Tourney Time!

Here it is, the only bracket I'm doing this year. I've done 5 million brackets per year in the past and the first one always does the best. Then, I start second guessing myself and mess witht he first one and probably ruin it (before the first round.)

I know the picture isn't very big, but there it is, if you click on it you'll get a larger version.

Game previews to come!

I like this tidbits idea

So, Heather had "tidbits" the other day, man what a good idea, so I'm stealing it! But I'll be nice and at least change the name of it, let's go with......."Well........"

Well........

- I'm watching Memphis had Tulsa their hat and it pretty amazing. Tulsa had it close for about a second, then Memphis got out front, then I went in the kitchen and the lead was 10, when I came back the lead was 23. Yeah, Memphis is pretty good.

- I saw Villanova's buzzer beater the other day. That's totally the way to play basketball. They kept it tight with Marquette, and Marquette played a great game, and even though they had almost no time at all they waited long enough for Marquette to make a mistake, and it worked!

- I would have liked to have seen the 6 OT World War III between Cuse and UCONN, there's a couple of problems with that. 1) I was 6 OT's, I can't stay up that late, I'm an old man now. 2) I really like Syracuse, always have, but I don't dislike UCONN enough to see if Cuse can hold on. 3) I LOVE Big East basketball, always have, but I don't love it that much. 4) I hate the angry face Jim Calhoun makes, I mean he looks like his face is morphing into a Gremlin. I just can't take it.

- I'm ready for the tourney, but I need to find a bracket I can fill in and post to the blog, if you know what to do, let me know.

- Just once in my adult life I'd like to see a basketball game officiated correctly. The officiating is 10 bagillion times worse in the NBA than it is in the NCAA but the NCAA still sucks really bad.

- I just finished rewriting the part for Claude T. Smith's "Fantasia for Alto Sax and Band." The transposition to Bass Clarinet isn't bad, but it's a complicated piece and moves pretty high on the horn. Plus, there are alot of alternate fingerings at work and I needed a prettier part with all the alternates written in.

- Additionally, I found good alternate fingerings for Altissimo A and Bb, they're going to be a life savers.

- Someone needs to hire me to design Bass Clarinets for them, that's all.

We're getting warm

I came of age in the land of the warm-up.  In High School we would spend whole classes in the warm-up process.  Hours upon hours were spent warming up the ensemble.  Nothing could be more interesting, or boring, depending on your point of view.  
Warming up is the ONLY thing you can do for yourself that is GUARANTEED to make you better.  I can, and will, go on and on about what you can do to improve, but none of it is a guarantee, they're just really good ideas.  This...this process that not enough people take enough time on is the one common thread that runs through all great wind players.
I'd said if you interviewed some band kids you'd find that most of them are quite bored by the warm-up process and find little value in it, they just know that their director insists on it.  I was never one of those people.

Where I come from, the warm-up is the only thing we've got, kind of like when we tell our kids "You'd better be nice to your brother/sister because one day they're going to be the only thing you've got."  If you don't have a warm-up, you don't got nothin'.  

I can hear the arguments now "But, if you warm up all the time you won't have any time to rehearse!"  On the contrary, Bass-Confucius say "If you warm up regularly your band will sound good enough to rehearse."  "If you warm up all the time and then you can't get in a warm up at a crucial time then the band will suffer."  Bass-Confucius say "If your band warms up constantly and you can't get in a warm up before a big show your band can walk off the bus and win the show (my Alma Mater has done and will continue to do this at least once a season.)  "Oh my golly good gosh!  I have to get married to a warm up routine as soon as possible or our band is going down the tubes!"  Bass-Confucius say "If you get married to a warm up your band will become so inflexible that they won't be able to take a shorter warm up when it is warranted."
To me, these are big "DUH"s if you're a band director, but what if you are just practicing by yourself?

Today, I went up to school to teach a couple lessons.  I brought out my short horn (in case you don't keep track, and you should ;o), it's a 1959 Leblanc 400) and didn't have a ton of warm-up time.  I felt kind of hamstrung my whole lesson because I didn't get to warm-up AND I was playing a horn that I don't play everyday that I haven't tailored my reeds to.  A good 30 minutes of warming up would have solved my problems.

I know, I know, you're thinking "Well, if I played the same horn everyday I wouldn't have those problems."  Oh contrare' mon ami!  If you play the same horn everyday and you HAVEN'T been doing this then you STILL need a lengthy warm-up.  You basically have no idea what the instrument will do from minute to minute, but you are warming up regularly you will become more and more aware of what the instrument will do when you put air in it.  Moreover, if you continue to do that and you, by chance, are playing a different instrument one day you won't need AS MUCH time to get acclimated.  Even if you're playing a leaky horn you'll be able to isolate the leaks almost instantly as you warm up because the feel won't be right.  You see, you can diagnose AND learn control at the same time.

