Wow! I must have forgotten I have this...

Since I don't have a real website yet, I've decided that I should start posting on my blog again. It appears that I went through my whole master's degree without posting once! My next post will attempt to be a summation of those two simultaneously glorious and inglorious years in Waco, TX. Baylor University was most definitely the place for me during that time, and now I am living in New York City pursuing my Ph.D. in clarinet performance at NYU. Sadly, that means that I have reading to do before class tonight, and thus, this post will be THIS short. :-)

It is finished.

And the sky turned black as the night.

I think that's from an old Petra song... I'm not exactly sure. You know, 80s Christian rock?

Well, actually, my undergraduate education is finished, and that's far better than any 80s Christian rock song you could ever think of. I handed in my last paper yesterday. You have no idea how annoying it is to walk across that stage on commencement day, get your case for your diploma that they will send you in the mail -- if, after checking on your grades, you have actually met all your requirements. I still had a paper outstanding for a 2-credit elective course. However, this elective course was one I needed to fulfill my graduation requirements, so I didn't have that oh-so-desirable sense of finality as I sat listening to Rick Warren go on forever and ever about things that will last forever, like his sermon did.

By the way, I didn't want a sermon for graduation. Oh well. I probably would rather have listened to Hillary Clinton for those 20 to 30 minutes in her strained, monotonous, half-yelling sort of oration. While we're on the topic of graduation speakers, I will only say this of the Baccalaureate address: talk to me if you want to hear my opinion.

So I found out for sure that I'm playing the Brahms clarinet quintet (clarinet + string quartet), Op. 115, at the Scotia Festival. If you have not listened to this piece, you need to do so. I'm also going to bring a bunch of other chamber music for clarinet, strings and piano as well, because we can probably work on more than just that one piece. I'm very excited for this opportunity - not only because we get to be coached by world-class musicians, but also because I'll be playing with other young people who are serious about their craft. In addition, while the wind program at Baylor is very strong, doing a festival like this one with a large string component will be good, since the strings at Baylor (from what I understand) aren't quite as strong as the winds, and there's not a ton of collaboration between strings and winds for chamber music.

And there remains so much to do.

GRE on Friday and recital on April 20. I guess I should start studying for the GRE and really learn my recital music.

Mission: Auditions... complete!

The middle of last week brought my final audition, this at UGA. I really liked the professor. I think he could help me establish some good habits in my playing that would bring about much improvement. In addition to two clarinet assistantships open next year, there is also a band assistantship available, because of which he had me play for the band director as well. We'll see what happens. I have to take the GRE now, because Georgia hasn't waived the GRE requirement for performance majors (all the other schools to which I applied waive the GRE for grad performance majors). Pain in the butt.

Speaking of things left on applications, I found out that because of a single course that I took at Hudson Valley Community College during a summer and because of credit I earned at SUNY Albany in high school French 4, I need transcripts sent from them to Baylor University to complete my application there. Another pain in the butt. Grr. Especially when the music school doesn't even care. Dr. Shanley indicated that the faculty were sending positive recommendations both for admission and for an assistantship to the music graduate program. Oi. All these steps make me wish that music programs were separate from the universities, but on the other hand, music schools probably don't often have the finances to run well without a larger institution.

When I got back on Thursday, there were two pieces of mail for me from Boston University. They actually accepted me, but I didn't get any money from them, so I probably won't go. I like Boston, but not enough to spend at least another $60k to stay here two more years, especially when there are good teachers and other cool towns elsewhere.

Finally, I went and got myself an A clarinet on Friday. It came with a double case, and I bought a case cover with it. This makes me elated. Now I have my own set of instruments and can call myself a real clarinetist! Hopefully the instruments will hold up for a long, long time. I'm going to be sending in the form for insurance ASAP, either today or tomorrow.

Choosing a clarinet (last post, continued)

This is a long overdue post.

So the concert went acceptably - I only played in one of the two pieces, though it was indeed a major work (Dvorák Symphony No. 9, "From the New World"). I played second clarinet and my teacher played the first part. The other piece was the Fauré Requiem.

