New Daddy and I have a violin/guitar wedding ceremony and reception background music set coming up in March, and the kids are with Grandmama and Grandaddy for a couple of days.
So what do we do? Practice wedding music, of course!
I had gotten a harebrained idea a few weeks ago: transcribe Grieg's "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" for guitar and violin. New Daddy isn't terribly happy with me, because it's enough work getting thirty hymns ready for a wedding, and add to that a new piece... well, it's a ton of work.
At first, I thought it would be easier to transpose it to G and transcribe it to keep New Daddy from having to tune his guitar to dropped D. But after killing my brain for the first sixteen bars, I decided to ask New Daddy if he would mind re-tuning during the set. Of course not; that's what guitarists do! Scrap G. Back to D... relief.
Except that this handy Finale NotePad (that's free) doesn't account for alternate tunings (you have to pay for that feature, along with grace notes and mid-piece key changes). But no worries. The E string notes just sound a little odd on playback.
This afternoon, I dug out New Daddy's guitar to try out some fingerings, and my left hand fingertips are now numb and raw. I thought my violin calluses had me covered, but nope. Apparently, guitarists have some pretty awesome calluses... and big hands. I have hands that are apparently just big enough to cover the piano, not the guitar.
I turn to New Daddy and ask: Can you do this? (which feels like a nearly impossible contortion to me)
New Daddy glances over absent-mindedly: Yep. (back to his programming)
But we're both pretty excited about this piece, because it's just such a cool piece. And I get to use my orchestration skills to divide the piano part between our two instruments. Fun, fun, fun. Okay, at least for me.
So what do we do? Practice wedding music, of course!
I had gotten a harebrained idea a few weeks ago: transcribe Grieg's "Wedding Day at Troldhaugen" for guitar and violin. New Daddy isn't terribly happy with me, because it's enough work getting thirty hymns ready for a wedding, and add to that a new piece... well, it's a ton of work.
At first, I thought it would be easier to transpose it to G and transcribe it to keep New Daddy from having to tune his guitar to dropped D. But after killing my brain for the first sixteen bars, I decided to ask New Daddy if he would mind re-tuning during the set. Of course not; that's what guitarists do! Scrap G. Back to D... relief.
Except that this handy Finale NotePad (that's free) doesn't account for alternate tunings (you have to pay for that feature, along with grace notes and mid-piece key changes). But no worries. The E string notes just sound a little odd on playback.
This afternoon, I dug out New Daddy's guitar to try out some fingerings, and my left hand fingertips are now numb and raw. I thought my violin calluses had me covered, but nope. Apparently, guitarists have some pretty awesome calluses... and big hands. I have hands that are apparently just big enough to cover the piano, not the guitar.
I turn to New Daddy and ask: Can you do this? (which feels like a nearly impossible contortion to me)
New Daddy glances over absent-mindedly: Yep. (back to his programming)
But we're both pretty excited about this piece, because it's just such a cool piece. And I get to use my orchestration skills to divide the piano part between our two instruments. Fun, fun, fun. Okay, at least for me.
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