Performance Theme

Well this year for my final performance recital I have to play for 30 minutes. The repertoire I chose has to be based on a theme.

I found it quite tricky to think of one but after speaking to a couple of the saxophone tutors. I decided to find pieces I would like to play and try to fit a theme around them.

This helped as I had a piece by Amy Quate -'The Light of Sothis' which I hadn't yet performed since it was composed in 1982 my saxophone tutor- Allan agreed on a theme of 'Saxophone Music from the 20th Century'. This was perfect.

So far I only have two pieces : 'The Light of Sothis' by Amy Quate 

and 'Blues Concerto for Alto Saxophone' by Bill Holcombe.

I am still in the process of picking other pieces but that shouldn't take too long if my tutor and I brain storm together.

End of Summer

Well it's the end of the summer and it's been a good one, I went to Berlin for 4 days in August and I have to say it is a lovely city if you have never been before I recommend that you do. There is some much history to see and hear about. I will definitely will be going back( not sure when though). With the Capital Concert Band we played on the Ross Band Stand in Prince's Street Gardens in August which fun and luckily the weather was in our favour it was sunny  :D

This is a picture of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, I thought I would give you a small preview of what the city if like.

It is also the start of a new academic year. I aiming to achieve my BA music performance degree. I am into my third week back and it is looking to be a good year. The modules that I am studying are: Performance, Project in which i shall be doing a performance of my improvisation skills, Media Law and Ethics, Instrumental Teaching and 20th Century Music History.

The graduation was on Monday 24th September in which the concert band play Cartoon Music which we played at the final concert in the Queens Hall in June at the end of the academic year. The concert band has just about doubled in size this year. There 9 first study saxophonists this year, the only time i have seen that amount of saxophones in 1 ensemble was at the saxophone congress in June. Well there was hundreds of saxophones but when you are in a concert band with 9 saxophones it feels like hundreds.

I have got several blogs I have to do this year so you will be seeing a lot of posts from me. I enjoyed writing my blogs last term so I think I will again this term.

That's all I have to say for just now but I will hopefully keep you posted every week.

Oh wait I never asked how your summer was, did you do anything exciting?

End of HND

Well that is me officially finished my HND course. I got the last of my results for year 2 the other day and i'm glad to say i have passed them all just need to wait for my overall result for the two years.


In September I will be starting my Degree, I'm looking forward to it. I then just ave to consider wither or not I want to do the Honors. 

final week

Well this is my final week at college for the year. The past two weeks have been busy ones, finishing all assignments and the last rehearsals of the performance weeks. Tomorrow night the Classical concert is being held in the Queens Hall, Edinburgh and on Thursday night at the Bongo Club with the Pop students. I'm looking forward to it and i think they are going to be the best concerts yet.


It has been a good year and now most of my class mates are off to University, some in another city. They will all be missed, it's going to be strange not having them around next year but we shall all keep in touch.


Hope you have all had a good year too.

Well the sun is shinning and I am sitting inside trying to finish off all my assignments before the deadlines :(
I had my performance exam on Monday- didn't go as well as I had hope but I thought my final piece was really good. I was also told on Monday that I got a distinction for my orchestrations :D I'm very pleased with that.
For analysis I had to analyse the 3rd Movement of Mahler's first Symphony- "The Titan". I've been enjoying listening to it, it is a very enjoyable piece of music(if you listen to a decent recording), well that's my opinion of it.


Well now it's back to work.
P.S only three weeks left of college this year. On to performance Blocks next week- they are looking pretty good.

Orchestration

Finally! finished my orchestration with 24 hours to spare :D  I knew I would have completed it without stressing out at last minute. I can now enjoy my weekend and start on the rest of my research essays. It's al deadlines now!

Hello Everyone, Hope you all had a good Easter break.

That's me back at college now and it's not been a bad first 2 days back. As much as I have enjoyed the 2 weeks break, I felt that I would have preferred to have spent those weeks at college and finished 2 weeks earlier at the end of term. I felt I wasn't as motivated as I should have been to do work, compared to when I'm at college. So it is now time to get my head back into the books and get all my course work handed in.

I have my Orchestration deadline next week. I'm confident enough that I shall have it finished without panicking at last minute. Well we shall see. 

It's been a few weeks since I have last posted a blog. I am now on my Easter Break. I was planning on doing some work last week but unfortunately I got distracted and had a relaxing first week off. It is now the second week of the break and i am getting down to my work now. 
I have been doing some orchestration today and I feel I have made progress. In the last couple of hours I have been working on my Bach piece which is getting there I just keeping rethinking of what other instruments to use and perhaps changing the ones I am already using. I am using a programme called Sibelius. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a music notation software. This lets me see exactly what notes I am entering and notifies me when I have gone out of range. 
I am planning on using a drum kit in either one or two of my pieces so I have been learning how to read drum music and to be honest it isn't difficult. As they saying goes, you learn something new everyday and I have :D
I feel I am pretty confident when orchestrating a piece of music once I get started, the only down side is deciding which instruments to use as it is up to me rather than someone asking me to orchestrate a piece of music for specific instruments.
Well I'm going to get back to writing out my drum part. Hopefully I won't leave it too long until my next blog post. Enjoy your Easter.

Rhythm choir

Today i attended the first rehearsal of the Rhythm Choir. I had so much singing rhythms along to the words: du, dn, duea, dah. It was tricky to get the hang of at first. Once I got the hang of it I then could not stop laughing because I then started getting tongue tied. It then got even funnier when we started marching along to the beat of the rhythms. I had such a good time that I am looking forward to the next rehearsal.

Community Concert

Today I performed at a local church with along with my fellow community music class students. At Carrick Knowe Parish Church on the first Thursday of every month they have a pensioners club. Today we entertained them during their afternoon tea.

I really enjoy playing to the elderly because there are from a different generation and they appreciate the music in different ways from today's generations.

Classical Concert

Last night was the Classical concert. I thought it went really well and I really enjoyed it. I played in the concert band, sax ensemble and sang in the choir.


Can't wait for the next performance block.


Today I have my first clarinet lesson of the new year. I need to work on playing the low E and F fluently and practice playing over the break(without squeaking).

Concerts

Well it's now that time again were I have a couple of concerts at the end of the performance blocks. This time we only had 2 weeks to learn our repertoire because the first week was before the Christmas break. During that week we learned some pieces to play at the little Christmas concert that was put on in the Music Box on the last day. 
I have the Contemporary concert music tonight in which I am playing in the jazz band. Tomorrow night it is the Classical concert where I am playing in several ensembles: choir, concert band and the sax ensemble.


Looking forward to two good nights to end my week on.

Back To College

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. 
I'm now as they say 'back to the grind stone'. I've now been back for two days and it has been filled with rehearsals. concert band,choir, saxophone ensemble and jazz band. The jazz band has been working with one of the degree students- Dale with his Contemporary Music Technology project. Today we performed the composed piece along with Dale's laptop solo. It was very enjoyable.