Impatience

No reply yet.
I'm impatient, I know. But the world seems as though it wants to torture me, because I'm suddenly receiving 70-something spam emails a day. And every time I see a notification on my email app, I get worked up.
I'm giving him a week before I send another.

Eek.

I seem to have a talent for stressing myself out over minor things. Today proved successful in this respect.
I finally got around to sending an email to Robert Sheena, the English horn/oboe teacher at Boston University. (I just noticed, it seems like every male I know is named either Robert or Matthew. This is getting bizarre.) I asked for a sample lesson, as it seems like every music student in my grade is doing the same thing. It's all done and sent, and now the wait begins.
Which is when, of course, the stressing begins.
It also doesn't help much that I have my road test next week, and it's potentially the most unnecessarily nerve-wracking thing I've ever done, simply because it's so simple. But, I refuse to even really think about it, so for the moment I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist.
I'd sent Mr. Sheena a couple emails sometime last year, but never received a response. I was somewhat offended a while back, but decided that I was better off just dealing with it. Looking back, they were kind of pointless: I wrote something about asking what the difference between a solely oboe and a combination oboe/English horn program would be when studying in college. I honestly don't blame him for not responding.
I hope he does this time, though; at the moment he's still my top choice of teacher. I can only wait and see whether or not a) he responds, b) I like him and he likes me when/if I do get a lesson, and c) if I get into BU at all. I've become so hooked on the idea of going there I've even seriously considered early decision (or action, whichever one is binding - I never remember), if they offer it to music students at the College of Fine Arts. Previously, I never would have dreamed of doing this.
I'm honestly beginning to consider myself insane.

In awe.

I just saw, broadcast live to a theatre near where I live, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra's combined performance of Mahler's 8th.
I'm still rendered speechless. It was just that good.
I'd elaborate but there are just no words.

Hell is on its way

Well, as if I didn't have enough on my plate this year, it looks as though I'll be taking on even more the next. I think I'm just asking for a nervous breakdown, but I don't want to discontinue anything. Besides, the majority of what I'm taking on is musical, and I generally view that as therapy, not a stressor.
So, if everything with scheduling goes well, I'll have a full courseload: AP Music Theory, AP English 12, AP Macroeconomics, AP Environmental Science (possibly, unless I decide I want a free period), and AP Calculus. All of this plus band and drawing, and a half-year online course on music and art history that's being offered for the first time next year. I normally wouldn't spring for it, but it sounds interesting. After last year's catastrophe with the online course I took (I ended up dropping after seven weeks; stress levels were too high and the other people in the class never participated in anything), I'm surprisingly not wary of trying another one. I may try to drag someone I know into it, too, so I won't be completely alone.
Then, in addition to this, I'll be having college auditions, I may have Juilliard Pre-College, plus students and whatever orchestras I'll be in to practice for. I also just need to practice, period.
All in all, I'm setting myself up for total hell.
But, the majority of the hell I'm getting into is musically related, so maybe I'll like it. I already spoke with another one of my friends (a highly talented opera singer, though she doesn't seem to think she's as good as she actually is sometimes) and she agrees that probably the easiest part of next year is complaining, especially about AP Theory (which is what we were specifically talking about at the time).
Oh, and I forgot to mention all the shows with the drama club I'm hoping to do, what with seniority and that stuff that's now on my side: the autumn show, winter show, and spring musical that maybe I'll actually get a part in and won't do pit by default. I will concede that this year, with Oklahoma!, there's a decent, hopefully Sweeney Todd-like oboe/English horn book that I'll be playing. Maybe (just maybe) I won't spend the entire time watching the show and missing all the cues. Nobody in the audience notices whether you play or not, but by the fifth time running through the show, you stop watching and start realizing how little you're doing. And that is never fun. (Thoroughly Modern Millie, anyone?)
Not this year, I hope.

