Wednesday

It's already Wednesday...this week is flying by! My website, davidfreemanmusic.net, is up and running. I've spent the past couple of days consumed by one thousand adjustments, mostly adding pictures and sounds, as well as a heavy dose of do-it-yourself search engine optimization. I'm worn out. If you haven't been, please come check it out. I threw a couple of more pictures on there, and I finally added a few live tracks from gigs with my quartet and quintet.

In other news, I participated in a recording session for Rebecca Loebe. It was a horn section with Karl Liberatore, Marcus Henderson (pictured here) and myself on tenor and bari sax. We did it at Will Robertson's place. Without a doubt, one of the easiest sessions ever--the guy had charts! It also helped immensely that from the first note, the three of were pretty tight. Like we'd played in tune before or something. It was cool. We did multiple passes on a couple of tunes and were done in under an hour.

Another busy day is already up and running, so I'd better get a horn in my face.

Is it really Sunday?

My new favorite kid show is "Penguins of Madagascar."  It's on Nick.  You've got to try it.

Last night I played a wedding reception until 11:30 at the History Center (and nearly strangled myself out of boredom), and then joined the last night of 500 Songs for Kids at Smith's.  Lots of standing around, punctuated by brief periods of deafeningly loud monitors.  It was fun, though, and a pretty good hang.  Mark Cobb and I hung out of a little bit afterwards, and I ended up walking out the back door at 3:45 AM.  Ouch!  

I'll be headed to bed early tonight.  

Practice and Performance

When it comes to performing, I am of the belief that you prepare (practice), and then you go out there and go for it.  If it works, great;  if you crash, hopefully you recovered.  Either way, you accept it as was you've got at that moment, and when the moment's over, it's time to start thinking about the next one.  I play around town quite a bit, and adopting this philosophy has really helped me to avoid spending useless time analyzing what when wrong on any particular gig.  

I play a steady gig with several volunteer musicians, and as soon as the last song has finished, everyone is chirping about who screwed up and why.  It seems very amateurish to do that.

Last night Yacht Rock had alot of finger pointing after the show at the 10 High.  Things got a little tense.  Let it go.  

Thursday

Thursday!  It's here again.  Time to race through another wild weekend of gigs. 

I've had enough time to get some work in on every horn this week, so (at least mentally) I feel ready to go to work.  

still going

Greetings.  What a day yesterday!  Beth called not long after I got up reporting water in her car (it was raining).  Of course, I was expected to fix the problem immediately!  So, I eventually diagnosed that the drains for the sunroof were clogged and the excess water was draining into the headliner.  I worked on cleaning out the two tubes that carry the water to the outside (basically, I tore apart the interior of the front corners of the car).  I had to stop so I could go teach.  When I got back, I had to pick up Jack at a friend's house (Beth was at ASO Chorus rehearsal).  We boogied home so that I could clean house and get the laundry done while she was gone.  I cleaned the kitchen, vacuumed the house, and got the laundry cleaned and put away.  That left me just enough time to read three stories and get Jack to bed before he crashed.  After he went to sleep, I ate supper and finished working on the car (including the worst part--putting it all back together).  I got to bed at 3:15 AM.  Hopefully the car is done so I don't have to hear about it anymore.

On the gig front, I played a whole bunch last week, and I've got a bunch of stuff this week.  That's good, because we're just about out of money.  Attached is a nice shot of me at the Star Bar playing with YOU.

Yacht Rock performed at 500 Songs for Kids this past weekend.  It's always a ton of fun to watch other bands do their thing.  Their music careers, I'm assuming, have been much different from mine.  I have been a hired gun from the day I started--call me, and I'll come play with you.  Most of these guys, I'd guess, have always been in a band (with a certain amount of exclusivity to that).  I wonder if I was fifteen years older if I would have spent more time as "the sax player in the band," instead of an add-on.

Website Builder

I noticed while trying to contract musicians for a wedding ceremony in North Carolina that most musicians are difficult to find.  By that, I mean that if you are in search of a trumpet player in Asheville, and you type "trumpet Asheville", you don't get alot of useful results.  You might find private lessons, but not a link to somebody who can play your gig.

This spurred me into getting a website up and running.  I purchased a domain name (davidfreemanmusic.com) and found a host (who also provided me with the free domain davidfreemanmusic.net).  I started last night trying to get something out there, but I do not speak enough computer language to know what I'm doing.  davidfreemanmusic.net  is there, but it's really just a place holder until I get around to making a good looking website, and optimizing the search engines so when somebody looks for "saxophone Atlanta" they can actually track me down.  Good luck to me!

Lessons

I have a student who is dragging through to his final lesson before he quits lessons for good. He comes in, refuses to play through his scales or anything in his book, and reminds me that he will after mid-May, he will never put an instrument up to his lips again. I cannot figure out for the life of me why he continues show up and waste my time. What is the rationale for spending the money so I can babysit the kid for a half hour? 30 minutes in a week is not quite 0.3%! What's the point? Can you improve on anything if you do it less than 1% a week?

