard's "Music of David Walbert" album, I have a good handle on what it is supposed to sound like. With mucho practice perhaps I'll be able to have my playing do the piece justice. It starts with a beautiful series of hammer-on and pull-offs. I am focusing just on the first page and a bit into the second at this time. Next on the list will be Yesterday and Richard has offered to help me out on that one, which is always appreciated. I also plan to get his help with some of the currently tricky passages in Prelude 1. In fact, I managed to stay up way too late last night( well it was dark out but technically it was this morning, since my head hit the pillow sometime around 3:45am. As I lay there I realized my poor hubby was going to be up in about an hour) because I was having fun working out the left and right acrobatics. Somehow I think I'm going to need a nap later today, considering I was up at 8:30. Hummm less than 5 hours sleep, let's see how that affects my functionality. Another hot and humid day is on the menu, not much motivation to leave the air conditioned comfort of home.

Stepping Back

Today has thus far been exclusively dedicated to the guitar with the exception of a quick trip to Staples with my hubby and this literary digression. I still have this goal of committing Nocturne to memory before the weekend concludes. It is a good thing this is a three day weekend because it looks as though I am going to need that additional day. I have been breaking up the Nocturne focus with other tunes that although memorized still need additional work. Honestly, they all need work. Perfection is elusive and impossible. Sometimes I get frustrated as I can only see(technically hear) the mistakes I make and my memory works so very slowly. From my perspective it seems that "others" have an easier time of storing tunes in their brains. Well back to work.

Self Defense

You have to look closely. Yes those are peanuts in my ears. They were applied in self-defense as Julie and Jackie, my studio buddies dropped hints about my having a show in the Fire Arts gallery next year. This helped me ignore the hint and continue playing Echoing Gilewitz.

A Perfect Day

My day started at 9:00 am. This felt like sleeping in because it is the latest I have gotten up so far this summer and the longest I have slept. I followed my typical regime of preparing for the day by brushing my teeth and getting dressed, shuffled downstairs and started up the computer and grabbed the closest guitar which ended up being my 12 string. So I greeted the morning with a mournful rendition of The Foggy Dew, played around with the mood of the piece during many repetitions and moved on to Loch Lomond/Scotland the Brave. All because the 12 string beastie was already in Open C something tuning. I ignored the churning computer for another 45 minutes or so and moved onto working on Nocturne and Anji, my current main focuses. I have this goal of getting Nocturne memorized before the weekend is out. I am creeping forward and not altogether confident that I will achieve that arbitrary challenge. A practice session feels totally incomplete if I haven't played Dance and Study for Margot so they both got ample attention today along with Freight Train, Falling Slowly and Scarborough Fair.
I forced a separation between me and instruments and left to get my morning Starbuck's Frappacino(at some point I realized I hadn't had anything to eat yet) and to get some DVD cases for the festival videos I have rendered. By this time the morning had waned and mid-day surfaced. After organizing the videos, I couldn't help but grab the guitars and get back to work on my playing. I ran through a few of the exercises Walbert presented to me then picked my way through several tunes.
John was my nourishment savior and came home from work with a sandwich from Subway for my dinner. Thanks hon! Then it was off to Fire Arts for me to mentor the high school kids who are participating in summer studio. I keep a guitar at the studio and took a few breaks from the kids and played some more music. In fact I ended up leaving about an hour late because I was pretty absorbed in the tunes. My studio buddies seem to be a willing audience, at least I hope I'm not torturing their ears. They did stay until I was finished.... Not so true although for the pit bull dog one of the kids brought to the studio. He was sweet tempered and friendly until I began to play. He absolutely was offended by the sound of my guitar. It completely frightened the poor pup and he huddled next to his owner and barked at every strum. Fortunately, my dog is completely unaffected by the sound of my playing and often lays next to me during a practice session.