Some Bassoon progress
First of all — even though most of you probably know — I have succeeded in those conservatory admissions, which is awesome. More than that, in the audition part I received 23 points (out of 25 possible), which is much more than I would have expected. In the other parts, I have done somewhat worse, but in each of them it was quite enough to pass. Well, school starts next September.
In other news, I have been practising (a lot). There was a small interruption while I was at Utrecht two weeks ago, but other than that, I am getting between an hour and two every day. I have been mostly working on basic technique: breath control, embouchure, getting fingers to move, tonguing and staccato. I do long tones across three octaves every day (metronome on 40, 8 beats per tone, chromatic scale from C to c”, then 4 beats per tone from c” to C (breathing every other), then 2 up again and 1 down). A lot is going into breathing and embouchure in that exercise. I add decrescendos from time to time (it seems that the exercise is also more demanding that way).
Then go scales — last two weeks it was A major, F# minor and I’ll be adding a sharp every two weeks I suppose (I’m at E major/C# minor right now), then switch to Bb major and start adding flats. That way, I should get through all of them before the school starts in September, and maybe even find some extra time for some practice. I should definitely know all of them reliably by first year’s midterms, and I’ll need another pass or two till then. Anyway, the scale exercises revolve around the standard drill: scale, triad, inversions, dominant seventh chord and its inversions. Basically just kicking the fingers into obedience.
After scales, the practice program starts to vary — there are some staccato and finger exercises I do sometimes, and there are etudes (currently in Weissenborn op. 8, start of lesson 18). As far as actual music goes, I have been mostly sticking to continuo parts — maybe two movements of the Händel oboe sonata (well, “oboe”… HWV 364), first two or three movements of Sonata Sesta by Veracini. I have teased the Sicilienne by Eugene Bozza a little, although it is really out of my current technical (not to mention musical) reach. Few weeks ago, prof gave me a copy of Inventions per Oboe and Bassoon, by J. Z. Bartoš. I did some work on the first one, and I played it in the class last week… We also tried it with Lucy, and it wasn’t that bad. There’s this one … surprising bit in there, but overall, it’s getting pretty well.
More recently, I have also started to work on my right hand’s fourth finger, which has been misbehaving from day one. Finally, after few months of frustration, it seems the spell is broken and things have started to move… somewhere. Hard to tell what gives just yet, but it seems that eventually, it’ll stop cramping. Hooray for progress.
And well, reeds. I have two playable reeds right now. One is pretty good, the other — hard to tell just yet. I have been using the latter for just long tones last few days, wondering what will come out of it. It’s harder to control and takes a lot of air in the lower register (C-E) and I’m not quite sure about its intonation either. Interestingly, it initially seemed to be the better of the two…
(Other than bassoon, there’s also the piano thing. I didn’t mention that before, but I have bought myself a Yamaha P-140, so now I can practice piano at home — which is good for the compulsory piano classes that are part of the conservatory curriculum… I don’t have much more than maybe 20 minutes every few days, although I am trying to make it more regular. Nevertheless, there’s also been some progress in the piano department.)