I think by the end of this whole thing I won't want to hear anymore of her songs, not that it's bad, but it's really getting to be a bit of an overdose. Although one can imagine, the number of times she has played the songs, she's probably even more tired of it than we are.
The band came in today, made things a little bit livelier, because it was a lot noisier, and it was funny to watch how almost all of them have long hair, in varying degrees of curliness, and some rebonded. (and I'm not referring to girls here) Sound check was very tedious as usual, checking monitor levels and bearing with the screeches and the feedback and the overdose of whacked drum beats that resonates through the cello.
Discovered I have one more solo cello-piano piece to play on Sunday, which means more chance of screwing up in front of 1800 people. Although I don't know if that's worse than playing 4 solo cello-piano pieces on Monday in UCC theatre. The rest of the octet have been very encouraging though, maintaining that no one will notice as long as I keep a poker face and pretend that it was meant to sound that way. But still.
I didn't believe her when she said it was good, because I missed one major accidental and flopped all my bowings and screwed up the one line of double stops. So I just gave her the wry knowing smile, which was an instinctive response. (So much for Scorps being mysterious, I think I'm too much of an open book already). Maybe it only sounds passable because she's listening to the cello via the monitors, and above the sound of her piano. The piano covers all (or at least most) faults, hopefully..thankfully.
I know I really shouldn't be so pessimistic - after all, it's a gig and you're supposed to have fun playing for gigs. But still.
It's not like I'm a perfectionist or anything. Far from it actually. I'm content to leave things in a mess as long as other people don't notice. But I think it's because all along my cello teacher has been extremely picky on sound, tone, vibrato, every possible thing, that I can't shake the feeling that there's something wrong with every note I play. (Yeah right, now adopting an external locus of responsibility eh..)
Leslie once said, during a post-concert talk, that when he practices, he listens to himself like how a teacher listens to his student. And recently I think I'm starting to do that, only that being less technically equipped, it's paralysing, because there's so many things wrong, you just don't know where to start.
Ok maybe I'm over reacting again. It's just that after seeing her video of one of her L.A performances, I think I have huge shoes to fill - her cellist there is this rather witchy looking woman with long curly hair and with a perfect tent-like body structure to execute majestic vibratos and she sounds really good.
(My goodness it's horrifying how blogging encourages all this talking to myself). I should just focus on workable goals, which right now, is figuring out how to convince my teacher tomorrow that I've been too busy playing pop songs to have time to practice my cello.
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