Oh hello, blog! How I've missed you! (Practice Session 7)

Tonight, after jauntily scaling and arpeggioing up and down for a few minutes, I focused once again on the music for QUO.  I practiced the music in rehearsal order, which of course means I did not get to the music in the second half.  Fortunately, I don't think the artistic director conducting those pieces reads this blog :)

I was delighted to find that cellos are tacit in the Overture to the Nutcracker Suite, and the cello parts in the Chinese Dance and the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy are very easy (slow and pizzicato).  The March is also pizzicato, but fast.  Still, I was able to muddle through it, and I surprised myself by playing a five-sixteenth note run across two strings.  It sounded like a rusty door hinge at first, but after three or four times, I had it.  The Waltz of the Flowers was daunting, mostly because it's long, but I have the melody, which is nice.  After I was done practicing, I went into the living room where my roommates were and asked them if they heard me playing the Waltz of the Flowers.  Lindsay said "I definitely recognized something at some point."  I'll take it.

I think I'm playing celesta on Sugar Plum Fairy, which will be fun, but it's unfortunate that that's one of the easy cello pieces.

Then I worked on the fifth waltz of the Blue Danube, and I rocked it (as much as I, at this juncture, can rock anything on the cello).  I began practicing the coda, which, in my opinion, is way too long to call itself a coda.

I practiced for an hour before I got fed up with myself and stopped.  I didn't have enough time to really work on any of it because there's so damn much of it, and I started so late (9pm).  Even if I hadn't started late, my tolerance for listening to myself play is low.

My main pet peeve with my playing is accidentally bowing an adjacent string.  My intonation isn't spot on, but it's getting there.  It's the bowing the extra string accidentally that really makes my playing sound like crap.  I know that practice will take care of that.  Practice will take care of everything.  I would be making real progress if I would just sit down and practice more.  With rehearsal tomorrow and band stuff Thursday, the rest of this week is shot.  I'll have to make myself practice multiple times over the weekend.

A big challenge I had at rehearsal last week was hearing myself.  Now that I know the music better, maybe that will be less of a problem.  I'll let you know, readers!

Still haven't named the poor guy.  Lindsay has decided his name is "Cookie."  It isn't.