music and muzak

I haven't really spoken about music for some time now, and there is a reason for that. I talked about how my nerves got the better of me in a rehearsal last september, and despite any random pep talks I may have given myself, those nerves decided to stick around.

Last night was our spring concert. My orchestra does 3 concerts each year (season) and we spend the prior few months rehearsing for each one. Two hours of rehearsal each week isn't really a lot when suddenly the big day is looming.

And my nerves were really jangling.

I didn't ever have this problem in my early musical days. It's only been a problem since I started playing again. I am really really afraid that I am going to make a mistake - even when I know the music inside out.

Part of this is also linked to the fact that in the orchestra - for a flute - there is nowhere to hide. You are only ever the only person on your part. There is no doubling up on a part like there can be in a Concert Band. If you miss an entry, it's missed. 

Actually, years ago when I played in the army we never did double up. But then again - I never was the solo part. And also, I was top of my game then.

So last night we played 4 pieces. Beethoven's Coriolan and 4th Symphony - both premiered in 1807, Wagner's Seigfried Idyll - written for his wife after the birth of their boy in 1870, and Schumann's Cello concerto.

I played first flute in the Coriolan, and second flute in the Cello concerto. The other two pieces had only one flute part. So I played the Idyll, and the other lady played the Symphony. She pulled the short straw - the symphony was the longest and trickiest part of the four pieces by far. 

So on the night, we started with the Coriolan. That one was totally fine, I was on top of that. The only weird bit being the addition of several instruments that we'd never heard in rehearsal - second bassoon, second clarinet and a pair of horns.

Then came the Idyll. The thing with this piece of music is that the flute has some lovely little refrains over the top of everyone else, with about 40 bars rest in between each. And the piece is not a traditional repeticious melody - if you get lost, you really get lost. So the lead up to each of my entries was preceeded by grim counting, and attempting to quell the nerves. 

If I'd been playing all though up to each solo part, I'd not have got so nervous. But I had a lot of resting time to devote to getting some real leg shaking finger rattling panic going.

I sat there telling myself "1 you can play it, 2 you're not nervous, 3 you're totally calm, 4 2 3 4, 5 2 3 4, 6 you're totally calm, 7 you can do this..." and so on. I even forced myself to smile calmly and look serene. I was desperate to control my nerves.

And there is a bigger reason why I was so desperate to get control.

I didn't mention our last concert - which was in December last year. We played Haydn's Symphony 101, and I was the first flute. It's better known as "the clock". It's a wonderful piece for the flute, and I had it totally under the fingers. There should have been no problem.

But there was - on the day I woke up to find a huge blind, painful red swelling on my lip. Right on the point where I press the hard edge of the flute. Playing became incredibly painful. I made it through the afternoon rehearsal, but I looked like I'd been kicked by a goat. By the time we got to the concert I was trying to work out whether I should use bonjela on it and make it numb, but I decided that it might have an adverse effect on my embouchure (shape of my lips as I play).

I played the first two movements of the symphony fine - which is good, because the most flute demanding part was the second movement. But at the beginning of the third movement my sound started to go. I didn't know why at the time, but my lip had become so swollen that I could no longer form my embrouchure correctly. I had to play louder to get a clear sound, and much of my part needed to be soft. 

I felt a rush of heat and my whole body went into panic. I managed to finish both movements, but not well. And the sheer panic that was running through me managed to make me stuff up a last entry and put it in entirely the wrong place. 

I got the super glare and eyebrow gather from the conductor. His body language was swearing at me in some four letter words I didn't even know the meaning of.

My mother in law was in the audience. She said it was lovely and she didn't notice anything that sounded wrong. But that didn't help. I felt as if I should slink away and never go back. I was so mortified. I knew that most people in the orchestra, and most emphatically the conductor knew just how badly I'd stuffed it up.

So fast forward to last night - I was pre-terrified that I would just randomly mess everything up - despite the fact that I had no great big simmering boil on my face, and that I knew my solo parts off by heart.

I won't drag it out - I played it well. Beautifully almost. I missed two notes out, but didn't play any wrong ones. I may have dragged out one bit and not been perfectly in time, but I ended in the right(ish) place.

I couldn't stop smiling after that. I'd broken my camel's back. 

