Music Camp, Continued

Day 2:

Swimming and Tai Chi with Sue and Donna:   Check.

This is my normal Friday fitness schedule.  I chose to go ahead with it, even though it takes up the entirety of the morning.  As always, I thoroughly enjoyed both activities.  As always, it made me quite tired, and that got in the way of Camp a little, both in motivation and straight-up fatigue.  Another time I'd choose one or the other and save the rest of my energy for Camp.

Dinner:  Check. 

I'm trying to minimize dinner prep time, and chose Slow-Cooker soups as my go-to.  As it happened, Ron made dinner on Day 1, a delicious preparation of skillet salmon and go-withs.  Today I made the first soup.  It sure was delicious; however, I'm not sure but what the prep time just moved to a different part of the day!   An aside: while in Tucson, we had another hilarious conversation about the regional ways to which meals are referred:  in the southwest:  Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner.  In the midwest, Breakfast, Dinner, Supper.  Getting tangled up in these differences with brother Scott, who lives in NE, always amuses me to no end! 

Violin and piano practices:  Check.

Finish My Personal Music Library Theme of the Day:  Check.

I'd let my Amazon order sit overnight so as to look at it with a fresh eye today and make certain of my purchases.  I added a couple of CD's, then pushed the $$ button.  



Day 3:  

Violin and piano practices:  Check.

Progress on Great Courses video:  Check.

I've had this course, titled "Understanding the Fundamentals of Music",  for some time.  I've watched 10 of the 16 episodes, and liked Camp as a time to finish it up.  The lecturer, Robert Greenberg, is like all Great Courses lecturers, very much an expert who is expounding on a topic he loves.   Though his style is very professional and self-contained, he does inject a goodly amount of humor, making it fun to watch and listen.

It is pretty heavy going.  It's college-level information and delivery.  Probably not why it's titled something like "Fundamentals of Music for Dummies".  I have encountered a good share of the information in the course of my musical life, and have a context for what I haven't.  It's good for my overall base of musical knowledge, but it's way too theoretical for what I'm struggling with in my daily practices. 

Theme of the Day:  Explore repertoire of Little Deck Concerts:  Check. 

This got thoroughly explored and decided, as follows:

• Tiny Deck Concert season is May-October
• There will be two Tiny Deck Concerts per month
• Each Tiny Deck Concert will consist of two short tunes played several times or one longer tune.
• I'll be incorporating Suzuki tunes, fiddle tunes, popular covers, and folk songs in this repertoire.
• As much as possible, the short pieces will be memorized (a particular weakness of mine).
• The concerts will be ephemeral.  
• November-April will be repertoire building months.  
• This will require finding additional practice time.  I think I see some places in my schedule to fit it in!
• Yep, I'm instantly behind in my repertoire building.  But the first pieces will be from Suzuki Book 1, which I've been playing since I started lessons.  I think I can squeek out "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" without too much rehearsal!  And if I repeat repertoire, who's to know?