Getting high on music
As we are getting ready for our next concert, and starting to figure out what we're playing on our summer trip, the band is getting new music. We've been assured that we'll know what we're playing long before we leave so that we have ample time to practice. Judging by the music we played through last night, we'll need it. Not only is the music fast and technical in the woodwinds, but several of the pieces we've gotten go up into the stratosphere. Like, holy crap, it goes up to a high D??? What is this nonsense? I know, this won't make much sense to non-flute players, much less non-musicians, but notes like high D are why God invented piccolos. They are rare. Like, you get past high Bb, maybe high C, and you're into the Mariah Carey notes of the flute. I would not be surprised to discover several of the members of the flute section don't know the fingerings offhand. The only reason I know high C# and high D is because I did used to practice them, but I haven't really done anything with them recently, and I mean since I joined the band, because I wasn't coming across them. Okay, well, scratch that! And, naturally, it's not simply that you have to hit these notes with their awkward fingerings, you have to do them in a running pattern at a raging tempo. Like, the piccolo player asked the assistant director after one of the songs, could you give us an approximate tempo marking you'll be taking this at so we can work with a metronome to get this down? One of the clarinet players went, you want the marking labeled "Fast," with the capital F. Don't use the one with the lowercase F. Heh. Yeah, it's super fast and super awkward and I'm not entirely sure how I played it. Maybe I didn't. When you start getting into those super-high notes, they all start sounding alike when you're playing them at breakneck speed with the entire rest of the band doing something similar. By the way, the piccolo? Is also up in the stratosphere. The only reason her part doesn't go up past high C is because that's the instrument's upper limit. I'm pretty sure I've tried to hit higher than that on piccolo, but on the flute you need special keys (a B foot with a gizmo key, which doesn't exist on a piccolo since there's no footjoint) to help facilitate the notes, so not even every flute can really play those notes well. All I know is that I've got my work cut out for myself the next time I practice. There's like three songs in that "holy crap, are we really going to play these?" realm. Oh well. I enjoy that sort of thing.