Sunday, February 13, 2011

I'm Becoming a Creature of Musical Habit

A bit of background here- I finished my music undergrad (BA Music) in December and I'm now finally starting to look at grad schools, because there was no way I was going to prepare for/take the GREs, apply to grad schools, and prepare for auditions while simultaneously preparing a senior recital and completing my last semester of classes.

I've been establishing somewhat of a musical ritual, which has become somewhat of a musical rut. Every day, I start with 15-20 of Baermann (clarinet scales/technique stuff), followed by the new repertoire I've picked (Weber Concerto 2, Milhaud Duo Concertante), and then orchestral excerpts. Sometimes the rep and excerpts get switched, but essentially, the same stuff. For the first week or so, it was refreshing to hit some new music and to finally have a routine, but now I'm starting to get tired of it. What to do?

Well, tomorrow, I'm meeting with my clarinet prof for a lesson; making sure I'm doing okay with learning on my own and discussing more grad school audition rep. I'm hoping she'll pitch some more new stuff.

Also, today I inadvertently fixed my monotony- with the upcoming Bachchat (via twitter, on March 21), I've been wanting to record, or at least arrange/play, some Bach for my instrument, since it didn't really exist in his time. I've decided on French Suite No. 2, one of the pieces I'd studied last summer in piano lessons. That was the first time I'd really learned to deconstruct Baroque music in terms of voices, singing and playing different combinations of each to learn the piece.

So, we'll see how this goes for the next few weeks; I'm looking forward to getting some new information to apply to the last few weeks of working independently. I've reached a point where I can a good bit of  learning on my own, but I definitely need someone there to keep me in check in terms of technique and breaking bad habits.

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