In this post:
1. District band auditions (also choir and orchestra)
2. Thunderbird (not Shawnee Heights)
3. Desktop Image Switcher (awesome!)
4. El Jazz
5. Once Upon a Mattress
1. District band auditions…a day full of waiting, practicing and dealing with being a different person? Well we started out going to the wrong building…the primary center (where they were having orchestra auditions). I’m not sure how long we would’ve hung out around there, but luckily Mrs Barnhill caught my dad and I and said “Hey, wrong place.” So we got to BHS just in time for the morning information meetings. We received numbers for our order of tryouts. It turns out I got pretty lucky and only had to wait about an hour and half to audition (while many others had to wait well over three hours). For this whole audition I was, lets say, trying something new! “Hey, this time I’ll forget to pick-up district music from my band director until a week before the auditions, and see how I end up doing!!” Actually, I didn’t plan it that way, but that’s how it all turned out.
I picked up the music last Thursday, and began preparing. I had to cancel my drum lesson this week, due to Once Upon a Mattress rehearsal (see below), so I didn’t get any advice from my teacher on this one. Honestly though, I had the piece “in my pocket” – I knew how to play everything and had it all put together…but two days of that confidence of assembly and whatever wasn’t enough to hold me quite together in the audition. I ended up playing the two pieces (the first one great), the second…not so great. The sight reading went pretty well, though I stumbled on a couple quarter note rolls or something, messing them up somehow.
Obviously my “plan” didn’t work out, because Chelsey called me a few hours later, and we both didn’t make it. It’s sort of funny though, since she prepared for a month or two…
I’m not really disappointed. I realize it was my fault in missing the chance to pick up music. I must have been dozing off during early morning marching band announcements or something. I also had the chance to audition for state choir. I would’ve done that, but our choir director kind of pressured us saying “If you don’t do band or orchestra auditions you HAVE to do choir auditions.” So that made me a bit scared, and I decided band would be a bit less intimidating. Anyway.
Now I’m left with the decision of band or choir auditions next year. I wonder which would deal me better chances?
2. Thunderbird is an email client like Microsoft Outlook. Cole has talked to me about how he has been using it, and I was a bit interested. I downloaded and installed it today, and set up my Gmail account in it. I was a bit disappointed that Thunderbird didn’t grab my 4,000 email messages that are stored in my Gmail account…haha. I also tried setting up my david@wingerson.us email thing, and that worked okay.
There is just something about email clients that aren’t web based that I don’t like. I really don’t like having to click “get mail.” I also don’t like setting the thing to use system resources and check my mail server every minute. I prefer just opening Gmail in Firefox, as a nice tab, sitting to one side. It’s set as one of my homepages (out of 5 (Netvibes, Gmail, Cole’s Forums, Pearl Drummer’s Forums, and this site!), so all I have to do is open Gmail, and taa-daaa, there is my email. No need to open a second program…I can basically run everything I need out of Firefox…75% of the time it’s the only program I have open.
To sum it up…I don’t like using anything like Thunderbird or Outlook. Too bad.
3. Desktop Image Switcher – For those of you out there that get tired of your desktop background often, John’s Background Switcher is for you!!!!!! I was getting really tired of my bland desktop, and at the same time was enjoying glancing around at “interesting” photos on Flickr. So this background switching program can grab photos that you specifically choose, from whole folders you designate, or from any tag on Flickr. So I’ve been getting some really cool desktop backgrounds on my desktop, changing every 30 minutes.
4. El Jazz – Right now I’m listening to some jazz! That’s right! David isn’t listening to Tool?!?!? That’s right!! At my last drum lesson I was working on playing some jazz, and my teacher pointed out something very interesting. Sure I may be “good” rock and funk drummer, but I’m lacking in the whole jazz department. This is probably due to a couple of reasons.
One, I play while using isolation headphones. Sure, this is great for hearing what I’m playing along with, and it saves my hearing, but the sound of me playing that I actually hear is deadened and dark sounding…so I end up playing loud and boomy to make up for that. Since I’ve been using these headphones for over a year, I’ve sort of morphed into a heavier player…exactly what I was trying to stay away from.
Second, I don’t listen to enough jazz! So I’m working on that right now 🙂 Medeski, Martin, and Wood is the group I’m currently listening to…and they’re a good step for me, because they are more “fusion” rather than jazz. It is sort of the inbetweener, between Rock and Jazz…at least drumming wise.
5. Once Upon a Mattress – only a couple minutes ago did I realize that I should have been publicizing the school musical that past week or so. Obviously I forgot…because I was too busy going to rehearsals for it! This week we had a few hours of rehearsal every night, making me quite the tired person. Thursday was opening night, and that was really good, while last night’s performance was just a bit shaky in a couple of places. Our last performance is tonight…actually in about two hours. So anyone/everyone that reads this before then should definitely come check it out. It starts at 7.00 pm.
This has been quite the random grab-bag of posts, I know…but hey, thanks for reading! You know what to do…tnemmoccomment.
