Audience Etiquette

We've all been there. You're in the audience at a musical performance and someone starts to talk to the person next to them. Or s/he takes out a phone--or, heaven forbid, a laptop--and starts typing away. Or someone decides to slowly open the world's noisiest piece of candy EVER.


What do you do in that instance? Shoot them a mean glance? Ignore them? I think it depends on the situation, but recently I was forced to take matters into my own hands. Apparently I made the right decision, because about a dozen people thanked me afterward for doing so (I didn't even think anyone really noticed!).


A couple of weeks ago Pellissippi State Community College hosted their annual Student Honors Recital. Vocal and instrumental students (open to all students, not just music majors) auditioned earlier in the semester and the best of the best were chosen to perform on this occasion. It was a wonderful recital--I'm constantly amazed at the students we have at Pellissippi, and all the hard work they (and their teachers!) put into their crafts.


So, onto the recital. The first performer, Taylor, gave his best performance yet of "The Impossible Dream." It was truly awesome--except for the fact that, during the softest part of the song, an older woman a row in front of me leaned to her friend and whispered something about how she couldn't hear him. And when I say "whispered" I really mean spoke at a normal level, as if she were having a conversation which wasn't taking place during a musical performance. She was 3-4 rows from the front and Taylor had no problems with projection; maybe she couldn't hear him because it was during a rest in his part and the piano was playing quietly? The song wasn't over yet!!


But whatever, right? It happened once, some audience members sighed, the performance went on. But it didn't end there. This woman seemed to delight in being absolutely still and quiet in between songs/pieces and then waiting until during a performance to speak to her friend. I don't remember the exact number but during the third or fifth disruption I finally leaned forward and touched her very lightly on her shoulder. It took her a second or two to turn around but when she did, I put my finger to my lips and--as politely as possible--motioned for her to please be quiet. How did she respond?


She stuck her tongue out at me. A grown woman, probably someone's mother and someone else's grandmother, stuck her tongue out at me. But she didn't make any noise for the rest of the recital. I wish I'd shushed her sooner!!


I didn't even think much of it, but after the recital half a dozen or so students and fellow audience members came up to me and thanked me. I felt like a hero! :-) And the next day more students thanked me, including Taylor (who'd been filled in by his classmates).


I guess the moral of the story is this: If someone is disrupting your enjoyment of a performance, take a chance and try to politely silence them. You never know how many other people might be grateful for your small act!


**Favorite Moments**


I'd also like to mention a couple of my favorite moments during the recital:

1. The one stagehand who moved stands and whatnot for the performaners was a very tall, slim man (I'm going to guess student). He was dressed nicely, in a button down shirt tucked into some khakis. The memorable part is that he was sagging his pants. I don't know how he managed this, because the dude was so skinny! That belt had magical powers. The talkative woman in front of me gained a few cool points when she leaned to her friend (in between performances, no less!!) and whispered "He's gonna lose his pants if he's not careful!" 
2. Right before a flute student began her piece, a little girl behind me whispered to her mother "Is that a recorder??" I'd expect that to be reversed--a child asking if a recorder was a flute. It threw me off for a second, but it was so adorable!

Plastic musical instruments

As you read the title of this entry (or did you skip it and go right to the body, like I often do?) what did you think of? When I hear the phrase "plastic musical instrument" I think of those cheap, translucent recorders you can buy in the music stores. If I think a little bit longer I picture the nicer, Yamaha recorders that many of you played in elementary school (or play now, if you're an early music fan like I am). Then there's the bass that my friend Alex and I were discussing the other day--we decided that it would be really cool to create a bass made of plastic and fill it with water. T'would sound very...interesting. :-D

Did any of you think of LEGO? I certainly wouldn't have imagined those wonderful building blocks which are still in a drawer somewhere in my parents' house. O:-) Now when I think of LEGO, I think of that fabulous "Knights of the Round Table" ditty from Monty Python... But I digress!

I don't even remember how this came up in the conversation but I ended up telling my friend Deb about a cello which someone made out of LEGO. I promised that I'd find the info and share it with her; then it occurred to me that other people might be curious as well. And while looking up the cello I remembered that someone also made a harpsichord out of LEGO--one which actually plays!

So here, for you all to enjoy, are two musical instruments made (almost) entirely out of LEGO.

