Davey commented on my super hot picture located at the top right hand side of this page in the about me section. It does look super ghetto (would you expect or accept anything else from me?) for a few reasons. The resolution is terrible cause i guess you can only have 50 kilobytes of picture file or something.. so it took some resaving and stuff.
The picture originates from this summer. Fi and I went on our super road trip, and this was one of the 5 pictures that survived. Thats right, we went on a two-week epic roadtrip and this is all that survived. This is due to 2 reasons: 1)flail and 2)ezonics
1) my camera was rendered unuseable after there was a flailing incident in transit between me and fiona early on in the trip
2) the other camera we had was fiona's. doesn't ezonics just sound like a super high quality camera brand? it's not really that bad.. its mostly that fi's had it a while, and its showing the signs of wear... mostly a battery slider that doesnt close all the way, so you have to hold it when the camera is on... we realised this, but not the fact that if you let go right after, it would shut off and not save any of the pictures we took. Oh well, no biggy cause fi and I will remember this trip forever, and relive it from time to time to keep it fresh in mind.
The picture: I still had my sandals, and theres a "cruisecanada.com" van in the background and a visible green, presumably parliamentary roof in the background as well. therefore it must have been early in Ottawa. The stupid cutout man was wearing a safety vest similar to my shirt and pointing to his right, so I decided to stand by him and point to the left, thus creating an artistic balance... we never did find out what he was pointing to.. there was no sign or anything...thus a legend is born!
Wow today was busy and productive. I had class, comp lesson, then a meeting at the modern dance school, which took all of maybe 5 minutes, just to get music I will need to learn... 70 pages of it..! Nevertheless, thanks to the transit system, this meeting took me away from the school for 3 hours. I returned to the school at 6, and practiced until 9:30, and i actually was at the piano playing for 3 hours out of that time! go me! I got a huge chunk of work done on the Mozart, and ya, greatly productive all around.
I have reached a point of stress with the Scriabin etude. The metronome marking on it says 152. I am currently playing it at 134, and I feel it won't be getting much faster.. The recording I have of it doesn't go near that tempo either, and takes a lot of time here and there. it might be at that tempo between 2 or three of every 10 notes, each phrase accelerates then backs off. I feel confident that i can produce a good performance of it as things stand, but I feel obligated to be able to play it at that tempo, strictly with the metronome, simply because it is an etude. Nevertheless, I will continue to work at it, and make it better, because that's what pianists do.
I realised yesterday that I have to play the Rachmaninoff prelude for this audition in a week or two, and I haven't touched it in months.. so i need to do a nice spiffy touch up job on it. Today I pulled it out, and didnt even try to play it, I worked just on the finger work that I know needs to be done. I also worked on the 2nd page, which needs to be block chorded, to remember to where the hands are moving... I would prefer if I hadn't left it quite so late, but it's definately manageable..
ooh ooh and the Scriabin pieces are almost solidly memorized.. that is they are, but not perfectly. only some small hesitations here and there, but at the speed the etude rips along at, anything seems like a huge gap. When I take time for the phrases, the memory doesnt cause problems, but if I can have it perfectly memorised while metronoming, there will be no problems with the performance. The middle movement (ironically the PRElude) is still the least secure memorywise.. its just not as cut and dry harmonically as the other ones... but really, this is Scriabin, nothing is cut and dry.. it's jujst a little more... 'modern' than the other ones.
All in all, I feel good at the moment about my preparation, butI still have so much more to do.. the second movement of Mozart needs much attention, and LEARNING of notes...oops. but I have a whole week after Genser prelims to worry about that! Ha ha huh... I also have a fair bit of music to learn for accompanying singers for the MRMTA scholarship auditions on top of my own sonata to finish learning... oi vay, I sure have become quite the busy little beaver.
hmm, enough blithering for one night...