Piano is an unruly bitch, but I'm strangely drawn to her

The piano minor I final is tomorrow and none to soon. I need a break, I've had it with school for the year. I should be scrambling to learn my scales & and two more pieces, but I've been slacking. I'm sure I'll suck tomorrow, as this isn't the kind of thing you can cram for at the last minute. Ah well. All I need to do is pass, not ace it. I'm sure I can squeeze in a little more practice before bed-time. My final is around 2:00 tomorrow afternoon, so I have the whole morning to practice, preferably on a real piano at school. The down-side is the real pianos are mostly all really out of tune, but I need to play these pieces on something other than a keyboard...weighted keys or not, it's just not the same.

I had my first bass lesson in about two months this morning, and it was great, and very inspiring. Jeff is a fantastic teacher, extremely approachable, and explains things in a eminently understandable way. He's great with a beginner to string bass like me, even though he teaches some of the best and most advanced bassists in the world at Eastman. Along with the requisite good instruction, he gave me encouraging words about my developing bass skills, and I do well with positive re-inforcement. At the conclusion he praised my progress in the last year of lessons, and found my ambition and growth inspiring. Here's a world-class player and pedagogue at the premier music conservatory in the world, calling me inspirational. That is one serious compliment and it completely made my day. He sent me on my way with a list of three books to start my repertoire, filled with sonatas and solos. If I can retain this level of entusiasm I think I'll really begin to take off soon.

In more mundane news, it's back to visions of rock n' roll stardom for Filer. He's once again on the let's-get-the-band-happening craze, and dreaming up all kinds of august plans to create a huge following for Jacoda. Our Feb. 8th gig at Acme was originally going to be our CD release party by his designs, which is fairly unrealistic since it'll be tough to finish, master, and duplicate CDs in that short a time. Also, he sees the albums as being professionally duplicated and packaged... not a small fee, nor likely to be a quick job. I tried to dissuade him, but promptly gave up when he didn't agree with my points. Chris, always the master of guiding Mike in a sensible direction, managed to give us an extra few weeks to a month to wrap up & make CDs before our grand release. Still, that means we have to find a show to play in mid-february or early march. The wheels are turning in Mikey's head to make us bigger & busier than I have the interest or availability to be, but I guess that's ok. If this thing chews into too much of my time I'll gracefully bow out with the knowledge that the whole band will probably tank if I do. This might sound arrogant, but the simple fact is that Chris has said that he doesn't want to work with another bassist in this group, nor does Don want to start over, so if I go you can just stick a fork in Jacoda. Ah, the impermanance of this thing called life...

Well, it's almost 2 a.m. and I need to get to school early enough to hoard a practice room in desperate hopes of salvaging my piano grade. Ergo, and to wit: it's bed-time for me. Thank-fully I have another wonderful evening with Tatiana planned after school to look forward to. Wish me luck, for I need lots of it now, and I'll keep you posted tomorrow.