"This Gun Is Pointed Right At Your Heart." "That Is My Least Vulnerable Spot!"

You're a damn liar if you don't want to go to the grocery store and buy this right now. I hate most ice cream but even I think that looks delicious. This is going to be one of many, many bitch fits about my aural skills and music theory class and I will most likely repeat myself each time. Back story? I nearly tested out of aural skills but since I don't know fixed-do which is a system of solfeg only taught at certain schools, I had to start all over in first year aural skills. And because of that, they put me in first year theory as well. At first I was just like ok, whatever. Easy semester, right? No. This is too easy. My harmonic dictation this past friday was I V I V I V I. Can I get an inversion? Can I get a neapolitan chord? Maybe a borrowed chord? Maybe some inverted 7th chords? Maybe some modulation? Maybe a chord progression that didn't make sense? Then we had rhythmic dictation and melodic dictation that I would get in the first run through. Look. I am a bonafied bad ass when it comes to aural skills. Theory? I'm OK. But aural skills? I'm great. Give me an interval to sing I can do it. Give me a melody or rhythm to take down, I'll do it. Give me all the melodies we have to sing these upcoming 2 semesters and I can sight read them. Give me all the melodies that I have to do the next 2 semesters after that, and I can figure them out with a couple of minutes. Me and aural skills are one. I didn't really realize how good I was in theory until I started looking at new music and just knowing what was going on all over it. I was in my lesson and me and Larry were analyzing my Grand Overture and I was naming all the chords and the voice leadings and why I'm playing I'm playing the V chord louder and the theme, recapitulation, all that good stuff. I didn't maintain a 3.5 GPA for no reason. I'm a smart guy when it comes to music. I hate going to class. It's painful. Then I have a bad habit of showing it. But I can't help it. Call it me being to stubborn and I need to get over it, but when all this freshman level information is being thrown at me, it brings me down. And I don't like my teacher nearly as much as my old. Dr. Flory was and will always one of the best teachers I've ever had in my life. He was serious, to the point, cared about us understanding, and was such a geek that he would throw in his little jokes that were so awful that it made us laugh so much. My new teacher is a great pianist. A Peabody grad and a really energetic and happy dude. But those first two things I said? We get reminded every day when he says "I mean it's like a mozart sonata..." Then goes and shreds Mozart or Brahms or Chopin. Then he always brings up his times at Peabody and it gets a little annoying. Because I feel that just him teaching at the school got everyone's never ending respect. There's no need to flaunt it. Am I wrong for feeling like this? Do you think this is all me being cocky? Look I came to this school not only for guitar, but to expand my musical knowledge. Being in these classes makes me feel so trapped. It's kind of like being in a prison. I just want to struggle. Struggle makes you care and learn more. I want to get that struggling bond with my classmates. I want to walk out the door and look at them with this same horrified/shocked look as to what we just learned. But I can't get that with this. If someone asked "hey! Do you want to make all A's with easy classes or struggle to make a B in a hard class?" My answer would easily be the hard class. I just want to move forward.


Lessons with Larry are going great. We really focus on musicality and overall interpretation. And we're both very vocal. I know what I want in the piece and he knows what I can do to make it better. We'll be reading/analyzing the piece and we try different things to see what sounds good. It's not like how with Hii, he would tell me one way to play it and never question himself. Any time Larry suggests something, I play through it and he decides if it sounds right. It's like we're just two people working to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I really enjoy it. I've just got so much on my plate and I'm always busy. It's gotten to the point to where 4 hour practice sessions are just barely enough to get through everything I need. With all the technique exercises and all my solo pieces, I need at least 5 or 6 hours to spend a sufficient amount of time on everything. Me and my friend Andreas plan on playing all the Bach two part inventions which would be a dream come true for me. I love listening to those. Glenn Gould plays them like no one to ever walk the planet. I might actually be playing Introduction and Fandango by Luigi Bocherrini AGAIN with 3 other guys for guitar literature. I've been playing that piece since I was a junior in high school. But I'm always down to play great music with a quartet.

Want to hear something really geeky? I was at a party and one of the piano majors started playing ballroom dance music for entertainment. Well after a while it turned into an hour long session of us naming our favorite concertos, sonatas, etc etc and he was just able to play them by ear. It was really amazing. We somehow got to Coldplay and Journey after a while. But at one point someone said, "Play Chopin's Nocturne in Eb Op. 9 No. 2!" And as soon as he started playing it felt like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Just the first 2 notes make my head spin. That piece takes me back to such a transition period in my life. It was the summer of 06 where in the month of June, my life was awful due to one person and then in the month of July, my month was immediately great due to another person. It's what I consider one of the top 3 most beautiful pieces ever written and I would feel awful if I didn't post it on here at some point.



The past week or so I was in shock of two bands. A Wilhelm Scream/Explosions In The Sky. Why? I've been listening to AWS since I was 15 and EITS since I was about 17 but for some reason when my ipod was on shuffle and I heard a couple of songs by each of them I was just in awe. Unbelievable music. More so AWS than EITS but still. It's been a while since AWS has released anything so I haven't exactly been in touch with them. I listened to We Built This City(On Debts and Booze) and it felt like the first time again. Since I can't really practice in my room past 11pm, I have a bit of free time since I continue to deprive myself of sleep. Who cares if I have an 8am class? Everybody Loves Ramon is on 1-2am and that shit is hilarious. Anyway, what I do is just try to make songs that would work perfectly for bands I really dig. I used to make instrumentals quite often back in my electric guitar days so I wanted to start up again. Figured Explosions In The Sky would be a nice inspiratation so instead of getting up from my chair to turn on my ipod, I youtubed them and found an amazing video of my favorite song by them. It's pretty intense. So turn off the lights, listen to the music, and think about all the dramatic as hell moments in your life.


Explosions In The Sky-The Birth and Death of the Day