piccolos – T E Shepherd

The Very Last Night Night of the Proms

Thomas — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:45:00 +0000

Tonightâs concert was not quite like any other I have ever done. With a Proms-style, the Abingdon Guildhall was decked out in bunting, union jacks, and red, white and blue balloons, and the auditorium arranged around five long tables. We were seated on the stage, squished to one side with the other side taken up by the Abingdon Town Band.

When Emma arrived with her Mum, apparently I looked like I was terrified â a nervousness that sheâd only seen in me before on our first date. Still, the concert went off to great success (including the un-rehearsed performance of The Blues Brothers).

With a BBC2 first half, following the interval we moved off into a BBC1 finish of flag-waving and pomp and circumstance with party-poppers and silliness…

The Power of Cheese

Thomas — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 23:13:00 +0000

So, Spring is on it’s way. Another gloriously sunny day, and a morning with early morning light over flooded fields down the Otmoor valley. The day did deteriate though. Vania, my colleague had to rush off home in tears to sort out some serious Home Office related mixup – I don’t know the details but it does sound v. serious. Then, I stayed past my normal 4.30 finish to hear that Web Services weren’t (predictably enough) going to give me a job.

I wasn’t particularly surprised, but I was pretty disappointed and annoyed and pissed off, and I probably wasn’t the best of company on the drive home. Still, I went off to band, and played Mama Mia on piccolo, and now I feel better!

Wednesday – Thursday

Thomas — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:21:00 +0000

1. Fish4Jobs in partnership with Verticality are currently my two best friends. It was through them both that I had the buzz of the interesting Cambridge designer job (which sadly came to nothing). Yesterday I was fishing through the former and came across an ad for a Senior Web Designer in Oxfordshire – what the hell I thought and applied – after all I only need to upload my CV and hit send. Yesterday afternoon, the guy at Verticality phoned me back, we had a bit of a chat. This position really was for someone a bit more senior than me but he liked the sound of me and my skills and asked if I would like to put through anyway maybe for a more junior position. So anyway, he went off and contacted them and they said yes, so he got back in contact with me to say that’s what he was doing. Don’t know yet what if anything will come of this, but you know, it’s defininitely worth sometimes going for everything.

2. I need cat food. Well, Bella and Arthur need cat food. Today I ran out of it and had to nip round to the local shop and get some Go-Cat to tide me over until I get to pet shop and can get some Pro-Plan or James Wellbeloved science diet. Your off-the-shelf Whiskers and Go-Cat is expensive! 89p for a box of biscuits which is going to last next to no time. The science diets, although you buy them in bigger quantities are no more (or not significantly more) expensive, and they are heaps better for your pusscat than the supermarket alternatives.

3. Chapter 6, the closing chapter of Part One of my novel went into review at CritiqueCircle yesterday. I’ve already had three crits on it, all very complimentary, one I think did actually use the words ‘un-put-downable’ and apparently they sat down with a cup of coffee to read it, and when they got round to drinking it, the coffee was cold!

4. Amy was not at wind band tonight. All my other fellow flautists were though, but it did leave me playing solo piccolo. All things considering, I did pretty well. I just have to remember to breath from my diaphram and blow confidently…

5. I have a Play Meeting on Sunday. Hopefully we might get it to the point of then needing to find ~~sacrifices~~ volunteers to read the parts so that we can get a feel for how it works.

Wednesday – Thursday

Thomas — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:21:00 +0000

5. I have a Play Meeting on Sunday. Hopefully we might get it to the point of then needing to find ~~sacrifices~~ volunteers to read the parts so that we can get a feel for how it works.

Music, kittens, and quotation marks

Thomas — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:56:00 +0000

1. As long as I breath from the diaphram, and blow the notes confidently, my piccolo playing seems to be coming on quite well, and not too screaching and ear-piercing. That said it’s still loud and high, and really I ought to be careful just how late I do practice Vaughan Williams’ Folk Song Suite.

2. Bella and Arthur seem to be adapting to my music making. Once cautious, if not fearful, of flute and piccolo, now they will carry on sleeping throughout…

3. The current vintage of Sloe Gin has a damn fine tast. Mm-mmnn… sloe gin and chocolate olivers.

4. This might be useful, and there is way too much to be said in the world about the humble quotation mark.

5. I am on the last page of revising Part One, Chapter Six. I’m still getting some good crits back from CC, and I may try submitting it somewhere once I’ve got Part One finished. This said, I’m trying to work out if that’s wise or not – I mean what if some publisher was to get back to me uncharacteristically quickly with a ‘this is great – send us all of it’ reply? Yeah, I know, that’s unlikely (on both counts), but Sod’s Law dictates… :-\

Winter sun and wind music

Thomas — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 23:50:00 +0000

1. And so today, we came to the 4^th Annual Playing Day. It’s a strange thing, but this is the third one that we’ve had at the Manor Prep School in Abingdon and on every one of those days it has been the most beautiful of clear, sunny winter days that we’ve had it on. Just like in previous years we’ve had a guest conductor alongside our ‘regular’ Philip, and spent the day playing different music to our normal Thursday night rehearsals. It’s good fun, if at times, fiendessly difficult!

