My days here continue to be awesome. At a
first cursory glance at my schedule, it appears that I don’t have enough to do. And I do have large gaps in my schedule, it
is true. The first couple of days of
classes, I was quite worried that I wouldn’t be able to fill my time. This was a really stupid thing to worry
about. Here is a short description of
what I did on Friday—a day when I had relatively few classes.
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| My Schedule |
My classes started at eleven, so I got to
sleep in. Since I got to sleep-in, I
knew I could stay up late the previous night.
So I played music until midnight.
Back on Friday morning, I had a leisurely extra hour in bed where I
wrote down some thoughts and practiced clapping some rhythms. Then I realized I was late, and ran to the T
at 10:30, so I could get to Berklee by 11:00.
I had my musicianship class first, which is
basically ear training. I love this class,
as it is very interactive and the teacher is fantastic. She makes the most mundane exercise seem
fun. We sing, clap and write down
rhythms. It is very fun, and often
funny. On Friday we had a short quiz,
which meant that each of us sight sang and sight clapped a couple of bars from
our workbook. We went around in a
circle, everyone singing/clapping different bars. Each person got a moment in the spotlight…
certainly not my favourite activity.
From there I raced off to my ensemble class,
something for which I was really excited.
All week I had heard other ensembles practicing, the horn players
swinging and the drums pounding out an awesome groove. But alas, my class wasn’t like that. The
class was 2 hours long and we didn’t play any music. The guitar
players were nice, hopefully I will get to jam with them later. Since the group wasn’t a good match for me, I
went and talked to the Five-Week office.
The people there were so great.
They were very sympathetic and gave me a new jazz ensemble to replace
the bad one and also put me in a funk-fusion band. Those people are awesome.
Then that was it for my classes on
Friday. I was done at 2:00pm. Except then I met two other violin players
and we practiced for a little while… one and a half hours. We worked on the songs we are playing in the
Five-Week orchestra. We practiced chops
(the rhythmic way of dropping the bow on the strings to produce sounds like a
quiet drum). Then we jammed on a
blues. It was pretty awesome to play
with other fiddle players like this. I
only have experience doing this type of thing with my dad, so it was pretty
cool to hear their different playing styles and to be able to trade solos three
different ways.
While we were practicing, I noticed people
traipsing past the window in the door to our practice room (more like a practice
closet). Each person would peer inside,
staring at the three violins making odd chunking sounds. Then they would walk on. I presume they were
prospective students on a tour. I felt
like I was in a zoo, everyone coming to look at the exotic fiddle players. This image amused me so much, and then my
friends when I told them, that we laughed until we cried. One of my friends pointed out that we were
even displaying like animals in a zoo—which of course made us laugh harder.
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| Poly-rhythms in a Pizza Parlour |
Afterwards, I took a half hour break to eat
some lunch, and then I went back to the practice rooms to practice my own
assignments. I’m mostly working on modes
and movable finger patterns based on the mode arpeggios. Then you can move the finger patterns and
play them over different chords to get entirely different sounds. I can’t describe how much fun it is to learn
this stuff. It’s kind of like learning
how to use different spices when you are cooking. Each spice gives the same dish a really different
flavour.
I was pretty tired at 5:30, so I packed up
and went back home, to Fisher College.
Where, after a short rest I did… can you guess? I practiced some more! This type of day seems to be what my routine
is settling in to, and it is the best thing ever. I don’t need
to do anything but play music, so music is all I’m doing. If I’m not careful, I’m going to leave Boston
without ever having been a normal tourist here.
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