I now (almost) officially have a senior project!

I talked to my band director, and he's letting me do it! I'm going to compose a song for our band, and we're going to play it. I'm ridiculously exicted.

It's funny because I was so nervous to ask him. I had to have my dad talk to him with me. When I told him my idea, he was literally like, "Ok!" And he lent me a bunch of books about composition and music and stuff. I started reading this one called "Score Reading" and it was CRAZY, cause there are all these examples in it from scores, and I came across 4 pieces that I've played just from reading it today! They are: Chopin's Minute Waltz, Beethoven's Leonore Overture, Wagner's Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Schubert's Unfinished Symphony in... I believe it's b minor... lemme check...

Yep, Symphony No. 8 in b minor. I love that one.

So yeah, I'm excited. :)

I had a youth symphony concert yesterday afternoon, and one the night before, too. The Friday night one was SO much better. We played Sibelius's 2nd symphony, which is pretty much the hardest thing we've ever played, but the Friday night performance went really well. Saturday was a different story. Maybe we thought we didn't have to try as hard since we pulled it off Friday night, but people weren't watching our conductor, and everyone was getting ahead and it just wasn't that good. At least the Sibelius wasn't.

Also, there was the fact that I almost passed out... I hadn't had anything to eat all day, and I think that that's mostly what caused it. When you play the oboe you get used to being lightheaded all the time, but this was way worse. During the first movement, I started getting lightheaded after pretty much every part where I played, and my head started hurting really badly, and I was like... ...This isn't good. I have a pretty big solo in the third movement (we didn't play the second one... maybe because it was a long program anyway, maybe because the other three were already so difficult) so at the beginning of the third movement when I rest for while I breathed in and out really deeply. It sucks because with the exception of the last movement, pretty much everything I play is really exposed, so I can't just drop out or there'll be this huge gap. So I came in where I was supposed to, and we hadn't gotten to my solo yet and it wasn't getting any better. I was nervous too, not because it was a hard solo, but because I was worried I wouldn't be able to play it. So that didn't help.

Anyway, I started playing my solo, and it got really bad. I was lightheaded and my hands and feet were really tingly. Then I started shaking, and least it felt like I did but I'm not completely sure, and my vision wouldn't focus and I almost felt like I was dreaming. This last part only lasted for a few seconds, and it was really scary and really hard to explain. But the whole time, even when it felt like I was dreaming, notes were still coming out of my oboe, and I was still aware of how they sounded. They sounded bad. After those few seconds, I stopped playing. I actually had a few seconds where I didn't need to play, and I sort of recovered, and I was actually sort of able to play the rest of my solo. But it sounded like crap, and there were parts where I had to drop out. The only other time that's really happened was when I was playing Schubert's unfinished symphony, during this part at the beginning where there's an oboe/clarinet solo. I'm pretty sure not eating combinied with nervousness is what causes it. I don't know how I know, but I think that's the reason.

Ok, well, I should really go to bed now... time for another week...

Thank God it's Thursday.

...and that I don't have school tomorrow. I was planning on sleeping in until I honestly felt like getting out of bed, which, in all truthfulness, would probably be sometime around noon. But I have to get up around 10 and drive my sister to the school for a rehearsal, because my mom's working tonight and she gets back and goes to bed at about 8 in the morning, and my dad's going to be at work. I know, I know, 10 is plently late, but I love the feeling of being able to get up WHENEVER I want.

So, for this Goals Essay thing, we have to do research on some kind of college-related thing and put it in our paper. Yesterday our class went to the career center to do the research... I spent most of the time looking at University of Michigan, which I've heard has a really good music program. Do I want to go all the way to Michigan? I don't know. I think I want to get out of Washington. I LOVE Washington, but I've lived here my whole life, and I just think it would be really interesting and a great experience to live somewhere else. Plus, a good music program is a good music program. Anyway, I was looking at their website.

"All composition applicants must perform an audition on their principal instrument or voice."

Requirements for pianists applying to degrees other than performance:

Prepare:
a baroque work
a quick tempo movement of a classical sonata
19th- or 20th-Century solo of your choice
Memorization is preferred.

Ok, not so bad.