I have another student who has quite an attitude, makes no effort to improve, and then makes comments like "I'm not paying you for this!" (actual quote!) when I act silly (entertaining myself) during his time. He lost his book about two months ago, but hasn't replaced it. He now expects to come in and use my copy every week. I'm guess I'm letting him push me around, but I think to myself that if I can remain calm for the thirty minutes I am with him, it will just about pay for a tank of gas.

The majority of my students practice a little (not enough, but a little). A handful practice everything I give them. The remainder (maybe six or seven?) show up, and have not done any work on their own. They even count the thirty minutes a week they spend with me as their practice time. A major waste of money! So I wonder, should I get rid of them, or continue to babysit them and take their money if they want to give it to me? Sometimes I think that if I got rid of every student who was wasting my time and their money, I would be teaching three students a week! Would that be better or worse?

Here's hoping the parents will pay a little more attention. If the kid ain't working on it at home, he's not making progress. Thanks for the money...I think.

Monday again

It's Monday again.

I'm doing all my usual Monday stuff (laundry, vacuuming).

I just want to take a moment say a word about "the sound guy."  The sound guy is everything when it comes to your gig.  He has the responsibility of helping the audience hear you and making you sound the best.  The soundman may also help you to hear yourself better (monitors).  If you can't hear yourself, you can't possibily know what you're doing.  Therefore, you should always avoid pissing off the soundman, as he is capable of ruining your best efforts.

Last night, I was the soundman.  Hope you got the message.

Saturday

Beth is on the way home from her brother-in-law's funeral in Phoenix.  Here's the obituary:

Dimmick, Chuck P.
born December 29, 1958 in Riverside, CA passed away suddenly on April 18, 2009 while attending a NASCAR race to watch his favorite driver, Jeff Gordon. Chuck was the loving husband of Kristen and devoted father of Dillon. Chuck was the Director of Marketing for the Lund Cadillac Group. We are sure he would still want all to know that 0.9% financing is still available on all New 2008 Hummer H2's. A mass celebrating Chuck's life will be held at 11:00 AM on Friday, April 24th at St. Patrick's Church - 10815 N. 84th St. Scottsdale, AZ. Arrangements handled by Hansen Desert Hill Mortuary 480-991-5800. In Lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to the Dillon Dimmick Donation Fund at any Bank of America.

Friday

I'm sure I'll be crashing soon.  Beth is out of town from Wednesday to Saturday, so it's just Jack and me right now (and Reggie, of course).  I fell asleep in Jack's bed after reading stories Wednesday night, and then he woke me up around 7:30 Thursday morning.  Thursday night I didn't get to bed until after 3 AM due to Yacht Rock, and then I was up again this morning at 7:30 trying to get him ready to go to school.  I'm probably already asleep and just don't know it.

Yesterday might have been one of the best in recent memory.  I helped out a student by transferring/transposing some music to Finale and emailing her a PDF, and then I got busy practicing.  I managed to find time to hit all my horns.  I think my self worth must be tied to how much I can practice;  yesterday was a high point!  Even after all that, I still had time to get outside with Jack for a little over an hour.  

Last night's Yacht Rock was pretty good, though I think we're ready to move on to some new songs.  Mark Cobb played lots of crazy stuff in the first set.  I think he must've been checking out his JoJo Mayer stuff this week.  The second set got a little tense on stage, resulting in a brisk rendition of "Little Jeannie", but no blood was spilled, and I think things will eventually be ok (for a week).  At some point in packing up I dropped my sunglasses.  I can't find them.  If you picked them up, please bring them back to me.

One strange note-Melkonian ran his fingers through my chest hair on the break.  That was weird.

We had a killer thunderstorm pass through here last night.  There's lots of trash in my yard.  I need to get out there and get working on it before I have to go get Jack at school.  I think my gutters are full of those fuzzy oak tree things.  Also, my grass is growing as we speak, so I'd better get out there before I have to rent a combine.

Monday

So...I'm doing laundry today, and then going to teach. Not very exciting, but then again, Mondays never are. It looks like I'll have an hour off in the middle to maybe practice, which should be nice.

For some reason, the pollen really kicked in yesterday evening, and I've been itching my eyes and blowing my nose constantly for about the last eighteen hours. I was kind of hoping all the rain would have washed the air clean of this stuff. Then again, maybe it's just inside the house.

Here's hoping my gigs this week are musically satisfying. It's getting to the point where I would trade the money on the gig for a sustained divine musical experience. I got a little of that Saturday night (courtesy of Marcus Miller, Grover Washington, Jr., and Mark Cobb), but Sunday was pretty bleak. We'll see what this week brings.

Kevin Harry sent me some pictures he's taken of me at gigs we've played recently. Here's a photo of me playing flute at someone's wedding ceremony. As always, I wish I was playing more flute. I love playing flute. It's a very different thing from saxophone or clarinet, and I like not only the flexibility of bending and altering the tone, but also the fact that I can use the color behind something else without intruding. With saxophone, I usually have to play around something else going on, but with flute it's very easy to stay in the background and then bring it forward in the music. It's very cool.
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