Everyone else has left, but I’m still at mom’s house following Thanksgiving. I have a negative bank balance and no food in my house. I can’t afford my own bus ticket, and even if I got home, I have nothing to eat. Valerie needs to find out what happened to the money she tried to send me a week and a half ago, and she needs to do it as soon as possible. I’m really frustrated with her for doing this in the first place - she was simply trying to avoid driving to Springfield when she decided to use the account transfer method. Obviously, now, it’s a method that doesn’t work. Or, at least, it hasn’t worked in this instance.

But let me stop bitching about this and get back to writing about my musical practice. I like what I did yesterday when I found different ways to break down and approach my practice as a whole. Today let me deal with aspects of musical practice I spend less time on.

  • Score Reading: This is a cluster of skills that are all fundamental to my sense of musicianship, particularly as a musicologist and a composer.
    • Transposition: I need to get much more solid at transposition in general, not just sight transposition. I shouldn’t have to refer to an orchestration book every time I want to check out a transposing instrument’s part.
    • Clef Reading: This is easier than it may seem at first. I just need to do it a bit more often.
    • Piano Reduction: People who are particularly good at score reading are able to sight read scores across a number of staves. I would settle for being able to write and then read piano reductions as well as being able to sight read one or two staves at a time.
  • Ear Training: This is one of those things that should be fundamental to my practice but that sits on the back shelf for long periods of time.
    • Sight Singing: I like Bruce Arnold’s exercises from his Fanatic’s Guide to Ear Training. I should also sight sing from lead sheets and scores, though I want to be solid with Arnold’s exercises before I put too much effort into this. I also like Arnold’s book Lines for sight singing. This is one of those sets of skills I should be much better at.
    • Hearing: This is another area in which I need to improve. In a sense this is much easier for me than sight singing, though, so I really should put more effort into sight singing. Ultimately it would be good to be able to transcribe music just by ear.
  • Percussion: When I have a little bit of extra money I should buy some incidental percussion instruments at Guitar Center. I’ve noticed they have a really good selection of percussion stuff.
    • Drum Rudiments: This is something I can learn from the internet with some sticks and a practice pad, both of which I have around somewhere. The rudiments themselves are available online in notation and in videos.
    • Hand Percussion: This would be an easy thing to work on here and there. I should be able to get some basic rhythms off the internet. No need to go searching for books.