I'm getting to know my area quite well. Market street is one of the main streets in the entire city and you can pretty much get anything you want or need on this street. This past week was placement exams week. The theory one went about as expected. I was never outstanding in theory so the exam went so-so. They used a little bit of different terminology that really threw me off. I will most likely be put in Theory 2 which while yeah, it sucks I have to re-take theory, it's really a good thing. Re-learning that stuff is good. Next was my sight singing and dictation. My strong point. When I was at Del Mar, it seemed like the harder the classes got, the better I got at sight singing. I made an A on just about every skills exam and dictation exam back in those days. So the sight singing was ok. I'm definitely rusty with sight reading. All I could think of before was how Josh used to make fun of me for singing like a backstreet boy. "DO MI SO MI DO!" haha. So it went pretty good. Next up was dictation. First part was written and I could have done it blindfolded. Super easy. Then the actual dictation came up and good ol Prime Time Raziel didn't disappoint. I nailed everything with certainty. After the first part was complete, the teacher told everyone who doesn't think they can pass the advanced part needs to leave. About 30% of the room stayed. So the first melodic dictation comes up and after 1 playing, more than half the room got up and left. The melody was played fast and it was at least 8 measures in 3/4 timing. WITH ONLY 3 PLAYINGS. What?! But I managed to get about 60% of it. The rest was pretty simple. Harmonic dictation was a bit rough. Rhythm was easy. I don't think I passed out of it but I definitely got in the advanced class. Oh and keyboard? Piano? Tested out! And to be honest, I don't think I could ever take a piano class that could possibly top my classes at Del Mar. Especially that last semester. Miss those guys and Sutanto. I just had my guitar ensemble audition where I played Etude #2 by Villa Lobos. It went well but I accidentally played the run in free strokes rather than rest strokes. Oh well. After that was some really sight reading in a minor.It was a few posts ago where I talked about all the great punk shows in San Francisco. As if my mind wasn't already blown away with that, I found out the guitarist playing in San Francisco this year. Ready? AH! Kazuhito Yamashita, Manuel Barrueco, Scott Tennent, Pepe Romero, Xuefei Yang, Roland Dyens, David Russell. What. The. Fuck. Kazuhito Yamashita is the most dramatic guitarist EVER. Barrueco in his prime is the best guitar play to ever live. Scott Tennent is one of the absolute most technical guitarist out there. Pepe Romero has the best right hand EVER and is the best spanish guitar player EVER. And I've gotten a once in a lifetime opportunity to get a lesson with him and seen him in concert. Xuefei Yang falls into the reputation(robots) of all asian guitarist, but she is fantastic and plays what is in my opinion, the most beautiful piece ever written for the guitar in Spring Breeze by Gerald Garcia. Roland Dyens is one of my favorite living composers right now and is in my opinion one of the best classical guitarist around. David Russell has perfect tone and is one of the top 5-10 guitar players around. I just was in shock. Jaw 100% dropped when I saw this line up. I may get the chance to have master classes with Barrueco, Dyens and Russell. What. The. Fuck. I don't deserve this!
I know I say this every update, but living in the city is great. I've walked so much over the past week. The walking does kind of suck because of the hills though. But it's a nice workout. I'm trying to get a job not at the school so I can meet non-conservatory people. I want to have a life outside of the school. So I figure being at punk shows and getting a job is good for that. I'm going to try and work at Cold Stone again! haha. The people that know me best know my order there. Love it, mint with oreos and EXTRA gummi bears. Delish. While walking is fun, it does have it's bad parts. I've walked through some super sketchy streets and encountered a big group of guys I would have rather not. Encounter may not be the word but I walked right through them and it really sucked. Walking at night is a little rough too. All the homeless mock me when I'm on the phone. I can't stress to you how many homeless people there are here. Short story? There was one night where me and 5 or 6 other people were walking to a party that was a good 20 minute walk away. Well we know we're in the somewhat ghetto and we see a group of guys standing outside an apartment building. So we're walking and as we're passing them up, one guy jumps out the front door with a knife and a doo-rag over his mouth and screams. But immediately after says "nahhh jk!" What?! You don't just do that! I nearly pissed myself. If you had told me a year ago today that I would eventually be at a party on a balcony 20 stories high in downtown San Francisco, I would have never believed you.I'm not sure why, but you can't find any Pedro The Lion videos on Youtube. You can find David Bazan, but none of those videos where it's just the song playing. I highly recommend everyone to re-live the early days of my senior year of high school by listening to Pedro The Lion's Achilles Heel. Very easy to listen to. Interesting voice, interesting melodies, story telling lyrics. Just very soothing and mellow. It's one of the few bands that I like that any girl would love. I love it and am trying to listen to more of their stuff these days.
Pedro The Lion-Transcontinental
The luxury of having been spared the hard part
You'd think would be enough for me to pull this off
But i'm left to bleed to death
Now all the man i've ever been
North am transcontinental
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