Awake and Alert, Finally

I'm finally feeling semi-normal after flying on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We had a rough time travelling back from Ireland on Monday. There were thunderstorms in Chicago so our plane got diverted to Milwaukee, where we had to sit on the tarmac for 3 hours before being allowed to fly back to Chicago. By then it was so late that we ended up sleeping at O'Hare while waiting for our flight early Tuesday morning. It's been a long time since I've slept (or tried to) at an airport. Then on Wednesday it was back to work and on a plane. The silver lining about being awake for most of 2 days was that I adjusted back to Pacific time very quickly.

When I finally tried to play the cello on Tuesday it was pathetic. I think I was too tired to play. All I remember was that I felt terrible, my playing felt terrible, and finally I just quit. Then on Friday, before my lesson, I played a little and lo and behold, my tone sounded better than it ever has before! Go figure. I think the adjustments I made to my bow hold a few months ago are finally starting to feel natural and are paying off in much better tone quality.

My lesson was more rhythm work - my teacher set the metronome to 40 and had me play quarter notes, eighth, or triplets on that slow beat, with the goal of making my sound change exactly with the beat. It is surprisingly hard to do when the beat is that slow. When I switched between eighth or triplets on that beat I would either be a tiny fraction too slow or too fast, and it would take me a few measures adjust my playing to lock into the beat. Well, guess what I'm working on for my next lesson!

Music is just like my swimming - it goes away fast and comes back slowly. In the case of swimming it is speed that goes fast and is really hard to get back. I could feel that I had lost ground on the cello by not playing for about 2 weeks. But on the other hand, even playing today I could hear a difference in tone - so the break wasn't all bad!

My Saturday chamber group was just our first violinist and me. She brought a lot of violin music and I played the piano. After not playing the piano for 3 weeks my fingers felt stiff. I had to warm up with the Franck violin sonata - not the easiest piece for stiff fingers! We played a movement of Frank Martin's violin sonata, a Bach violin concerto, and finished up with Beethoven's violin sonata No. 4. We'd never played that one before and it was lovely - written just before the "Spring" Sonata and very different.