Applause of the Uneducated

I'm recently learning (okay, yes that was redundent) a new (why not go for overkill here) piece of music on piano. It's a piece of music that's very familiar to all the members of my family, and most people who've played piano may have heard of it at some time or another. It's Rustles of Spring by Sinding. Now this piece may look fairly intimidating, but don't be fooled by the 32nd notes. It's not that difficult of a piece. It flows very well, the fingerings are fairly simple for the most part, and is very fun to play. Now it is a very difficult piece to master. I'm not sure how many people in the world can play seven against eight in a single beat equally. Or switch readily from 5 sixteenth notes a beat to 4 or 6 or back to 8 32nd notes. So it's easy to learn, very difficult to master.

I'm about three days into the piece, so it's still nowhere close to performance level. The thing is, people are so impressed by this piece. I was thinking about it and about the couple that's going to be living below me. He's a sax performance major, and his wife is percussion/piano performance major. I imagine this picture of her just cringing at my ability to butcher this piece of music, while everyone else would be amazed at the speed and ability of this impressive sounding piece. The difference of reaction in my mind is quite a large amount.

Even music majors can be quite ignorant of what a piece is suppossed to sound like though. There's only one individual at University of Kentucky that we can rely on to play all the tuba accompaniments, and play them well. I decided to learn the first movement of one of the hardest tuba accompaniments that we have. The tempo is about 132, and you play chords through the entire piece using 16th notes. Now add in changes of chord structures every two beats, and you have a bear of a piece. I spent several months hacking this piece out when I wasn't playing tuba, never getting even close to performance tempo.

I got the chance before I finished at UK to listen to him perform the accompaniment one last time. I listened as he started off okay, and then missed over half the notes through the rest of the piece. I was shocked. Here's a professional player who is suppossed to know his stuff missing half the notes. Now, don't get me wrong, he never missed a beat. In fact, he made up most of whatever he was playing, but I knew the exact notes and what he was suppossed to play. My opinion of him dropped immensely that night. He knows how to keep going and bs through just about anything, and never truly learns any of the more difficult pieces. If it wasn't for the actual soloist, I probably wouldn't have applauded. He may be a much better player than I am, but since I am now more educated on this piece than any present, even the other tuba players, I was the only person there in a musically literate audience to realize his errors, which were many.

I haven't reached any conclusions on my thoughts of this. Good, bad, or otherwise. A part of me expects that everyone should expect a certain quality that isn't being attained, while a part of me thinks that if that happens, everyone will be a critic. So for the time being, I'll bask in the applause of the uneducated, while making fun of myself in front of the educated. Yes, that will work for the time being.

Change

I absolutely love change. I may have written about this subject previously, but if not, enjoy. Whenever something new happens in my life, good or bad, I usually tend to enjoy it. Case in point, finding a new place to sleep every night because there is no permanent place to stay. While it's not something I would want to do for an extended period of time, trying it for a few days isn't too much of a problem and is actually somewhat fun. I'm sure it would have worn on me pretty quick, but for the few days that I had to do that, it wasn't bad.

I finally found a more permanent place till I can move into my place on the first, and the great thing about it is that they have a piano in the room where I'm staying as well.

Although I never moved as a kid, I probably would have been the type of kid that would have loved the change and uncertainty associated with moving. I'll never know though, as my parents have lived in the same house for over 27 years.

I love changes in weather good or bad, in fact, I'm relieved that I've already seen rain up here. Okay, I may not be as keen on the storms or hale that passed just South of us, damaging many things, but maybe I would. I'm certain there's a little bit of morbid curiousity that makes me want to jump outside during a halestorm just to see what it feels like.

New program, new people, new places, new experiences, I just gotta say that I do love change.

In school and homeless

So I'm now in the middle of my first day of classes. I have a place to live, but the problem is that it won't be available till the first of the month. So far I've contacted members of the ward, and some fellow classmates, and my roommate who has found a temporary home. So far no success. Hmmm... looks like I may be sleeping in a car tonight. No fun.

I am alive (to an extent)

I didn't realize that it had been over a month since I last posted something. Things have been chaotic and at the same time fairly lazy as of late.

How does that work, well let me show you. Since I've never been in the same spot for longer than one week, there was absolutely no possible way for me to get a summer job. Well, in that time I started off with an exceptionally horrible sleep schedule. I spent four weeks finally forcing myself into a decent schedule. This was soon interupted by a trip to Minnesota to register for classes and take care of housing, etc. Well driving 14 hours through the night both ways was enough to destroy any type of decent sleep I was getting. Less than a week later, I took a trip for a family reunion out to Utah, and this continued to degrade any type of sleep patterns. I ended up flying home, while the rest of my family drove to visit more relatives before coming back to Kentucky.

So this meant I had just gotten off of two trips, and as always, you usually feel the need to take a vacation after you've taken one, so I figured that I would spend a couple of days just relaxing and playing video games, then start back and get the last few things ready for moving to Minnesota. Well, a couple of days turned into a week.

At the end of that week, it was probably the absolute worst I've ever looked. I ended up playing about 110 hours of games in one week in the most absolute disgusting display of my life.

My family had come home to find me passed out on the waterbed after only three hours of sleep at 1 P.M. I was so focussed on this game that I deprived my body of food, water, and sleep for about a week. I was ten pounds lighter, hadn't shaved for about 5 days, and I haven't gone that long in two and a half years. I was slightly jaundiced from where I was getting no fluids. I averaged less than five hours of sleep. I looked a mess. So when I say I'm alive, that meant my heart was beating and that was about the extent of that.

Luckily, I am out of that one week and back among the living and preparing things for school up in Minnesota. I am going with mixed feelings up there, but the one thing for sure is that I'm going to be really glad to get into the daily grind. I can't stand not being in the daily grind. I'm not a self-motivated person, so the daily grind is essential to my well-being. My mixed feelings come from this being the last option of the choices that closed up before me till this was the only option available to me. Well, here's to life and to entering back into the daily grind. Which will also probably mean I'll actually post more often as that seems to be the case during school. Till next time.