"In addition, submit up to seven scores of your musical compositions with recordings of each work on indexed compact disc."

Recordings?? Like, recordings of actual people playing them? SEVEN? I'll be lucky if I can manage ONE recording of an actual group of people acutally playing a piece I've composed.

Then, I checked out the Admissions FAQ.

"I would like to recieve a brochure. How can I be placed on your mailing list?"

"How do I sign up for an audition or interview?"

"Can I send a recorded audition?"

Too bad there were no answers to the questions I'd most like to ask.

AM I GOOD ENOUGH TO DO THIS?

WILL I GO CRAZY STUDYING MUSIC FOR 4 YEARS? WILL IT NOT BE FUN ANYMORE?


I'm not THAT good. But that is what I want to go to college for. And I really think I have potential, even if there are some days where I doubt that.

Looking at this stuff, thinking about it, is just stressing me out. I know that is normal. But right now, most people I know are like, "I have NO idea what I want to do." Well I have an idea, an idea that's actually been cemented in my head since around middle school. But what if I'm wrong?? When I went to All-State a few weeks ago, there was a time when we got to ask our conductor (he was AMAZING) questions. Someone asked him what his favorite age group to work with was, and he said that honestly, it was our age. He said that older musicians have sometimes become... I believe the word he used was "jaded." He basically said that some of them have lost the passion and enthusiasm that we still have. Well, what if that happens to me? Who's to say it won't?

That's the hard thing about making these decisions NOW. I'm pretty sure NOW that this is the right decision, but what if it isn't??

Oh well. We'll just have to see.

On the bright side, my sister just told me she's not going, so I can get up whenever I want tomorrow. Well-deservedly.

God, I'm exhausted.

:(

I didn't feel like doing homework, and don't have any due tomorrow (I do have a whole review
for a test on Monday that's gonna have to get done over the weekend now), so I googled competitions and scholarships for composition. All the competitions I read about sounded HARDCORE, and not something that I would even want to enter, and that made me realize that I should really start composing more stuff. So I went to the piano and started messing around with the Locrian mode. I played for what I think was a really long time, and came up with some stuff that I like but that I'm not sure anyone else would.

When I stopped playing, I realized that I had been mad, and sad. And that that was coming out in my music. The Locrian mode is dissonant - if you start on the 7th degree of a major scale and play a scale using the same key signature, that's Locrian. So, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B would be B Locrian, in case anyone cares, but I was using A Locrian, so A, Bb, C, D, Eb, F, G, A. Anyway, music theory tangent over. I realized that I had been creating all these dissonances that didn't resolve, that would never resolve, and chords that went anywhere but where you would expect them to. And I realized that I am dissatisfied. I am dissatisfied with myself, I am dissatisfied with many of the people in my life, and I am dissatisfied with the human race in general. And there are "dissonances" in my life that were coming out as dissonances in my music.

Then I thought about it more, and realized this wasn't quite accurate.

The music I was creating wasn't just ALL over the place. It did have somewhat of a melody. But the chords, the harmony under the melody was what I was trying to make as ugly and as filled with this sense of dread as possible.

I lie to myself. I pretend that I am happy with everything because I WANT to be happy with everything. I want life to be this happy, safe, relatively predictable little melody. Of course, tension keeps things interesting, but it's all fine as long as I know the tension WILL resolve in the way I expect it to. When things don't happen that way, I tell myself that it's all fine. But the chords I was using in my song WEREN'T fine, they were just semi-fine, and they just KIND of went where you (or at least I) wanted them to go, but not all the way, and they were NO excuse for proper resolutions. Does this make sense to anyone but me? On the surface, my life is fine, but underneath it's really not. This is weird because there's nothing big that's wrong, just a bunch of little things that I'm not really content with. Of course, it doesn't help that I'm really tired, and I'll probably have a much more optimistic outlook tomorrow.

I don't know if any of that really made sense, but I definitely see the parallel. Wow, I just spelled "parallel" wrong and had to correct it, I am REALLY tired. And I cannot be held accountable for anything I write, or DO for that matter, when I am this tired. It's cause of the basketball game last night, it was the last playoff game and band got home pretty late. But I'm not complaning, it was worth it.

:)