who only by moving can balance

I keep being gently surprised by what hard work it is to play the horn, and then laughing at myself gently, because I have now been at this for nearly fifteen years (give or take a several-year break when I first moved to London), and you might've thought I'd have learned by now, but -- there we go.

In slightly more detail: I keep noticing halfway through an exercise that I was focussing so hard on one of my facial muscles or my abdominal muscles that I'd forgotten about the other set. Increased facial strength is paying off in terms of achieving the same range with less pressure and consequently greater flexibility (and better tone!), which is a lengthy way of saying "gosh but I'm spending a lot of time paying very close attention to about a one-inch-diameter area of my face".

And, finally, having girded my loins (as it were) in preparation for actually doing some staccato drill work (which sounded less bad than I'd expected) -- I was abruptly extremely glad I hadn't done any Pilates recently. In theory it's because I'm giving the ankle a bit more of a chance to recover; in practice, it turns out to be Extremely Musically Useful, at least at this stage in my development!

Specifically: I hit this point in term and I'm actually, like, halfway competent at the horn! I hit most of the right notes most of the time on the first attempt! I start getting to think about how to sound more musical!

... and then we play the concert (I am currently at home getting dinner and changed between rehearsal and gig) and I get overwhelmed by something else and don't touch the horn again 'til next term, even though playing makes me feel better (for a variety of reasons, via a variety of mechanisms).

Nice bits today: I finally managed to (approximately) play a phrase I'd been having trouble with all term in about the right place, at about the right speed, with about the right notes, so I'll have done that at least once in context by the time this is all over bar the shouting (hey, Alex, that was five minutes' dedicated practice, it makes a difference and you enjoy it, <3); and, yesterday, my first turned to me after we'd played through a movement of the Débussy and said "... can you play that bar?"

Because, see, it's a relatively straightforward movement! It didn't need a lot of work doing! I think we'd played it through once or maybe twice before near the beginning of term? So at that point, the fact that we'd both flubbed it hadn't been particularly concerning, what with it being relatively fast semiquavers that were over relatively quickly.

Yesterday, however, we had a Dawning Horror.

We came to the conclusion that whoever had orchestrated the piece (it was originally a piano piece, as I understand things) had never picked up a horn in their life, so had written something that was absolutely fine for e.g. the bassoons but unambiguously an absolute pig to play on the horn. We spent some time staring at it, and got nowhere.

This afternoon I worked out a playable fingering.

It took my first a few goes to realise what I was suggesting, but now all of a sudden we can both approximately play this single sodding bar.

And it was very satisfying.