Music and Livelihood

I am not going to be able to work as a performer for the rest of my life. There are a number of reasons for this, and none of them are up for discussion in this post, but my current strategy is not working and is unsustainable. However, I am a musician through and through: when I am not making music I am pretty miserable. So I've been thinking lately about how to make a living as a musician,...

Concentration, Flow and Procrastination

Over at "Wait but Why" there are a couple of excellent posts on procrastination and how to overcome it. If you procrastinate, or you are continually frustrated by those who do, I commend these posts to you: they explain the experience of procrastination well, and the strategy suggested to overcome it is sound enough, if not a complete toolkit. I do have an issue with the portrayal of the state of...

#AcWriMo for a church musician

I'm not doing a PhD (yet), but over at PhD2Published it's that time of year again. AcWriMo is a sort of motivational gimmick whereby a group of people decide that in November they're going to get a lot of writing done, and then offer one another lots of moral support. My own take on this will be hymn tunes. I love writing them, and really enjoyed the ones I did for the hymnathon videos, but my...

The Week Ahead

This week is looking pretty typical in terms of what I need to do, at least musically.I'm teaching tonight and tomorrow night. I've done most of the preparation for that, but need to remember to bring music with me for my students. I'll be leaving home at 2pm each day and spending a lot of time on public transport... I usually use this time to read. Right now the important reading is all to do...

Improvable.

Good rehearsal today with the other members of the Brigantia Consort -- we looked at some new repertoire, rehearsed stuff we've been working on for performance probably this summer, and did some improvisation.We recorded some of the rehearsal, and it was interesting to hear the results. Two things, to my mind, really stood out.The first is that we do talk rather a lot between playing. Of course...

Final stretch

Over a month since posting, again!I have my end-of-degree recital on Tuesday next week. That's, er, a week from today. Right now, it's all about the practising. And the programme notes... sadly I'm not allowed to have a ghost writer for my programme notes! I'm hoping to get back to writing some more here when I have recovered from the recital.

Monday again…

...and I'm having "one of those days". I woke up with my head full of a bad cold, dithered around far too long before leaving the flat, only to get to Trinity and find no practise rooms until later in the day than I'd planned to stay, and my arranging class cancelled. I don't want to cancel my teaching, but if my voice continues to get worse and my general feeling of wooziness does not abate, I...