Playing the Bass Again

Nora has classes on Mondays and Wednesdays until about 8 PM. That translates to 3 hours alone with the kids until Nora gets home. We have a nice little schedule where we eat dinner together, play outside together, and then horror of all horrors, I get to practice the bass while the kids plunk away on the piano and/or bang on the mini-drums. This is actually the first time since we moved from Philly 3 years ago that I'm actually able to get some real playing in. It's probably not the most productive practice sessions...what with all the other "music" going on, frequent interruptions from fighting over instruments/toys, and handing my bow over so that the kids can bow while I finger out "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". But it's better than the absolute zero playing I've done over the past 3 years.

As an aside, Julia posted about her own practice sessions today. She mentioned that being a former Suzuki method student, she always tries to pick up a recording of the piece she is playing before practicing. I'm sad to say that this little tidbit was something that I didn't pick up on until about 2000 or 2001 when I was playing with the Main Line Symphony Orchestra. I started playing the bass in 4th grade, played throughout grade school, highschool, and college (I got about halfway through a performance 2nd major), and finally the MLSO after college.

This probably would have helped a lot while I was learning to play more difficult pieces, especially with the Bach Cello Suites which I thought were impossible to play on the bass. Edgar Meyer proved that wrong with this superb performance.

I don't know why it didn't click earlier; it seems so obvious of a thing to do now.