Laurel Black Music

Between visits to our new city to house-hunt and making sad attempts at packing up our home, I'm squeezing in as much practice as my forearms and sanity will let me. There's the part of me that says you should ALWAYS be practicing .  There's also the part that says your practice will be crap if you don't WANT to do work .  Then there's the other part that seems to always remind me that I PRACTICE BETTER when I'm also exercising and taking time for short meditations. There's no shortcut for hard work, for practice so tedious that you want to stab yourself in the eye with the end of your mallet.  But there has to be a balance, right?  It has to be ok that sometimes you have to clean the house before practice so you are able to focus on the notes and not on everything else you have to do. I wonder if other people can prioritize practice to the point that all other things are forgotten and ignored, and can they do that without the creeping anxiety of everyth...

This post is a continuation of my first Musical Arts and Crafts publication, which I have copied as the next entry in this blog. You know, in case you didn't get to read it the first time... ;) Alrighty. Musical arts and crafts is all about mounting scores into a large book that makes reading multiple pages and the resulting page turns manageable for the soloist.  There's something about it that shows a sense of ownership about learning the piece. When I'm fiddling with 20 loose pages I feel like someone who is barely trying to hold on, but when it's mounted in my book, I feel like I have control over my learning experience of the piece. It's very satisfying. What I have to share with you today are some examples of "things getting crazy" in the mounting process. In other words, I just mounted a score that was not pretty, required lots of cutting and folding and taping, and whose pages aren't even in chronological order. That's right, folks, so...

The post below is copied from my other blog, called Creative Laurels.  Musical Arts and Crafts I love playing marimba. What I happen to love just as much (...besides sewing and writing...and playing the piano) is mounting a score into my pretty little book. What do I mean by this?? Let me show you. When a piece is 14 pages long, it takes up this much space: SO MANY PAGES. And in case you were wondering, I have two Shakespeare quotes on my office wall: "Thought is free." "Say as you think and speak it from your soul." The center quote says, "In order to live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong." - Joseph Chilton Pearce I have always made my own little posters of my favorite quotes, but as that's not what this post is about I shall move on.  So, turning 14 pages is not an option in performance, especially when my hands are tied up holding mallets. And, since nobody wants to be the person with 6 stands in front of ...

It's a final week of concerts to end the spring semester. I, along with the percussion studio, have been very busy. 4/27: 4pm General Recital (for any music student wishing to perform)           7pm Band Concert 4/28:  7pm Sr. Recital: Austin Bolden, percussion and composition             performed two world premieres:             2012 for marimba and piano. Concert Music in E-flat for solo euphonium and piano 4/29: 7pm Sr Recital: Matt Harvey, percussion            "Chromatic Foxtrot" by George Hamilton Green (me, piano; Casey, drum set) 4/30: 6pm Percussion Ensemble Concert               Marimba Spiritual  - soloist 5/1: 5pm Sr Recital: Chelsea McGlothlin, voice 5/5: 5pm Faculty Recital: with David Ball, low brass           BASTA for solo trombone, by Folke Rabe       ...