sir mixolydian-a-lot

(so this entry was written on tuesday but never posted. oop!)

it's the afternoon of the snowpocalpyse and i'm not at work, haven't been there all day. that means i should have had a lot of time and energy to devote to this post instead of spreadsheets, right?

yeah, no.

i am enjoying the quiet of a sleepy apartment. coco is knocked out on my lap and juan's gone to lie down for a well-deserved birthday nap.  i relish the silence.

the biff and me with exchanged instruments
(and my terrible hat hair)!

you'd think that someone who used to be so committed to playing in musical ensembles would want to enhance the daily experience with sound, and it's often true, but being a musician (in practice or in principal) allows you to fine tune an appreciation for stillness, for the rest between breaths and notes.  this is a sensibility that i've neglected and need to rekindle. your voice can't always be drowned out in sound.

last week started out as a quiet one. as planned, i sniffed out resources to re-visit music theory early on. it's been more than ten years since i wrote a sonatina or chorale in class but i've felt a need to re-fire those creative synapses. i felt like a chunk of the "me" i describe to other people has been missing - do we sense a recurring theme with these past few weeks' of entries? 

i found a series of videos on youtube that proved pretty helpful in getting back on track. lypur's videos are kind of heady, so they or may not be good for everyone interested in learning the basic.  since i can already read sheet music and notation i skipped through to video 8, which covers semi/half and whole tones, and pushed through to 9, which briefly touches on pentatonic vs diatonic scales. upper level videos were where things started to get interesting and it's amazing how much information i kept as reference material even though i wasn't applying it.

i remembered a lot of little tricks, like taking 3 half steps down from a major scale to get to minor, and memorized the sharps and flats for each major scale.  theory's got its own patterns and mnemonics and lingo.

ah, the memories.

and modes... holy hell.  i once knew them by heart.  this video is great if you know your scales already.  dorian and aeolian are where it's at.

this week (already in the works), i'll be making a creative gift for someone or someones just because. these projects are going to take some time to finish, but i'll be sure to upload some pictures of finished pieces on monday.