4 hours

I sorted the 4th of July parade music out into folders today. It took me four hours! But boy, I am glad I did it. I learned - how much time it takes to sort through sheet music (obviously, a lot), the music order for band music (I think I have that nailed now), how many kinds of clarinets there are! (E flat, B flat, bass, something else that I can't remember - can't they just be like trombones and be simple?), all the different percussion parts (no wonder those guys are running around all the time).

I have to say that it gave me great respect for all the volunteers, music teachers, conductors, music librarians who painstakingly parse music out into separate folders, and then even more painstakingly reassemble the music after the concerts are done. You'd think I might have been a little resentful, spending 4 hours on a precious day off carefully sorting out this music, but I was not at all. It just worked in my day, and just seemed like the perfect thing to do. Plus, like I say, it was a pretty amazing insight into how this works. Just imagine for every concert you see, how much effort goes into putting the music together.

Ok, my practice today. I had a mental map of my goals/thoughts/memories from yesterday's practice, and today's was a good and productive practice. I could so see the progress I had made on the material I worked on yesterday. I worked on Show Boat for the June concert, and I love how I can hear the pieces of that music coming out as I am playing it. My goal was to get all the way through a piece for the concert each day, and I didn't do that today or yesterday - so I need to work on that earlier in my practice rather than exercises.

Maybe the best part is how thoroughly and thoughtfully and listeningly I am doing my warmup. On my way up the street from my meditation this morning, I stopped and visited with Jim and Salty a bit. We were talking about practice and I described what Jack had told me from the brass class, about imagining the music "up here" at the top of your head as you then play it through your lips - you hear the music you envision and then you play to that. Jim told me about a lesson about scales, and making the scales beautiful, about playing the scales musically. I did that in my warmup today. I played my notes in my head before I played, and I played them beautifully in my head. Then pretty nicely in the real world, too.

I think practice is like a lot of things. If there is a lot of intention behind it, there is much more that comes out of it. If you just jump into it, you get what you prepared for.