I ran almost 7 miles today! That's definitely a new record for me, by about 2 miles. Not bad.


In the meantime, I'm pretty ready for the semester to be over. There's really not much left, big project-wise, but there's no getting past those two weeks of class that still remain. (And teaching will continue to be a daily challenge--mainly because I'm really learning new repertoire as we go.) I'm anticipating a really nice May, with visits to Minneapolis for a conference ($180 nonstop flight! Prices have seriously come down), Poughkeepsie, and potentially Rodney, Ontario, but also time in between with no obligations aside from long-range planning for moving and marrying. (Boxes will start getting filled the minute I have the time.)

Speaking of getting married, Sara and I had our first Viennese Waltz lesson the other day! It was fun--we're being taught by a former student of mine--but we felt like we were more "frog-hopping" than anything. Which, as you can see, is not what you're supposed to do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEdJ6pQXmoU
But imagining being able to whirl that fast and effortlessly! Well, we have a few months...

Three days ago, it was bright and beautiful outside; I went on a hike and got sunburned.

Two days ago, it snowed most of the day.

??

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Teaching has been rather fun lately. I've been sensing that many of my students would like a greater challenge, so I've been trying to oblige them. Last unit we did a lot of structural reduction of pieces, that interpretive act that is essentially the gateway into Schenkerian analysis. I think they enjoyed it in class, though from the assignment I asked them to do and their informal out-of-class work I don't think they were very good at the interpretation on their own (it takes time).

This unit, we started by learning the modern modes, along with lots of non-diatonic scales (octatonic, various pentatonics, whole-tone, "Gypsy," etc.), which is pretty typical. But that same week, we started on pitch class set analysis; then this week we started transformational analysis. Both facilitate a rather mathematical view of music, which of course was very exciting for certain students. But in addition they allow me to talk about lots of advanced topics, like properties of triads and the diatonic set (maximal evenness, minimal perturbations of maximally even structures, axes of inversion, inversional and transpositional symmetry, etc.). A lot of what I'm teaching them right now doesn't have much "practical" application in music, but they seem to be very excited to learn for the sake of learning. Even more fun, some seem surprised and perhaps liberated to realize that that's okay. It may seem obvious that honors students would love learning for their own sake, but I will say that back at the beginning of the year, when I taught them a lot about early music and its theory, they were not so excited. I'm not sure if it's the time that's made the difference, the trust I've built up meeting with them 5 days a week for 25 weeks now (! that's a lot!), or their excitement for relatively modern music.

It's the time of year for many things!

First, for Bloomington to really live up to its name: the magnolias that dot my area of town are in full flower, as well as all the tulips, hyacinths, forsythia, those trees with the stinky white flowers, and the redbuds. I've been really appreciating these this year.

But also for guys in baseball caps and girls in short shorts to play cornhole (if you don't live in Indiana, Michigan, or Ohio, you may have to look this one up) in their front yards, beer in hand, music loud in the background; as well as for all guys (and girls, though I haven't seen any yet) who think they're awesome at playing the guitar to sit outside with self-absorbed looks on their faces and generously share their music with all nearby.

And also for tons of concerts at the music school. Today there are only 15, and several weekdays this week only have 3, but next Saturday and Sunday have 21 and 18, respectively.

And it's time to look forward to the end of the semester!