Painting My Own Canvas

Good evening to all! Wow, what a day! So my alarm clock goes off at 6:30am, I reset it for 6:45, then 6:55, then 7:20. Ha, then I get up. Shoot I was tired last night after bells. With rehearsal from 8-10pm, one's brain is bound to be fried. Then, I read like 45 pages of that article for Hafer. I just hit the hay when I was done....dead to the world.
So, I drag myself out of bed, get dressed, primped, slip on the headphones, and head to the Cochran for a bowl of Apple Jacks and then to the FAB for another 20 pages of classic music. I did practice my scales, but the piano I was at had no bench, just a chair, so I was actually very low on the keyboard and it didn't feel too good on the wrists.
I head into theory for the morning and the first thing I see is Mardi Gras beads flying across the room. Turns out Dr. B, wife, and baby had fun over the weekend and the baby collected more beads than Danny Beard did. I made a nice odd 83 on the theory test, which in truth, I am relieved about. I could have made an A and should have made an A, but at the end of the test I rushed, and thus made stupid errors. At least, I made my leading tones go up and my chordal sevenths go down! Ha! Mastered!
My piano lesson was good. Started off with a rocky scale cycle. To be honest, I try to practice just the normal scales once a day, usually the first thing I do in the morning. I just haven't been in the scalar mood lately. The Shostakovich was a bit dodgy at the beginning. I think my mind was on other things, because it always is (hey! i know i'm scatterbrained! i take after my mother!)., but it eventually smoothed out. I just need to work on my phrasing in the right hand and remember to hit the right notes in the left. Firefly is coming along. With time, it will be up to speed and that piece is going to rock my socks off! Haven't worked on the Beethoven in awhile. Will do it though. I still can't believe ML, the abbreviation for Momma Leventhal (my piano teacher), crawled under the piano while dragging a bench behind her. She was doing it to hang a wall hanging. At her age, she doesn't really need to be doing that. She should have asked one of us more flexible younguns to do it. Even if it was like late at night, I would have come and done it. I may live in McCarty, a good mile at least from that building, but still on campus. Anyway, I now have an exercise for augmented chords! YAY!
Opera History was interesting, as it always is. Byron convinced Dr. Hauer to move the test to Monday, which gives us, especially me, more time to revise. Hallelujah! This means I CANNOT SLACK OFF IN STUDYING! I also need to finish the Classical Period timeline this weekend and ask Hafer if I can email it to him. The thing is going to be huge and if it is printed, it will be in color, which means more money on my part. Joy.
Choir was ok. I couldn't stop yawning through it. Thank God for Starbucks. The high B-flat sounded ok, I just need to support it more underneath and approach it from the top. And Mary is right, Flan needs to have 1-2 people on that note because when 6 first sopranos try to hit that note and miss, it sounds bad. It's at the end of The Battle of Jericho, which is a very energetic arrangement by Moses Hogan, and the high notes are relatively easy in this piece.
Today in rehearsals for Carmen, the chorus was only needed for No. 21 and then released. We have to be off-book for Acts I and II on Friday.
And tonight, FPC Bell choir was a hoot. At the very end of rehearsal, Dr. Smith knows we're tired and we want to get out of there. So he calls up "Let the Bells Peal," which has a ton of half notes for the bass bells. Well there is a certain bell technique that requires lightly tapping the bell on the table to make an echo effect. This technique is not written for use in this piece. But to annoy Dr. Smith, Mike, Patrick, Bearcat, Me, and Whitney are randomly doing this echo effect on random beats throughout the half-note line (which sounds really cool because being random, you never who's going to do it when). And what's even more hilarious is that we've been doing this since the beginning of the semester and he just now heard it and acknowledged it tonight. Now anybody who is observing would know that we are goofing off because we're just cracking up. Hahahaha. I love being young. Still wish I was 19, but you don't get everything you wish for. I have the mind of a 19 year old (the year I went overseas), but the stress of a 21 year old.
Aural skills test and 18th century test come back tomorrow. 5 page response to a 90 page article due tomorrow. 12:01 is tomorrow afternoon at the BSU. Carillon is tomorrow night from 8-10. Hopefully, tomorrow will not be a bad day. Hopefully, I passed both tests with decent above-average grades. Hopefully.