Mark's Music School Diary.

jelloman said:
You look happy and relaxed, boss...
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Not really, but this class is a fun experience this week. I got to sit in the audience and hear the chorus sing today. Even missing a third of the voices it sounded fucking awesome in this room and I could finally hear everyone's parts:

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Mark Wein said:
It's definitely been cool getting to have some new experiences. Today's experience has been playing this A7#5(#9)/C chord in one of my classmates' charts for my small group:


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My hand hurts just looking at that...I have enough trouble with an Fsus2 chord on fret 1 :P.

Cool stuff on the singing, I wish I could sing
 
Mark Wein said:
It's definitely been cool getting to have some new experiences. Today's experience has been playing this A7#5(#9)/C chord in one of my classmates' charts for my small group:


e93eafa5b2ae46b76751db0aec89e0e2.jpg



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Why are you playing that C? THERE'S A BASS PLAYER IN YOUR PICTURE!
 
Mark Wein said:
Even missing a third of the voices it sounded fucking awesome in this room and I could finally hear everyone's parts:
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It's amazing what room acoustics can do. As primarily amplified musicians, we're used to going to a mix board or adjusting our personal amps to make everything sit right in the mix, but in acoustic classical music, you're at the mercy of the room. Too much reverberation and it's mud, but too dry and everything sounds naked and harsh. I'm playing bass in both the orchestra and the wind ensemble. The orchestra typically rehearses in the nice recital hall, while the wind ensemble gets the 'large classroom' style rehearsal room, which has heavy curtains around it, so it's actually fairly dry, but also very bright. The recital hall is very warm with a nice 2 second reverb. There's a TedX thing coming up, so the orchestra has occasionally been booted from the recital hall, and it's so much harder to make things sound balanced in that classroom.
 
Poparad said:
It's amazing what room acoustics can do. As primarily amplified musicians, we're used to going to a mix board or adjusting our personal amps to make everything sit right in the mix, but in acoustic classical music, you're at the mercy of the room. Too much reverberation and it's mud, but too dry and everything sounds naked and harsh. I'm playing bass in both the orchestra and the wind ensemble. The orchestra typically rehearses in the nice recital hall, while the wind ensemble gets the 'large classroom' style rehearsal room, which has heavy curtains around it, so it's actually fairly dry, but also very bright. The recital hall is very warm with a nice 2 second reverb. There's a TedX thing coming up, so the orchestra has occasionally been booted from the recital hall, and it's so much harder to make things sound balanced in that classroom.
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Yeah....we do the "large designed in the 60's" classroom thing most of the time (30-40ft ceilings, a mix of pegboard and curtains and an asymetrical ceiling) so this was an eye opener for me. I have spent 25 years singing with microphones so hearing myself in this room and hearing the whole group from halfway back in the hall was wonderful.
 
Men's Chorus Festival today:

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It's gonna be a long day. 8am-6pm here and then a 9-12 gig at the Post tonight.


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This week hasn't been very notable other than the fact that just getting through my days with a massive amount of home stress (which I won't discuss here other than that everyone is healthy and Mrs W and I are really good) has been a trick. My practice time has been pretty non0existent except for what I can scrape together for immediate needs although that should change next week. I did get a Thelonious Monk-style tune written for one of my combos and it went over pretty well. Now I need to get through guitar combo and piano classes this morning before shopping for a halloween costume for tonights gig and teaching.
 
This week has been another meat grinder. Some stuff at home is being resolved but has been a source of great stress and lost time. My GE class has taken much of the last few days between catching up on reading lost over the last couple of weeks, a paper due and regular participation work.

I blew the first part of my musicianship test on Tuesday but did well on the performance portion this morning so hopefully that evens out. A drag after acing the last test.

I wrote a tune for one of my combos and it went well. It was a Thelonious Monk style blues with a bridge and the instructor use my arrangement to teach us some pretty cool stuff about Monk. Today I discovered that our teacher was in the Brian Setzer Orchestra from 1998-2004 so now I know nothing I play will impress him much :embarrassed:

My private lessons have been hugely useful. I need to find the time to actually practice this material well enough to use it. TK says that I'm doing fine and growing but I know I'm not finding the time I need to really shed this stuff.


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Mark Wein said:
This week has been another meat grinder. Some stuff at home is being resolved but has been a source of great stress and lost time. My GE class has taken much of the last few days between catching up on reading lost over the last couple of weeks, a paper due and regular participation work.

I blew the first part of my musicianship test on Tuesday but did well on the performance portion this morning so hopefully that evens out. A drag after acing the last test.

