A sticky situation at orchestra
Maestro: (entering the high school band room where our pops orchestra practices) "It feels like a sauna in here."
It was so hot and humid you could taste it. And it tasted like "school." The oscillating fan didn't help much except to occasionally blow the sheet music off the stand.
But the real problem was that I couldn't make my left hand slide up and down the fingerboard. My thumb was practically glued to the neck and my fingers were stuck in "first." Shifting became a nightmare.
Was it the heat? An accumulation of rosin? Contact with the unidentified sticky substance lurking on my music stand? Soap residue because I rushed and didn't rinse my hands adequately in the scary pitch black (now that "school-was-out-for-summer") girls' room.
Back in the band room I desperately tried pouring some of my Poland Spring over my left hand, but that didn't help much. It got a little better after the first hour of playing, but by then we'd already run the program in preparation for our outdoor concert next week.
Fortunately I was able to clean the fingerboard and neck when I got home, and it all feels normal now. I will most definitely be more disciplined about cleaning my cello after each practice session from now on. I'm also going to make sure I'm better prepared to clean everything off in the band room when necessary.
Labels: orchestra rehearsal
posted by cellodonna @ 10:14 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I didn't know that you practiced in a high school band room--that makes the whole scene in my mind just perfect! I'm so used to practicing in a band room (and once you've seen one, you've seen them all); of course, the legion band practiced in the basement of a bar, and I never got to join the guys afterwards for a drink because I was under-age...
Well you've brought back some fun memories for me, Donna! And I'm sorry to hear about the stickiness. I hope it's not so humid at your concert next week...
XO,
Jill
hey there! Thanks for your comment on my page. Here's something that may not be exactly comforting, but relevant, at the least: I get stuck, too. And I would qualify as a borderline obsessive fingerboard cleaner/hand washer! I sometimes theorize that it has something to do with the instrument rapidly absorbing water. It happened a lot when I first moved to the UK, and also when I had a summerlong gig in Florida, but then seemed to go away, though the humidity remained. I find that a way to combat this is to play more, and practice shifts. This is not just good for solidifying shifts, but it builds really tough calluses, which aren't porous like regular skin, and slide more like plastic than skin. Weird, huh? Have a great weekend!
e.
PS: I always thought it was 'callouses'. Calluses looks strange to me.
Goodness me, you are the third or fourth person decribing sticky hands! There must be a malevolent global onslaught in action, spreading from Canada, America, to the UK!
Oh my goodness! Who else was sticky? How did they cope?
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