Sunday, May 10, 2009

the road ... and best intentions

My weekend was open and it laid out before me, full of endless possibilities. No classes right now, no rehearsals, lots of time for practice, time for meditation, time to enjoy the sun ...

Oops, I hardly got any practice in, BUT both Saturday and Sunday were productive practices. Yesterday I actually had a great warmup, reinforcing my low note behavior, playing my upper range well, and doing a decent vibrato on my scales, even working a bit on one of my exercises. But! It was supposed to be the first of two practices and I never made it to the second. The weekend intervened. I went on a zipline tour, of all things, on "local appreciation day" with my friend Natt (Picasa web album currently under construction). I went to the Bach Society concert - lovely, lovely - little tiny kids were marvelously cute, cousin Marie as always sang beautifully. Then in a rather startling change of character ended up at the Jazz Babies Ball at the JACC 'till midnight, but had to leave because I had to get up early to help clean an ill friend's house.

Then today my day was full from beginning to end. Family, friends, and musical cohorts. What more could you want? But - my only practice was playing "Lean on me" from my head. But it was encouraging. I sang it. Then I said, "What note am I starting from?" I sang it again, and I answered myself, "F." So I picked up the trombone and I played an F. It wasn't right, because my horn was cold so it was ... damn, the physics of this instrument always throws me, it was too flat with the tuning slide pulled out too far. So I pulled it in and played the F and it was the note I was singing as the starting note, and I played it somewhat bumpily, but not even too bumpily!

Then I played it in a different key, can't remember which, and it was even better, and went past 9 pm by about 10 minutes (thanks, Charlie) ... but, sadly, that's all the practice I got this weekend.

No comments: