I'm currently on the side of a free way helping a broken dow bus.  Oh, never mind.  We're picking up four hitch hikers.  Don't worry dad, they're very nicely dressed old ladies.  Actually, I can't claim credit for this act of mercy, our bus driver is responsible.  We're traveling to New York, NY.  I always said that I'd "hoped to go there some day."  Life's amazing.

There I'll be meeting a friend from Flagstaff who is visiting her children.  They dance for the New York Theater Ballet and we're going to catch their performance tonight and return to Boston Sunday night.

I'm sad that it's been such a long time since I've posted anything, but when I think about trying to sum-up the past two weeks, I feel like I'm being asked to give a quick paraphrase of the dictionary.  I suppose that's because the past two weeks, like the dictionary has not been a story, but rather a journey.  Every day there are times I find myself doing something I thought I would never have the opportunity or the ability to do.  For instance, 

• after much work I was able to play a written jazz piece properly,  
• I eat in a cafeteria, and stay up late talking because I want to, 
• I'm learning to hang out just for fun,

 

• I understand tensions, know the inversions, can play my scales well, and can comfortably convert them to relative, parallel, or pentatonic minor,  
• I'm surrounded by people who can immediately relate with me when I mention practicing,
• I can cross the street on a red light,
• I'm more comfortable telling people my opinion,
• I'm learning to "comp" (read chord symbols and improvise or accompany)

Every day I meet so many new people, all so very different.  They are all so amazing and unique, it's made me respect people more.  If you were to browse the population of our school it would seem, for the most part, quite average.  As I've gotten to know people however, I've been amazed at the stories each person has to tell and the colorful spectrum of personalities they create!  I can't do them justice here, but I'll try.

Maru (Above to the left) is from the Canary Islands in Spain and she plays the piano.  She might be mistaken for an (almost) 5 foot tooth pick until you hear her strong, accented voice.  She's 23 and has a degree in Civil Engineering.  She's now studying Film Scoring.  With all the music training I've had, I tested out of 3 Core Music Credits.  She tested out of 13 with English as her second language!

Kikima is 1/2 Nigerian but spent most of her life in the States.  She has pink, white and blond rostas and is one of the most sincere people I know.  She's never had any music training, but can compose and play by ear in any style.  

Leah is a classy/flashy, upfront, 23 year old, African American from NY who spent 2 years studying Bassoon at Juilliard and is now studying voice at Berklee.  

Sam plays violin and viola.  She is from Massachusetts and plays celtic and folk music.  Durring the summer and fall semesters she took a break from Berklee and toured with a group of musicians playing concerts around the country to thank the sponsors of PBS.    ?  

I could go on and on.  There's more kinds of people here than I've ever imagined, and perhaps the coolest thing, is that most all of them spend at least a chunk of their day kindling inspiration; doing what they've decided they're here to do.  

Speaking of friends, I made one outside of Berklee when I went to that Old South Church.  Her name is Betty and she is in her eighties.  During the knitting group last week she mentioned that she had bought a baby grand and never learned how to play it.  We decided that I would give her piano lessons and she would give me knitting lessons.  She attended Berkley in CA and is a retired Dr. who never married.  She now lives with her sister on Beacon St.

From her apartment you can see the Charles River, and any cars or other such items that MIT students put on the roof of their auditorium during the last Phrat  party.  We had our first "lessons" on Thursday, but although I was there for 2 hours,  I only knitted a half a row, and we never touched the piano.  We hope to do it again some time this week.  

My classes are wonderful.  My teachers, while some of them could teach differently in my opinion, are very well educated, want to see us succeed, and are willing to do anything they can to help us get there.  The culmination of my classes is my practice time.  The teachers willing acknowledge that the true learning happens out side the class room when the knowledge is applied, and it really does.  It will take some time but I am in the process of believing in the value of practice time as a truly worth while thing.  

 

(This Angel of music stands outside my Writing Skills class which takes place in a room Berklee rents from a church behind the school.)

My favorite quotes from teachers so far include:

(loud, with a heavy boston accent) "I just aint that kinda' cat!" and "We are musicians.  We're moody, we hear the world different, we're hard to understand, but we're still the highest life-form on the planet." (Not sure I agree, but everything's so convincing with an accent!)

Whelp, I've done it again.  I write so much I hesitate to tell people I have a blog for fear they'll drown in the flood of words!  Anyways, thank you for reading!   

Lesson of the week:  "Pull" spelt backwards says "Push."

  

Address

I finally have an address, and need some letters to reply to so that I can try this cool mail chute in the 1140 Bldg, and race my letters from the sixth floor to the lobby! (You can see them as they slide down to the mail box) It's:

Hannah Slater
2221
Berklee College of Music
168 Massachusetts Ave
Boston, Massacusetts 02115

I also have a new schedule:
Monday:
Ear Training, Intro to Music Tech, Rhythm Section Ensemble
Tuesday:
Writing Skills (that's like notational penmenship)
Wednesday:
Keyboard Reading lab, Keyboard Comping lab, Traditional Harmony, Ear Training and Intro to Music Therapy
Thursday:
Writing Skills
Friday:
Private Instruction, Traditional Harmony, Ear Training, Intro to Music Therapy.
It's ten classes, but it only adds up to 16 credits so I don't think it'll be too bad.

Bostonian vocab of the day: "I have an 'Eye Dear'" means someone's about to share an ingenious chord progression.