I know, I know, now you're thinking "Yeah, that's cute, I can't play a leaky horn, it won't do anything."  Ah, Bass-Confucius say "If you've been hammering your warm-ups, you'll get to the point where you can play anything in any condition in a serviceable way."  Now, I'm not saying you'd go out and play a recital or an audition on a leaky or otherwise "broken" instrument, but you could get through a concert or marching band show or a practice session without it being a total wash.  Let's say you can reasonably repair your instrument, now you know what's wrong.  I've got that problem right now on my 400, and I'll get around to it, but I still have the 430!

Now, what if you don't have a leaky horn and everything's fine?  Well, get to it!

What....

You don't know what to do.  What kind of stuff you should be playing to warm-up.  You're unsure if what you're doing is working, or going to work.  I have a solution!

Warm-up the way you did in band.  Don't get cute, just do things that work.  An example:
 
(all in written pitch)
 
Long tones on the C, F, and G scales.  No skimping, do them all and really work it.
 
Equality of tone is highly essential here.  If you're not careful you could spend a massive amount of time realizing all the notes you have that are not equal in tone to the notes around them.
 
5 note segments in all major and minor keys (at a moderate tempo, play each one 3 times before stopping)
-  You may slur
-  or slur 2 tongue 2
-  or tongue 2 slur 2
-  or mix them up (play Slur 2 Tongue 2, then Tongue 2 Slur 2, Then tongue 1 Slur 2 Tongue 1 consecutively in one rep.)

You could very easily alter the articulated notes from legato, to staccato, to marcato, to a "swallowed" note that almost ends before it begins.  You could get lost in this if you really wanted to.
 
Chromatic Scale (all slurred from E to C, no fancy pants extended range)     
 
Remingtons (movement in half steps downwards from a tonic)
-  I prefer starting on open G, that makes the pattern:
G, F#, G, F, G, E, G, Eb, G, D, G, Db, G, C
-  Then change the tonic to C:
C, B, C, Bb, C, A, C, Ab, C, G, C, Gb, C, F, C, E, C, Eb
 
Playing the remington studies is the easiest way to hear if your pitch and tone are stable.  It's also the best embouchure workout there is.  Try not opening your mouth the breathe, but breathing through your corners and never really releasing your embouchure until you're done.
 
Now, I know this is simple stuff, but that's it.  Some variation on this stuff will do.  Just don't run off with some pretty warm-up, you'll get bored quickly, change is a good thing in these situations. 
 
How long should it take?  Well, if you're really working it you could go for a solid hour and not realize it.  Seriously!  This stuff is important!
 
You'll start to see a difference when you really start working this out.  It's a maturation process that will net a wonderful long term result, but won't necessarily blow you away in the short term.  You've got to be patient.  I spent 3 years warming up like this constantly, another 4 playing 3 hours a day on my own and the last 9 holding to a warm-up of AT LEAST this level every time I play.  No joke.  Try it!

Superior Performances 3.13.09

Alright, so keeping with my theme from last week here's more Madison.  This was my first exposure to the Scouts and it was the first Finals that I followed (P.S. - '95 was a good year to start following!)  This is a day in the life of a bullfighter, except the bullfighter has the loudest corps in history following him around and he never actally fights any bulls, but you get the idea.  The playing is great and for me the simple color palette in the guard works.  Plus,  you can see how far afield judging has gone that they were in 4th place this season.  If they did this show now (as I'm sure they still kinda do) they would barely make finals (as they have for a few years now.)  This is still the glory years of the Scouts, so please enjoy!

Sleep, blessed sleep

So, we're still busted in this house.  I don't what the deal is.  The JB woke up at 4 and screamed in our faces til 6 this morning.  I mean, dang girl, if you're tired, go to sleep!

Heather's working really hard at the gym, so she's really busted too and the kids just sat around after dinner tonight.  I mean, busted!

Please pray for recouperative sleep in this house, cuz we need it baby!

In the interest of enjoying music and sleep, try this:

Stop-action tonguing

So, I was in a lesson today and saw an interesting little article in my student's folder from a big-time Clarinet professor.  They had all these articulation exercises written in and one in particular was intriguing...

There were 4 eighth notes each followed by an eighth rest.  The instructions written were:

Do this for 5 minutes and move up one notch on the metronome each week, but the music was titled "stopped tonguing."  I love this stuff!

So, one can only assume that "stopped tonguing" means stop the note with your tongue and then move on.  Ok, I can get down with that.  So, how do I do that?

I look at it this way.  Tongue the note, release the tongue in order to sustain the note (yes, you are sustaining it, even if the note is mega-short) and then come back and stop the air with the tongue.  

That means you're supposed to be doing 3 things to play one note, a note that might even be a half count long.  That requires alot of control.

