Moved! FIN! Pictures to come soon. Thanks to all those who helped when we had to get out of our apartment and this time from storage to our new place. Also, thanks to Art and Allyss for letting us stay at their place, John and Katty for letting us take up thier garage for six weeks, Matt and Ginny for letting us store stuff in thier basement even though poor Sadie just had surgery and Ginny is about to pop, and thanks to Casey for letting us invade his apartment with stacks of boxes. You are all amazing; thank you!

Moving is expensive!

There is the deposit, first months rent (sometimes last month too), setting up all the new utilities and some of those include deposits as well. Then there are the moving costs: truck rental, boxes, cleaning supplies, etc. There is always something needed at the new place that you thought you had before; it always happens. You have to restock your fridge and shelves with food.

It is so excited to move though, even to a new place in the same town. It’s a time to reflect and re-invent yourself. Patterns and habits can be changed more easily in the new environment. We get to take time to put things away properly (that were just thrown somewhere before) and we get to make the new place ours.

We are moving tomorrow for the last time within Iowa. We plan on staying here for the next two years until I am done with school. We weren’t planning on moving from our previous location, but Mother Nature had a little something to say about that!

We will post pictures of the new digs when we get settled!

I am not planning on making this a daily thing, but this is just weird.

So between this morning and now Cuil it is now finding:

Sometimes you lose before you begin. Anna Patterson, a former Google employee, has launched her own search engine: Cuil. It seems to me that the search engine battle is over and has been for a long time. To “Google” something is iconic. No one says “I’m going to go Yahoo Search that” or “I am going to Microsoft Live Search my name”; it just doesn’t happen. Throw another search engine into the mix and you have more of the same. Patterson’s angle is that is supposedley indexes three times more websites that Google does. I did the only logical thing: search myself. Here are the results.

Cuil:



Google:



The Google search yielded me the top three hits - two for this site and my Twitter page.

Winner: Google.

Seriously......
Oxford, Iowa has to be the strangest little town I have ever been to, let alone stayed in for any amount of time. Today RAGBRAI came through town. What does that mean for little ‘ol Oxford? Tons of drunk bikers. I think RAGBRAI is a great event, I just didn’t appreciate staying so close to a bar.
In just one week from tomorrow we will be moving into our new apartment. We are so excited to have our own space and our own things again! It has been six weeks exatly since the flood. What a crazy six weeks it has been. Yesterday I posted about normalcy. Bring it on!

As a freshman trombone major, I really had no idea what I was doing; I was taking lessons for the very first time. I was very fortunate to have such a quality trombone teacher in Buddy Baker and UNC had a very developed trombone studio so there were quality trombonists all around me. I had never really “practiced” though. I was obedient and played my Buddy Baker routine every morning at 7:00 AM, but my actual practice time was fairly inefficient. I spent a lot of time running over things in the practice room. I did not take the time to really perfect a certain measure or lick; I did, however, inadvertantly develop another skill: performance. I ran through things so much that I never really had the problem of stopping or not being able to get through a piece like so many students have.
I have since learned to split my time between practicing and practicing performance. So far, this formula has worked fairly well. I would encourage each performer to take time practicing performance. How does one do that? Once the piece is “ready”, spend some time each day playing the piece through in its entirety - do not stop! If you are working up just one piece for a solo, jury, or concerto competition, play that piece through two or more times depending on time and chops. The next step would be to play in front of as many people as possible: play for your family, freinds, teachers, and even do a mock-recital if possible. The more you can play in front of people, the better. A great example of this is Larry Zalkind. Almost every lesson I had with him he asked if he could play something for me. This was good practice for him, I am sure, and great for me since I got to hear such a quality trombonist play at a very high level. Developing a culture of performance in your repertoire is a necessary skill that many do not take the time to develop. Try some of these things; they may work for you, they may not. If something else has worked for you, let me know in the comments.

Cheers.

A few months ago a friend turned me on to Twitter, a micro-blogging tool. Micro blogging is more of a “play by play” of your life as opposed to a full-blown blog. I have started using Twitter a lot, sometimes more than a dozen times a day. So, this begs the question: if you Twitter or update your Facebook profile all the time, do you still need a blog? The answer, for me at least, is yes. The two serve different functions. As I mentioned above, the micro-blogs are more of a play by play while the full length blog gives you the freedom to explore topics more in depth without the 140 character limitation of Twitter (each micro-blog has a different character limitation). That being said, I will try to use this blog for more in depth topics rather than the play by play. I have occasionally delved into conversations on music and practicing and I hope to do that on a more regular basis. I will not completely leave journal type topics out. I am sure the two or three readers of this blog would be utterly devastated if I did not upload mediocre quality photos from my phone and a description of said photo. /sarcasm.

Do I even need the DMA? I mean, this make three degrees already. Why do a fourth?
Get yours free here!

As you may or may not have noticed, things have moved a little. The “Crossing Over” blog was an assignment for the Advanced Brass Ensemble Literature class. I have since moved the posts into my normal blog; the original post dates have been retained.

As the spring semester was coming to a close, I had many plans for this summer: eat well, excersise daily, lose weight, practice a ton, have a recital ready to go the first week of school, and many others. After the great trip to Salt Lake for the International Trombone Festival, those plans simply fell apart. This flood really affected the city we live in and us individually. We were living in a hotel for a week, moving inventory in and out of Kate’s work, and now we are staying about twenty minutes outside of town, so travel is very inconvienient. The music building was flooded, so I do not have access to practice rooms or the music library. So, this all begs the question: what is normal?

Is normal being comfortable with the everyday? Isn’t that exactly what we are always trying to get away from; to do something new and exciting? This summer certainly has been both new and exciting, just not in the most positive ways! I have discovered that when praciticing is not convienient that I struggle making all the time that I need to progress at a certain level.

In nine days we will be moving into our new apartment. Things will be getting back to “normal” (whatever that means). We look forward to this normalcy once again.

For some reason, something weird happend with RapidWeaver (the app I use for web stuff). I lost all the posts I did on the flood. Basicially, the month of June dissappeared. That’s probably for the best though as I wish it would disappear from my mind! I didn’t get a picture of the flood at its highest, but here is a picture when the water is about a foot and a half deep.

We are staying at a friend’s house in Oxford, Iowa. It’s a very, very, small town. We are right in “downtown” Oxford. Many of the buildings were owned and used by the Masons either currently or at one point, including the building we are staying in. I don’t know much about it, but I understand that Masons have had an important role in the midwest. Coming from the mountain west, I haven’t really seen a lot of this. It’s kind of neat.

There has been so much tumult as of late that I stopped updating this blog. I felt that due to the flood and all that I only had negative things to say. No more! Here are some pictures from the Iowa City Jazz Festival from the first weekend of July.

Bonerama was awesome!


Old Capital Building looking all majestic from where we were sitting:


Joshua Redman was awesome; always is. I have dug him for a long, long time. I got to meet him a little at the IAJE (now defunct) in New Orleans - 2000.


Joshua Thompson looking as handsome as ever:


This was our view for most of the festival. The tree were sitting under had limited shade and it was very hot. Lucky for us, Brian and Laura are friends so it wasn’t a bid deal. Besides, you go to a jazz festival to listen! (and wear fanny packs, aparently)