General Update

First of all, I have to say I'm quite pleased with the grade I received on my last Arrangement assignment: 80%! Yay!

I've got another one due on Thursday. In a few minutes I'll be off to the keyboard lab to work on it and have it checked over for obvious glaring errors.

Congratulations are due to my three piano students who took exams in December. All of them worked very hard, and all of them passed confidently.

I've had a somewhat shaky start to this year. I returned from holiday to find that the landlord's agent for the flat I'm renting a room in was in a car accident, and that they wanted us all to move out by the end of January. This was quite stressful for me, but thanks to friends I was able to find out that legally my position is quite strong and I can stay put until at least the first of June. It's all been very much up in the air but I met the actual landlord today, and I think things are going to be alright. Hopefully I'll be able to get on track now and get on with my academic tasks for this term!

I'm waiting to hear from Paxman regarding a quote for horn repairs. I suspect I'll have to drop by with my horn tomorrow, as they've not answered my e-mail which was sent on Wednesday. Perhaps it got stuck in a spamtrap.

The past few weeks have been a well-deserved rest from just about everything. I've been visiting family in Canada, and I've made the most of the opportunity to really have a good rest. It's been wonderful in many ways. I did some playing in church on Christmas Eve but haven't really picked up my horn since, which is maybe not so good.

The few weeks before that were extremely busy and stressful, with moving house and lots of rehearsals happening at the same time. I do still need to deal with some of the aftermath of that when I return home. Among other things, I got a new horn stick support, which is working better for me than the old one was.

I've made good progress on my Arrangement assignment, I think I'm about a third of the way done now. Two or three more good, solid afternoons of work before classes start should see it in pretty good shape.

Once I'm back in London I'm going to challenge myself to update this blog every day until the first of March. The idea is that as it's a music blog I'm not going to want to update it if I haven't practised or made some progress on musical projects, so by forcing myself to update every day I'll also encourage myself to stay focused on the things I need to do to improve my musicianship and succeed in my studies.

I think the most difficult day to deal with will be Sundays; I usually teach piano all day on Sunday and don't practise horn at all. I think I probably need to do more mouthpiece work on Sundays and make sure I take some written work with me to look over on the train. Another option would be to spend some time on Sundays getting my website up and running.