Post Perfect Summer-Not a Great Start

June has come and gone, was dominated by concern for my father-in-law and culminated with the inevitable.  Dad had been dealing with kidney failure as a result of diabetes and he passed away on the 28th.  My husband, John, sister-in-law Andrea and I kept vigil through the night.  At around 5am, Andrea was the first realize that the steady yet dwindling cadence of his breathing weakened and ceased.  So far we are all handling it pretty well.  We knew this day was approaching as he had several health issues multiplying and his refusal to take dialysis sealed the deal.

He suffered a serious physical crisis the previous week that forced him to be hospitalized for a few days.  When it became apparent that he was very near the end of his time, hospice care was arranged and he was moved back to his assisted living facility.  Even though he was quite ill and not always lucid, he expressed pleasure when informed that he was going back home.  He did like living at Inwood Hills, his assisted living home.  His health deteriorated rapidly after mom died, forcing a move from the independence of living alone in his own home to somewhere that he could have the daily chores seen to and his medications monitored and administered.  He had made friends at Inwood, mainly lady friends and the staff seemed to do good job attending to his needs.  He will be dearly missed by us.  The funeral consisted only of the three of us and my daughter, Naomi, son-in-law, Dan and eldest grandchild, Austin.  A few visitors showed up for the viewing but it seems that the majority of dad's friends had pretty much lost touch or had passed before him.  His siblings are quite elderly and could not make the journey to South Bend. 

Through all of this I have found it difficult to play guitar very much.  It is not ignored but I think for the time being I am a bit emotionally drained.  Thank goodness it is summer and I have not had to deal with going to work through this whole ordeal.  I'm trying to be a support for John and Andrea but I'm not too certain how well I'm doing at that.  Anyway instead of immersing myself in creative efforts, I find the couch frequently pulls me off my feet and forces me to collapse.  So in a month's time I've gone from being horribly plagued with insomnia to near narcolepsy.  Hopefully by the time August rolls around I will discover the middle ground.

Even though I'm not absolutely consumed with the guitar at the moment, I manage to play each day.  My lofty goals of being prepared for the Troy Gillacamp threaten to be stalemated.   I wanted to be able to have each of the targeted pieces of music sorted out and on the road to memorization.  Seems that will be an impossible challenge since there are only four short weeks until camp.  John and I are trying to make a couple of trips this month, a three-peat to the Original Hammered Dulcimer Players Festival in Evart, Mi and I will tag along as he participates in his first mandolin workshop in Bloomington, IN. and conducted by Jim Richter.  The mandolin workshop should provide me with the chance to tuck myself away and focus on my playing while John is in his classes.  This event is being held at what looks to be a very nice B&B and there is a porch off of our booked room that beckons for me to use as a practice space. 

I am still working on trying to memorize the Beatles' tunes When I'm 64 and Imagine.  I have Yesterday and Across the Universe pretty much committed to memory but they are in need of massive amounts of polishing.  These are arrangements by David Walbert and they are phenomenal!  I am trying to get Richard's hypnotizing arrangement of Sunflower River Blues in open C tuning, squared away.   I find myself easily slipping into improvisation when I practice this piece.  Sometimes I find the groove and sometimes my fingers stumble over each other and it becomes counter-productive.  I've been keeping my Breedlove J22 in Open C and using it exclusively for playing this piece.  Recently I strung it with D'addario's EJ24 strings for DADGAD and boy does this guitar thump with that combination.   I've been especially drawn by Gilewitz's arrangement of  this John Fahey tune ever since I heard Richard play it over 2 years ago now.  I think the alternating bass must be in synch with my own heartbeat. 

I have acquired a nylon string guitar.  It is a classical model with a cutaway body,solid red cedar top, solid mahogany sides and back, and rosewood fingerboard.  It is produced by Lag, a French company.  It is a Tramontane TN100ACE.  I have been using it primarily to play in DADGAD tuning and I must admit it has a sweet tone and is very responsive for a relatively reasonable price tag.   I believe although there is no marking to note it, that it is actually constructed in China.  The build and materials quality are excellent and the sound has actually improved since March when I originally received it.  Adjusting to the wider fingerboard is a bit of a challenge although. 

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.

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.

David Walbert directs me in an exercise.

Well sort of.... we actually posed for this shot, balanced the camera on a support and set the timer and hoped for the best. I wasn't as stunned as I looked.

I've Been Walbertized! And it is GOOD!

I just settled back into my hotel room in Birmingham, Al. I arrived at the airport yesterday at 12:10 pm, deplaned, got my luggage, picked up a rental car and made it to Yoda's Den(Gilewitz's affectionate term for David Walbert's home studio) by 1:07pm, not too bad considering my flight was 10 minutes late as well. Sunday's session focused upon Study for Margot and Dance, both being Walbert compositions that I have been playing. He suggested new left hand fingerings in a few places on Study that help me smooth out some sections. We also worked on picking mechanics. He showed me and helped me develop some techniques that I had never tried before, including string stops, vibrato, right hand sweeping strokes, rest strokes etc. So much information flowed and it will be great if I can remember 50% and incorporate into my playing. Walbert is an absolutely fantastic teacher and it became apparent within 20 minutes why Gilewitz reveres him so much. Their approaches are similar but David's is deeply rooted in his classical roots. Richard has prepared me so well that as we finished up today's three(supposed to only be two) hour session and I told David I had only been playing since August of 2008, he was truly surprised. He assumed I had much more experience. Today's session started out on "Falling Slowly". He felt I already had a good handle on the piece so he helped me take the piece farther with the addition
vibrato, crescendo and sustain of the bass notes. From there we went onto "Spatter the Dew" an Irish piece I have struggled to sort out the timing. I think I have it now. It is a 9/8 slip jig with a few sections that tricky for me. I have some new pieces to work on as well and am anxious to get busy on those. I leave early tomorrow morning to head home. Crossed fingers that the weather won't muck up my flights.