I got an interesting text message from my department chair at the last school at which I worked. Apparently, there are some outstanding invoices from J.W. Pepper (a sheet music company) from when I was teaching there. I know that I settled all my financials before I left. Though, what that actually means is that I submitted payment requests to the school. I cannot say for certain whether or not the school actually followed up on those payments. And, since I was leaving the school, I did not take any of that financial paperwork with me. I can't even say for certain what happened to it. I hope they are able to sort through the paper trail and get everything settled. I guess some things get a little messy in a band director transition, especially when the school waits too long to hire a new person.
I don't remember whether I told you yet or not about this, so I am going to start at the beginning of this particular story. If this sounds familiar to you, feel free to scroll down till you find new and interesting information. If you haven't heard this before, then you better read it. All of it. Every word. There may be a test at the end.
You may recall that I have had Pet Shop (the instrument storage room) duties as part of my assistantship. Well, the Pet Shop signs instruments out to students using the old method: triplicate forms filled out by hand, which take forever to fill out and which create piles of paper records to keep organized and need space to be stored. I had been using a Filemaker Pro database to manage my inventory and loan instruments when I was working for the school system, and I figured the same kind of system could be implemented at Temple to streamline the instrument sign out procedure and to cut down on the paperwork storage space we use. I have some experience using Filemaker Pro and figured it would be a cakewalk to design an instrument inventory database. I was wrong. It turns out that what I know about Filemaker Pro barely scratches the surface of its functionality.
What I knew when starting the project:
- You enter all your data in a spreadsheet, like the ones used in Excel.
- You can design layouts that display the information in the spreadsheet.
- Multiple layouts can be used to display data relevant to different situations.
- Layouts can be printed, so I assumed they could be emailed as well.
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This week was a concert-riffic week. Monday night was the Night Owls concert. I thought it went really well, overall. My first piece, Scherzo Without Instruments, was an exercise in conducting strength. Almost immediately, as we started the piece, the tempo got out of hand. It took all the energy I had to try and control the tempo. Dr. B. told me after the concert that he could tell how hard I was working to hold everything together. I really was. I had nothing left to give to gestures of style and interpretation. It was all tempo, all the time. But, we made it to the end together and the audience clapped, so I am going to count that one as win! My second piece, Earthdance, went off really well, with just a minor exception. The piece begins with 4, out-of-time measures of rain storm sound effects, followed by two measures of a bass drone and ambient percussion noises, followed by a clarinet and saxophone melody. The past couple weeks, a saxophonist kept coming in two bars too early with the melody. I took a minute to go through that section during my warm up with the group before the concert and we worked it out. Yay! But, then in the concert a clarinet player did the same thing the sax player had been doing. The funny part of it is that when she came in early, the whole clarinet section turned to her and yell-whispered at her that she was early. I could have sworn the whole audience heard the whispers. But, it turns out nobody did. The rest of the piece went really well.
Thursday was the last Wind Symphony concert of the year. I played on two pieces, Donald Grantham's J'ai Ete Au Bal and Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. I got the sense that a lot of the ensemble members did not like the Grantham, but I actually found the piece to be really cool. And West Side Story is just awesome. You can see the concert here:
I managed to get the school to let me play just contrabassoon this year. And I have been worried that, come next year, they would expect me to play bassoon as well. In all honesty, I am not as skilled at bassoon as I am at contra. I have just considerably more time playing contra over the past 10 years and, to be honest, I like it better. Dr. T. approached be as we were preparing for the concert and asked me, in a way that I feel like was meant to sound nonchalant, if I would be playing again next year. But, I could tell that behind the conversational facade of the question was the desire to have my playing contra next year. I told her that she was going to be stuck with me for the next few years. To which she replied that she was definitely ok with that. Looks like I have claimed my seat as the contrabassoonist here.
Dr. C. has been critiquing me pretty consistently about my pacing when I present. She says that I speak with a little too much energy and that I move too quickly. This weekend, at Temple Prep, I finally heard it in my own speech: I do talk fast when I am teaching/ presenting! Much faster than my conversational speech. I made an effort to slow down and actually found that the students listened better when I spoke slower. This is going to be a hard habit to break. But, I am going to have to put in the effort to make it happen.
I realized that there are no pictures in this blog yet, so enjoy this one as we come to a close:
Well, folks, that is all for this week.
Future Dr. Mitch, out!
