Music

November 5th. 50 days until Christmas. Halloween pumpkins are gone… Time to break out the Christmas music!

Just to give you an idea of how much I love listening to Christmas music, I just randomly grabbed 5 hours worth of it from my iTunes library and put it in a play list…that doesn’t even account for half of it.

My favorite? John Denver and the Muppets, A Christmas Together. I could listen to just that album for days and never get bored of it. It was the first record (yes, actual record) I ever owned, and I literally did a happy dance in the store when I saw that it was out on CD!

(Huh. I just looked up the CD on Amazon to link to, and apparently it’s now only 10 songs – the one I bought has all 13 from the original album…glad I bought it when I did! And I’m not linking to the abridged version. So there.)

Band starts tonight. I should be excited, but I’m just worried…I’ve only played for a grand total of maybe 2 hours since the July 3rd concert. Ugh. I also had a “duck foot” added to my horn in the off-season. It’s supposed to transfer the weight of the horn from your pinky finger to the top of your hand. I figured that this would be a good thing, since after playing for a couple hours at a time (for example, rehearsals or concerts) my pinky finger would get all numb and tingly. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get used to it yet (maybe because I didn’t practice much?) and it’s soldered on, permanently.

Between that and the lack of practicing, rehearsal ought to be wonderful! Here’s hoping that the first rehearsal is very, very short. As in: hand out the music, and let’s go home!

I’m supposed to be in an outdoors concert tonight…but since it’s currently 60° and raining, somehow I imagine it will be moved to the school. I was looking forward to playing in the park. :(

(Is it summer yet?)

Has anyone out there ever used music notation software on the Mac, specifically, OS X? I’m looking at Sibelius, which is very expensive. Demos are dangerous, I tell you. I fell in love with the program before I realized how much it costs…

But as far as I can tell, it’s about the only application that does what I need it to do under OS X. That is: I play my digital piano, it appears as written music on the screen. Simple, right? The shareware apps I’ve tried just don’t work – generally, I can enter a few notes, and then it stops recording. Most other commercial packages cost around the same, and only run under Classic.

I’m open to suggestions, if there’s some middle ground I missed in my search…

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a musician…somehow I ended up a software engineer… But I actually wrote a couple of songs in high school – not great songs, but not awful either. For some reason, on the way home from Sit ‘n’ Knit tonight, a melody popped into my head. And some words followed. And now I have a full-blown chorus to a song, written out on paper and on the computer. Weird.

Of course, lyrics were never my strong point (probably why I stopped trying to write songs) and words for the verses are not forthcoming. I guess I’ll just have to go to bed with a pad and pencil nearby, in case I have some major inspiration at 2 am.

…otherwise, this will just stay a nice chorus jotted down on a piece of staff paper…

Another opening, of the same show, with some new cast members. This week seems like it will go much better – we managed to run the entire show with sets, lights and costumes last night except for the two scenes we skipped to allow Adelaide to rest her voice…that could be the only problem: a couple of the kids are coming down with colds.

I’m taking next week off – my first real vacation in a year. Most of my vacation days this year went towards finishing my masters’ project, so I scrimped every day I had left for next week and the time around Christmas. And I truly need it…several days in a row with no alarm clock, no schedule, and tons of time to knit. And blog. Hopefully. Then again, maybe I just won’t use the computer at all for a week… :)

Guys and Dolls worked – the kids pulled it off, while the adults working backstage…well, they took forever for each and every scene change. I’ve decided that theater parents are as bad as – or worse than – band parents. Imagine having the nerve to ask the accompanist to play a song in a different key for your child twenty minutes before the house opens! Now, I’m capable of transposing music, but not by sight, and certainly not when the song is 10 pages long, and written in 4 different keys that switch about every 8 measures. This is tough stuff, and I actually spent hours practicing just this one song. I eventually had to have the director intervene, because the mom wouldn’t take “no, I’m sorry I can’t do that” for an answer. The kid singing, by the way, was fine with singing it in the key we’d been practicing it in for the past month, it was just his mom that had an issue. I really get annoyed with parents who live vicariously through their children in extra-curricular activities – I have no problem with supporting your kid, but it can get to be a little much. I hope when I have children I don’t do that. Anyway, I chose to spend all day yesterday watching football and knitting*. So, the song won’t be transposed for this coming weekend either, but honestly, they don’t pay me enough to spend my entire day off trying to rewrite the music. Sorry, rant over. :)

*Christmas knitting is coming along, and I’m not panicked yet, but I’m tossing around ideas in my head for alternate gifts if I can’t get to one or two of the things I was planning on making. I think I can finish the items currently on my needles by the end of Thanksgiving week…if not, I’ll really have to start cutting back on hand-made items. Next year, I’m starting my Christmas gifts in January.

Guys and Dolls opens tonight. We still haven’t ever run through the whole show with lights, sets and costumes… This could be very interesting. Plus, I was up late last night practicing, so I’m very sleepy. It might be time to break my no caffeine rule. (Well, to be perfectly honest, it’s not like I haven’t had any caffeine at all since April, but it’s been very rare.) Then again, I might play all of the songs too fast if I’m caffeinated… :)

It’s in the genes, apparently. Completely independently (or so they claim) Denis and his sisters have come up with EZPass songs. Ours is pretty lame:

Mary and Lou came up with:

Jeannie and John have the cleverest one, that Lizzy (who’s 2-and-a-half) even sings:

Does anyone else have EZPass songs, or did I just marry into a very strange family? :)