A Link to the Past

What should I be doing?

Studying for my Mocks which begin next week.

What am I doing?

Trawling the internet for a cheap ocarina.

I don't know: I just came home from school on Friday utterly shattered and thought, you know, I deserve some relaxation here people. So I figured what better way to unwind than with some soothing music, and who better than myself to play it? I honestly couldn't tell you where I pulled the idea from, but it struck me to look for our old ocarina, the one my parents bought me at some market stall on an family holiday to Menorca. As I recall this was an excrutiatingly dull holiday on an island which I'm pretty sure couldn't have existed before tourism, and as far as I recall I ended up spending most of my time out on the balcony of our apartment complex accommodation learning to play the ocarina. Handily enough it came with a pamphlet explaining how to play the ocarina for beginners, and by the end of the 2 weeks I could play such popular hits as Happy Birthday and The Sound Of Silence with its help.

I found the leaflet of course... but the ocarina itself seems to have been thrown away or lost in time (and I can say that definitively enough because I spent a worrying amount of time looking for it). My new tack is, being from the generation I am, to look for one online. But it hasn't proven to be a very fruitful search... See all the ones online are really artificial looking, nothing like the earthy, authentic clay one I had when I was ten. The whole thing's a bit stupid really, because all I want is my old one and nothing else and I'm hardly going to come across that, even on e-bay... and the sound of the ocarina, to be honest, is not a soothing one at all. It's piercing. Still, I don't seem to be able to rest until I've found one... so if anyone can point me in the direction of one, or you know if anyone has an unwanted ocarina lying around the house, you know what to give me for my next birthday.

Les Choristes

Ok, so I said I'd explain about this 'Composition Workshop'(it was a workshop) to which I referred in my previous crap list blog. Now, a very reputable Irish choir have for the past few years been running a workshop for Leaving Cert. students in which you get the chance to write a piece of music for the choir, to hear them perform it, and to have it recorded and put on a cd, and they do it all for free out of the goodness of their generous, musical hearts. So one day about a year ago our music teacher Ms. D suggested a few of us enter... etc.

After a long time spent not doing it, and then a considerably shorter and more rushed period spent franticly to get it finished some time back in October, the day of the great recording finally arrived last Wednesday, and all the villagers rejoiced and were merry. A motley crew of music freaks (of which I was a member) made the long and perilous journey out to DCU, their absence excused notes already written into their journals, in some cases twice for good measure. Having just enough money TO THE CENT for bus fare, and narrowly escaping an encounter with a 12year old knacker girl who was speaking very loudly on her mobile indeed some way down the bus, we made our way into the grounds, and ascended the spiral staircase to the recording room. I was pissing my pants so fucking much you'd have thought they were that shade of dark, slightly shiny blue to begin with.

So we ran through the pieces, as you do, and they sang as amazingly as expected, and better. Precedings were slow and, even though there were only 4 of us with compositions to be performed. Because of our lack of experience in the area of writing music for a professional choir, or for anything else, it has to be said. They would sing it their way, beautifully, we in our I'm-a-bigshot-composer-now way would want it another and make our little comments, and any suggestion any of us were bold enough to make was greeted with a number of expert throat clearing noises, and our vague suggestions would be discretely dismissed for the choir director's superior, more, shall we say, experienced musical decisions. This buisness was pretty tiring, and we were given a 15minute break after the first 2 pieces had been recorded.

And so for the last few days I've been restraining myself from pestering Ms. D with questions about when the recordings will be ready so that I can begin flaunting my talent, slipping the cd on the background whenever people are around and saying 'oh this old thing?'. Though I said the piece had been a rushed job, I actually did put a fair bit of work into it, and I was pretty pleased with what I ended up with to be honest. So I'm literally bursting to hear it again. In fairness it's quite a novelty to have your own music performed by such a esteemed and talented choir when you've never written anything before and are unlikely to again. And if anyone, you know, wants a copy of the CD, just send me a blank CD and a tenner and you'll get it within 5-10 working days.