draco @draco@sonomu.club

Only 10 minutes of vocal practice yesterday. Still managed to warm up and sing through all of my range once.

Apart from that, I took about an hour to familiarize myself with Reaper. Still totally on the fence about the idea of switching to closed source. What is nice though is the level and quality of documentation; that's something where most open-source projects could step up their game.

Currently #reading: "The War of Art" by Stephen Pressfield. I feel massively called out by this book.

Today: Practicing an accompaniment for a simplified arrangement of the "Ode to Joy" on my electric guitar for a bit. Then about 20 min. singing - I feel like I caught a cold, which is annoying.
About 40 minutes of classical guitar - a lot of technical stuff and a first look at the Sarabande from Bach's Partita BWV 1007.

Among the most pernicious internalized shit I deal with is the assumption that art is a nice-to-have and "just a hobby" (which implies it should be squeezed into the gaps left by "proper work"™).

But for me, it feels like a vocation. And you don't treat something that comes from the bottom of your soul with disdain.

Another good singing practice session this afternoon. I'm very pleased with the high notes, as well as with how "Quella fiamma" gets easier and easier... while still being interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DIrZZRMh-c

#classicalsinging #belcanto

Another TIL: The ratio of one equally tempered half step is the twelfth root of 2. #musictheory

Maybe, sometime these days, I will even understand the math behind equal temperament (which, to this day, I don't, but I guess it was just never explained to me in a way I understand).

TIL: Blauertsche Bänder. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blauertsche_B%C3%A4nder #acoustics

OK, I'm doing this teaching thing: #musictheory and (classical music) harmony! Everything from notation, basics of acoustics, intervals and scales to music history.

I'm available for 1-on-1 lessons and small groups (2-4 people). Price: Sliding scale for 1-on-1, pay-what-you-can for group sessions.

I'm in the CET/CEST time zone, fyi.

What being a musicologist is good for: Finding a halfway trustworthy Public Domain source for Beethoven's Ode to Joy, then arranging the popular melody into a leadsheet-style thing with chord symbols for communal singing within less than two hours.

Wife and I stood on the balcony of an empty school building and played bass and guitar and sang while about a dozen people sang along in the yard, all nicely standing apart as recommended.

Just had an unexpectedly good singing practice session - even sang a really hard Rossini aria! Bravura arias always put me in a good mood.

I'm going to refresh my memory of the rules of harmony as taught in music schools. This was the book they used back then when I studied at the Saarbrücken music school.

It was one of the books I loaned to someone and never got it back, and now I'm happy to have it back on my shelf.

(The title is "Harmonielehre im Selbststudium" by Thomas Krämer.)

Today: My voice felt a little sluggish at first, but I ended my (roughly) half-hour practice with some Brahms. Juicy stuff.

I taught my first 1-on-1 harmony lesson on Discord today! I felt a bit awkward, but it was a lot of fun. And also, screen sharing my #musescore window was a really useful tool.

Also, it's good to be reminded that this stuff can be hard at first.

I need to distact myself from #covid-19 related anxiety. I guess I will explore composition and Supercollider if I'm not writing a book. (Seriously, I have a bunch of book projects on my hard drive because my brain can't stop at one project.)

Also, I'm toying with the idea of starting to teach music theory online, via Skype/Hangouts/Jitsi. I could do something along the lines of "music theory for total beginners" or "harmony 101".

In other news, I had two really good practice sessions today. Singing Rossini and practicing scales and arpeggios on the guitar, and taking my first timid steps in jamming along to a simple backing track.