Janathon day 23: this blows!

Written Jan 24, 2013, tagged under post,flute,janathon,orchestra,SoundCloud,spractice

So, after a busy and snow-laden day, it had got to 11PM with no sign of exercise. I had been really hoping for a run, but the freezing ground with new snow fall was making me a bit nervous of taking a fall in my tiredness. There was a bigger hurdle, though - I also needed to fit in some pretty serious practice for my flute concerto with the Misbourne Symphony Orchestra in April. (My spractice - Spring practise, a bit like January marathon - has been going "alright", but not much more). In the end, realism won over: finishing flute at 00:15 didn't leave a great deal of time!

So, instead, I am putting the day down for recovery (I do have rather achy glutes after the last 2 days of kettle bells, honest), but more significantly as involving intensive breathing exercises! It takes a lot of puff to play the piece I'm doing for the concert, and in fact I'm feeling slightly light-headed now as I type.

On a musical note, I thought I'd have a shot with a metronome today, and find myself really wishing I had introduced this earlier. A bit like hills, for some reason there's a tendency to go faster when the notes are going down, and slower when going up. It feels like I'm having to accelerate and slow down to keep in time with the stupid thing; I'm a bit all over the place! Progress is slow, even if the music is lovely. (Here's a snippet I recorded a while ago of one of my favourite slow bits).

Time spent on Janathon: 1 hour of breathing exercises *innocent titter*

Notes played: about 1,000,000 (or it feels like it)

Volume of air used: 39 cubic metres (at least)