New record

i just practiced for 1.5 hours!! it was so fun. i learned a couple variations to Twinkle, Twinkle and i also learned the song Banana Boat which is their title for the song where you sing:

DEYYYYY-OOOHHHHHH
ME SAY DEYYYYYY-OOOOOHHHHH
DAYLIGHT COME AND ME WANT TO GO HOME!

i don't know why i just caps locked that, but there you go. since i am getting ahead of myself, i went back to the beginning of the book and worked through all those songs for a good 4o min of the time. practiced tone as well as half notes.

and in between there, got a skype call from rojas, so i got to play the two new songs for him real quick. that was sweet! hopefully i can keep this amount of time for practicing up, then i might catch up to my dad. nah, probably not. but it's still good to keep it up if i want to play ska by christmas. i've already voted that my goal of playing on street corners will have to wait for the warmer spring air of 2010.

Barcarolle

tonight i practiced for 40 minutes. when i came upstairs to watch heroes with my host family, they said, "thanks for serenading us with your saxophone tonight! we loved listening while we ate dinner!"

i think they were specifically talking about Barcarolle. i had started playing this song from my beginner book (meaning it's a very easy version of it) realizing that it sounded so familiar. i finally went to google to check it out. sure enough, it's the song from the opera that the main characters in "Life is Beautiful" go see. and when you wikipedia the word barcarolle, it refers to the rhythm of the songs sung by gondoliers in venice. how cool is that?

i've also officially figured out all of Come thou Fount, so that's fun.

tonight was a good one. 11.33 hours total.

Attack of the sax! (twinkle, twinkle)

over friday and sunday, i practiced a total of 60 min. i was going to do more today, but i got hungry. :P

i'm getting better, although i obviously need more practice. it has simply been encouraging to turn the pages and learn more songs. nonetheless, i will try to be more patient and stick to really getting the easier sections down perfect. if i write it down, that will help me be better at it, right?

thanks for reading! have a happy week.

Gooooooood

maybe it's the weather, maybe it's the thought of going to a baseball game tonight. whatever it is, today's 40 min practice was great! started off a little squeaky, but then it just clicked. i had super tone, and ended up moving on to several pages just because of how excited i was to learn new notes and new songs.

maybe it was listening to the song Tequila yesterday and thinking, 'wouldn't it be awesome to be able to rock that solo?!'

i dunno. but i now know part of the Mexican Clapping Song, When the Saints, and Ode to Joy. holler!

It's the altitude

thirty minutes of very few rests in between means sharayah is out of breath!

i worked a lot on that blasted G again, because it likes to make the sound an octave higher. to which i say, no me gusta! however, it was a good practice. i spent quality time on the first couple of pages this morning, and then played a couple of the basic songs on the other pages until i could play them without making a mistake. repetition is the mother of learning, after all!

welp, now i'm off to lunch with lexie--you'll get to read about that in my other blog!

Skip to my lou

can you guess what song i learned today? that's right, i practiced more of my half notes. i also learned what a fermata is. or relearned. i mean, i did study music a long time ago..

today included 30 minutes of minimal squeaking, and decent tone. i can also add F# to my list of known notes!

and as a side note, i'm working on adding a couple pictures on here. i just get a little lazy sometimes. but after cleaning not only the inside, but the outside of my sax today, i got excited on showing it off s'more. all in time, all in time. for now, just words and pics kept for my 2 favorite followers.

With an audience

it gives me great pleasure to post today. i played all the way through to page ten, which meant utilizing the half note. the half note is a challenge when it comes to breathing instruments, because the tendency, at least for me, is to slur. however, i know the importance of distinguishing notes, particularly for overly simplified versions of William Tell's Overture!!

and, ladies and gents, my host brother came in. he said, "i heard you from upstairs, and i was wondering if i could watch."

aww shucks!

so i played a little diddy for him. "that was great!" he said.

thirty precious minutes. i think wednesdays are good days.

Not so great

today's practice was cut short because it just wasn't pretty. i know i'm allowed to have these days, but they can still be annoying. i was at least able to practice all of my notes--going back to old school long notes for the sake of tone. however, i just kept squeaking. particularly on the D which is usually my best note. what can you do?

i chose to cut short the practice to a mere 15 min, which at the very least puts my total to an even number, which is good for all of those symmetrical type folks. (maybe next time i will torture you with a 17 min practice or something :P )

any way. tonight is going to be a long one, so maybe it's best for me to take a quick nap any way.
shalom.

7.25

two days in a row of practicing? yessir! love it. and love that i'm past page six.

i mainly replay everything leading up to page seven until it sounds all pretty and such. i still squeak every now and then, but learning how to clean my sax really helps take care of that.

my friend said that the sax is the easiest woodwind to pick up. but that doesn't stop it from sounding so cool! and besides, the flight of the bumblebee will be the ultimate, it'snotaseasyasitlooks moment. once i get there of course. you'll have to excuse me for dreaming, as i was perusing the music store the other day and saw that crazy solo in the 130 songs for the alto sax book.

6.75 hours in

the neck strap makes all the difference. have i mentioned that? i am now able to play many more basic songs, though i'm finding entertainment out of figuring out some hymns (more of come thou fount as well as be thou my vision--i stick to songs with the word thou in them). good stuff.

practiced for thirty minutes yesterday in between a game or two of scrabble, work at the warehouse, and high point's messy games. i'm becoming more confident of that eventual ska night.

my lips turn really red after practicing. makes me chuckle on the inside. it is also simply a joy to do something i didn't think i'd get around to this year. praise the Lord. oh, how continued visions of playing on the street corners and perhaps using that as a way to a) earn small amounts of cash and b) share my faith is rather stimulating!

Tejas practice

i played for an hour on saturday, in between all sorts of texas shenanigans, as one of my new friends likes to call it. i only squeaked a little, and it came as soon as mom came into the room. fascinating.

both mom and pops said i sound pretty good for a self-starter. for only having played a few weeks too!

i officially learned the new note, E, and was then able to play "twinkle twinkle." you know you love it. :D

on top of all of this, i have a neck strap. thanks to dad. thanks to music and arts, provider of all of my saxophone equipment (practice book, reeds, cork grease, care kit, etc.). the only bummer to music and arts in my dad's opinion is that it's really just music supply.

"music IS art," the cashier said.

"so why don't they call it that?" was my dad's reply.

6.25 total hours practiced.

Squeakish

today's practice involved a lot of squeaking. it was weird. i changed reeds, and was reminded of the funny taste of wood. idk, i guess i got used to my last one. that helped a little bit, but it looks like it might have something to do with my embouchure. it might also have something to do with my instrument.

and i still need to get a neck strap.

near the end, i was sounding all right, and even started figuring out "come thou fount." i guessed on a couple of the higher notes, which was a little confidence booster, mainly bc this song is presently my favorite hymn.

30 minutes more. i'm excited to practice when i get to texas!