324th day sober. Last night I totted up my busking sessions in my busking book, even adding little tabs for the year 2021 and 2022. Between the rather disappointing session Thursday night and yesterday, I actually made $70 which is a lot of money for me. My day job pays $50 a day and that's really good money in Silicon Valley.
The cornet really needs new springs and I found a place that sells them, Austin Custom Brass, but they're out of the size I need. But they're very responsive on email and say they'll have them in stock again soon. I'll also have to learn how to take a trumpet valve apart and put it back together right. I now know that weak springs are really easy to check for. First play a piece that's "speedy" at all, and also just moving the valves up and down there will be a "bounce" to them.
But out there playing, I was really doing my best to "put it across" to the listeners, and that's what I think busking is really good training for. And adding a good location, Sunnyvale Whole Foods, is a big thing. I need to start scouting out other Whole Foods locations and find out which ones are good. If I end up full-time busking I'll need to rotate locations, not playing at any one more than 2X a week.
If I'm back on a daytime schedule, I can also look at playing at various farmer's markets on the weekends.
Last night I was so tired, getting back here about 8:30 which is of course the equivalent of 11:30 due to the "wartime 3-hour shift", and all I wanted to do was relax, eat olives and prosciutto and cheese, watch YouTube and practice the octaves exercise on the flute headjoint for maybe a half-hour.
About the flute, well, I don't know. If you ask me, it's actually harder than the trumpet. The exercises on the headjoint alone are good discipline. It's harder than the shakuhachi. I'm still glad I got the thing because when the world *really* shuts down, I'll have it. If I can make it back to Hawaii, I can at least offer to give it to my older sister, who played flute in high school. We don't know what happened to her old flute.
YouTube is becoming less and less watchable. A frame rate of a 1-3 per second isn't really video, and while Ken Burns seems to have designed his documentaries to be watchable despite bad internet access, most film makers have not. Anything really good, like both versions of On The Beach, are films I'll have to find on DVD and keep for when the internet gets even worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment