Met up with John Reynolds this morning, and he whisked me away to the third year’s Teaching Skills class. There were just eight or nine in the class, and we sat in a circle talking about today’s topic – intonation. An interesting question was also addressed:
Imagine you’re playing second clarinet in the orchestra. Your part is in unison with the first flute, and in harmony (thirds/sixes or whatever) with the first clarinet. The first clarinet is a little sharp. Do you play relative to the first clarinet (which means you’ll be sharper than the first flute) or in tune with the first flute and off pitch with the first clarinet?
Go figure!
I bumped (literally) into Timothy Reynish this morning when I was looking for John in his office. Chatted with him a little, and he spoke quite highly of Singapore and the Phil Winds!! (: He’s here to conduct a wind orchestra concert this thursday in a concert. I sat in Tim Reynish’s rehearsal in St Teilo’s church after Teaching Skills class, and it was interesting to watch. For starters, the wind orchestra is double or even triple the size of NAFA’s. There were 4 oboes, 1 english horn, 12 clarinets, 9 flutes and 5 bassoons just for woodwinds alone!
The church of St Teilo is beautiful. It’s old, small but spacious, and with nice stained glass on the walls. To the left is a pipe organ, tucked into the side. The high celing provides good acoustics and the band sounds gorgeous there. Tim was in quite a bad mood today, and I thought that he was being quite sarcastic to some of them. 🙁 The music they played wasn’t very tonal either, and some of it sounded plain weird. Will be watching their concert this thursday. I hope it’ll be good!
Now I know why Nicholas Daniels can’t teach me in Trossingen. He wasn’t around because…
he was in Birmingham for Loree Oboe day! Cool or what? (: Anyway, I had my first lesson with Sandy today, playing the XL because a stubborn bit of oboe swab was still stuck. He got most of the swab out by cutting it first, and then using a hammer and pin (!!!!!) to force out the rest. Sandy learnt the Mozart under Heinz Holliger, so what I’m getting from him is a second-hand version of Holliger!! Exciting (: I hope to finish the whole of the Mozart during my stay here. Maybe Carolyn will let me do it in my final recital, instead of the dreadful and long Holzbauer. Sandy was quite understanding, he let me play the second movement while he was taking that bit of swab out because he knew i needed time to think of which fingerings to use on the thumbplate. The tempo he recommends for the second movement is much faster than anything I’ve ever heard, but his interpretation makes sense so I’ll practice that for this week and see how it turns out. He changed quite a lot of the articulation for the first movement, so I’ll have to practice it differently too. Next lesson’s on monday at 11am. Shall see how it goes and what he says.
Here’s the view from the room I had lesson in. It overlooks the tennis centre, and the leaves littering the path look so pretty! Beep’s getting a bit too scruffy and dirty, I think I might have to give him a bath soon.
I hung around for a bit after my lesson but my lips got too tired of practicing that I decided to walk back. Had the intention of walking to Tesco’s but it was too far and the sky was getting dark. Settled for a mama-shop a 15 min walk away from my place, and I was surprised to find that they sold maggi mee and koka cup noodles! Bought some milk and cereal for tomorrow’s breakfast, as well as chips and chocolates for snacking on. I got myself a Subway meatball sandwich on the way back. The Subway shops here are similar to Singapore’s, but they have sweet corn and grated carrots as part of the vegetable selection, and three different cheeses!
It was all slimy and soggy by the time I ate it, but it still tasted alright.
While the rest of us had instant/boring food, flatmate Royce cooked an elaborate dinner for himself today! We just had to take a picture of his concoction. It was like a rojak of vegetable, sausages, egg, bacon, rice in sauce.. Interesting.
I’ve mentioned that my journey to school is a 10-15 min walk, I’ll now describe some of it. There’s a huge place called the Nazareth House, it looks old and spooky and huge. On the way there’s also a Christian Science church. I wonder what goes on in there. Here’s a picture of it.
It’s not very clear, but you should be able to make out the words Christian Science Church. In the window there’s this wooden pyramid thing formed by a few poles and some items. Will see if I can get a close-up shot of it without people staring at me soon! Also on the way is Bute Park, apparently the second largest park in the world after Central Park in NY, and there’s a lane leading into a section of the park where the Ambulance base is located. Ambulances move in and out, so extra care has to be taken when crossing that lane. It gets a little irritating when the ambulance comes out of the lane when you’re walking past it, and then switches on its siren when its right behind or beside you. It happened to me once, and I literally jumped in shock. Sometimes I think they do it on purpose to poor, unsuspecting students =P
I’ve been sleeping much better now, having gotten used to the rumbling of the train outside my window. I need to shop for groceries tomorrow! Everything’ so expensive here, packing our own food for meals is the cheapest. I’ve packed sandwiches and fruit for lunch the past two days, but I’ve now run out of bread rolls and ham 🙁 Tomorrow shall be practice day as I’ve got no classes. Maybe I can sleep in, practice for two hours or so in the morning, go shopping, get back and do more practice.
Oh, and if you’re a reader of this blog, please drop by and say hi by leaving a comment! Knowing that there are people reading this motivates me to blog (: