SCMEA...part two? Oh, and a house.
Last night I got back from the SCMEA Conference in Charleston, and oh my goodness it was a great weekend! :D I got to try out so many different flutes, and I picked up a Jupiter product catalog with prices for alto and bass flutes...I'm saving up my money to buy one of each eventually. I love love love both of them, particularly the alto. It has an incredible sound; it's so beautiful. However, the cheapest alto Jupiter sells is $1830, and the cheapest bass they have is $3190. So I'll have to save up for quite a few years. But I will own an alto and a bass flute by the time I have my Masters...I hope. :P Anyway, the whole weekend was really fun. I had a great time hanging out with my fellow future teachers. ^_^ The flute majors and I walked around and played just about every flute in the place. Courtney fell in love with the Azumi flute they had on display at the Music & Arts table; she's decided that's the next one she wants. I think it's a great choice; if my parents hadn't gotten me my Pearl I was going to buy an Azumi myself. Kim kept going back to the Brio! flutes, which happens to be the brand Greg Patillo, the beat-boxing flute player, uses in his rather fantastic videos (please look him up if you haven't seen his videos yet). I honestly liked the Brios too; they have a really beautiful sound, and I love the cut of the tone hole. Sorry major music nerd moment there. Hehe.
Another super awesome part of SCMEA was the percussion concert! They played all their world instruments - the African drums, Taiko, and steel band. It was amazing. The African dancers were great; Kurry tortured one of the couples a bit by letting them stay crouching on the ground for an extra minute or two before continuing the music. It was rather hilarious. Then the Taiko ensemble played their usual "Tsunami", as well as a fantastically entertaining rendition of Beyonce's "Single Ladies". Oh my goodness that was so cool! They had a really awesome dance routine to go with the drumming; it was great. :D Steel band sounded really good too, although that's no surprise. They even played an encore after their scheduled pieces; it was "The Naming Day", which I think has to be my favorite piece from steel. After the percussion kids were done, the MENC folks helped them load up the truck/vans, and then we headed home. We listened to DCI for most of the way back; it was fun. I was in sort of a funky mood shortly after we left, but I felt better after driving a little ways. Overall it was an awesome weekend. I'm looking forward to hopefully going to the Midwest clinic in December this year; there wasn't enough interest last year so nobody went, but I really want to go this time. I've heard so much about it, and all of it good.
There is also something I forgot to mention that occurred before SCMEA: my parents bought a house! It's a 3-story, 7-bedroom house in The Farms community in Carolina Forest, and it's absolutely wonderful. It's also bigger AND a couple hundred thousand dollars cheaper than the other house we were going to have built for us. The room I picked out for myself has a rather decent view, and right next to it is my future practice room! :D It'll be used as a guest room when needed, but the rest of the time I will have my very own practice room. I can keep my instruments in there, my stand, my music...it's going to be positively amazing. I'm so freaking excited; we move in next month.
Alright, well that might be one of my longer posts that was just about my life in general. Hope it wasn't too boring. :P See everybody later!
Another super awesome part of SCMEA was the percussion concert! They played all their world instruments - the African drums, Taiko, and steel band. It was amazing. The African dancers were great; Kurry tortured one of the couples a bit by letting them stay crouching on the ground for an extra minute or two before continuing the music. It was rather hilarious. Then the Taiko ensemble played their usual "Tsunami", as well as a fantastically entertaining rendition of Beyonce's "Single Ladies". Oh my goodness that was so cool! They had a really awesome dance routine to go with the drumming; it was great. :D Steel band sounded really good too, although that's no surprise. They even played an encore after their scheduled pieces; it was "The Naming Day", which I think has to be my favorite piece from steel. After the percussion kids were done, the MENC folks helped them load up the truck/vans, and then we headed home. We listened to DCI for most of the way back; it was fun. I was in sort of a funky mood shortly after we left, but I felt better after driving a little ways. Overall it was an awesome weekend. I'm looking forward to hopefully going to the Midwest clinic in December this year; there wasn't enough interest last year so nobody went, but I really want to go this time. I've heard so much about it, and all of it good.
There is also something I forgot to mention that occurred before SCMEA: my parents bought a house! It's a 3-story, 7-bedroom house in The Farms community in Carolina Forest, and it's absolutely wonderful. It's also bigger AND a couple hundred thousand dollars cheaper than the other house we were going to have built for us. The room I picked out for myself has a rather decent view, and right next to it is my future practice room! :D It'll be used as a guest room when needed, but the rest of the time I will have my very own practice room. I can keep my instruments in there, my stand, my music...it's going to be positively amazing. I'm so freaking excited; we move in next month.
Alright, well that might be one of my longer posts that was just about my life in general. Hope it wasn't too boring. :P See everybody later!