Anotherblog

Infected finger

I went to a pharmacy at lunchtime to get some disinfectant for my finger, and they told me to stop being silly and go and see a doctor, today. The finger was infected and rather swollen, but I honestly didn’t think it was that bad - still, I followed their advice, and the doctor was equally confident - “goodness me, look at that!” she said, and was writing a script for antibiotics, and getting me to buy ichthammol to put on it right away.

Now I have a big bandage on the middle finger of my left hand (and I’m grateful they didn’t feel the need to lance the infected bit.)

“So there I was, giving Jeff Fenech the finger, when suddenly…”

Stupid finger. Stupid back. Now I *really* can’t play guitar.

Sore back

I’ve been knocked out for the last few days with a sore lower back. I took Monday and Tuesday off work in order to lie down a lot (although I was able to play a bit of guitar, so the days weren’t complete write-offs). It started on Friday night with, I think, a bad night’s sleep, and was exacerbated when I moved a television. I discovered the joys of voltaren, and rediscovered the joys of deep heat, reminding me of the last ski trip. Ah, skiing. Sigh! Twitch!

That was my back. It’s still enjoying letting me know that it wants to be stretched a lot, and that’s fine; I’ve been stretching a lot.

Hey, want to hear about my infected finger? No?

Satie’s Gnossienne #1.

Thanks to the weather, there’s been no chance to do archery for almost two weeks now. I’ve been making up for that by playing more guitar. Lots and lots of guitar. I (re)discovered two tunes that I want to add to the repertioire, but it’s starting to blow out a bit, now - 15 tunes? Isn’t that a bit much? Still, most of them are short.

Gnossienne #1 is not one of those short ones. I discovered a rather lovely version of this on youtube and I’ve been practicing it ever since. The Gymnopedie/Gnossienne are some of my favorite music - Gymnopedie #1 is the only piece I can play for piano, and I bought a book of satie-for-guitar in the late ’90s, but found it disconcertingly difficult, and a poor arrangement.

Thanks to youtube and online tabs, I found a better interpretation of Gnossienne #1, one that isn’t too hard, but still sounds beautiful when played with sufficient skill. A long way off, then, but still in the repertoire because it’s too beautiful for me to not have it there.

Tárrega’s Lagrima

I have two pieces by Tárrega in my repertoire. The first is Lagrima. As with a couple of the other pieces, I’d heard this song for years without really thinking about whether I could play it (most of the time, because I clearly wouldn’t be able to). Then, when browsing through the book and trying out pieces, I suddenly discovered - oh, it’s that tune!
This one’s naturally slow and not terribly hard - I only discovered that I had it a month ago, and I can already play it better than most of my other pieces. I can play the first half reasonably fluidly and without the sheet music; and I can play the rest slowly and with occasional pauses to get my fingering correct. Very little expression, but I’m mostly up to speed, mainly because it’s already pretty slow.
I now need to get out the metronome and get a bit more disciplined about practicing - I’m really enjoying playing it, but I think I’ll enjoy it more when my fingers nail the fret changes…

Archery

I’m just holding on with archery - I’ve only been able to go once a week what with one thing and another, and my arms feel it every single time. On Sunday afternoon, I was rather pleased to get an all-gold at 40m (the gold area of the target is 24cm in diameter - all-gold meant all six arrows of a round were in that circle), and then get in the gold area for the first three arrows of the next round too! Nine in a row. Even so, I think I need another lesson to make sure I’m not settling into any bad habits.

Bach’s Bourrée in E minor

The Bourrée in E minor is a standard, with pretty much the same status as Stairway to Heaven for classical musicians. Still, on a personal level I’m enjoying it. A while ago, I bought a DVD that shows how to do various classical pieces, including this one - a mistake, in retrospect, as it showed me things that I already knew. I just needed to practice more.
So that’s what I’ve been doing. I play this through at least once a day, slowly, the metronome at 76, resisting the temptation to go faster through the familiar bits. Not even close to playing this without the sheet music. No expression (which still sounds fine with Bach anyway, really), lots of mistakes, and I need to be more intelligent about my technique in some places, just to make sure I’m holding notes for the right length and not letting the open strings ring too long etc. And this, for me, is one of my more advanced pieces!

Guitar

My procrastination activity of choice lately has been the classical guitar. While I was at Emerald beach with The Gang, I bought a metronome in order to try and bring some sanity into my practice sessions. My practice sessions tend to be much more about enjoyment than progress, which is fine, except that too much playing-for-enjoyment and not enough playing-for-progress means I rapidly get bored playing the same things over and over, and then put the guitar away for another year. This time (so far) has been a bit different. I’ve got so many activities on my todo list that I don’t even need to schedule time for the guitar; I end up playing every time I schedule something else.
The metronome has pushed that delicate enjoyment/progress balance to a really good place - I’ve been both progressing and enjoying, and my fingers are getting really good callouses, and I’m getting better to the point where I wrote up an official repertoire the other day. This is the list of songs that I want to push to performance status. None of them are performable yet, but they’re all tunes that I ought to be able to do, with normal levels of practice and no further music lessons. They’re all at different levels. I can play all of them from beginning to end, slowly, from the sheet music, without expressiveness, and making some mistakes. Some of them I can play at speed. Some of them I don’t need the sheet music. Some I can play with expressiveness. Currently, there’s only one I’ve played all the way through without making any mistakes. It’s a short one.