Feels good man...

Perhaps in another episode of premature fowl tabulation, I'm just sayin' that it feels good to get back into the regular swing of things where I can wake up each day and prioritize my schedule based on my personal wants and needs, especially in the area of musicianship. I haven't received feedback on either of my final assignments, but I'm relatively confident I should be good for this semester. I received my grade for my final sight singing test, and although I didn't smoke it by any means, I was satisfied with the 86 I received.

This should ensure no worse than a B in that course, and although it screws up my lifetime 4.0 with Berklee (as well as being my first B since 1996), I'm not sweating it because as said before, this course was fairly contrary to my current musical goals.  Full disclosure, I had been phoning it in on the solfege and conducting portion since about the third week. I was basically faking that portion just to receive credit for the course knowing that if I did ever put an effort into those skills it would be further down the road. There were many assignments where I had the opportunity to raise the grade if it was less than an A but I never cared enough to bother. 

Despite this, I am endeavoring to forge ahead with ear training and I intend to make it a regular part of my practice schedule. I definitely learned something during this course and I want to capitalize on that instead of letting it atrophy like I did after the first ear training course. The big difference is that I can go at my pace, and at least for the time being I won't have to focus on the solfege and conducting like before. 

In other news, it feels great to get back into a regular practice schedule. It's not only part of my development as a musician, it's been an integral part of my mental health and well being these many years and I was sorely missing it. A short term goal is to work on audition for the Berklee Online Guitar Program. I think I've settled on "The Spirit of Radio" for the electric piece and "Letter From Home" for the acoustic portion. We only have to submit one example but I thought I would perform each of these and then put it up for a vote on social media (assuming anyone would bother to listen & comment).