We played the Schumann, which did have a couple of errors in it - I found myself playing alone for a moment when the other flute forgot to come in! But none that were horrendously obvious. And the soloist cellist was quite dishy and interesting to watch - even from behind. He played like a dream and had the prerequisite floppy hair which he flipped about as he bowed away.

And that was it - the entire second half was the symphony which I wasn't playing, so I was able to sit with my family and enjoy it.

It makes such a big difference to my whole outlook now I have gotten past my awful screw up from last concert. It's like a huge weight lifted off me.

Here is a wonderful photo that I've had to scan from the original 10 by 8 black and white print. It's the only one I have, and as I didn't take it, I don't have the negatives either. But it's a precious shot to me, as it shows me (far left, flute) playing with 2MD band in Victoria Barracks.

After I left Newcastle university, and left my army reserve band, I played with 2MD for the better part of a year, as a "full time reserve". We were based out at Vaucluse at that time, as the new bandroom at Victoria Barracks was still being built. Vaucluse was wonderful because it was away from the constrictive overview of the upper echelon of the army, and the band could behave more like a band than a bunch of soldiers. (Of course we behaved ourselves sir.)

We'd play soccer on the park above the lighthouse, and when it came time to pass a fitness test we'd run along the cliffs before rehearsals.

Generally we were done by lunch time, and since most of our gigs were at night in the less busy parts of the year we had a lot of free afternoons. I was living in the barracks at randwick at the time, which in itself was quite an experience, quite worthy of an entire blog post to itself. I'd make it back there in time to have lunch at the mess, and then as others were going back to their units for the rest of the day I'd mention spending the rest of the afternoon on the beach. How they loved me.

Eventually they told me that I'd have to go to kapooka and join the regs if I wanted to stay, and I decided that the advertising industry was missing my expertise, (and who really wants to go to kapooka?) so I took my leave and went.

I think that was still one of the best years of my life though, wonderful people, music and places. Not many people get to play the 1812 overture and have real cannon's being fired from the other side of the green in time with you (or sometimes not quite!)

ok, so - it was the first orchestral rehearsal for the christmas concert last night. And frankly I was terrified. I won't be terrified on the day of the concert, nor the few weeks prior to that. I will be nervous for the first half term of rehearsals. But the first rehearsal itself - that's special, and only terror will do.

Many years ago I connected my stereo to my mac, downloaded an audio converter, and converted one of my tapes to mp3. Thankfully, vanity prevents me from mentioning that the tape was Bananarama. Whooops.

The result was less than mediocre. It was scratchy and full of hissing, and that was just the singing. The sound quality was poor too. And very very quiet.

So the tapes got put back into the tape box and stuffed back under the bed. I didn't want to throw them out - there is a lot of music I love in that collection. But they didn't get played for about a decade.

Recently I thought of a band I've not heard for many years - a comedy act band from Newcastle (NSW) called the Castanet Club. I went digging around the tape box looking for it, but came up with an empty box. I googled them, but there was nothing about. Certainly no mp3's to buy on iTunes! Devastating!

But spring time (wishful thinking - it's still winter) is a time for decluttering the house, so the tapes were dragged out and rehoused in a new box when I decided I needed the plastic one for toys. I decided to look into converting them in mp3s again. This time I discovered that since I own Toast 8, I have a program that will do just what I need. It allows me to adjust the input levels for each recording session to boost up quiet tracks, and ensure that the recording is within clean parametres, it automatically splits up the recording into tracks by periods of silence, and it then lets me import to iTunes. Fantabulastic!

I had to dig through the tape box and make piles - lone cassettes, and empty boxes, tapes to record, and tapes to ensure no-one ever saw. I have a vast number of pirate recordings from my highschool years - taken straight from the radio and inexpertly cut together. You can hear DJ's being cut short between tracks, or talking over the start of a song. I used to give them imaginative names to identify them too. Picture what tracks you might find on "1983, summer hotties" !

While digging through the dusty collection, I did find the missing Castanet Club tape, so Maynard F# Crabbs is now residing in all 4 of my ipods, ready to make me dance!

It's a happy day.

I'm just not sure what I should do about the 6 tape compilation of "Miami Sound Machine" doing the hits of 1985, or the "Hooked on Classics" tape. Surely these are SO bad that they actually SHOULD be immortalised? Correct me if I am wrong? (And I so rarely am!)