I've had the busiest summer in a while I think. But it's starting to wind down. I've travelled for a big chunk of it. This is good and fun and also tiring. Esepcially if you're getting old! <;-)
I'm so glad Behn has taken over things for me. He's great and his lessons are great! I'm having fun and will also be happy when things wind down and I'm back home doing lessons and working on the tunes with you guys! The worse thing about travelling is not having an instrument close by. That's a bit of a problem. When I was in Argentina there was no instrument near by. It was in cases at the sax players house. Actually that turned out to be a cool thing. I spent time each time closing my eyes and playing the vibes in my mind. It was actually really fun and I felt like I was getting some practicing down. I wonder if any of you practice like that.
At this point in my life, I'm supposing and hoping that I do a lot of travelling. We'll see. It's been about 5 years now of getting around a bit. It's the goal of every musician to change with YOUR times. So I'm wondering new ways to practice.
I want to mess more with Sibelius and use composition to practice. The problem when travelling is attending to home duties, like bills and stuff. That's even a little more time consuming then at home. But I have a document scanner and when I'm home I scan all my mail and then read it on the road. Document scanners are fast and easy to scan many pages.
But I need to find ways to work on music on the road. I do more listening. I turned on Spotify again this summer. Here I can research music and listen to lots of stuff. That's GREAT. I'll try Sibelius. I even have a very tiny midi keyboard I want to try using.
The final thing is: I feel personally like I am really talking and preaching about what a great instrument the vibraphone is. I think I'm getting people into the instrument. This is great. I love the instrument and I want more students playing it. So all this traveling is a good thing I think, because I'm trying to play my best and really talking about how much fun the vibes are to play. I think that's something we all have to do. Right?
Just don't mention moving the instrument and packing it up, until after they're hooked on the vibes!!! ha ha ha ja ja ja xa xa xa :-)
But I'm home next week and want to dive into Peace and get some lessons up.
Comments
Sometimes when I walk the dog....
Gary Rich Thu, 07/18/2013 - 01:38
Sometimes, when I walk the dog, I try to visualize the keyboard and go through the major and melodic minor scales as if I'm playing them. Not easy at first, because it takes a lot of concentration to get through all 12 keys. I guess there's about a million ways you could do this. Sometimes I try to go through the changes on whatever tune I'm interested in at the time, or move a pattern through the keys. I'm all for visualization practice and I think it really helps (well, I hope it helps). We walk for about 45 minutes, so it's time well spent on a lot of levels. I wonder what my dog is visualizing while we walk?
I'm doing mental practicing
c.stallard22 Mon, 07/22/2013 - 22:08
I'm doing mental practicing this month, because I'm at a friend's house and can't get to the university every day. Just scales and stuff, but I think it helps.
On a similar note, I have a violinist friend who had major wrist problems two weeks before her senior recital. She couldn't practice, so she spent time mentally running through her program. When it came time for her recital she was nervous, but she played better than she ever could have hoped. Mental practicing pays off!