Life of Wiley

Oh well, that didn’t last long. In fact the snow had stopped about 10 minutes after I’d posted the last post and by the time I came out of church you could barely tell it had snowed at all. No snowmen today then.

Woo Hoo! It’s snowing! Not too heavily at the moment but it may develop. The forecasters have been promising this since Friday and it had seemed that everywhere except Watford was getting it. Maybe I won’t be able to get back from church; doubt it though as it’s already starting to ease off:(

I’m preaching tomorrow morning for the first time in ages. With all the swaps I’ve done with other preachers in the circuit I’ve not preached since the third Sunday in Advent. It’s a pain when this happens because it takes me longer to “warm up” to it, so it seems harder for me to put together a service. If I have a few services all on top of one another I get into a groove and everything clicks into place quite easily. I suppose it’s a sign that I’m really still quite green at it.

Anyway, it’s the first Sunday in Lent and the title of my sermon is “Jesus is Lord” based on what Paul teaches in Romans 10. Ironically, with the release of Mel Gibson’s film the Passion of Christ, I’ll be referring to that other controversial film, The Last Temptation of Christ.

Yay! It’s been confirmed that I can have a trumpet for my upcoming birthday. I’m probably going to get the Conn International recommended by my former tutor and playing partner. I need to investigate whether to get it from Phil Parker or from a retailer in the States given the value of the £ against the $ right now. Trouble is I doubt I could wait for the shipping if I got it from the States and I’m pretty impatient when it comes to things like this.

Had a good practise again last night. Didn’t practise for too long, maybe 30 minutes but I did manage to get a nice clear high C#. Couldn’t get any further and could only just squeak out one of the high Cs in Buster:( Spent quite a bit of time on Partita, the test piece for band. Did quite a bit with a metronome too so I hope Martyn takes at the metronome markings, otherwise I’ll have to watch:) I think the hardest bits for me are going to be the mp crotchets in the first movement as they need to be nice and legato with no airiness about them; and the sudden dynamic change from f to p in the quick quaver feature in movement 3. Everything else is down to stamina and tuning I think.

I’ve decided to ditch playing out of Wynton Marsalis’ Carnaval book as I think it’s holding me back. I mean that in the sense that I’m just hacking away at the music during my practise sessions without making any improvements, except maybe with finger dexterity.

I keep doing this, but I’m going back to basics and just practising out of Clarke’s Technical studies and the Arban and it seems to already be paying dividends. I haven’t got much range, I’m comfortable and can play melodies up to G on top of the stave, but for solo work and solo cornet in band I really need to be able to play up to a high C (two ledger lines up) and occassionally a bit more. Certainly for solo work I would need up to E/F above high C. On Monday during my warmup where I play semitone ascending intervals from second line G I managed to get up to a nice clear, loudish high D; I’d not done that since I changed my embouchure. Trouble is I can’t consistently do it yet and do it when playing melodies. So when it came to running through Buster Strikes Back I only managed to get two of the four high Cs, and in subsequent practise sessions I got nowhere near it. Anyway, if I stick to a methodical approach it’ll come one day.

We had a good rehearsal on Tuesday night. Fantastic attendance, I was a bit late and had trouble finding a spot to park, which is a nice problem to have. We spent most of the rehearsal on Partita for the Areas. We perhaps didn’t play it as well as we can do, but Martyn spent a lot of time on ensemble playing which will help with producing a balanced performance. Just need to tame those trombones:-)

No rehearsal with the St. Albans brass group last night as there was a church service going on so we all met up at the pub and had a drink and chin wag. I had to return a trumpet I’d borrowed with a view to buying but I think I’m going to buy a new Conn International, which seems very good value for money and my former tutor reckons they are the best student model trumpet he’s played for years and he’d perform professionally on one. I think Lou’s going to get me one for my birthday, can’t wait!

Had a really boring night last night; went to the cinema intending to go and see School of Rock but couldn’t be bothered to queue, so came home, popped up to the local shops and got a take-away curry and few bottles of beer and watched 8-Mile again, then spent some time making some cosmetic changes to the band’s website which took me to 2.15am!

The curry was pretty good; Lou and I had been meaning to try this place out for a while, since it went under new management. Didn’t much care for the way they did their Samosas, but the Karahi Chicken was pretty good. If you live in the Watford area, it’s the Prince of Bengal on Langley Way and is more of a true restaurant now but still does take-aways. It must be fairly good as the restaurant was busy.