2. Came back home and enjoyed a good roast meal (particularly good roasted veg today!), and then settled back and watched three episodes of season 1 Battlestar Galactica – it was just going to be two episodes but I couldn’t stop there with Starbuck floating in space towards a cold moon at the end of Act of Contrition.

3. Another good CC critique today, with a few more interesting things to consider.

4. Bella and Arthur are being particularly affectionate at the moment. Bella was having a nice cuddle whilst I was watching the first of tonight’s BG episodes, and then Arthur got all jealous and muscled in and for a while I had two of them on my lap, before Bella pushed off to the other end of the sofa.

5. May go into Oxford and give Blackwell’s one last visit before I lose the 30% discount…

The blustery day (reprise)

Thomas — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 22:57:00 +0000

1. Yes, dear readers Britain has once again been ravaged by storms. And yes it has been very bad in places (did anyone see the footage of that aeroplane trying to take off from Birmingham airport?), but like all of Britain’s bad weather the media and the weather forecasters always manage to over dramatise things and and make them sound much much worse than they actually are. This is not to say that is very sad that some people have died as a result of the weather (any loss of life is always sad) but it is important to remember that these winds were nationwide and the loss of life was remarkable small. Also they are only splashed across the national headlines because of the media’s habbit of reporting every event in such situations. If the wind hadn’t have been so widespread, and just one or two people died, would it have been reported…? The agenda of the media to dramatise events like this in these situations does irritate me.

2. I am once again living Lakeside.

3. Some more new pieces at band tonight, including one on on that funny handwritten-style of printed music that I found next to impossible to play. It’s also particularly impossible to play when it’s all on ledger lines above the stave and in seven (yes seven!!) flats. I think the composer might have realised that he was being a bit harsh on us when, near the end, we actually got given about four bars with just the one sharp!!

4. Managed to do some more crits over at CritiqueCircle today, but seem to have done a splendid job of procrastinating away from my own novel. I must fix that this weekend.

5. I want to see the film Miss Potter. I may go tomorrow night…

Breeeding upper windwind, and promotion to the smallest instrument in the band…

Thomas — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:03:00 +0000

At Abingdon Concert Band we have a real problem finding enough brass. Trumpets and bass instruments are hard enough to find, and horns are next to impossible…

Meanwhile in the ranks of the upper-woodwind we’re breeding (not literally I hasten to add – unless you mean Hilary, in which case yes) like rabbits. Tonight, with the return of Rhonda, and with the addition of Rachel and Sarah, we were up to seven flutes and tapering back into three rows. This could cause a problem for with the next concert programme seeings as it’s hard enough to fit all the flutes and clarinets in one column as it is without making double spacing the other two columns! So tonight, I pretty much stayed on the piccolo parts with Amy. And I do like the picc part to Goff Richards’ Doyen – da da ta taa ta ta! Dah dah dahh dahh daa ta ta…

Wherein I am, for a time, Celine Dion

Thomas — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 23:15:00 +0000

Our next concert, is themed, intriguingly, Transport of Delight and features music from all the popular, and some not so popular, modes of transport. As transport goes fast (and in the case of a Model T irratic), much of the music is scored in a similar vein. We are also playing music from Space and Beyond and Thunderbirds – which I guess is transport of a sort.

And then we come to a more lilting, sedate piece – possibly the largest form of transport. Yes, music from Titanic. And yes again, guess who gets to play to *that* song? You guessed it – the dear old lilting flutes…

I can still play

Thomas — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 22:59:00 +0000

I realised today that I haven’t picked up my flute since our last concert on 3 June at Radley’s Silk Hall. It was band tonight, and it wasn’t till I got there that I realised that I was the lone flautist tonight. That said, it went remarkably well, all things considered – maybe because I was expecting myself to fluff every note and miss every cue, I didn’t.

Oh, and did I mention, that I like piccolo? ‘Cos I do.

The smallest and highest instrument in the band

Thomas — Tue, 16 May 2006 22:11:00 +0000

My newly bought Piccolo arrived today, in a small Special Delivery package. All day it sat on my desk and taunted me. I, of course, had to open it up and put it together, and finger the keys, and I so wanted to play it – to stand in the middle of the open plan office and play. I restrained myself from doing this, but I still wanted to. I tried it out as soon as I got it home. Secondhand it may be, bought from ebay too, but it seems to be good. And I can play it too – well at least I can play Leroy Anderson’s The Typewriter.

It’s going to be fun at band with the four flutes (two of who also with piccolos), mixing it up, ducking in and out of who’s playing which part.

In the 10 minutes that passed between my bid becoming the highest bid and above the reserve met, I had fluctuating feelings of whether I was doing the right thing, but yes, yes I did; yes I have. I love my piccolo…