Life of Wiley

Hmm, well first post in the church category and it’s to announce that I will be taking a 2 year sabbatical from May to devote my time to bringing up our young family. We’re expecting our second child in May and I think we’ll have our hands full!

Wey Hey! Went to the rehearsal last night rather unexpectedly and Martyn had a great surprise in store. We worked on a couple of the pieces for the Milton Keynes contest and then he got out Buglers Holiday. For those that don’t know, Buglers Holiday is a cornet trio that makes fairly extensive use of double-tonguing, although it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected to play. I’ve been dying to play this piece since I heard a recording of Canadian Brass performing it (well at least I think it was them, but I can’t find it listed in their discography!) I’d better start improving my double-tonguing technique pretty quick!

Residents Caught Out By Match Changes (from Watford Observer)

Having lived in West Watford up until 3 years ago and fought the council over plans to introduce match day parking on our street, I have nothing but sympathy for the residents caught out by this. There is nothing that can be done further if residents have made the effort to get fixture lists and visitor permits, if the clubs then go and change fixtures without much warning.

It’s unfair for the council to say this is the resident’s responsibility I feel the responsibility really rests with the club, Saracens in this case, and residents should get together and pursue the club for reimbursement. People who do not follow rugby or football should not be expected to check if any matches have changed.

I feel a letter to the Watford Observer coming on!

Just listened to Green Hornet from the soundtrack of the film Kill Bill vol. 1; it is superb. It is a trumpet piece played by Al Hirt, a phenomenal trumpet player who sadly died 4 years ago. It has elements of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumble Bee in it.

Whilst I’m talking brass I might as well mention that my cornet practice last night continued to show improvement, although my eyes seemed a bit funny as I couldn’t read the notes well. I even managed to squeeze out a couple of the high Cs in Buster Strikes Back. I’ve been told that I’ll be performing this with the band in May at the blind centre. Martyn reckons that this should alleviate my nerves as the audience won’t be able to see me, to which I countered that they’d still be able to hear my nerves through the playing. Hopefully it should be okay with plenty of practice, and it’s an informal gig anyway.

I read an interesting article on the Trumpet Players International Network (TPIN) mailing list regarding spread embouchures. What is a spread embouchure, well according to this post from Timothy Jon Phillips:

Main symptoms are:
can’t play long phrases on one breath
Fatigues quickly
Air before the sound during attacks
No subtlity in attacks… explodes or wiffs
Have to blow your butt (can I say butt?) off to play out of the staff Low register attacks will be thick and inaccurate Usually requires very large facial movements to do “lip slurs”

This pretty much sums up my playing quite a lot of the time. Anyone reading this who may have hints as to how to overcome this please contact me!

A surprisingly good and well attended rehearsal plus the first committee meeting of 2004.

We had the first rehearsal of 2004 last night at band. It went quite well really; most of the players turned up, in fact I can only think of one player who didn’t turn up who hadn’t got an excuse.

I played reasonably well although my lip gave out in the last half an hour.

We also had a committee meeting after the rehearsal which went on for quite some time, although we still finished in under 2 hours which I don’t think is bad, but when you’re not starting until 10.15pm it is quite late. I suppose we do have a lot to discuss at the moment what with the upcoming AGM and contests, not to mention trying to think of ways of fundraising and getting sponsorship. Louise wasn’t happy about it all the same, but I don’t see what we can do beyond moving it to a different non-rehearsal day.

Well, as promised, I had another cornet practice tonight and it was a lot more constructive than last night. The tone was much improved do; rather than just doing a warm up and then blowing through some tunes I just did a warm up and then some exercises from Clark’s Technical Studies. Couldn’t get anything above a high G though when playing a couple of the Kopprasch studies. Oh well, it will come.

Just had an excellent swimming session (all part of the new exercise and lose weight regime). I went at 10.00pm and there was not another soul in the pool so I ended up just have a really leisurely swim chatting to the lifeguard as paced up and down the pool alongside me. If only all swimming sessions could be like that, I might do it more often!

First day back at work today after nearly 3 weeks off. There were 2800+ e-mails waiting for me in my inbox and of those only 50 were not spam!

Found out that my mate Mike has got himself engaged over Christmas, congratulations Mike and Flash. I’ve added his blog into the left hand panel.

Had a bit of a hectic weekend with band related stuff. As I’m the contest secretary for Watford Band I thought I’d get the new registrations and transfers sorted out for the upcoming contests. I hadn’t realised that there’s a 4 week delay in making a transfer effective and this pushes right up to the Milton Keynes contest on Feb 8th! Added to that I was still missing a couple of completed registration cards and transfer forms.

I also had my first practice of 2004, not surprisingly it wasn’t very good. Going to have to sort out a proper practice routine this year. My tone was awful and anything above a high G was not happening. This could be a real problem since Martyn, our MD, has asked me to do Buster Strikes Back this year which has 4 or 5 high Cs in it. Oh well, I’ll have another, more methodical practice tonight and then see how it goes at the rehearsal tomorrow.

Problems with grafitti and a good night out at the Panto.

Still can’t quite believe this, but some moron is spraying grafitti on our front garden wall! I had to wash some more off today (I also had to do it when we arrived back from our Christmas break). It’s not just a tag either, but extremely foul and obscene language. I’m just thankful my son can’t read yet. Fortunately it’s only sprayed on using that spray snow so it washes off very easily.

On a lighter note we went to see the Pantomime at Rickmansworth’s Watersmeet theatre. This year it was Cinderella and was very good. Euan liked Buttons the best but said he didn’t like it because it had got the wicked step-sisters in it!