11/3/09

Monday during the day was a day of practice, swimming, and reading a bit of that exciting music theory book. Then in the evening was our first full orchestra with the choir too at the National Theatre. It was actually a great success! Obviously a few bits to tidy up here and there but it wasn’t the train crash I think some people were expecting. So it’s looking very promising really. Everyone feeling a lot better about the whole concert now. Which is great.
Yesterday was lots of teaching - Michael then Disan, then Soloman, and supposedly Julius too but unsurprisingly he didn’t turn up! They all seem very pleased with how orchestra went and we went over any bits they are worried about. Generally they are all doing very well so I am very happy with them all. Soloman’s tuning is really doing well, as is Disan’s and they are both getting the hang of tenor clef fantastically. Michael’s scales are getting there, pieces are doing well too. So it’s all good!
Today started off blissfully cool and cloudy, even looked like it might rain (can't quite believe I'm saying I'd like to see some rain!) - which it really needs to, is very sticky at the moment. But no, turned into a crazily hot and humid day. Not sunny, but cloudy, hazy, and HOT! Phew. Decided that when playing duets with Philip today, he could do the leading in the tricky one we’ve been looking at the last couple of classes. So I said - right, you lead, you decide where we’re going from and how we’re going to rehearse this, you decide what needs to be done to make it better etc. I was trying to get him more involved with the playing and learning of it because he always looks so bored when it’s constantly me whittering on. I think he quite enjoyed it actually, and it wasn’t sounding too bad by the end! So hopefully that got him more interested. He did seem to be enjoying himself a bit more as far as I could tell!
After Ugandan lunch (and lots of it!) we headed of to Jenny and Jessy in the mid day heat, and traffic. I must have mentioned before how crazy the traffic is…it really is insane! Everyone seems to go home or out for lunch so we always get caught in standstill jams on our journey there. We’re thinking of changing the time. We’ll see. Anyways, we finally made it there and started out lessons. Began with a recap of the 2 and 3 time we were doing last week, getting them to sing songs, clapping and identifying the time. Then moved on to explain that the beats that we were clapping were called crotchets, so we have been clapping 2 or 3 crotchets per bar (the lines either sides of the notes). It's really strange explaining these things as I don't really remember being taught them, but it's good exercise for the brain, explaining things as simple as they get. That’s as far as we got with the littlies, but we managed to move onto minims with the older lot. Very exciting. Nearly got into a complete mess explaining that a bar of 3 could contain both a minim and a crotchet because 2 beats plus 1 beat equals 3s. But managed to rescue it somehow. Next week we’ll add in quavers and get them clapping different rhythms. What fun. I really enjoy it actually. Is so rewarding when you know they had absolutely no idea what we were on about 2 weeks ago and now we can talk about bars and crotchets etc. Good stuff!
Was straight off to the National Theatre for the 2nd of our full rehearsals. Again a great success. All the soloists were there too so really getting a good feel for how it’s going to go. Everyone is very pleased. It’s going to be great! Apparently it’s being filmed too so I’ll try to get a copy to show you all at home! That’s all for now folks! X