This Week: Day by Day - Tuesday

I decided not to add to yesterday's post as I realized that by tomorrow - not to mention the end of the week! - the post would be terribly extensive.  And so, here is post two instead:

Tuesday:

Everyone slept longer than me this morning.  I love early mornings when its just me and my thoughts.  It's so peaceful.  My mind is not cluttered by events and issues of the day and I just have time to process and think.  I might not think about anything particularly, but it's refreshing.

It wasn't too long into this early paradise when Annie got up.  She wanted to go and change into clothes right away but I called her to come down stairs and give me a snuggle.  She came bounding down and snuggled in at my right before she was up and away again looking for a tissue, an activity she kept up most of the day.  And yes, it was necessary.  (Was that a bit TMI??  Sorry... XD)  Annie was quite restless right from the get-go today and she kept wanting to head upstairs and get changed.  I know she's so keen to dress herself in the mornings - she figures that if she gets in before hand, she gets to pick her own clothes and won't have to wear what anyone else thinks she should wear (i.e. jeans or trackpants... don't worry about being too cold, love!)   I also knew however that there was a very good way to keep her centred and settled - breakfast.  She managed to stay in the kitchen while I prepared my quinoa porridge, and then I put her in her high chair and set the precious bowl of wheat flakes in front of her.  Eventually everyone made it to breakfast, and Grace volunteered to have toast thus diverting a crisis with the last of the milk.  

After I did my job - vacuuming this week - I went up stairs to the study to do some music practice.  A lot of my mornings are now filled with music practises, what with flute, piano and my newly acquired violin.  I usually start with violin, but since I got new music for flute last night at band, I decided to do that instead.  I thought I would start with the 'easy' one.  It was amazing how difficult I found it.  I think I just don't keep up with the pace at band so that I hadn't really taken in some of the rhythms and runs.  And just saying, runs are quite difficult on flute - it isn't just dependant on fingering the keys - some notes have the same fingering - but as the pitch changes, so does your breath pressure and the way you have to purse your lips.  Hopefully I can master it before long.

After our reading time as a family, it was piano practise time.  I am currently practising from the Suzuki piano book three, as I really want to know the pieces I will have to someday teach.  That piece at the moment is a sonata or sonatina by Clementi.  Of course I have favourite pieces that I always play through as well, just because I can.  Those pieces are Fur Elise by Beethoven, Prelude in C number 1 by Bach, and Prelude in C minor by Chopin.

After Piano it was time to hit the violin.  Ok, not literally, but I did get a lesson from Joy as she is the one teaching me.  She informed me that "Song of the Wind" was going well, but "Lightly Row" really did need more work.  She also gave me "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" and another song that I can not remember the title of right now... it has something to do with children.

Stir-fried curry sausages and veggies on rice for lunch - yum!  ^_^

After lunch, my not-so-great feeling started to get worse.  I had been hoping that it would turn out to be hay-fever from the windy weather, but by the time afternoon rolled around, I was pretty sure I had a cold - again.  We have had a real hard time trying to shake this bug.  Whenever we start to get better, it attacks again.  Mum convinced me to get a doctor's appointment, and so I am booked in for tomorrow afternoon.  I kind of hope he finds something that is treatable with antibiotics, because then he won't just send me home under orders to rest.  That always seems kind of useless to me.  Because I wasn't feeling good - at all - I snuggled on my bed with The Book Thief and even dozed off for half an hour before I had to get up and get ready for my piano student.

My Tuesday student is new - she is only seven and had her first lesson last week.  Her family is Indian and she and her little sister are absolutely beautiful.  She is picking up what I am teaching her very quickly.  She is proving to be an absolute blessing and a delight to teach.

After they left, we had our nightly routine of dinner prep/end of day laundry while watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire and Family Feud.  

So that was about my day... What did you do today?  I hope you had a blessed one!  I leave you tonight with a very timely verse sent to me by a dear friend.

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

We Three Kings of Ominous Are...

Today Jess, Grace, Joy and I tried to do some music together.  This is always an interesting exercise as we are all of very different temperaments and each have our own idea of how to learn something as a group.  In the past, we have tried to learn hymns together (we called ourselves "Hers playing Hymns") but it never got very far.  So today, we decided, would be the day.

As it is coming up to Christmas, we chose "We Three Kings" with Grace on the piano, Jess on cello, Joy on violin, and me on the flute.  The very first verse threw us into turmoil.  It is obviously the three kings singing together, so we had to play together.  There was only a melody line and a scant harmony written in on the music.  

"Don't worry," I said, the ever-optimistic.  "I'll just write a harmony in.  GRACE WOULD YOU STOP PLAYING PLEASE!!!!"  And yes, believe it or not, I yelled that bit.  (Grace has a tendency to get bored when we aren't playing and starts to play her own thing loudly over everything else.) 

"Noooooo... don't write a harmony now!!!"  the girls beg.  I promptly sit down at the piano, pencil in hand, ready to do the deed.   Grace and Joy go outside in frustration.  Jess sits there and plays on the ipod.

15 minutes later...

"I'm done!"  Everyone comes back and I proudly display my three part harmony - for the first verse.  I inform them that I will take care of the chorus later.  They groan, but we start playing the new music.
"Stop, stop, stop, stop, STOP, STOP, STOP!!!!"  I call.  "It doesn't sound good right now!!!"

Grace's head makes contact with the music rack as Joy complains, "I'm sight reading."

"We're all sight reading," Jess says dryly. 

"Look,"  I say logically.  "Let's run through our parts separately." 

Grace groans again and leaves the room.  "Call me when you're ready."

Joy, Jess and I practice separately and then together.  We call Grace back, and she accompanies us on the piano.  It sounds good - the first verse.  The chorus is a wreck, but we figure we play the chorus through once for each verse, so we have plenty of time to figure it out.

Joy takes the part as the first king, the king who offers gold.  We convince her that the violin sounds much better if she stands up, instead of sitting on the floor, but she brings up another problem.  "I haven't got anywhere for my music," she says.  We are starting to get desperate, so we blu-tack the music to the glass sliding door near the piano, and that does the trick.  (You know they say that necessity is the mother of invention!)  Joy is only part way through her verse when I stop her again.

"Joy, stop.  You are playing a king - A KING - he is a vigorous king, not a weak person about to cry.  And use your vibrato - it sounds so much better."

"I hate vibrato."

"Do it anyway.  That's better."

I am the frankenscence king, and as I know what I want out of the verse, it goes off without a hitch... ;)

Jess is the myrrh king and plays her verse nice and deep on the cello, accompanied by deep chords played by Grace.  Dubbed the "death verse" by its gracious cellist, it has a tendency to make us start giggling in the middle of it.

We finally worked out the chorus and were really happy with how it sounded.  We played it through a few times and were starting to get comforable with the harmonies and the parts when Mum came in the room.

"The harmonies sound really good," she encouraged us, "but there's something wrong with the timing.  It is supposed to be in 3/8 - I think you are playing it in 2/2." 

We were.  How we managed that, I'm not sure, but Grace says she can't play it in 3/8 and so now we have to wait until she can figure it out.  I know she can do it, she just needs to practice.

So that was our music session for the day.  I would love to master some more pieces together - we'll have to wait and see.  :)