So, to make up for the boring night last night I thought retail therapy was in order. First of all I had to go and buy a holiday. This had huge potential for disaster since Louise is away, but I think I’ve come up trumps. We’re off to the Algarve for a week in a pink (yes pink!) villa. Looks pretty cool actually and it’s not far from the beach and the airport is less than an hour away (these things are important considerations if you’ve got young children and by the time we go away we’ll have a new 5 month old!) It also came with car hire so we’re not limited to one place.

The rest of the shopping was a new and enlightening experience for me, as I spent the morning trawling charity shops looking for books and CDs. I came away with 3 books, a Bill Bryson travelogue, a book called Trumpet which is about a jazz trumpeter (always a good one to get for a trumpet player:) and the classic The Thirty-Nine Steps. I also got 2 CDs, a children’s story CD of Cinderella for Euan and then the steal of the day, The Darkness’s Permission to Land for £3.25! I watched their performance on the Brits (yes I know, the show was appalling) and thought they were hilarious, I’ve no doubt in my mind that they are taking the mickey out of the 70s/80s glam rock scene; brilliant stuff!

Good rehearsal tonight, only let down was the trombone section but then one had been in a car accident and the other had a paying job! The excuses some people will come up with not to turn up:)

Curiously we didn’t spend any time on Partita (hence the title of this entry), the contest piece for the area contest in the 5 weeks time. Tonight we spent rehearsing things for the CD, Breezing Down Broadway, Basin Street Blues, Barnard Castle and Swedish Folk Song which is an arrangement of the hymn tune whose name escapes me at the moment but has words that go “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder…Then sings me soul, my Saviour God to me”.

A lot of the band went down the pub afterwards too, which was good as it shows the band is growing socially as well as musically. This can only be of benefit in the long run when we can learn from each other and appreciate each others strengths and weaknesses and learn to work as a team. I think Martyn is aware of this now, as it seems he’s listened through the CD from Milton Keynes, and has had us not only trying to work together as sections but also working to balance against other sections of the band. I think this will be particularly important when we get our trombone section back as they are definitely the strongest part of the band at the moment and it’s difficult for the rest of the band to match up to them, so I think, as Martyn said tonight, there are some compromises to be made.

Just in case you were wondering, this is what I got Louise for Valentine’s Day:

and Joanne Harris’ latest book, Holy Fools.

I remembered on the way home whilst using my mobile phone car kit that I hadn’t updated the blog to say that it had been done! I arrived at work at 8.40am on Monday to find the engineer waiting for me (I wasn’t expecting him until the afternoon).

So I’ve used it for the first time tonight and it’s not bad, but I think the speaker is in the wrong place (it’s in the passenger footwell). If I’d had a more expensive kit it could have all been linked through the car stereo speakers but I guess my company wouldn’t stump up the extra. I couldn’t hear the person I was speaking to very clearly but he was also in his car using a bluetooth setup and my car is a convertible and I was driving up the motorway at the time. But it did recognise the voice commands which surprised me.

I’ll have to see how easy it will be to move the speaker either to the drivers footwell or by the windscreen post above the dashboard.

Haven’t posted for awhile (excepting the Peter Kay post below).

I had an excellent weekend (Valentine’s Day) as Louise had bought me Pirates of the Carribean on DVD. This is just a fantastic film. We watched it twice over the weekend with Euan. And now, instead of coming home from work and playing knights, we’re playing pirates! Euan’s Jack Sparrow and I have to be Will Turner and we run about the house fighting the skeletons.

I’ve got hooked on the music too. So much so I posted a question on the brass band forum The Mouthpiece to see if there was a brass band arrangement of the main theme. This has now developed into a poll about reasons for watching the film, e.g. women leering at Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom, or blokes leering at Keira Knightly. Personally I watch it for Johnny Depp’s hilarious performance; he must have been drunk throughout the shooting of that film to have slurred all his lines!

As you can see I’ve now set up the webcam to display a picture on the blog site, must remember to tell Louise!

Louise and Euan have gone up to her mum’s for a few days as it’s half-term so I’ve got to fend for myself for the next few days. So I’ll be having fish fingers for tea tonight and watching The Matrix: Reloaded which my brother bought for me for Christmas and I haven’t got round to watching. I also need to watch all the additional extras on the Special Edition Fellowship of the Rings DVD that I’ve borrowed off my mum before she returns from France on Sunday and I expect I’ll watch the bonus features of Pirates too.

Looking forward to the band’s social do on Saturday night too. We’re going to a Greek restaurant in Watford where there’ll be food, drink, plate smashing, belly dancing and a disco. Should be a great night.