But there's no way I'm getting to sleep until at least midnight, because I slept till noon today, to make up for six days of getting up at around 6. I had to get up early on Saturday to go to Solo and Ensemble. I didn't actually play anything of my own... I was accompanying my friend, who sang something. I also watched some people perform, mostly choir people. They all did amazing. I WISH I COULD SING!! I am so, so jealous of people that can. Like, you have no idea. I'm sooo jealous.
I really wanted to enter this year, but I just didn't have the time. I've wanted to enter since I was a freshman, actually, but the last two years MC didn't get on it fast enough. And this year, with the play and all, I didn't have time to learn anything on oboe. If there was any possible way I could have done it, I would have. But there just wasn't. Why did it have to be right in the middle of all this play stuff? I was even thinking about learning something on piano, which might have taken a little less time, but I didn't even have time to take something I already knew and perfect it. But I'm still really frustrated that I couldn't do it.
My friend Natalie went, with her clarinet trio. :D I left before they performed, but apparently they did really well, and my band director said he was surprised they're not going to state. And Danny, who's in the trio, also played a solo. I watched him, and he did pretty well. Natalie... well, sort of has a thing for Danny, and I think it's really cute. And this girl in band, Sara, who ALSO plays clarinet, is not-so-subtly trying to set them up. Ah, band love. I hope he asks her to prom or something. They're pretty good friends, so I could see it happening.
I hope Krystal (the friend I accompanied) makes it to state, so I can go and watch all the people that made it! I'm not sure if she's found out yet, but I'm pretty sure she will tomorrow if she hasn't already, because I know some people that know they got in.
Ugh. I better at least try to get some sleep. This was a really short post...
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
The semester is OVER.
And I haven't written in this thing for months because I've been sooooo busy. Mostly because of the school play, The Music Man... I'm the piano accompanist. I just got back from a hellish rehearsal... we open in less than a week, and some people STILL don't know their lines, and some of the stuff just isn't coming together. Anyway, there's a whole pit orchestra with like 15 or 20 people (when they all show up...) that I'm in, and the actors just started rehearsing with us. I've actually been going to rehearals for more than a month, though, because they needed music to practice with and it wasn't really necessary for the whole orchestra to come every day. So I've been going to both the orchestra rehearsals AND all the play rehearsals. Anyway, this rehearsal was actually going pretty well until we got to one of the dances. The dances...they're all LONG, and HARD, and they DON'T make any musical sense. (Well.. actually they're not QUITE as long, because we cut out lots of parts, and not quite so hard because I've figured out ways to make some of my parts simpler. I feel like being an accompanist is 25% actually being able to read music well (not really my strong point), and 75% knowing how to B.S. your way through things. I take pride in my ability to B.S. my way though things... it takes a good amount of knowledge about chords and stuff, which I have. I LOVE music theory. Anyway.) And they're starting to make a little more musical sense now that people can actually play their parts. But we get to the Marian the Librarian dance, and they dance, and we come to the part where Nathaniel, our lead, is supposed to come in singing again. Only he doesn't come in. No big deal, right?
