nerves

[iimpavid]

There was definitely a time in my blogging life where I wasn't stressed to the gills at every hour of every day, but this is not that era. Apologies, y'all.

Either I'm experiencing bizarre visceral pain or I'm developing shingles again... It definitely feels like shingles, though, but knowing medical professionals I have to wait until stage 2 of sore development before they'll believe me.

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I find it wildly irksome that my body comes with a built-in stress warning system courtesy of the chicken pox virus.

 

I'm already well aware of how stressed I am on a daily basis, thank you very much: I've stopped washing my coffee mug and lost the ability to maintain my own routines. It's pretty obvious that there's a problem. There are no vegetables in the refrigerator and we don't have the rent money to cover December. (Dear gods please let my sibling get a job soon. Or at least allow the government to finish processing her unemployment benefits-- we're heading into month 3 of this runaround bullshit.)

All I want to do is spin yarn and go to bed early. Instead, I get to Do Job Tasks and muddle through preparing to teach a friend to read music. This is a skillset I've never taught before and I have no idea where the hell to start and I can only just barely play piano... but I really, desperately need the money they're offering me to do it so I have to figure this out.

Things are gonna get a little ~woo~ for a second here, skip the next few paragraphs if polytheistic stuff ain't up your alley:

I was Told at the start of this horseshit that we'd come out the other side of it alright enough, it'd just take a whole heap of creativity and a willingness to reach out to other human beings. And on some level I do believe that, evidenced the fact that I'm actively seeking all the out of the box solutions I can get my grubby little paws on instead of just wallowing and being relentlessly pissy about how bad this feels. (Although I am doing a bit of wallowing and pissiness now and again; I'm only human. I try to keep it contained to text mediums and not directed toward any people.)

But also I'd love to know what the timeline here is. I get that The Dude doesn't work on a timeline or with the expected, and the Norns wouldn't even take my call if I bothered to ask. But I need to know when the next brief vacation from the relentless grind of capitalism is coming our way. I can put up with pretty much anything if I know when it's gonna end.

We finished the ancestor elevation for the grandparent sib believed was at least part of their ongoing strife. I can't say whether that ancestor feels any less troubled at this point, but their portrait on our altar seems to be less of an attention black hole, if that makes sense. I can look at it without feeling anxious, drawn in, trapped, or resentful. This could just be a function of exposure after spending 9 days praying over this person's image for health, peace, rest, and so on... but I'm hoping it also means they're a little more peaceful than before. I'm hoping that sib was right, that this person WAS a large part of the "family curse" they seem to be under, and that working for this person's peace in the afterlife will help us here in this life, too.

Only time will tell, I suppose.

/end ~*woo*~

I'm hoping I adapt to being this tired soon. I hope I can share some useful musical knowledge tonight. I hope sibling gets a callback that amounts to "yes we'll hire you to start monday". I hope their SNAP card gets here with today's mail. I hope this weekend I have time to spin yarn-- someone on Pillowfort gave me some really good advice on how to draft that I want to try out sooner rather than later.

Comments

[hashiveinu]

What's your musical background? My original background was piano, and pianists get taught music reading and theory in a way it seems like vocalists and most other instrumentalists don't. Any piano book aimed at beginners (my favorite is the Alfred series) is going to have nicely stepped lessons about reading music. You can probably find pdfs of Alfred.

Of course, since you're teaching a vocalist and not an instrumentalist, there's the complication of ear training and vocal production at the same time. The choir directors I've had who have been the most effective at teaching reading have used Curwen/Kodály solfeggio and hand signs - there are a lot of aspects to that method that are effective at linking up what people subconsciously know about scales and intervals into an understanding they can use. I haven't brought out this method with my choir, but I may do so in the future. The most important part, as far as I can tell, is to keep an awareness of where the tonic is in the person's mind - a purely intervallic method can get people lost if they misjudge one interval.

Good luck with it! It's an intimidating task, and teaching any complex skill takes a lot of time and probably a lot of false starts.

[iimpavid]

I'm a singer first and foremost and have a fair amount of skill with that-- I've been singing with symphonies, theaters, and assorted choirs since I was 14. (I play guitar adequately enough for a punk band but not classically-- I couldn't read music to learn a guitar piece if my life depended upon it.)

I was thinking I'd start them with solfege. It's the best way I've ever found to explain intervals that doesn't involve numbers-- and anything that physically embodies an abstract idea, like handsigns, will bolster memory far, far better than talking about it.

Before I get to that, though, I also want to make time to talk with them about what, exactly, it is that they're looking for and willing to try.

There's an added layer of dyslexia/dyscalculia that they're coping with, too, which often makes even looking at sheet music more difficult. I'm pretty sure there's no equivalent to Dyslexie for music, yknow? Some of our choirmates are downright snobby about being able to read sheet music-- and refuse to use multiple methods for teaching more complex rhythms or whatever than "just read it" (lazy ass section leading imho)-- I suspect that they're not feeling too great about that, either.

In any case, I appreciate your advice and knowledge on this particular topic! I'm delighted to hear from someone who actually knows what he's doing because ye gods I'm flying by the seat of my pants, here.

[hashiveinu]

Lol, no, I don't know what I'm doing. I've been leading this choir for less than a year. :) I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants up there, too. Most of what I've said is just gathered from my research and what I've observed.

Some of our choirmates are downright snobby about being able to read sheet music-- and refuse to use multiple methods for teaching more complex rhythms or whatever than "just read it" (lazy ass section leading imho)-- I suspect that they're not feeling too great about that, either.

:/ People will be so cruel to justify their own lack of interpersonal skills.

[iimpavid]

Hey, that's a year more of experience than I've got lol and I appreciate getting to benefit from that. Seriously, thank you.

And, yeah, people can be real mean. I wish they wouldn't. I honestly feel like the idea that "a person must be able to read music to be good at music" is a fundamental lack of understanding of How Music Works-- I used to think that way and then I learned better! It is true that there are advantages when working on a schedule to having people who are able to sight-read, yes, or if someone struggles with memory. However, reading sheet music doesn't make anyone good at making the pretty music sounds.

All you need to make music is the desire to do it, a body and, depending on the type of music, the ability to breathe well. Hearing helps, too, but that isn't essential. Music is a far, far more fundamental human expression than language or symbols can contain.