Amateur music, string and Oresteia

Yesterday I was in need of something quick to cook in hot weather,  and made pasta with a simple sauce of crushed tomatoes, basil picked right before, olive oil, butter, red pepper flakes.

Pecorino romano sprinkled on. Sprig of fresh picked Italian basil.

Later I tried a bowl of butternut squash carrot soup made with home chicken broth, but cold., a heatwave not being the time for hot soup. It was surprisingly good,too. Noted.

And since I'm hors de combat for cording right now, I dyed my current output in a black walnut, red maple, turmeric mix dye I had in the freezer.

Here with a glass bottle keeping it submerged, because it wanted to float

And here after overnight soaking, nice warm color interesting for future reference. Now hanging to drip dry over the sink.

Meanwhile back to reading, I thought this enforced indoor period might be a good time to read a classic and downloaded the Oresteia to my Kindle .

Tigger, get F to look here. You're right in there! 

I hadn't realized it's a trilogy. Anyway it's a rsttlin good story, starts at the fall of Troy , dramatic message passed across land and sea by beacons, and very readable, too. 

In translation, my school days of translating Homer being a bit behind me. Nausicaa doing the laundry, even in ancient classics it's always danged housework.  

Moving along from a misspent youth with Greek and Latin and other languages, to music and what I've done about it.

I always wanted to play violin but piano was available, so I trudged off at age six to learn, gah. I also took singing lessons then, mainly because my wise Mom thought the breathing might help with ny severe asthma. Turned out I had a decent voice, and wasn't racked with stage fright performing.

I performed in various local festivals, terrified at the piano performance -- Town Hall, grand piano, hundreds of people, big deal, and much more confident and successful with singing. 

I have what's called relative pitch, vital for a singer, meaning the ability to hit intervals correctly, such as eg singing one octave higher than the prompting note. It means you can reliably sing the tune as written without missing notes or needing an accompanying melody to copy.

I don't have perfect, or absolute, pitch, which is the ability to identify a note with no context.  Not many people do, and it's a good question whether it's useful or not, but that's a debate for another time and place. 

Anyway, violin had to wait till midlife when I had the chance to try it. I rented a great German violin, 200 years old, mellow, and a friend's daughter lent me her excellent bow, light enough for my hand. 

Finding a teacher took a bit of doing, since they usually don't teach adults and are a bit unsure about it, but I did eventually, and became a modestly proficient player, able to be in the second violin section of an orchestra. 

My colleagues were kids! They were very kind and encouraging when they realized I wasn't some teacher, but playing at their level. There's no hierarchy of age in the arts.

I played for several years until my body rebelled and the pain pushed me to choose a physically less demanding instrument. 

That's when I found the recorder

I've played, and still own, all these except the top one.  You have to learn several in order to play in groups. Such happiness, making music together with new friends. 

Mainly it was early, medieval and Renaissance, favorite periods. At school I'd sung a lot of medieval plainsong, that being a big deal at a convent school with a built in chapel where mass was said.

So finding recorder was such a return to music I loved. Playing as an adult beginning amateur only requires enthusiasm and the willingness to make a total fool of yourself at regular intervals. 

I was also given (but I insisted only long term loan) a very good orchestral level silver flute and taught myself that, too. Gosh that takes some breath though.  

After a couple of years' joy, it was needed by a promising young student so I sent it back willingly, having had my share.

I got a bit of voice coaching in older age, too, from a retired opera singer and teacher. This was an exchange for teaching art to her severely autistic son. It was great for a while, i learned a lot about voice production and preservation, then I had to move on, life making other demands, ss it does.

About reading music -- it's simple if you learn it early enough! I learned to sightread bass and treble clefs for piano, and it was so much easier to play other instruments later,  where you only had one line to play at a time Plainsong I learned to sightread at school. We all did. It wasn't considered anything special. 

I wished I'd learned more clefs though. The viola clef is different and it's really harder to do as an adult. Your brain doesn't want to stay with it.

So that's my life in amateur music to date. I've outlived a lot of my consort friends, the demographics being against us. 

I can still play solo, and now I think I'll dust off my recorders and do that. The bass is too hard on my gnarly old hands, but the others will still work.

Blogistas, your comments have got me here! Translation: a fine mess you've got us into, Ollie! But thank you.

Happy day everyone, make art and music, read, enjoy, fight the good fight, too. Let's do it all!

Music continues, supposed to be good for the brain. Jury's out.

So I continue to play music. It's very good for your breathing to play a wind instrument. As I find when I try an extended exercise, gasp, achh..

Then after working on the exercisesyou see here, for alto recorder, moving on. These exercises are like those ghastly Czerny piano exercises which turned generations of young players off forever.

 They're really about dexterity, very important. But it's not about music, just about developing the physical ability to actually play it. Like learning to drive so as to take road trips.

I never had a piano teacher as a kid, started at six, who actually grasped this.  But they weren't performers, just local ladies who'd probably done coursework.  No joy in it. Which accounted for my misery and longing to dump the piano.

 I did have much better singing teachers, and never wanted to dump my voice.  My mom wanted me to develop  good breathing technique, to help with severe asthma. She was very smart, wanted to avoid addictive asthma remedies available back in the 40s.

 So she  arranged singing solo and in a children's choir. And we found I turned out to have a good voice. It's the facial architecture -- high roof of the mouth gives resonance. It also enables good tone on recorder and flute. Lucky.

 I eventually took up violin in middle age, with great encouragement from serious musicians who thought it was wonderful just to be trying it. They knew all about the work and all about the joy.

 My hands aren't designed for violin though -- pinkie fingers set low, so the stretch to play notes is a big strain. Take a look at great string players and see those lovely long pinkie fingers, it helps a lot. I had to move on for fear of injury, sad day.

 And later recorder and flute, more work, tons of joy and friends and playing together. Ensemble playing with friends is what I like. Not performing. I've outlived my string ensemble, and quite a few of my recorder friends. That wasn't in the plan, though.

Then today, after Rooda exercises, on to some lovely stuff.

Morley, played,  first line on soprano recorder, second line on tenor recorder.

Then I declared my musical journey paused till tomorrow. I might sing a bit. We'll see.

So that's the Great Doh, Re, Me Me, Me!