Now about the choosing of the new clarinet. I was terrified to go pick out a new clarinet by myself. Okay, maybe not terrified, but pretty darn scared. When I picked out my first new R13 at the end of freshman year, my teacher had come with me to help me do it. This time, I was on my own. At the last lesson I had with him before I went, I asked Mr. Kirkley to give me the things that I should look for in the new instrument. First priority was its scale, in other words, having good tuning of each note on the instrument in relation to the other notes. Then, I needed it to be free-blowing, but just a hair more resistant than my ideal, as the instruments tend to free up over the course of a year. Finally, if it came to this, I would pick the instrument with the best tone out of the ones with good tuning and ideal resistance.

Now, these are criteria by which I think I never would have been able to judge three years ago. However, I was surprised at my aptitude a couple weeks ago. There were 13 instruments to try - all Buffet, all R13s. I tried them in groups of three (the last group was four though, since 13 is a prime number and nothing goes into it evenly :-P). I liked one each in the first two groups, none in the third, and two in the fourth. From these, the tuning test rendered the two from the last group as the two finalists, and due to one slight tuning advantage, I chose the one whose tone I preferred slightly less. Now mind you, all of these instruments are the same model, so we're talking minute differences. They all sound like clarinets, but the ease with which one can get the desired tone is what varies between instruments (in addition to tuning and resistance). So in sum, the one I chose had a slightly better scale, slightly better consistency of tone through all the registers of the instrument, was a little less resistant, and had a touch more brightness in the tone (American and German-school clarinetists generally prefer a dark tone).

Sorry for that quasi-technical, maybe boring, likely unsolicited lesson in clarinet qualities. The importance of this is that I realized that, believe it or not, after four years of studying the instrument, am developing some sense of independence as a musician. I am now able to analyze and make choices based upon certain minutiae. Dorky as it may sound, I think this helped me realize that I'm a real musician now. Theme related to the title of this blog: I found out I know more than I thought I did. What a pleasant feeling.

Now onto other things.

Recovery step one... complete!

So I did it. I got a new instrument. I went to University Music in Lowell and played all of the R13 clarinets they had in stock. For those clarinet non-aficionados in my (assumed) limited readership, an R13 is the basic professional model clarinet of French clarinet manufacturer Buffet-Crampon.

It took me two hours. I tried them in groups of three. I picked one from the first group, one from the second group, none from the third, and two from the fourth. Then I took advantage of the music store owner's offer to help me choose one. We eliminated the clarinets from the first two groups pretty quickly, and thus had to decide which from the last group would be the winner and which the runner-up.

It was a hard choice; both instruments had a very good scale (were well in-tune with themselves), and both had an overall gorgeous tone. In the end, I ended up deciding based on the fact that one of them had a scale ever so slightly more in tune than the other, combined with a slight advantage of evenness of tone between registers. The trade-off with this instrument (the one I chose) was that its tone was just a tad brighter than the other. Regardless, the tone of this (now my) instrument is still beautiful and robustly clarinetty. I will just have to make a couple minor adjustments in my playing, mouthpiece, and/or barrel to keep it dark.

It turns out that choosing a new clarinet happened to be a very important and therapeutic experience for a couple reasons, but more on that later. I have a concert to play in less than two hours.

The end of an era and the start of a new one

So one of my friends is admonishing anyone who reads her Xanga to switch to blogspot, as she did. I am heeding her advice. I became acquainted with blogspot last semester due to a blog that we had for my senior-seminar-ish music class. Our professor, Dr. Monroe, is one of those teachers who loves to use technology in his classes, and I think we all had fun with that class blog. And aye, indeed, Kandyce, blogspot is a better format than Xanga.

We'll see if I have any luck posting to this one more frequently than I did my Xanga.

For those unacquainted with me, I am about to graduate from Gordon College with a Bachelor of Arts in music, with a minor in French. I am a clarinet player, and I am currently waiting to hear back from the graduate schools to which I have already applied to and auditioned at, and I have yet to audition at two more.

I most recently lost my clarinets (well one that was mine, and one that is the college's), and on Saturday I am going to replace my Bb clarinet. We'll see how that goes. It is quite unfortunate when you have to take out a loan equal to half the cost of the loans of your entire undergraduate education just to replace your instruments. But no dwelling on this... life goes on.