Lesson 9/10/03

Fred took the month of August off, so I was a lazy bum, and didn’t practice much until the end of August. Today was my first lesson back, and it went surprisingly well (though I hadn’t advanced as far in the book as I would like 🙂

I played a minor etude (the first in my book, since they just introduced minor scales), and actually did a fair job, though I forgot to keep playing the couple times I messed up. I have to get it into my head that it’s like juggling with a partner — you just keep going when someone drops, no matter what, and when someone can pick up the dropped club, they fit it back into the pattern. Except here, I just need to let the bad notes go, and get on with the tune. I suppose since I’m not playing with anyone, I feel like I can just back up instead of forging ahead.

We also talked about transposing cello music to play with the alto sax. Andrew plays cello, so it would be fun to try playing a duet with him (or it may cause a breakup….hmmmm). Anyway, Fred had discovered early that alto sax music can be relatively easily transposed by taking the cello music, which is in concert key, and is written in the bass clef. Pretend that it’s in treble clef (i.e. don’t change where the notes are, but change the bass clef symbol to a treble clef symbol). Finally, actually change the key by either changing the key signature or adding accidentals. Andrew and I are going to try to find a beginning cello duet book that has a few pieces in the right key. The problem with taking music he already has is that I only know four major scales: C, G, F, and D; these translate to concert scales as E-flat, A-flat, B-flat and F major. much of Andrew’s current “easy” music is in sharp scales.