Chops, wedding gig, etc.

I'm playing a wedding on Saturday! A gig!!!

But that also means that I need to take a break from my Serious Work today and yesterday to get that rep figured out. I usually try to add maybe 5 or so pop songs to my book each gig so that it'll nicely and gradually expand (read: so I'll get more tips when I have songs that people request). The only problem today is that I don't have Sibelius on this computer, because I haven't had money to purchase it since I got this new one and Sib 7 isn't supported on the new MacOS's (BOOOOOOO). SO that means today I will be writing by hand. Yay! What fun! Too bad I can barely read my own music handwriting.. Unless I find that using an online notation program actually is quicker but I kind of doubt it -- my former speed at making lead sheets was mostly related to my light speed use of Sibelius I think).

I'm also playing Jesu, Joy of Man's Desire, a song that I actually haven't had to play before but thanks to Sylvia Woods (bless her) I could download an arrangement and look at it right away. I feel like it's one of those songs that harmonically makes so much sense it almost gets disorienting. Around and around and around and around and around and wait, where was I? Anyways. I'm hoping I'm correct in planning on only having to learn the first half of it -- placing my bets here that the wedding party will have gotten in by the time I've circled around the popular part of the tune a couple of times (always going for a level of "good enough" these days for weddings. Actually a nice skill! Saves energy, more bang for the buck). But I'm grateful though - I had a hunch last week that I'd have to play something new so I was reading through a bunch of things just to get my reading chops warmed up.

Speaking of chops: after three weeks of focused practice both my harp chops and my singing chops are FINALLY starting to get in order!! It's so much funner when you can actually do the things you should be capable of doing. But it's also interesting -- I'm reminded of how muscular it all is. Almost like an athlete, we really have to stay in shape. And I've also been very focused on developing the right kind of strength this time around. It takes longer for it to sound good but the payback is so nice and I'm hoping more long term rewarding.

I'm also practicing conducting these days, but that's another story. :-)

Ok I'm not sure actually if anybody in the whole world cares about the kind of stuff that I wrote in this post hahah, but thankfully nobody was forced to read it! I enjoyed word vomiting my thoughts though, so at least somebody got some joy lol.