I maintain I am a professional procrastinator

I sometimes wish I would be able to graduate without taking any classes. Yet again I find myself, at 9 PM, not having even a chance to think about practicing yet today because of all the homework I've been doing. I won't give myself a full ride, though: I procrastinated this take-home until the last minute, but I along with everyone else in this class. (AP Chemistry, in case you all are wondering.)
I will defend myself, however, and say that if I'm forced to go to bed without practicing, it won't have been without playing. I have band, as I do every day, where I usually sit and wait while the director works with the flutes and trumpets and practice either Mozart's Concerto in C or the oboe excerpt from Rossini's La Scala di Seta to occupy myself, at approximately a dynamic of pppp. And people say clarinets are the quietest instruments in the woodwind section.
I'm feeling pretty good musically, though. I'm currently listening to WQXR, and they're currently broadcasting a concert by Leif Ove Andsnes, solo on piano at Carnegie Hall. It's incredible, and I remember specifically one particular thing he said during an interview prior to the performance on the air. (At least, I assume it was him, I never heard specifically.) Nevertheless, he said how one piece he was playing was one he considered an "old friend"; he had first seriously started to attempt to master it at around age 16. This reminds me a lot of Mozart's Concerto (the one previously mentioned), and I just found it somewhat uplifting. Hey, this guy wasn't playing Chopin in Carnegie hall at age 6 (not like I know of anyone who did; nor do I know for sure that Andsnes did not), and look where he is: audience members interviewed said he is "one of their favorite pianists". Not bad, not bad. He certainly sounds charismatic, and plays quite excellently. Colorful, with a wide range of tone and musicality. I'm impressed. I'd be also impressed by myself if I weren't impressed.
I'd say more, but there's not much more to say. I'm still highly bothered by how this year, contrary to every other school year I've had in my lifetime, we have no midwinter vacation. It's instead an "extended weekend": this coming Friday there is no school, and the Monday following is off, too. I'm bitter. My classmates are bitter. The teachers are bitter. And all this because of the absurd amount of snow days we had to have last year. This year? The only ones used so far were back in October from that freak snowstorm on Halloween.
Bitter, bitter, bitter.

Ludwig van Hamlet

Ages and ages ago (maybe in October or so of this current school year) my teacher was in the middle of a campaign to get the majority of the band to learn to syncopate, or at least count. I don't think it really worked; we're still suffering from lack of rhythm and reading. His new slogan, "Play the ink, not what you think" hasn't really paid off.
Anyway, true to form, I'm getting off topic. One day, he'd written on the board: "To syncopate or not to syncopate, that is the question". Now, as a true Shakespeare nut who reads Antony and Cleopatra for fun, I immediately took it and ran with it. I dragged along my friend Nadia who sits next to me in class (credit to her is well-deserved) and together we began to convert the entire suicide contemplation speech into a speech bemoaning music. We only did some lines, but showed our director it anyway, and he absolutely went mad for it. He said once we finished it, he wanted it, and would have it made into a poster.
Well, that was way back when that he said it, and we hadn't finished it until maybe a half hour ago. I finally was sick and tired of it hanging over my head, and sat down and completed the rest of it. It's not just word replacement, I'd like to think; reading over it, it seems to have an actual poetic quality (aside from the lines where I couldn't keep the syllable pattern and shot it to hell).
We're both proud of it, and it just sounds really awesome, so I thought I'd share it with you guys. Feel free to leave comments or send me a note if you want. Hopefully this will make poster form in a few weeks, where Nadia and I will live in infamy on the band room wall until probably Mesches, the director, leaves.
Drumroll, please...

To syncopate or not to syncopate, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The signs and patterns of outrageous rhythm,
Or to take arms against a sea of ties,
And by subdividing end them? To tie: to slur;
No more; and by a slur we say we end
The articulation and the thousand natural accents
That song is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To tie, to slur;
To slur: perchance to sing: ay, there's the rub;
For in these measured bars what sounds may come
When we have shuffled off these rested minutes,
Must give us pause: there's the breath
That makes calamity of so long line;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The conductor's wrong, the first chair's contumely,
The beats of despised sharps, the beat's delay,
The insolence of soloists, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his glory make
With a bare melody? Who would second chairs endure
To grunt and sweat under a weary line,
But that the dread of something far further,
The nigh-mythical success, from whose bourn
No soloist returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear harmonies we have
Than fly to soli that we know not of?
Thus fear does make ensembles of us all,
And thereby the native glow of betterment
Is then made dark with dim timidity,
And thus endeavour of great pitch and movement
With this find that their currents turn awry
And lose the name of music.

I really hope you all like it; I had way too much fun doing this, aside from a few troublesome spots. But, all in all, I got a huge kick out of this.