Control implies that you have to sound good, so, if you're having tonal issues (I mean, like you're just NOT HAPPY with your sound, then wait for this.)  If you're cool, then control is pretty easy to obtain.

Definitely, just playing nice, easy, open notes with simple rhythms like 8th, 8th rest, 8th, 8th rest, etc... is a good idea.  Definitely, set a certain amount of time you will venture to do this.  You can do this in minutes (I'll do this for 5 minutes) or you could say "I'll do this for 24 bars."  However, you can go two steps farther.

Step 1)   Practice something with stopped notes.  You could be practicing just about anything and, as a part of working something out, you just stop all the notes in that passage just to get in the groove of stopping notes.  

Step2)  Try it in an ensemble setting.   If you're in a band or orchestra you could use this technique in musically appropriate places.  Using the stopped tongue as a device to further separate (not shorten) notes is a great way to use the stopped tongue, cultivate it, and add ammunition to your articulation arsenal.

Stopped tonguing increases pressure in the back of your mouth, so it will feel funny but it's fun to do if you really get into it.  Try it sometime!

Progress Anybody?

Alrighty, for my birthday Heather took me to Disney World.  Yay!

I know it's been a month since my birthday but I've been recovering from the trip of trips.

It was a total surprise and I honestly had no idea that's what we were doing.  I could sit here and recap the whole whirlwind trip, bit by bit, but that would take forever, since it was the best trip ever!  I'll just recap the super-highlights to make you jealous.

We were on a duck hunt, since Donald Duck is my favorite Disney character, and boy did we find some Donalds.  We met Frontier Donald at MK and Three Caballeros Donald at the Mexico pavillion at Epcot.  There are tons of "Hidden Mickeys" throughout the park, mostly due to over-exuberant cast members, but there at a few "Hidden Donalds" as well, so we were searching for those and going on anything that we wanted as much as we wanted since the kids weren't with us.  

We got a last ride on the TTA (Tomorrowland Transit Authority) since it's shutting down when they refurb Space Mountain.  The best part of this ride is that you go inside Space Mountain and when the lighting is ideal you can see the whole coaster.  Good stuff!

We got drenched on Splash Mountain by a mega water cannon right at the beginning of the ride. As many times as I've been on this ride, this water cannon has never been this robust. Usually it spits a little water, that never makes it to you, when a log goes over the falls.  Yeah, that day, it was on "super drench" because we got nailed.

We met Drizella and Anastasia who are hilarious!  Let's face it, the best job in the world is being a totally rude obnoxious person all day long and people loving every second of it.  Come on, you know you love it.  They even had a great conversation with Heather about Cinderella's rodent-made dress. It was priceless.

We toured Epcot World Showcase on a Segway (which is really fun to ride once you learn how to use it.)  We finally got on Spaceship Earth together and got a picture of ourselves on the new touch screen on the ride.  

We even suffered through the worst ride in all the parks..."Stitch's Great Escape."  Yeah, it's bad.  I actually hadn't even seen the movie (though I knew what it was about) and after seeing the movie I hated the ride even more because the movie is D-U-M-B DUMB!  We even asked the imagineer why certain things actually get made into rides and he really had no words for that.  Just goes to show you, all business is politics.

We rode the Tower of Terror together, which we've never done, and Heather loved it, she was laughing every time it took us up to get a glimpse at the park (which is funny, because you then plummet about 10 stories in a free fall before it takes you back up for another go.)  We found the 100,000 point target in Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin (Heather hit it 4 times on our last go 'round.)  We hooped it up on Toy Story Midway Mania and a ton more.  We're a super team, and kidless we moved like lightning through the parks(actually, even with the kids we move like lightning, so imagine how fast we were this time.)  There's nothing more satisfying than knowing you're going to get to do everything you want and then some.

We had some unreal meals.  I discovered lamb a few months back and was not disappointed at Citrico's with the lamb rack and the unreal birthday cake.  I've still got the white chocolate Donald that was on top of the cake (he was highlighted with gold leafing.)  We ate with an Imagineer(who was really sweet and really fun to talk with) and I had a vegetarian lasagna that was to die for at Chefs des France.  There was a Mushroom Bisque, a Cobb Salad, this unreal roast beef sandwich at Liberty Tree Tavern, just great stuff!  Every meal we ate was off the charts, I could go on and on all day, but then you'd be too jealous and stop reading, and we don't want that.

The one gem that we discovered was the Carousel of Progress.  It's a 20 minute ride that moves you from the turn of the centry to present day, chronicling all the household advancements that have been made in that time.  The stages are great, you learn alot, and the song "There's a Great Big, Beautiful Tomorrow" is a keeper.  As we speak it's running through my head.  If you ever have the fortune to go, please don't miss this attraction, we feel sacreligious for not having found it sooner.

Needless to say, I had the time of all times with my beautiful bride :o)