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Saturday, March 21, 2009 ? 0 Atashinchi ?
I am sooooo seriously tired after 2 full days of prac, out of which is mostly dazu (with zheng ls there!!!!!<3). And this time round they actually involved a lot of tanbo, unlike previous pracs, so it is much more tiring. I got such bad muscle aches from attempting to do 台风... I think praccing in CO can actually help you to slim down. Plus my shoulders hurt from carrying around my pipa so much. -_-Yesterday we had one FULL day of dazu! But it was in the j-blk shared classroom, where every sound is magnified until zheng ls kept telling us to play softer and softer and softer... We did the edited version of molou and at first it was a bit confusing cos we had to get used to a new score. But it wasn't that bad for most of us as we played the full version during last year's concert already. :) Liu ls and zheng ls went through the song section by section and it was so REFRESHING to hear what zheng ls had to say and he really clarified a lot of stuff. Now we have a much clearer idea of what we are expected to play and how to play it, and it will be up to us to work towards actually achieving those expected results.
Today we had about 1 hour of xiaozu with instructors before we started on dazu. Before that I was running around A LOT settling prac venues cos various groups of people booked nearly the WHOLE school. -_- In the end tanbo had to sit on the floor outside ks chee while xianyue sat on the stairs opposite us in music blk, then diyin went upstairs outside the Raffles Room, and the rest of CO stayed and pracced inside ks chee. We changed some more stuff during today's dazu but I think now we have confirmed the score. Today's dazu was a little less interesting than yesterday's, cos liu ls was testing the other sections' 音准 and tanbo was slacking/reading/stoning. I was sleeping with my forehead on the back of my pipa, but i couldn't really fall asleep otherwise my pipa would slip from my grasp. :( But yay I can memorise the new version of molou already, but seeing that some juniors may have more difficulty memorising if they did not perform in last year's concert, I told the section to memorise by next week. See I am so incredibly nice and lenient. :)
I am a bit worried that tanbo is going to get complacent, though, since liu ls is focusing on 音准 for the other sections. And since we don't have that problem she doesn't pick on us that much. I really wish that tanbo would not be so impatient about her spending prac time praccing with other sections, and that we would actually realise that we still have a lot to improve on, such as the ever present problem of 不整齐, or we can work on stuff like 音色 and 台风. Not to mention the fact that our 基本功 is so totally 烂. Please stop trying to compare ourselves to other people, cos the only ones whom we should compare ourselves to IS ourselves!
Let's talk about happy stuff. Today during lunch we had SO MUCH fun. :) Haha when we were waiting for a bus at the bus stop opposite school we realised that the entire CO was congregating there together with a load of other people, so we figured that we would waste a lot of time if we were going to wait for the whole section to get on the bus. And we decided to RUN to Far East as a section! It was so 爽 and we arrived proudly before everyone else did. Someone suggested that we should hold a CO marathon session. :) When we were eating tienli, weiyi, nicole and I had this INTERESTING conversation that continued during our way back to school. Tienli was telling us about some AHEM stuff that she probably got from Qianwen about what people do in RJ and whatever. It's a miracle that I have managed to 出污泥而不染 even after the 3 years+ of pollution from the ultra-sick tienli and weiyi. And I really pity nicole our poor little junior for being subjected to this kind of gross influence. -_-
Oh and the solo part that I duet with liuqin which I was so worried about didn't turn out so badly after all. I mean of course there were problems cos I am not very familiar with the part (never practise since last year's concert!) but since the notes were quite easy it wasn't so bad. Yesterday when we first went through liu ls kept insisting that I was playing it wrongly and she stared at me in that freaky way but I was feeling very 冤枉 cos I didn't know where I'd gone wrong. Then zheng ls came to look at my score and we realised that MY SCORE WAS WRONG. And he very nicely pracced that part with me for a while. :) But he was poking my shoulder to "tap" the beat and it kind of hurt cos he used A LOT of force. On the other hand (I heard from the zhongruan people) I was swaying my pipa a bit when I was playing so it kept coming close to hitting him and he had to keep dodging it. I think that must have looked REALLY comical. :P
When I played that part during today's dazu I finally got the notes right (that few bars in my score had 2 wrong notes and 1 wrong rhythm... whoever 抄谱ed did such a great job), but when they went fast I panicked and thought that I was playing too slow so I ended up 赶拍ing. Afterwards it was better but I think my 节奏 wasn't 稳 enough. I think I should play with more confidence. -_- And the conductor kept telling me to play LOUDER but I tried very hard already! I will try to work on it but I don't think I will be able to achieve any significant increase in volume since it really depends on 基本功. But zhang ls told me it was ok and that I only needed to be more relaxed, though I think that when liuqin comes back and duets with me I will be covered since liuqin is higher pitched. :( How?
Haha but at least that part has a fixed speed, except for the 渐慢 at the end, unlike the part after liuqin solo where I play the 71 7176 #5. The rhythm was weird in the first place and now I have to 渐快 AND 渐慢 within 4 notes that make up one crochet. It is super difficult to get the 感觉 right. And I think I am too tense. I am trying to find the 松弛的感觉 for both this part and the pipa-liuqin duet part, but cannot compromise on the volume. Shall ask yu ls about this when I go for lesson on Sunday.
Btw 没有柳琴的日子好难过! When zhang ls was here we asked her to play the liuqin solo part otherwise we attempted to make up the important liuqin parts by playing on pipa or getting tienli to play on the liuqin. Tienli was super enthu about it and she actually went home to prac those parts, but she always panicked too much when she played them during dazu. :( Actually trying to play for them was a bit fun in some ways but we were kind of lousy at it so... :P Sarah and yunan please come back! We really really need you people!!!
This sunday I am passing my pipa to yu ls to send for repair cos some 品s' 音色 is a bit muffled. She will lend me one of her pipas so that I can practise at home. I will really miss my pipa! Oh and yesterday and today I managed to break 2 一弦s at THE EXACT SAME SPOT. It's the part where the 弦 just meets the 缚手. Maybe it's cos of the new way we play the 极限音 plus they expect us to play with the maximum amount of force. But it's so weird cos I usually never break strings and this time round I broke one the day after I changed it! So freaky!
Today I went home SUPER late cos I was waiting for yifei, who was attending wenyun's pep talk with some of xianyue. It was so scary and someone started crying, so in the end wenyun and amelia went to give her a hug to 安慰 her. Reminds me of how that time after I scolded tanbo I attempted to do some damage control cos I was scared that some people would take my words too harshly, like jiahui who puked in the toilet, and yunan who didn't dare to look at me for the entire duration of dazu that day... Anyway after the pep talk wenyun, amelia, yifei, danna and I stayed back to discuss stuff until the security guard wanted to chase us out. :P We left the school when it was nearly 8 and the sky was TOTALLY dark. So scary. In the end I reached home at nearly 9 o'clock.
But I realise that now I am loads more confident of what I do as an SL. I am finally able to recognise the fact that whatever you do there will be those who disagree and that it won't work if you try to take care of everyone's feelings. Anyway I only have a few months left of my term, which will pass very quickly, and afterwards I will be gone from CO, so who cares? There's no point in stressing myself out so much. :) Of course in order to have this mentality you have to erase the sense of guilt from your conscience, which I took quite long to do, but hmm I think I have somewhat accomplished this. So just accept me for who I am and how I do things, and if you don't like it then pray that in the future you get an SL who does things a different way. I shall not bother myself anymore. :)
Great this blog post has taken me so long. Haha I just have soooooo much to talk about for CO! But now I NEED to go and sleep or I will die during tomorrow's xiaozu. Again. Byezzzzzzz......
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