[Time-sinks] Making Music

Part 4 of my series on myriad time-sinks is here. This time I'll be focusing on something that's been a big part of my life for a very long time - music. I'm not talking about listening to music and going to gigs here, oh no. I'm talking about playing music. Sadly (from one point of view) I'm not in a band, and since I can't play the guitar I'm never likely to be. I play a different kind of instrument - the bassoon.

My journey into music started with the piano. My parents decided that it would be a good idea for me to learn to play a musical instrument, and picked the piano. I don't remember having any say in the matter, but I was pretty young at the time. Fortunately my piano teacher was a wonderful lady named Muriel; a very experienced music teacher, with endless patience and great teaching methods. She insisted that I learnt music theory alongside the piano lessons themselves, which was a godsend for my later musical development (although I didn't realise it at the time). I eventually made it up to grade 5, as well as grade 5 theory (which under the ABRSM scheme is necessary to take higher practical grades). It is Muriel that sparked the love of music that I have to this day. 

I wish I'd had access to one of these! Steinway grands are the Rolls-Royces of the piano world. (Credit: steinway.com)

When we moved house, I moved teachers. Unfortunately I didn't click with my new teacher, and since I had already started to struggle with the high-speed moving chords found in a lot of higher grade piano music, began to struggle. I scraped through grade 6, and decided that enough was enough. I continued to have lessons, but now focused on pieces that I wanted to play. That was enough to bring some of the enjoyment back into the piano for me, but I was still frustrated with it. I changed teachers once more when my 2nd teacher retired, which improved things again, but I have now barely touched a piano since my first year at university. Still, it was important for the music that I am involved in now.

Like almost all school children in England I was also taught how to play the recorder as part of my timetabled music lessons at school. Unlike most of those children though, I stuck with it beyond the compulsory lessons, eventually becoming quite good at it. I joined a recorder consort at my second school, then when we moved house I joined the recorder group at Saturday Morning Music School (SMMS) in Bedford. This led to me learning how to play all 4 of the main recorder sizes: Descant (the beginner's size), Treble, Tenor and Bass (helped somewhat by the fact that I could already read bass clef from my piano lessons). I was still having lessons as well, and eventually achieved grade 8 standard, the highest possible.

The entire recorder family of instruments. Wood sounds better than plastic, but is more finicky. (Credit: srp.org.uk)

I have since allowed my recorder playing to lapse, and haven't really touched any of my instruments since I started at the University of Warwick. I've still got them though, as well as all of my music. Maybe one day I'll pick them up again. The recorder is a much maligned instrument, partly I think because of the afore-mentioned compulsory lessons at school. The only experience that most people have of recorder playing is the simplistic music taught in them, complete with squeaks, squawks and split notes from the cheap plastic instruments. But get a group of top-class recorder players in one group, with the full range of sizes and good quality instruments, and the music that can be produced is as beautiful as any you'll hear.

I may have given up on my original instruments, but I've discovered the perfect replacement. The bassoon is, in my biased opinion, the best musical instrument in the world. 

I started playing the bassoon when I was 16. My frustration with the piano was at it's greatest, and although I was enjoying the recorder I was looking for an instrument that would allow me to play as part of a larger group. I didn't want to play a string instrument, as my brother already played the violin.  He also already played the saxophone (he's easily the more musically talented one out of the pair of us), and brass instruments didn't appeal to me. That left woodwind, which was fine by me; I had all my recorder experience to draw on. At school we had lots of clarinet and flute players already, which left the oboe and the bassoon. One day I was walking into the music department and heard the bassoon teacher playing. The tone and pitch were beautiful, and I picked the bassoon right there and then.

If only this was a real thing..... (Dredit: deadrobot.com

I picked it up very quickly. Thanks to my piano background I already knew how to read bass clef, and my recorder experience meant that I was already pretty good at regulating my breathing whilst playing. I went straight to grade 3 in my first year, then grade 5 in my second year, then grade 7 in my 3rd year and passed grade 8 in my fourth year of playing, my final year at school. I've not had any lessons since, and although I feel that I've definitely lost some of the skill that I had, I do enough playing that most of it is still there. I think that that's a testament to the quality of teaching that I enjoyed from my teacher, Pat. Much like Muriel at the start of musical journey, she was patient, highly experienced, never made me feel stupid, and was an excellent musician. 

The other reason that I've managed to keep a decent skill level up is the time that I spent in the Bedfordshire Music Service ensembles, particularly the 1st orchestra. Bedfordshire used to have a fantastic system of youth music groups, both concert bands and orchestras. 3 levels of each, with an increasing audition standard as you moved up the ranks from 3rd to 1st band/orchestra. They ran courses of varying lengths (longer for the better groups) during each of the three major school holidays, and every other year the 1st and 2nd groups would go on a residential tour for their summer course. I spent a year in 3rd orchestra, then 2 courses in 2nd band and 2nd orchestra before stepping up to the 1st orchestra. I spent 3 years there, including a tour to Barcelona. The conductor of the 1st orchestra was a retired professional conductor named Michael Rose. He was hard taskmaster, and expected a lot from his musicians, but looking back this was exactly the right thing for us. A lot of the time he treated us as if we were professionals, which did amazing things for our confidence and ability. You had to play well, as he certainly wasn't backward in making his disappointment known. I owe a lot to Michael and the Bedfordshire Music Service. Sadly the county has withdrawn funding from the entire system, leaving it to struggle on through donations and course fees in a shadow of of its former self. It's a travesty really.

Bedfordshire 1st Orchestra performing Verdi's Requiem in April 2008. (Credit: Adrian McCague)

Whilst I was still at school, I joined both the orchestra and the concert band there as well. In a trend that has continued to this day, I played in the orchestra for the challenging music and the concert band for the more relaxed, fun style. It was the same at Warwick University. In the year that I arrived I was one of 8(!) bassoonists in the orchestra, so parts were shared around. The situation improved as I continued my degree, and we played some beautiful music, including some of my favourite orchestral pieces such as Scheherazade and Mahler's 2nd Symphony. In the wind band it was more relaxed, although still challenging at times, and there were only two of us. I enjoyed the wind band so much that I became involved in the society committee for two years, including one as president (Never again!).

Now that I'm at St Andrews I've managed to successfully audition for the orchestra for the last three years. The repertoire is very different to that at Warwick owing to the smaller size of the orchestra, but that's been great as it's meant that I've played pieces by composers that I'd never even heard of before.  We rehearse once a week during semester time, for 3 hours. It's a lot of time, but the payoff at the end in terms of satisfaction and a feeling of achievement at the end of a successful concert is absolutely worth it. 

Unfortunately the rehearsals for the wind band clash with my lifesaving commitments. I'm not too bothered though, as I'm part of another group that fulfils my need for a more relaxed group: the St Andrews Bassoon Quartet. We formed about a year and a half ago, rehearse for an hour a week, and have given concerts with themes such as popular music and computer game soundtracks. We also record all of our concerts and put the videos up on our youtube channel.

The bassoon quartet mid-concert (Credit: Daria Wallace)

That brings you up to date on my musical activities. I don't get to play much during the holidays, as without scheduled rehearsals I lack the motivation to go and practice by myself. I always have. The fact that I keep my bassoon and music in my office rather than at home doesn't help either! But I'm hoping to change that this summer, and actually get some playing done for myself for a change.