I wrote a tune for one of my combos and it went well. It was a Thelonious Monk style blues with a bridge and the instructor use my arrangement to teach us some pretty cool stuff about Monk. Today I discovered that our teacher was in the Brian Setzer Orchestra from 1998-2004 so now I know nothing I play will impress him much :embarrassed:

My private lessons have been hugely useful. I need to find the time to actually practice this material well enough to use it. TK says that I'm doing fine and growing but I know I'm not finding the time I need to really shed this stuff.


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Stop being such a dick, Jack.
 
sonik said:
Ancient Roland unit!

What's that guitar? I like it. Is that pickup selector kinda awkward?
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It my 1979 Gibson The Paul. all walnut, I put BG Pure 90 pickups in it a few years ago. Since this was my first Les Paul it is pretty normal to me as far as switch placement goes. I've kind of settled on this one for my school guitar most of the time:

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The archtop occasionally comes out but the Les Paul just sounds better and can go in a gig bag.
 
Heading into the last month of the semester, with a week off for Thanksgiving. SO far as I can tell from the website my grades are all A's but I'm concerned about my GE class (I have an online midterm to take today). I have a week (December 3-10 or so) where I have a ridiculous schedule of performances, rehearsals and holiday gigs coming up, which is right before finals week and juries. I'm trying to make sure I'm prepared ahead of time because I know that the beginning of December will be a giant clusterfuck.

Of particular importance to me is my jury. Apparently my previous education is not applicable here (I discovered at my student advising this week) and I am considered a "100 level" or Freshman student. In order to enter the next level I have to execute items from a list so I'm doing the entire first year (and half of the second years) worth of material this time around. This is my new list:


1st Semester Jury



Scales and chords:


· Major

· Major and Minor Pentatonic

· Blues

· Chromatic Scales.

· Natural, Harmonic, Melodic minor (including Jazz Melodic minor)

· Whole Tone scales.

· Dorian & Mixolydian Modes of Major.

· Major, Minor Triads. Major, Dominant and Minor Seventh chords.

· All scales learned to date in 3rds and 4ths.

· Diatonic triads from scales


Transcription – Have You Met Miss Jones?


1st Semester


Now’s the Time

Doxy

Autumn Leaves

So What/Impressions

Take the “A” Train

Mack the Knife


2nd Semester


I Got Rhythm

Beautiful Love

All Of Me

Summertime

My Funny Valentine


1st Semester


Blue Bossa

There Will Never Be Another You

All Blues

Tenor Madness

Satin Doll

Misty



Luckily I know all of the theory stuff already but I need to have all of the songs above ready to play (melody, improvised solo and comp for another soloist) at the jury so the bulk of my practice time is now spent making sure I have the repertoire internalized and that I can demonstrate a working knowledge of playing altered dominant and lydian dominant scales in the appropriate places in the harmony to move the tune along. That last part is just what my private instructor is having me work on and I'm sure will be what I'm actually graded on for my applied music grade. I'm also sure there will also be some sight reading on top of all of this.
 
today is the first day I feel like a grouchy old man who fucking hates kids. We had a test in my music theory class. They put me in MUS 111, which is the first Diatonic harmony class because its been 26 years since I've thought about four part writing and I bombed that part of the placement test. But the class is pretty much just review for me. Having said that, its not that hard for students who are SUPPOSED to be getting an education in music to make a living either teaching or performing. This is the first of a series of 4-5 semesters of music theory and it isn't that fucking difficult. We had a test last Wednesday that we were warned about on Monday which should be plenty of time since we spend all of our class time and homework time working through exercises on the material. So many students failed the test so badly (as in getting 20% of the grade) that she is not counting the test and we are retaking it after thanksgiving. SO many of these kids would have failed the semester if that test were counted. I've never seen something like this before."back in my day" the grades would have stood. And honestly, the teacher is really good and is covering everything we need very clearly and concisely. Its not like they failed the test because she did a bad job. They failed the test because THEY did a bad job. She also didn't give anyone their tests back so I emailed her to find out my score. I think I did pretty well but who knows....maybe I'm a fucking idiot too. I doubt it though.

:annoyed:
 
ok....I'll share something I did. This is my Tuesday/Thursday combo class. We were missing the instructor, the other guitarist and the pianist yesterday so I brought out a chart that I've been working on...its a blues in the style of Thelonius Monk with a bridge. Instead of just playing is swing or as a shuffle I asked the guys to just play what they wanted and embrace the humour and "outness" of Monk. Its kinda rough (I have a few things I want to fix in the chart and a couple of arrangement changes) but it was fun hearing everyone quit playing like they were in school for the first time in 13 weeks. This was recorded on my phone and its actually a private link on Soundcloud because I'm sure the other players don't want this on Facebook or anything like that but I wanted to share SOMETHING musical I've done. My solo is at about 4:15: https://goo.gl/q1iYNs


 
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