Catching up

It's rainy today and I am feeling smug having checked my bank statement, filed and shredded papers, sorted some stuff for recycling and am now posting this. I did not realise how long it has been since posting anything. Actually, I already wrote this an hour ago, and when it was posted I could not find it at first, and then discovered it lurking on my blog BELOW the last entry!! Out of order! How did that happen? Anyway, I could not change it, so deleted it and here we are again. There is undoubtedly a simple reason it happened, but don't ask me. I am incapable of plumbing the shallows of my own IT skills. I would drown.

Tenor clef is losing some of its terrors, but the A-string still sets my teeth on edge when I get to 'f' or 'g' and above. However, when I think back a year and remember how anything above the open 'A' caused my fillings to loosen, I realise I have come far. Also, there is the pleasure of discovering new fingerings on the 'D' and finding a harsh phrase can be mellowed by changing strings. I must persevere, though with the 'A'.

I have been enjoying 'Greensleeves' by Vaughan Williams and thought I was playing it rather well (tenor AND TREBLE clef included) until, that is, I played it with my teacher and discovered that her sharps, flats and semitones were different from mine! There are many subtleties in a tone or semitone, aren't there? I have an old video of Tortelier playing a scale the Western way, then in the Eastern way and then - I think - in the Russian way. The differences were amazing. So, it's back to the drawing board for me and my English way.