And as usual, a weekend of snark

Well, it's snowing again (flurries, really) so I may as well update this little project I've been neglecting. As a follow-up, my bank account is still intact. I have yet to actually order anything (even cane, which I really need to do) so I'm not yet feeling the cold, empty feeling that comes from spending half of my savings. I was never a saver until relatively recently, and I rather regret that. My mother says it's from her and my dad. Whatever the cause, I have less money than I'd like.
About an hour ago, I had a children's concert with the conservatory I attend. It's technically supposed to be a "meet the woodwind family" concert, but as far as I know they've never gotten new students from it. I'm not sure what the point is. If they have, great; most of the kids are more or less just watching and on occasion crying. It's a young audience. I'm not sure I like it.
This time, as opposed to earlier years, it was with the woodwind quintet I'm in, so we had a built-in setup for the program. Previously, they would gather up a good flute, clarinet, saxophone, me on oboe, and that would be it. Once I think they blended the brass and woodwinds so it didn't look quite as pathetically small, but my memory tends to mush things together so I can't be sure. I distinctly remember, though, three years ago the clarinetist being unavailable and the teacher literally cut out a vaguely clarinet-shaped piece of paper, scribbled black sharpie all over it, and said it was a clarinet. I sincerely wish I was joking. At least she didn't try to play the thing; she brought a CD player with a clarinet concerto recording to demonstrate the sound.
This year, we had a whole representation of the woodwind section, excluding a sax, a piccolo, and a bass clarinet. (The clarinetist plays both saxophone and bass clarinet, but he was asked to play neither; the flutist was not asked to bring her piccolo; meanwhile, I was told to bring my English horn. Oh, well.) One horn (whom I'm dating, for future reference), clarinet, bassoon, flute, and me doubling on English and oboe were all the performers. We each went around, talked a little about the instrument(s), had to demonstrate a fun thing you can do with the instrument(s) (I'm completely convinced that, in the respect of interesting and weird things you can do with instruments, oboe is possibly the most boring one out there. You can't flutter tongue (or at least I can't); you can't really produce noticeable dips in the pitch like a saxophone or clarinet unless your reed is truly horrendous; you can't do mouth percussion like you can on a flute; it's not a versatile, jazz/classical/rock/whatever-genre-you-want instrument like a clarinet. I'm not sure many would consider this a drawback. Hey, we still do get all the soli.), demonstrate your range, play a solo, and then we performed a quintet piece we'd been working on to show how they sound together. I was passed over in the range demonstration. I'm fairly sure the MC forgot; he seems too nice to have subtly laughed to himself that the oboe "has no range" and thereby didn't need a demonstration. (Yeah, right. Tell that to Milhaud.)
All in all, everything went well. I botched up the etude that I think was originally written for violin that I played, only a little though, but I constrained my usual "well, that sucked" expression and eye roll that I do during rehearsals and practice sessions, so nobody knew. I think. I hope. I got applause; why should I complain?
We didn't have the usual tempo wars during the Haydn, the piece we played as an ensemble. It's apparently originally a piano trio, in case you're interested in looking it up, but was transcribed for woodwind quintet. We're also playing a Beethoven and a Malcolm Arnold piece. The former I love (but the horn hates, as he has to transpose) and the latter I find just basically bizarre. My teacher likes it, but to each his own. I keep having to smother my laughter at the ridiculous half-step harmonies I'm playing with the clarinet as I wonder what on earth this is supposed to sound like.
Tomorrow, as opposed to another rehearsal, my regular orchestra is instead hosting a senior concerto and sonata concert, with a couple ditties that the orchestra as a whole will play. (Likely, my guess, to ensure an audience other than the seniors' parents.) I don't know who's playing, aside from my friend a tuba player who goes to Juilliard. I know he's good, so I'm excited to hear him play. I've honestly only heard him once play something that wasn't just quarter notes, so him having the melody ought to be interesting. (If you're reading this, Conor, good luck!)
Reeds are still holding up. Everything's good. Hope you all are having a good weekend, despite this bizarre weather.