Cello by Nathan Sawaya, brickartist.com (Also check out Sawaya's Stephen Colbert)
Harpsichord by Henry Lim, henrylim.org (Be sure to listen to the sound clips)

Why Music?

I know I've been silent for much too long, but I'm back now! And I have a question for all the musicians out there:

What made you choose music?

Was there a cute boy in band and you joined just so you could sit next to him? Did you hear the girl next door say she liked guitar so you bought one and taught yourself to play? Were you forced to take piano as a child and then discovered it wasn't so bad?

Everyone has a story. You might feel that yours is uninteresting but I'd like to hear it anyway. How about this--I'll tell you my boring story so you won't feel so bad about yours.

I heard music inside the womb. Not in some cosmic, music of the spheres sort of way. My dad loved to sing and my mother was a music professor. My brother and I are both professional musicians and I don't think a single person who knows our family was surprised by our choice!

My first instrument was the piano. I must've been 5 or 6 when I began. I enjoyed it, and I was pretty decent. A few years later I was given an opportunity to play in orchestra (in my county, orchestra began in 5th grade and band began in 6th). My parents went to the orchestra teacher to ask a very important question.

Mom and Dad: If Robyn ever decides to do this for a living, which instrument would be best?

Mrs. Swoope: Viola, because there are too many violinists and cellists in the world.

And there you have it, folks. That's how my relationship with the greatest instrument in the world began! O:-) I've picked up a few more since then, but piano will always be my first love and viola will always be my greatest love.

Now it's your turn!

Monty Python + Trek = Pure awesome.

I'm just dropping by to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Joyous Holiday-I-Don't-Know-About or Just Another Day.

I'll be celebrating Christmas with my brother in a few days. We'll probably have pizza and play Animal Crossing. Totally non-traditional, but it'll be fun!

I also wanted to share a couple of YouTube videos with you. Some of you know I'm a Trekkie, but you may not know that I also enjoy Monty Python. I'm one of the many people who can recite the Holy Grail from memory. And since I'm a musician, I'm especially fond of the musical numbers.

Here is a video of the famous "Camelot" song from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Monty Python - Knights of the Round Table

And here, for all the Python/Trek nerds like me, is the same song put to clips from the original Star Trek series:

Star Trek meets Python

Enjoy the rest of your week! :-D

Rock 'n' roll dreams...

I don’t know if I should call this a dream or a nightmare. I call it a dream because it occurred while I was asleep and was interrupted when it was getting interesting, as usually happens with dreams. Also, I was doing something that most likely won’t happen in real life. But I think it would be better labeled a nightmare because I was being my usual clumsy, absent-minded self.

I was in a really cool recording studio with the Dirty Guv’nahs. The studio looked like it was in someone’s house—dark brown, wood walls with lots of knots in them and whatnot. Like a cabin almost. It was most likely my subconscious’ version of Levon Helm’s studio since that’s what I’ve been reading about in the Guvs’ tweets and whatnot. Earlier in the dream I was talking with the guys about a song they were working on—apparently I’d heard them working on it or something, or maybe they invited me to hear it? Anyway, I was there and we both had some ideas for an orchestra in the background. Our ideas matched up, so James grabbed a score* (a rock band having a “score” seems so funny) and handed it to me. Then the rest of the band picked up their scores and we started brainstorming.

I was feverishly jotting the ideas down that we all came up with and pretty soon the score was covered in notes. I think the score I was given already had some other notes on it because I remember there being some larger writing in places, on top of the music (I usually try to write small and in the margins)! So anyway, we were getting a lot of stuff done—put strings here, put some brass there, etc. Everyone’s ideas complemented each other and it sounded like it was going to be an incredible number. I thought to myself Are these the same Dirty Guv’nahs I worked with a few months ago? I’m always wary of bands who start off one way and then blow up and start adding more musicians and entire orchestras and choirs and dancers and ventriloquists and whatnot… I don’t like the term “sellout” but I do wonder if some musicians lose their original vision when they’re faced with all the possibilities of modern technology and such. I worry too much. A lot.

But I digress. We were working hard and ideas were flowing like maple syrup over a mountain of bacon pancakes. But I kept losing my music. We would be working on a section and then I’d get up and walk to the window for something (don’t ask what; I have no earthly idea—my dreams rarely make sense all the way through). When I went back to the first place I was sitting or standing, I didn’t have my music in my hand anymore. So we lost several minutes of creativity while searching for my score. Then we got some more work done. Great idea here, interesting tweak there… Then my music disappeared again. Why was it so hard for me to keep up with this blasted music?!?!?!

