I'm an ob/gyn at a university hospital, which means when I'm on call, I am in the hospital. My current sentence is for 24 hours duration and ends at 08:00 tomorrow morning. As you, dear reader, might imagine, this does afford the opportunity for some catch-up work, and, in my case, some fluting. As my pager is a long dog chain, I have holed myself up in my office and have been, ahem, "playing" a Muramatsu flute I have out on trial from Flute World.
Now, dear reader, I have a confession to make. I may have misled you. While my intro post on this little blog accurately states that I graduated music school 15 years ago, I have played since then. I graduated residency in 2007 and was in an ob/gyn practice for nearly 4 years in Louisville, KY. I bought a flute after finishing residency, took lessons and even enrolled in grad school part-time. I played a decent little recital at the end of one semester. The work was exhausting, though, and, I, being the all-or-none person that I am, stopped school and stopped playing. So, please don't think I haven't played in 15 years. I have. It is fair to state, though, that I haven't played in 2 years. Guilt be gone!
Now for the flute. It is a used Muramatsu EXBOE. I'm not really sure what that means, but that's what the tag on the case says it is. It has a sterling silver headjoint, silver plated body and foot, open holes, off-set G, B foot and a split-E mechanism. The question, of course, is how does it play. Well, I have no foggy idea, because 97% of the sounds I produce are unfocused, unsteady and out of tune. As a formerly decent flutist, I know that even the best musicians can tell if they've skipped one day of practicing. I have skipped many, many days, so I can hardly blame the flute for the middle school band student sounds that come out of it. I can say that it doesn't seem to have any leaks, but the pads make an annoying sticky sound. If I concentrate really hard and blow just the right way, I can get a fairly pretty sound out of it in the low and middle registers. The high register sounds thin to me. Is that my fault? Probably. The mechanism feels pretty good. All-in-all, I think I would be happy with this flute for the next year. The price tag for this little gem -- $3,400.
Dear reader, please don't think I have neglected my duties while working today. I am nothing if not dutiful. I have rounded, performed a minor surgery, attended a delivery, caught up on office notes and have signed delinquent hospital charts. At this point on any other Saturday on call, I would be watching TV or surfing the Internet. Instead, I played long tones. Long tones, out of tune, with poor tone quality. I know how I want to sound, but my facial muscles and respiratory system are woefully uncoordinated and uncooperative with one another, which, funny enough, isn't good for tone production. To help solve the many problems I am having with my sound, I bought a tuner app for my iPhone. It's called TonalEnergy Tuner, and it has more than met my tuning needs today. It has many features I can see using in the future, but the interesting feature I particularly enjoyed today was the setting that allowed me to tune at an intermediate level. At the intermediate level, I get a green happy face if I'm within 5 cents of the pitch (A=440). There was no beginner level, but I would have chosen it if I could have. I think intermediate level tuning is good for now. Not too easy, not too difficult. And the green happy face is oddly rewarding.
After some long tones, I felt some scales were in order. That's what you do when you're warming up, right? Play scales? Anyway, I was able to remember Exercise Number 4 (I think) from Taffenel and Gaubert 17 Daily Studies, or whatever the hell it's called, and played through the keys of C major and A minor. I was sorely missing a metronome, but, with an iPhone, there's no excuse not to have one. (Do you think Apple might give me a little money?) I downloaded an app called Tempo, which, again, has met my metronome needs. It turns out, when one takes two years off from playing the flute, one's rhythm is uneven and one's technique is, shall we say, rusty. I was able to play fairly even scales with quarter note = 72 beats per minute. It's a start.
Now for some literature. I worked on the introduction and the first few bars of the allegro section of the Faure Fantasie. I've played it before, but it is the piece required for the taped preliminary audition for the adult amateur competition I want to enter next winter. On a positive, er, note, I have an occasional nice moment, hitting a decent spin here and getting a good taper there. But, mostly, in the words of Paula Abdul, I'm not ready for this competition. I do like a challenge, though, so I'm going to keep at it.
As I'm typing, I'm looking around my office. I have no art on the walls, unless you count my med school diploma and my certificate from the ob/gyn board (ABOG). Oh, and don't forget my cork board. It's actually pretty nice. Nicer than most cork boards I've seen. I really need to spruce this room up. I've held this position for around 8 months now, and I've done very little to make my office look nice. I will rectify that one of these days.
So, that's my first day of practice. Not bad, I guess. Hopefully I'll get better. Only time will tell. I have an appointment in Arlington tomorrow afternoon to try out some more flutes. I'm excited the way a kid getting a new bike is excited. I'm also the kid who broke his arm riding his first bike without training wheels. Let's hope there are no flute-related injuries tomorrow.
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