Double Shot

It was a double shot day today - 2 one-shot-of-espresso-each mochas. The last time I did that I was pulling a 30 hour writing extravaganza on a final paper. And before that? Try the Old Life in Consulting.

Why so much caffeine? Well, today I pulled myself out of bed quite early to trek in to the practice rooms. Only the cleaning staff was there when I arrived. I spent over 5 hours today glued to a piano in one of the toasty, musty rooms. That's right: it's keyboard audit time. When they throw a sheet of paper at you and say things like, "Play a V7/V chord in F major. Set the key first, and then bring it to an authentic cadence. Then do it in D major," you learn to sit yourself in front of a piano for a long while to get it under your fingers. We also had sequences on the exam. These are progressions of notes that follow a pattern. The top note might step down by half steps, while the bass note moves by whole steps. The middle notes might alternate between thirds and some other interval. For this, the sheet gave us the first few chords, and we had to continue the pattern. Then we had to "transpose it into keys with up to two sharps or two flats." You don't write anything down while you do this; you just play it.

I continue to thank my piano teachers from my youth who put up with my reluctance to practice and my relative boredom with the instrument. (Singing was always much more exciting to me. I couldn't wait to take voice lessons! Piano, on the other hand...I was more than a bit of a slacker with that one. One of my teachers used to glower, "You know, BJ practices an hour a day!" Me? I was at about 10 minutes, if that. Homework seemed more important.)

Anyway, my keyboard audit popped up this afternoon. Before that, however, I had a coaching with my accompanist, rehearsing "Pierrot", a Debussy piece I'm singing in my voice lesson tomorrow. I also played guinea pig for a master's in directing candidate who was auditioning today. She coached me on "Laurie's Song" from Copland's The Tender Land. Throw in a theory class and an afternoon meeting talking about entrepreneurship in music, and you pretty much have my day before the audit.

Afterwards, I had a rehearsal for Figaro. I'm in the chorus, which means I get to nip in, do a little scene, and nip out again. It's so fascinating to watch the leads, though, that I'm hoping to ask if I can sit in on some more rehearsals. They are truly wonderful! And the director is fantastic. You can learn so much by just watching how other people figure out how to express this thing called opera.

Lots of odds and ends to finish up before sleep, so I'm grateful to the remants of caffeine that are keeping me going. There will be time enough to detox tomorrow...

~Hope