I was beginning to feel really stupid. I wondered if the band would be better off working with someone else. [Why can’t I be close to normal in my dreams? Must my faults follow me into subconsciousness?] It was the second or third or dozenth time that I misplaced my music that an alarm on my phone ended it all.

I woke up with more feelings of frustration and self-loathing than excitement and creativity. I also woke up with the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” running through my head, so we must have been working on something along those lines. Often my brain won’t remember the music that my subconscious created while I was asleep so it will pick something that my waking mind recognizes—something similar to what was in the dream—and leave that in my brain. Or it could be that we were working on “All You Need Is Love” but in the dream it was an original composition. That often happens—for instance, I’ll see a friend from high school in a dream but I don’t actually know them in the dream, or I know them from somewhere else.

So that was my dream this morning. I’d like to thank my 10:30 alarm on my BlackBerry for ruining everything. I was probably about to redeem myself and come up with the perfect finishing touch (once I found my music for the umpteenth time) before the blasted real world got in the way. Oh, well. Maybe tonight I’ll dream of maple syrup-covered bacon pancakes…

*For the laymen out there a score is a printed version of a song or piece of music. Usually it refers to the conductor’s score which has all instrument and/or voice parts on it. Generally speaking rock bands, jazz bands, and other “popular” musicians/groups work off of chord charts or often from memory. Scores are more associated with classical music, though they can be used by anyone.

Post-Thanksgiving Check-In

Hi, all! If you celebrated Thanksgiving this weekend, I hope you had a wonderful time. If you didn't celebrate it, I hope you had a wonderful regular old weekend. :-D

I am now back from my MANY hours on the road and am very thankful to not be in a moving vehicle. VERY thankful.

I took my camera this weekend and snapped a few fun shots. Check out my Thanksgiving 2009 album here. My absolutely favorite shot is of the Georgia state line.

And speaking of my photography, check it out: Schmaps.com chose one of my Georgia Aquarium photos (along with others) to be featured in their Atlanta guide. How cool is that?! This link takes you directly to the "Zoos, Farms & Aquaria" page, complete with my photo showing in the Aquarium section (look for the photo credit "Photo: Robyn Allegra"). However, if you scroll over anything else it sometimes disappears or is replaced by another photo. If you miss it you can also check out the original photo at Flickr.

Alrighty, that's all for now. I must find food... Or perhaps take a nap.*



*I'll leave you with one more link, since this is a particularly link-heavy entry. One of my favorite places to waste time: Yahoo! Games - Board Games

Happy list!

In my personal journal over at LJ, I sometimes post “Happy Lists.” I usually wrote them when I wasn’t feeling happy and needed to find something to be positive about. But today I actually am happy and I thought I’d post a list saying why so that the next time I’m down in the dumps I can come back to this.

I highly recommend making a list of your own. If you don’t have a blog you can leave a list in the comments for this post. If you do blog your own list, be sure to let me know! It’s fun to read other people’s lists as well.

How appropriate that I’m making this list the day before Thanksgiving…. I totally didn’t plan that. Anyway, here goes.

Thanksgiving Eve Happy List

1. This afternoon, as I left Pellissippi and walked across the parking lot to my car, the fall leaves made the coolest sounds as they were blown across the pavement by a gust of wind. The sounds made me smile.


2. A close girlfriend of mine got some great news from the doctor today.


3. A close guyfriend of mine, whom I haven’t seen since I played at his wedding 7 months ago (!!), also called with some good news.


4. (Related to previous one) Having two friends call me in one day and share the wonderful blessings they’ve received from God is one of the best things ever.


5. My student did very well in solo class today. :-)


6. I’m about to take a road trip with my brother to spend Thanksgiving with our parents, some aunts and uncles, and probably some cousins, too.


7. I’ve finally found shoes I can teach in without my feet hurting at the end of the day.

See, wasn't that fun? ;-) I highly recommend checking out TOMSshoes (the shoes to which I was referring in my last item). Great shoes and a great cause. I'm going to buy another pair--possibly two--in the very near future.

**If the formatting looks weird that's because I'm posting this from my phone. Will fix later (I'm currently on the road)!**