Last night I got 20 things ready to list on Ebay. That involved counting, sorting, cleaning, labeling, etc. I also ended up "high grading" a couple-few boxes of lab glassware, bottles, keeping the ones with nice logos and measurement lines and not keeping the generic ones. Those went out by the trash enclosure for the scavengers.
I realized it was past 5AM so I settled down and before bed did about an hour's practice on the flute, and am up to just before "Sad Song" in the Wye book. I can think of nothing better than to be very stubborn and practice a lot.
So far I've read 7 chapters of James Galway's 1978 autobiography. What really impresses me is he was in a family that found some way to afford to buy him a flute. And there were all these flute bands around, marching around so who'd not want to get into that? He was apprenticed to a piano repair shop at age 14, the same age I was out weeding lawns or doing any kind of work I could do. But he kept up the flute because it was his thing. Art was my intended thing at that age, but unlike Mr. Galway, there were no teachers just what could be learned on my own or in books.
But I've learned, there's always a demand, or at least a like, for music whereas Hawaii was overrun with artists and even here on the mainland there seem to be far more than are needed. And even if I got into sign-painting, which *is* needed, I'd really need a dedicated space to do it in, or maybe if I were really interested in it at all I'd have found a way to do it by now.
The flute I am playing now is an "intermediate" model, the model a kid might get as a teen after they'd been playing for years, first-chair in whatever music program in their nice, middle-class elite school etc. I got it because I figure with all my trumpet playing I should know how to puff some air by now and once I get around to taking the plugs out, I can do cool half-holing stuff. Beginner flutes are made to be easy to get a note on, and there might be a huge difference between this one and a beginner one.
Someone in Campbell had a Yamaha beginner one for sale for a couple hundred bucks and I'm almost tempted to go and get it, just to be able to compare the two, and also I'd like to learn how to work on flutes and it would make a great "victim".
I'm guessing a beginner flute vs. my flute is like playing a trumpet with a 7C mouthpiece as opposed to the 3C I use these days. You can sound OK on a 7C but a 3C's got a lot more "guts" to the sound. That's what I want to do, play the flute with "guts".
I can't believe how much worse the internet is getting. "Video" is 1-3 frames per second at 240p, sound generally OK but often not in sync, with tons of commercials. It's probably how it was in the mid-1990s. Back then if you wanted to watch video, you just bought the DVD and that's what I'm trying to do now, buy the stuff I really like on DVD. I also buy books, no "ebooks" for me. When the internet is only something people go on once in a while because they need to, I want to be adapted back to life without it.
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