Archive for January, 2014

What Happens When You Don’t Practice

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

I last picked up my trombone around December 1 or so, sometime before we left for Oklahoma to go get our baby girl Melia, so it had been about sixty days since I even touched the instrument. I took it to school with me during reading week, but for the first three-and-a-half weeks back, it sat forlornly in my office. I really need a reason to play the thing other than “I went to conservatory and feel guilty every day that I don’t practice now.”

But, today, I got in forty minutes on the trombone, and it went something like this.

“I guess I will need the Super-Slick today after all.”

“Is this the right mouthpiece?”

“That note shouldn’t sound like that.”

“Did my lips get skinnier?”

“Hey, that note was in tune!”

“I used to have bigger lungs than this.”

“Ooh… that note was *not* in tune.”

“How does that warm-up routine go?”

“That felt better than I remember it.”

“That didn’t.”

“High notes don’t feel so bad.”

“Yes, they do!”

“That felt like that old guy I used to play with in high school that made me think I’ll never let my tone sound like that.”

“Definitely need to do this more often.”

“Maybe a couple of heads from the Real Book would be a good idea.”

“All the heads in the Real Book are in bad keys and emphasize the tubby range of the instrument, but don’t go low enough for me to take them up an octave. It’s a saxophonist conspiracy.”

“My left arm is tired.”

“My right arm is tired.”

“That was a passable attempt at Bitsch etude number 4.”

“Is that my spit valve cork coming loose?”

“No.”

“I still can’t play pedal tones like Chad Arnow.”

“Gotta get more gigs and have a reason to practice.”

“Time to go home.”

Perspective and Perception

Sunday, January 19th, 2014

It’s been a busy winter so far in the Saunders household.  In December, I wrapped up my piano concerto just in time for us to drive to Oklahoma to pick up our new baby girl, Melia Noelle.  She’s doing wonderfully, and it’s great to have a baby in the house again.  This is my second time becoming a father, of course, and fatherhood has been the second greatest adventure of my life so far (with marriage being the first).  I’ve been learning by watching Noah the last three-and-a-half years, and now I can learn by watching Melia, too.  It’s yet another change in perspective for me, because I’ve never lived with a little girl before–I only have one brother.  The next eighteen years or so should prove very educational.  Six months ago, we thought that Noah was it, and our household would max out at three, but having a sibling is going to bring a balance to Noah’s life that I think is critical–not that single children can’t grow up to be good people, of course, but my life has been profoundly different–and better–because I had to learn to live with my brother (who now lives in Germany, and who I miss horrendously every day!).  As much as Becky’s life and my life changed on December 6, Noah’s life changed even more, because Melia will probably be the one who he knows the longest.

Noah has a change in perception coming up.  At preschool, he failed an eye exam a couple of months back, so we followed up with a pediatric opthamologist.  He seems to have the same astigmatism that both his parents have, but is apparently hyperopic, or far-sighted, where Becky and I are both near-sighted.  We didn’t suspect that he had vision problems, but it explains some things that we chalked up to his personality–namely, that he won’t sit still to learn letters and words (I backed way off of that this summer when it was frustrating us to the point that it seemed to be doing more harm than good).  If he is, in fact, hyperopic (which we will determine at a follow-up appointment), the kid can only see the flashcards with a lot of strain and concentration, which is tiring and taxing to the three-year-old attention span.  It probably means glasses, and many kids have a degree of hyperopia.

What struck me, though, is how his world will change when he got those glasses.  Like the souls in Plato’s cave, Noah has no idea that the world can look any differently than it does–and frankly, those of us with corrected vision have no assurance that we see things as they are, either.  Descartes held that only an evil demon of a God would make reality an illusion, but to an extent it is–we only perceive a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic and sonic spectra, and most of the Universe is beyond our ability to detect because of the finite speed of light.  We are limited to three dimensions and time flows in a single direction from our experience.  Yet, when Noah gets his glasses, everything will change.  Meanwhile, I’m planning to buy one of those sets of letters that you see in classrooms above the blackboard for Noah’s playroom wall.  And I have no idea how you keep glasses on a three-year-old’s face…