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Bumblebee performance,

Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2014-07-30 06:40

I got through my solo performance of the Bumblebee tonight with my community band. Whew. It came out pretty good; the conductor took a relatively slow tempo to clarify chromatic runs in the accompanying woodwind parts. That let me easily keep my playing clean and even, avoiding its becoming "Blight of the Fumblebee". I even projected a few dynamics to evoke the beastie's hovering, landing, taking off, etc. People apparently enjoyed it. This piece doesn't have to be blazingly fast.

My memory, mostly ear memory for this, didn't let me down at concert time. We rehearsed it just before the concert, and I had a couple memory failures then; but it turns out this music is pretty easy to fake, and I was able to play some similarly apian chromatic stuff when I got off track - I think only the conductor noticed. But no memory problems during the concert.

Working on this piece was instructive in a couple ways. In this arrangement the main theme involves playing in the throat register and repeated crossing of the break. I got better at those things, and practicing at home I got to feeling pretty secure with those passages at the printed tempo (144).

The other instructive thing had to do with double-lip embouchure. I switched to double-lip last year and gradually got better at it. However, when seated, I'd developed a bad habit of steadying the bell with knee support. I've sort of tried to correct this habit over time, but not hard enough to eradicate it. But I had to play the solo standing up, so in the two weeks I had to prepare, I tried out some slightly different ways of positioning the lips, and discovered that, done correctly, double-lip doesn't need knee or other added support AND it needn't unduly pressure the upper lip.

Thanks for listening to my blah-blah-blah (if anyone did.) I've got a post-concert "buzz", and there's nobody else I can express this stuff to.

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Careful what you wish for. new

Philip Caron

2014-07-19 18:23