Hey everyone. I haven't put anything up here for a while. This is partially due to slacking, but I've been pretty busy practicing, performing, teaching, studying, and all sorts of other stuff that hopefully I can write about here, if I can remember all of it.
In an online, informal way, this will kind of end up being like a christmas card.
In November, I attended an audition camp for the Santa Clara Vanguard. I went in hopes that I could play timpani, but would have been fine with a mallet spot even though my mallet chops aren't great. Over the course of the weekend, I split my time playing vibraphone and timpani, and had a great timpani audition. If all goes well in January, I should be playing timpani for the Santa Clara Vanguard this summer.
I've started to advertise myself as a private lessons teacher, and after putting up a bunch of fliers and printing business cards, I found my first student. The pay isn't much, and it's not a lot of work, but it makes me happy knowing that I'm contributing to someone's education and helping them do something that makes them happy. He's a quick learner and memorizes things pretty quickly, so I'm looking forward to all of our lessons in the future and whatever he becomes as a result of his practice and hard work.
In two days, I will have taken all of my finals and passed all of my classes. I've learned about the general acoustic properties of musical instruments. I've discovered the music cultures of various parts of Africa, India, Indonesia, Tuva, and the Navajo people. For my juries, I blazed my way through Tony Williams' drumming on Miles Davis' "Seven Steps to Heaven" and learned Astral Dance, a pretty difficult marimba solo; I'm proud of what I got done in a short amount of time, but I'll definitely need to keep working on them. I performed with a lot of talented people, playing all kinds of different music, and had a lot of fun doing it.
Next semester, I'll be taking lessons with Paul Rennick, caption head at the Santa Clara Vanguard, winner of multiple DCI percussion caption titles, percussion composer/arranger and performer; and Ryan Kilgore, Bluecoats pit tech, winner of international marimba competitions, etc. That should be very demanding and rewarding.
I'm also taking some interesting classes next semester. Mr. Rennick teaches a Percussion Arranging class every spring semester, and I'm signed up to take it, which should be incredible. I'm taking a class on the music of Frank Zappa with the head of the composition department; it's only offered every other year, so I'm extremely fortunate to be able to take it. I'll be working hard over break to see if I can test out of Jazz Keyboard Skills, Jazz Fundamentals II and Jazz Aural Skills. I'm excited to be in South Indian Ensemble again, but upset that my schedule won't allow me to be in Jazz Singers or Brazilian this semester. I'm in a late English class on Tuesdays, and I'm taking the last levels of Theory, Aural Skills, and Piano. I should be very busy, but that's how I work best anyways.
My band, Señor Fín, played a bunch of fun shows this semester, at house shows, pizza shops, smaller clubs, and tonight, we'll be playing at Dan's SilverLeaf, where all of the big acts that come to Denton come to perform, including Pat Martino, Jeff Coffin, Bill Frisell, the Decemberists, and all of the big local acts. We're in the process of recording tunes that we've grown really comfortable playing, with some new gear and software, and we're always looking for more opportunities to spread our name around and to make music for people that want to listen.
There are some other little things, but nothing that seems to be too important at the moment.
I've done a lot of great things, and been through some times that helped me grow. I've been to new places and met new people, and I've become even more aware of how great it is to have a place to call home and people that you can call friends. I had a great semester, and I'm looking forward to another great one after I come back from winter break.
Regarding the future:
If I don't have very much time to write, kinda how the last half of this semester was, I might use this blog to post videos I found informative, cool songs or interesting composers and musicians. If I did that, I would write less, but probably post more frequently.
I'll put up some things that I thought were awesome this semester as a little sampler.
Have a great break.
M