I suddenly realize why I had a headache all day

Well, for a week that started out pretty sourly, it's gotten better. ... in the last few hours, at least. I just finished a great practice where I finished up with the Yvon English horn sonata, which I haven't played in several months (or, possibly, a year or so). It sounded great, and I sure got a kick out of it. The presto at the end was nearly 100% there, and I'm just wowing my own pants off.
In other news, I changed the solo I'll be playing for my Juilliard pre-college audition to the Mozart Concerto in C (obviously, for oboe). I know it better than the Vaughan Williams, for one. But, the main reason for me switching was how they, Juilliard, requested two contrasting movements from "a" concerto or sonata, as opposed to two contrasting movements that are not necessarily from the same piece. The Vaughan Williams is pretty much the same throughout in terms of mood; it doesn't have a distinguished slow, sustained movement. Therefore, the Mozart it is.
Anyway, enough technical talk. Let me now explain to you why I now find the band that I generally can only bitch and moan about to be something of a godsend.
My band director allows upperclassmen to play with the freshman band that he also conducts to receive lesson credits. (We need 5 lesson credits per quarter, or 10 per semester. Usually, a lesson entails an entire period of listening to the director ramble on about scales, or syncopation, or how much he wants kids to learn to read music rather than just play what they hear the good people play, rather than actually working on the music with them .. they're a source of angst among a lot of the people I know in the class.) This is the notorious freshman band that was a complete and utter disaster last band concert that took place before, I think, I'd started this blog.
I'll keep it simple: they had to stop and restart the pieces three times, possibly four. It was atrocious, or so I've heard: I decided against actually going backstage and listening with the majority of the upperclassmen. I don't regret that decision.
Anyway, they don't seem to have much improved. From what my flutist friend and I have discovered, the incoming freshmen-to-be-sophomores lack rhythm, counting, intonation, balance ... the one thing they have no shortage of, however, is noise.
I'll try and be nice here, though; I don't want to be antagonistic (even though I think it's too late for me to start now).
I was sitting across from the clarinet section, unlike my usual position square in front of the conductor. Boy, was that weird. It didn't help that I didn't know a single one of the clarinets in the front row, although I think I know one of their mothers. (The girl looked familiar; most likely some Girl Scouts connection that I never really paid attention to.) One of them, every time I happened to glance at her, was looking straight back at me, and had this sort of expression that made me feel like I was just condemned to the deepest rings of hell. I don't know what it was about it, or why it was directed at me, and maybe it's just her blank look (in which case I feel pretty bad for saying that), but it was unnerving. I was tempted to offer a smile, but then I remembered that I was supposed to be a snooty and skilled upperclassman and kept my mouth tight around my reed. (That was sarcasm.)
All in all, I was beyond relieved when it was finally time for class to be over and upperclassmen band came in. I'm fairly sure that, with the exception of the beginning of my freshman year (I was exempted from taking freshman band; they wanted an oboe with the upperclassmen), this was the first time I was completely, 100% grateful to hear the group play.
Music to my ears.

Come join me if you're in the mood for a good cry

I always seem to want to blog the most whenever I have something that requires work. Usually, in a write-a-full-page-on-something-you-know-nothing-about kind of way, rather like the homework I'm procrastinating now. And, as a result, here I am.
Following up on my recent post on shopping, I've actually included a detailed shopping list, with prices - all of which, together, make me want to cry for picking such a high-maintenance instrument.
It's not fair.
But, I do well on it so I'm sucking it up. Here are the choke-worthy tallies that I've compiled and am planning to watch dissolve out of my savings soon:

• From Laubin:
• English horn easel: $26.00
• Rigotti shaper handle: $100.00
• English horn Nagamatsu tip: $190.00 (this is where I felt a small part of my soul wither and die)
• Oboe Nagamatsu tip: $190.00
• Rigotti gouged English horn cane: $1.70
• Rigotti gouged oboe cane: $1.70 (these are cheap but they're on the list; I may as well include them)
• English horn bocal, size #1, 2, or 3: $390.00 (or $410, if I want a larger one)
• From Charles Double Reeds:
• Beeswax: $2.25
• Rigotti Engilsh horn tip: $115.00
• Rigotti oboe tip: $115.00

I think the fact that I can consider something that goes for $115 cheap just says a lot about how empty my savings is going to feel after I buy all this. I'm not buying four tips; I'll buy either Nagamatsu or Rigotti for English and oboe, but I don't know which. I'm fairly sure I'm getting Nagamatsu for oboe, but English horn I haven't a clue. If anyone has a preference, let me know. I'm open to input. 

Also, I won't be buying the English horn bocal right away most likely; I have two (a Fox and a Loree; the former, I never use) and they're (the Loree, rather, is) working fine. My teacher suggested I buy a Laubin when I get the chance, and possibly try and wheedle a lower price out of Paul Laubin when I'm down at the shop. I'm not much of a haggler, but I'll be there anyway to get cane so I may try.

All in all (including the price of the bocal so it sounds more dramatic and impressive and pitiful for my wallet), if I buy the two Nagamatsu tips, it totals $901.65, plus tax, and shipping, both of which are not included. 

Mother of God. 

I hadn't calculated the total before, and this just makes me almost want to major in ... in... I don't even know ...  when I get to college. Moving on - if I buy one Nagamatsu, one Rigotti, it comes down to $826.65. Somewhat better but the idea of bursting into tears sounds like a good one right now. With two Rigotti shaper tips, it's $751.65. It's still too close to a thousand for comfort...

If you take out the bocal (I haven't tried to add the twenty dollars for the larger one: I'd like to preserve what's left of my sanity, but you can see for yourself what it would that if you so please) it should be somewhat more rational... $361.65, $436.65, and $511.65. (I know that's out of order, but the 751.65 was still in my calculator when I subtracted the bocal so I did them out of order. Sue me for laziness; I can't be much more broke than I will be when all this is done. I'm aware that sounds like terrible English, but I'm fairly certain it's correct. The evils of slang strike again.)

Hopefully, most of these purchases will be one-time ones. Hopefully. I pray. I'd better do well on these shaper tips, because the thought of having to cough up another near-$200 isn't a pleasant one. And, unless I'm so unlucky that a truck manages to somehow run its tire treads over it, the bocal ought to be a once-in-a-lifetime investment.

This is one of those times where I wonder why on earth I chose this instrument.

[I somehow still adore it.]

You dislike your reeds? What else is new?

I'm going to try and keep this post short. My current top priorities at this exact second are get warm and go to sleep, neither of which I can do while writing this.
Anyway, today went all right musically. I got a little less practice than I would have liked (by maybe a 20 minute margin), but my embouchure and right hand - specifically, thumb - were quite sore and more than willing to call it a day.
For once, I actually attempted to make reeds. But, this was somewhat thwarted: only one piece of the two canes I soaked for an hour plus was an oboe cane. I made that reed; all turned out fine. The other, which was English horn cane, I attempted to make. This went less successfully, as it was poorly shaped (doubtlessly my own doing from a while back) and there wasn't a hope in the world that it would seal. You could literally see into the reed, no matter how even you tried to close the sides.
Enough technical talk, though. I don't have much else to go on; I still haven't found my quintet music, I still haven't found my cigarette paper, my thumb still feels like it wants to die whenever I play horn for too long, I'm still trying to make any one of my oboe reeds an actually decent reed. (This is an exaggeration, mind you: I can play fine on nearly any one of the ones I have in my case at the moment; none of them are what I would call "perfect", though.) The one I played on today completely wiped out my embouchure in a matter of a half hour, at maximum. I managed to pull through for nearly an hour, but by that time I gave up and said "to heck with this". Nearly literally, too; I probably did, as I talk to myself incessantly, but I don't quite remember.
All I can say is thank God for the fact that English horn reeds generally last a long time. I've been playing on this one literally since before All-State, and it's only now just beginning to show its age. 

the Double Reed Player's Shopping Spree

I haven't actually gone on one yet recently, but I at least know what I plan on buying whenever I do.
Today, on the way to my theory class (uneventful save a minor, time-consuming catastrophe with the copy machine) I was naturally thinking about where I want to end up musically and how to get there, also dwelling on reedmaking as I know my best English horn reed isn't going to last much longer. Then, suddenly, it hit me: why not spend the money I received for Christmas (nothing for the birthday; I got this laptop and tickets to Seminar instead) on a shaper? And tips, of course; a tipless shaper is a useless shaper.
Now, sue me for false advertising, but I see nothing wrong with using the money I was given to buy the espresso machine I was previously saving for to buy the shaper. God only knows I'll get enough use out of it, and besides: I'll finally stop borrowing my teacher's, and will be able to make reeds when I want to, rather than waiting until I have a shaper and the bizarre urge to make them passes.
I know I use the Nagamatsu shape for oboe, but I'm not quite sure what for English. Charles Double Reeds has Rigotti .. and that's it. Laubin, thankfully, has a Nagamatsu for English horn as well. I might just go with both Nagamatsu just for the sake of it, but I dunno. It's a familiar name; the only time I ever see Rigotti is stamped on the inside of cane.
Thinking about it, I haven't seen my English horn easel in a while. Actually, I'm not sure I ever bought one. I'm fairly sure I did, though; it just mysteriously disappeared like the majority of the things I own. ... including cigarette paper, which I now realize, while looking at the products list on Laubin's site, I haven't seen in a while. There are a couple of scraps floating around the basement where my music stuff is kept, but other than those pitiful pieces I haven't a clue where the rest of them are. More cane, too, I just thought. I have a bit of oboe but no English horn, and god only knows I don't need any more oboe reeds. (In fact, I'm planning tonight to dismantle all the unused, ancient reeds I have lurking down there. I could make a fortune reselling the tubes.)
Also, my mother informed me of a fantastic creation, a combination oboe-English horn reed case. I haven't one, but I know it's out there somewhere. For a "meager" price of over $50 (I believe), I think it's well worth it. I can say for sure I'll get a good deal of use out of it.