(no subject)
For the last three Wednesday afternoons broccolipwns and I have been going to his improv class, hanging out with classmates and parents in the park/playground for a while afterward, and then parting company at the bus station, him going home (making for his first times soloing on riding buses and letting himself in) and me to my Sight Singing and Ear Training class.
In contrast to the audience at the Willie Nelson concert, this class definitely has people I know in it. At the first class meeting there were two women I've been in voice classes with. At the second class meeting another shape-note singer showed up, and then something funny happened: When I had been describing the first class meeting to violetclm I had mentioned a "grumpy" guy who kept complaining about the other students making too much noise -- well, when I said my name at the beginning of the second class meeting, he suddenly stood up and asked if I had used to run a BBS "a hundred years ago", and turned out to be one of my BBS users that I had never met before. My.
The class is kind of odd. First of all, the instructor is somewhat scattered and likely to make mistakes on her own sight singing, but as she said that Wednesday is her big teaching day when she has classes from 8am on, I guess it makes sense that she'd be pretty frazzled by the time her 6:30 to 9:15pm class finally came along. Second, it seems like my "OK, so I *can* sight-sing/read music -- it's just that I do it pretty slowly and can totally lose it if I'm trying to do it in real time" situation is basically where everyone else in the class is as well. So the instructor gives us some little exercises to do, and we do them, and she's all excited about how fast everyone is getting it, when really they already get it but just need an excuse and setting to practice more to get up to speed.
Which makes me feel a little silly: OK, so there's not some big secret to sight-singing/reading music that's going to be revealed here, but I just need to practice more, just like when my children were learning to read words and getting faster and better the more they did it, and I certainly could have done that any time I had wanted to! Oh well, it's fun anyway, and maybe there will be the equivalent of a big secret after all, in terms of some insight or another that just helps things click for me a little bit more.
In contrast to the audience at the Willie Nelson concert, this class definitely has people I know in it. At the first class meeting there were two women I've been in voice classes with. At the second class meeting another shape-note singer showed up, and then something funny happened: When I had been describing the first class meeting to violetclm I had mentioned a "grumpy" guy who kept complaining about the other students making too much noise -- well, when I said my name at the beginning of the second class meeting, he suddenly stood up and asked if I had used to run a BBS "a hundred years ago", and turned out to be one of my BBS users that I had never met before. My.
The class is kind of odd. First of all, the instructor is somewhat scattered and likely to make mistakes on her own sight singing, but as she said that Wednesday is her big teaching day when she has classes from 8am on, I guess it makes sense that she'd be pretty frazzled by the time her 6:30 to 9:15pm class finally came along. Second, it seems like my "OK, so I *can* sight-sing/read music -- it's just that I do it pretty slowly and can totally lose it if I'm trying to do it in real time" situation is basically where everyone else in the class is as well. So the instructor gives us some little exercises to do, and we do them, and she's all excited about how fast everyone is getting it, when really they already get it but just need an excuse and setting to practice more to get up to speed.
Which makes me feel a little silly: OK, so there's not some big secret to sight-singing/reading music that's going to be revealed here, but I just need to practice more, just like when my children were learning to read words and getting faster and better the more they did it, and I certainly could have done that any time I had wanted to! Oh well, it's fun anyway, and maybe there will be the equivalent of a big secret after all, in terms of some insight or another that just helps things click for me a little bit more.