New Year

Christmas has come (though it isn't gone yet -- not until Epiphany), the various services at church have gone well, my students are still on break, and so I am going away for a few days.

I'm really, really looking forward to it. When I come back the "new" year must begin in earnest, nose back to the grindstone with teaching and rehearsals and practising and oh, some forms to fill out and send off for HMRC, apparently I might need to give them some tacks, but I probably haven't earned enough.

I'm not much of one for resolutions. I already tend toward excessive tweaking, chronic attempts to re-think, re-arrange, improve strategy, and I know that I'm also prone to a feeling of dismal failure if I don't live up to some arbitrary expectation I set for myself. So I'm not going to make any promises of one post per day, or per week, or anything like that.

That said, I would like to write here more. I've struggled to find a voice for this blog for a while now -- since near the end of my degree, really -- and I feel like it would be really good to get something going again.

I'm thinking about what to write. I need to be quite careful in writing about my work teaching, and my work at St Andrew's, because of course there are confidentiality issues in both cases, but are there aspects of it that I should be documenting? I'm not sure which of my other work is interesting; composing is something I tend to post about when I have actually written something, I do try to flag events I'm involved in but often fail to get around to it in time (with very low readership it doesn't seem to be very worthwhile). My recent spate of political or social commentary is not likely to be sustainable, though I don't guarantee I won't rant sometimes. I could write at some length about practice methods, but I don't know that I'd be contributing much; some of my thoughts on music in liturgy may be interesting but I suspect they echo work done by others. I am still keen on doing some more in-depth research into various forms of sung psalmody, but I don't seem to know where to start there either.

What would you like to see me write about here? If you could ask me anything about my work in music what would it be? I'd love some open-ended questions with which to get started.

Results, moving on and settling in...

Where to start?

I got my degree. Specifically, I have been awarded a Bachelor of Music (Hons), Second Class Honours, Upper Division. In ordinary terms that's known as a 2:1 in the British system.

I had a celebratory recital on 10th July. I'm listening to a recording now, to try and make a CD to hand on to someone who couldn't be there. It's interesting... a note in the Mozart that I had pegged as 'always a bit sharp' is flat in both the exam and the recital. Clearly I should have recorded more of my practising for troubleshooting purposes. Overall, the recital went well and I think I played better than in the exam, so I'm very glad I did it. Also, there's little better than playing with friends and family for a large group of my friends and family.

I've also moved house. No more shall I wander along the Roman Road, at least not in order to get the bus to take me to Trinity in the mornings. The new house has a music room, which means I don't actually need to leave to practise. I don't need to book a room, either. This is most excellent. The house even came with a piano, which, although in need of some work, allows me to put off the expensive decision on buying one for myself, at least for a few more years.

So, I've been doing some practising, some small bits of composing, and rather a lot of packing and unpacking. In an unprecedented fit of being rather more organised than usual, most of my existing teaching schedule for the autumn is sorted out. I do need to find more students locally, but I also know it will take time to build up a class in this area.

The next few weeks bring a performance on 18th August (I'll play serpent and Anna will play violin), a trip to deepest darkest Somerset to unwind for a few days, and rather a lot of unpacking. I also need to start doing some arranging and transcription of popular works for horn, violin and 'cello, as it looks like a group of us are doing some of that. I also want to get going again on putting together a horn and organ concert, but I may need to wait a little longer and get some job applications out of the way, first. A website wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

In future summers I hope I'll be able to have a longer rest in August, but as so much is in transition and there are so many new starts, this one is turning out to be mostly one where I keep my head down.

How about you?

Final stretch

Over a month since posting, again!

I have my end-of-degree recital on Tuesday next week. That's, er, a week from today.

Right now, it's all about the practising. And the programme notes... sadly I'm not allowed to have a ghost writer for my programme notes!

I'm hoping to get back to writing some more here when I have recovered from the recital.

Monday again...

...and I'm having "one of those days". I woke up with my head full of a bad cold, dithered around far too long before leaving the flat, only to get to Trinity and find no practise rooms until later in the day than I'd planned to stay, and my arranging class cancelled.

I don't want to cancel my teaching, but if my voice continues to get worse and my general feeling of wooziness does not abate, I will have to. It's just a cold and it will run its course, but I'm unlikely to teach well in this state.

I have a meeting here at 2pm, after which I need to get going if I'm teaching this evening. In the meantime I am keeping my fluid intake up and trying to get some deskwork done.

One of the more difficult issues about being a freelancer in any field is managing the huge amount of discretionary time available. As a music student I have about eight and a half hours of actual classes per week. This week I only have six hours of rehearsal with other people planned, and my horn lesson. That still only comes to fifteen and a half contact hours. So, how do I spend my time?

If I'm not careful, the answer to that can be "looking at cat pictures on the internet." Let's re-phrase the question: How would I ideally spend my time?

The first and most important thing is that I practise every day. At the moment, that means 'every weekday': I do not have time to play the horn on Sundays when I am teaching all day long (though I do try to do some mouthpiece work), and I opt to take Saturdays as a rest day. Practising can eat anywhere from two to six hours in a day. In an ideal world I would get in at 8am every weekday to play for two hours, then schedule another session or two later in the day around other appointments. Happily, I do often manage the 8am session... what happens later depends on what else is going on. Ideally I'd be practising 24 hours a week.

I try to spend some time every day composing. This isn't as firm a habit for me as practising, sadly, and it gets dropped a lot. But in an ideal world, I'd spend an hour a day drawing dots on blank manuscript paper. There isn't a way to get better at this without doing it. Call it five hours a week.

For health reasons I have to spend around 45 minutes a day doing physio exercises. If I don't do them, I end up in pain, so they are really non-optional. I consider them part of my workday, partly because playing the horn brings with it certain physical challenges, and partly because of timing issues: there isn't really a sensible way for me to do the physio at home before I leave in the morning if I'm going to make my 8am practise slot, and leaving it for the evening, before I go to bed, also doesn't work well for me. Call that five hours a week, because by the time I've put away whatever else I'm doing it pretty much takes that long.

I do have to spend some time on deskwork: co-ordinating rehearsals and concerts is often easier by e-mail, and there is all the paperwork detritus of each project in which I participate, plus all the normal trappings of any life: banking, medical appointments and the like. I would get a lot less done if I didn't have internet access at home and at Trinity. I try to limit my workday internet time to around an hour a day, but what usually happens is that things pile up and then get done in one or two sessions over the course of the week... call it six hours a week.

Running various errands usually eats up an hour or two on some weekday, as well. I try to blog once a week. Call that three hours a week, which is probably skimpy, but I don't always manage to blog every week.

That's 43 hours a week of work to be done during discretionary time on weekdays, in my imaginary ideal world. It doesn't include meeting with people to discuss projects, ad-hoc conversations in hallways, travel to and from rehearsals, or lunch. It doesn't include cleaning out my locker or replacing the corks on my horn or other regular maintenance tasks. It doesn't include this week's 15.5 hours of contact-with-people non-discretionary classes and rehearsals. It doesn't include keepinp up with what other musicians are writing, finding new repertoire, listening to recordings, or attending concerts. It doesn't include the teaching I do on weekdays, or Aikido on Thursday evenings, or laundry, cooking and other life-maintenance tasks.

Back in reality, I try to get as much done as I can, and what does and doesn't happen is mostly the result of a process of attrition. If I actually did that much work on a regular basis I'd go slowly and quietly bonkers.

That is why I do not have time to look at cat pictures on the internet, and why sometimes, I do it anyway.