Wrong. Mr. Zickler (the director) stops everyone, and he's PISSED. Apparently there's supposed to be a LOT more music for them to dance to before Nathaniel comes back in. You see, the music for this dance goes on FOREVER, so we cut some of it out. We worked out that we'd skip from beat 3 of measure 40 to beat 4 of measure 156, where he starts to sing. We rehearsed it yesterday, and that's what we did, and it all worked out and he came in at the right time. But today, somehow, there miraculously isn't enough music. And apparently it's not them who are screwing up. So Zickler comes over and starts ranting about how this is IMPOSSIBLE, the cut HAS to be somewhere else. Even though we ALL have it written it from measure 40 to 156, and that's exactly what we played yesterday. So finally Zickler agrees to just do it again and see if it fixes itself. It doesn't. Hell ensues. Zickler is really frustrated, and so is Mr. Scherr, the band director, because they're both SURE that they're right. I show Zickler my accompanist score with all the parts in it so he can look at where we cut and try to figure out what's wrong. He keeps insisting that it CAN'T be right, and you can tell him and Scherr are pissed at each other. He looks at where I marked in the cut, and he's like, "This can't be where it is," and I'm like, "I'm positive." And I'm trying to figure out what went wrong, and it's all STRESS, and FRUSTRATION. I must've looked pretty freaked out or something, because Scherr's like, "Clare." And I look over and he's like, "It's okay, don't worry about it." And Zickler tells me that I MUST have marked in the cut wrong, and Scherr says something in my defense, and no one can figure anything out. So Zickler has us play from a certain part in the dance to measure 40 so he can look at the music and imagine what's going on in the dance. And FINALLY he figures it out. He says something about how yesterday we thought we were at the part in the music where they started dancing, but actually, we were at Marian's entrance, or something like that, and by this time my brain isn't processing things very well so I don't quite understand what he's saying, or how we could've been doing it wrong all along but still having it work. I still don't really get it... but it wasn't our fault.
Now, we have to figure out what we're going to DO, since it would be really hard to re-choreograph the dance and take out like 12 measures of dancing. So finally we decide to just repeat a certain part of the music instead of learning more of it, because it is HARD. So we try that, and it WORKS!! By then it's already 20 minutes past when rehearsal was supposed to end, so we get out of there fast. Ughh.
Well, at least it's fixed now. I'm gonna go watch a movie!
Wrong. Mr. Zickler (the director) stops everyone, and he's PISSED. Apparently there's supposed to be a LOT more music for them to dance to before Nathaniel comes back in. You see, the music for this dance goes on FOREVER, so we cut some of it out. We worked out that we'd skip from beat 3 of measure 40 to beat 4 of measure 156, where he starts to sing. We rehearsed it yesterday, and that's what we did, and it all worked out and he came in at the right time. But today, somehow, there miraculously isn't enough music. And apparently it's not them who are screwing up. So Zickler comes over and starts ranting about how this is IMPOSSIBLE, the cut HAS to be somewhere else. Even though we ALL have it written it from measure 40 to 156, and that's exactly what we played yesterday. So finally Zickler agrees to just do it again and see if it fixes itself. It doesn't. Hell ensues. Zickler is really frustrated, and so is Mr. Scherr, the band director, because they're both SURE that they're right. I show Zickler my accompanist score with all the parts in it so he can look at where we cut and try to figure out what's wrong. He keeps insisting that it CAN'T be right, and you can tell him and Scherr are pissed at each other. He looks at where I marked in the cut, and he's like, "This can't be where it is," and I'm like, "I'm positive." And I'm trying to figure out what went wrong, and it's all STRESS, and FRUSTRATION. I must've looked pretty freaked out or something, because Scherr's like, "Clare." And I look over and he's like, "It's okay, don't worry about it." And Zickler tells me that I MUST have marked in the cut wrong, and Scherr says something in my defense, and no one can figure anything out. So Zickler has us play from a certain part in the dance to measure 40 so he can look at the music and imagine what's going on in the dance. And FINALLY he figures it out. He says something about how yesterday we thought we were at the part in the music where they started dancing, but actually, we were at Marian's entrance, or something like that, and by this time my brain isn't processing things very well so I don't quite understand what he's saying, or how we could've been doing it wrong all along but still having it work. I still don't really get it... but it wasn't our fault.
Now, we have to figure out what we're going to DO, since it would be really hard to re-choreograph the dance and take out like 12 measures of dancing. So finally we decide to just repeat a certain part of the music instead of learning more of it, because it is HARD. So we try that, and it WORKS!! By then it's already 20 minutes past when rehearsal was supposed to end, so we get out of there fast. Ughh.
Well, at least it's fixed now. I'm gonna go watch a movie!
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