Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Actually, this post will have nothing to do with the book. Ok, I will mention that they are filming a movie about it! It's about time. I guess there will be life after the Lord of the Rings movies. I thought I'd never look forward to a film again.

Anyway, so I found out this weekend that I'm a hitchhiker. Well, I've at least got good thumbs for it. Kind of like these:


I also found out, the hard way, that while these thumbs may be good for some things they are BAD for clarinet playing. It makes positioning your fingers correctly extremely difficult since your right thumb tends to contort under the weight of the instrument. ARG!!

It was quite discouraging when my husband who is straight thumbed was able to better finger the notes I was trying for. He had never even touched a clarinet before! I was going to use this as an excuse to play oboe instead since it's a bit lighter and the holes on the keys are smaller so you can get away with less than perfect fingering. However most everyone has said that whatever advantage I'd have in terms of fingering with the oboe it would be countered by how much harder the embouchure is on it.

I won't give up on my clarinet just yet. Besides I think I was getting ahead of myself by trying to go for those clarion notes anyway. So I will continue to practice my lessons for now and think about this more over the next few months. Yesterday I found a little music school in the city that has private lessons and they're actually a bit cheaper than the school in Westchester. Or maybe I should just go to Boy's Harbor. Well for now I'm going for a trial lesson at Bloomingdale and will keep studying with my friend as well. Decisions, decisions. Why do I suck at thee so?

In response to my fingering frustrations on the clarinet I decided to dust off my alto sax. Ahhhhhh, what a relief. No wonder people say that it's easy to go from clarinet to sax. I've only been on the clarinet a week and when I had my sax in my hands again I couldn't stop oogling over the big, beautiful keys that perfectly cover all the tone holes. It's a miracle. I blew into it and I got notes, not squeaks from top to bottom. YAY! It was like coming home. My fingers felt slow and clumsy but I was happy that the sound was still ok. Honestly I think I had been avoiding my saxes because I was afraid what would come out of them after the long hiatus. Well now I'm going to try to play them at least a little bit at the end of my clarinet sessions. I've been called for a gig!! I will get to play tenor next to a dear friend in an all girl group. I hadn't wanted to be in an all girl group before, but I don't mind now because it will be entre amigas. So pretty soon I might be able to be here again:


More info to come . . .