Today I feel surprisingly accomplished
Aug. 5th, 2011 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janne_dI played my clarinet this afternoon, for the first time in... ooh, must be a couple of years at least and even before that it had been sporadic for another bunch of years. So I was a bit worried that I'd pick it up and be unable to remember any fingering or how to read music.
But to my pleased surprise, it all cameflooding trickling back. The first attempt at playing an (easy) tune was a bit messy but then I dragged out my book of scales and plugged through a bunch of majors and minors until it felt like the relevant portion of my brain had started to wake up. And then I was away with proper music for about 40 minutes - I'm amazed my embrasure held up that long. Apparently muscle memory is incredibly retentive as well because apart from coming unstuck at trickier bits of fingering, some failure of sightreading when accidentals popped up and a trifling difficulty in remembering which of the weird key combinations up at the upper end of the instrument range was which note, it was mostly okay. I think I'd struggle with pieces I didn't know, but with most of the ones I tried, as long as I didn't think too much it was okay. Not proficient, mind, or particularly smooth but way better than I was expecting.
I need to practice more, because I felt so satisfied when I'd finished playing. And also so I can regain the ability to play semiquavers evenly... I don't really know why I stopped - no I do, it was because I didn't like practicing when I was in a shared house for some reason. (Now I can just annoy the neighbours, which I will try not to think about.) Pretty stupid to let it slip, since I'd worked so hard at it when I was at school. I'm not mssively musical but I made it my goal to pass the ABRSM Grade 8 in my final year of school and I played in the school band, the school orchestra, the regional schools wind band and a concert band one of the music teachers ran... I probably could have passed the exam with a better mark than I did, but it ended up being 2 weeks earlier than me and my teacher had anticipated and I was so nervous I threw up before it (the only exam in my life I have done that for).
Oh, and random weird fact: my accompanist for the exam was Magnus Magnusson's sister - a very lovely woman and very good at playing the piano.
But to my pleased surprise, it all came
I need to practice more, because I felt so satisfied when I'd finished playing. And also so I can regain the ability to play semiquavers evenly... I don't really know why I stopped - no I do, it was because I didn't like practicing when I was in a shared house for some reason. (Now I can just annoy the neighbours, which I will try not to think about.) Pretty stupid to let it slip, since I'd worked so hard at it when I was at school. I'm not mssively musical but I made it my goal to pass the ABRSM Grade 8 in my final year of school and I played in the school band, the school orchestra, the regional schools wind band and a concert band one of the music teachers ran... I probably could have passed the exam with a better mark than I did, but it ended up being 2 weeks earlier than me and my teacher had anticipated and I was so nervous I threw up before it (the only exam in my life I have done that for).
Oh, and random weird fact: my accompanist for the exam was Magnus Magnusson's sister - a very lovely woman and very good at playing the piano.