It's Been A Long Time

In the middle of packing and running around trying to get things done before leaving tomorrow for the NAECED Tapestry 2012 Conference I went down to church to attend the Music Skills class our Director of Music holds on Monday nights at 6:00 p.m. It's only the second one I've been to in the two years or so that he's been running them. He asked me if I'd come last week and play for this past Sunday's bilingual service.

Sunday was the first time in a very long time--years--since I've played my flute for church. It's a good bet that I'll be doing so again. Even though I felt a bit nervous, I enjoyed playing with others again.

This evening we didn't have any service music to practice. Richard wants to put together a couple of hours of dance music for some evening in the future. Since it was just the two of us for the first part of the session, we worked through a couple of songs. At one point he asked me to play an F scale, and I went totally blank. "How many sharps in F?" I thought to myself. Ummm... try one flat. Once I showed him I could play the scale, he told me to try improvising while he played the melody of the piece we'd been working on.

Improvise? ME?? AAAAAAAA!

But I did. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't awful either. No judgment, just encouragement.

Richard also asked me about my knowledge of chords. Having not been a music major or minor, I never reached the point of taking any music theory classes. I picked up bits and pieces here and there, but there's a whole lot I never learned. It looks like I'll be learning some now!

I'm looking forward to being part of the music program at church again. It will be nice to play regularly with other musicians again, something I haven't done in a long time.