30 Tunes.

 The Gospel according to Richard (of RBB).

Yesterday, for the second day in a row, I practised violin for 3 hours. That's probably longer than Rob spends in church on a Sunday. Or longer than Peter gets into trouble for not keeping bathrooms tidy.

Yesterday, I also took a lesson from rugby and added 10 tunes to my bench. 

I just hope I don't have to take a
record defeat on my next gig.

It works like this. I have 20 tunes in my new repertoire. That's enough music for about 1 1/2 hours of nonstop playing. I set up a 'bench' (as they say in rugby) of 10 other tunes that I already know. This gives me a potential repertoire that lasts for a very long time. Easily enough, with standard breaks, to do a 3 hour gig. My last repertoire was slightly bigger, but this one is better. Hey, who wants to play a solo gig for longer than 3 hours? I have to go out for a while today, but I'll certainly be pushing that practice along! 

Remember that the 'main' 20 tunes can be played with a backing track or unaccompanied. These two 'situations' require a quite different way of dealing with a piece of music. 'Unaccompanied' requires a lot more chords and 'with a backing track' requires more single note runs (think arpeggios, etc.).

Today's Gospel tells of a man who wasn't practising properly:

"Ronnie liked to play his violin when he had time. Most of his practice time was spent running over stuff that he could already play. Ronnie had pretty old strings on his violin. He did not worship Pirastro. For violinists this was pretty much the equivalent of a sin. Ronnie knew that Rosin was the body of a good tone, but he was too mean to buy Pirastro rosin. His tone suffered for his sin. It was well known, in circles of violinists who followed the one true Pirastro, that those who sinned would probably finish up playing a viola. Or even a cello. The Adam and Eve of the string instrument community are, and always have been, the violin and the double bass. Obviously, neither of these instruments ever ate a forbidden apple. A guitar had turned into a snake and tried to lead the double bass astray but had failed. Ronnie knew that he must repent. He visited a music shop. They had quite a few types of Pirastro violin strings - Violino, Evah Piazzi, Obligato and Tonica were all available and on display in a little cabinet with a glass front. Ronnie committed the sin of not wanting to spend too much and settled on a much cheaper set of strings by another maker.

"You must not put cheap strings before me!"

I guess you could call Ronnie's decision a mortal sin. In any case, he finished up playing cello."

Well, that's it from me for this morning.

Have fun, but don't buy cheap violin strings because it's a sin.

Sii Gentile.