Choir Weekend

We had a rehearsal weekend with my choir last saturday and sunday. We’re gearing up for our performance of Mendelssohn’s Elias at the end of the month. We haven’t yet had a rehearsal together with the orchestra, but this was the first time that all three choirs involved practiced together. Since the Elias is a large oratory, we spent all of saturday and most of sunday afternoon on the rehearsal, and covered about 100 minutes of baroque choir music in the process.

It was also the first time we met Mr. Bosch, the man who will conduct the concert and leads the entire project. Until now, we’d been working with our usual choir leader, but he is only laying the preparation for the concert and doing the practices this time; in concert, he’ll be acting as supporting tenor while Mr. Bosch will be running the show. Thus, for all questions concerning expression, dynamics, enunciation and whatnot, Mr. Bosch had the final word. And we discussed quite a few things those two days. Mostly, it’s been about speaking very clearly and precisely, and anticipating dynamic changes to make them smoother. Tonal accuracy has been good already, but the weekend brought us one step further towards concert-readiness. The pieces don’t have to be merely right, they have to be good. And to do that, we will need everybody on the same page concerning emphasis, emotional expression, breathing and timing. We’re about 80% there, I think, but we’re not going to practice again until the “dress” rehearsal next week. The choir has pulled amazing last-week improvements before, and I’m confident we will do it again. I’m certainly working on my stuff.

Usually, these choir weekends take place at some youth hostel and have a lot of social stuff in the evenings and lunch breaks. This one was pretty much all work and very little play, as it took place at the school we normally rehearse at and had no arrangements for an overnight stay. I had in fact arranged a board game (Nobody Is Perfect), but not one person out of the fourty or so in the Young Choir staid, on saturday evening! Everybody was busy, or tired, or could not get home otherwise. The only people who staid behind were some of the older people from the other choirs, who I don’t know that well. So eventually, I left as well and spent the evening visiting a friend.

Two side notes: My bikes gear shift just broke – after a futile attempt to fix it, it looks like I’ll have to turn it in for a day or so. Also, the recognition of my seminar presentation from Trondheim will only happen if I hold the presentation again in a slightly longer form in front of a local audience. Little bit of work, but not too much.

Aquatic Adventures

Recently, color pencils have been frustrating me. They give great control, subtle shades and high precision, and in all of that they’re pretty much the best you can get. But they also carry two significant disadvantages: They’re pale and they’re slow. Pallor first: Color pencils always produce slightly muted tones. You can get denser colors by layered application, but there’s a real limit there. If you press too hard, you’ll only get a waxy streak. Second slowness: Filling larger areas with color pencils takes forever. Especially if you want decent coloring, and therefore work in several incremental layers, with stroke direction distributed so the area looks smooth. Strong coloring needs many layers on top of each other. That was the reason that my hitherto best color pencil work took over nine hours. That’s just way too long for hobby. I don’t really have the patience to split a piece over an entire week; besides, different moods would make the end result rather incoherent.

So, since pencils have some inherent drawbacks, I looked around for alternatives. The significant ones are markers, pastels and painting. I was only looking for color techniques; I still like pencil drawing just fine (although I haven’t made one in a while). So, to check the list:

• Markers produce flat, luminescent color. Their main disadvantages are the tendency to streak and the mediocre color blending. Both pretty much require expensive markers for decent results. Cheap markers will ruin any artwork. Example
• Pastels normally come in chalks (oblong sticks) or pencil shape. They have very strong coverage, and tend to look kind of smeared. Good for violent coloring, poor for precision work.  Example
• Paintings come in different flavours. Watercolor is the simple stuff you know from school, acrylic uses some organic solvent and oil colors ought to be known to everyone – I’ve talked to people who painted oil before, and was told they were completely impractical – noxious fumes, weeks of drying time, etc. For a curious novice like me, watercolors were okay. I still had a school set sitting around, with a few brushes.

So I spent a while with those watercolors. The results were passable, but didn’t really enthuse me. I had trouble with paper crinkling, and the colors were so solid and dull. I went one step further, and decided to try out aquarelle. I managed to borrow a small box from someone (the small, simple ones are not expensive, anyway) and gave it a try. The colors were great: Strong, vibrant and still transparent. I’m good at mixing colors, so I have a very wide palette available. It’s easy to cover large areas and fine details are possible, too, although not easy. The large amount of water gave my paper issues, so I bought a small block of A4 aquarelle paper. A 10€ for 20 sheets, it’s tremendously expensive, but also works much, much better than anything else. I think that if I actually use up the block, I’ll have put at least 40 hours of work into the paintings, and the 10€ will seem rather insignificant. That’s the other nice thing about aquarels: They go fast, at least at the level of care and precision I’m working at. An A4 sheet with concept drawing takes a good 150 minutes. Compare that to 4-5 hours for a color pencil drawing of equal size. Of course, I’m still at the beginning, and I don’t know if I won’t discover problems to put me off aquarelle in the future – I thought color pencils might be very nice, too. They are, but not really in a way that suits my time constraints and temperament.

As a final image, I present to you one of my recent aquarelles.

Settling down

I’ve been in my new room now for a week. Last wednesday, my dad and I painted the room. The lease contract required it, and the room really needed a new paint coat, too. My dad did most of the painting work, being a lot more experienced and able to cover a large area in little time. I touched up the edges with a brush, cleaned up, put covering down and did any oddjobs. The paint we had was a pretty good quality, and it was very much worth it. Easy to use, beautifully white, scrubbing-resistant and dry almost immediately. We never had problems with paint fumes, and I was able to sleep in it the very first night, which was very convenient. For some reason, though, the lamp fixture has stopped working. I used an electrician’s screwdriver to check for voltage, and it seems to be there on both sides of the cable connection – but not in the actual fixture. The bulb is intact, in any case – I checked that first. Until I get it working again, I’ll be lighting up my room with my Hg lamp, which is very bright, if a bit noisy.

In the days since, I haven’t really done anything momentous. Gotten to know my neighbors, invited my brother over for dinner, met up with friends downtown, been to the cinema, watched some anime, did some stuff. I’ve been continuing work on thermodynamics. In fact, I’m approaching the end of the script I was learning from, and while it will need a second run to memorize the stuff, I’ve gotten a good impression of what thermodynamics is about. In other words, I now have a frame of reference into which I can integrate further information. That’s how I usually learn, and the frame is what connects new information and makes it stick in my memory.

My choir has been busy prepping the Elias for concert. We’ll be going live at the end of the month, and while I now actually know every piece, it is not yet good enough. Fortunately, I seem to be getting into it rather quickly. Somehow, the year in Trondheim with Aks appears to have done something for my voice and surety, despite the music there being actually rather simple. Could have something to do with singing in a small ensemble – you try to give your all, in volume and expression.