The Beginning

With lots of clumps and clatters my roommate finally arrived! She's absolutely PERFECT for me and I'm in for an entertaining semester!

That's her down there being silly in at the bottom, and above are three of her friends who I've been getting to know over the past couple days.

Shante, the first one on the left has a photographic memory. She thinks she developed it in preschool where she spent all of her time doing puzzles, but since her brother has it too, although he hasn't recognized it yet, I think it must be innate. I guess eyes must need a lot of space for that talent because God gave her beautiful ones with plenty. She is a vocalist and is majoring in song writing. That's where all the money's at because rather than being drug behind the changing fads in style like the stars are, the song writers are leading it.

Noslen from Memphis, my roommate, has a lot on her plate right now because not only is school starting and she's heading up a club (a really cool one for disabled people) so she has to meet with the president of the school and stuff, AND she's working as a DJ, but she's also in the middle of "sewin' God for makin' rats" because Henry ate her hot chocolate packates. Noslen's hot chocolate is a precious resource. Her instrument is piano :) and she's a Contemporary Composition and hopefully an MP+E major (music production and engineering). That's a very competitive field and only about 50% of the applicants are accepted. I say about because the other MP+E major I talked to said that only 300 MP+E students were accepted and 3,000 applied. But he seems to have collected his stats on a year when every single non-entering student was majoring in MP+E. (he had already been accepted) Noslen has lots of questions about "where I come from down in Ayriona" so we have lots to talk about.

Above her stands the quick and intuitive violinist Jennifer from NY. Noslen and Jennifer were also classically trained, and while Noslen has expanded, Jeniffer started to and wound up back in classical. She hopes to get a job in a Hawaiian Symphony Orchestra for a career after she gets a masters in Anthropology or languages in Europe. She and Noslen took me on a four hour review of R+B, and a little bit of hip hop, history essentials from Marvin Gay to Usher. (Rhythm and Blues - a style like Hip Hop but mellow and without rapping) We dabbled in Soul- including some old school music videos of Al Green - Funk, Techno and disco, but I'm still a bit of a rookie for all that. Noslen say's I'm just beginnin' and I'll be a solid black woman soon.

To the right of Jennifer is Lindsey who I haven't really gotten to talk to in person but all that's ever said about her is "she's toooo sweet" - which is meant in the best way - and also that she's the queen of jazz. She's also a vocalist but I don't know what her major is.

Jennifer drew a picture of me with angel wings :)!

Yesterday was Sunday and I woke up early (9:00 comes fast when the bed time's after 2) and entered the snowy wonderland outside my dorm.
It was SO beautiful and felt warm because there was so little wind. I walked through the thick and gentle snow to the Old South Church where I was given breakfast because of being an hour early, and then joined 20 Seniors for a knitting club :). Come to find out it was a Church of Christ with AMAZING Jazz music and a Gospel choir, but there were also lots of costumes (funny robes for the preacher and other people), some Bush bashing from the pulpit, and I didn't track with half of what the speaker said. He didn't mention God until the closing paragraph.

I think I'll go again next week just to do some knitting and hear the real minister, but I'm looking forward to looking around more. After that I went to the old public library

and wrote letters and in my journal for 4 hours in this little alcove: I love sitting there because it is in a passage to the BEAUTIFUL Sir Aurthar room

which so everyone who comes out looks inspired. There are more places to try though, so I look forward to that! I think it'll become my Sunday tradition.

Hopefully I'll practice today, and spend some time with my new homies. Come to think of it, their provably my first.

(a practice room)

Word of the Day

Today I learned a new word! I'll just give you the Berklee description and you can try to guess it.  Ready?  Jeopardy theme song please...

 An event begun by an Afro-Brazilian Drumming Ensemble followed by speakers like an A and R business man who worked with the Backstreet Boys and Brittany Spears, a 20 year old winner of some sort of Jazz Grammy who has opened for G love, as well as  some other Berklee Alumni/students/staff, and completed by an hour and a half concert by award winning students (including the girl who won the Grammy thing) featuring Jazz, Blues, Rock, R and B and a whole lot of sole... in all the styles?

Any guesses?  The answer is: Convocation.  Apparently every school has one but I'd never heard of it before.  I'd be up for that every night!

If you want to hear that girl who opened for us, she's on youtube with G love under "Emily Elbert and G love jam backstage" and her website is emilyelbert.com.  Believe it or not she actually looks much younger in person!

Dad left today.  I'm not glad that he left but it sure is exciting.  The whole city seems different now that I'm here for real and school's around the corner!  I sure wonder when the fantasy feeling is going to ware off, but until then, it sure is nice!  It warmed up a little this afternoon and I was able to imagine what tolerable weather must be like.  Mmmm...so sweet! 

I played some jazz today,  and it wasn't as hard as it seemed.  I think the trick is to put your fingers where they want to fall.  Then you get dissonance and work with it a little.  I like it.  

By the way, Berklee has an online radio station called the "birn" that I thought about playing on my blog, but there's so much variety I don't want to be responsible for what's playing at any given moment.  If you want to hear it you can go to www.thebirn.com.  From there you can select which of the five stations you want to hear.   

Thanks again for reading!  Have a good night.

Here are some pictures of my dorm!  

The outside...

And the inside! 

Dad generously stocked it with goodies, a water filter, and everything else I could need.

My new Mac and the midi keyboard they gave me are on my desk there, crazy stuff, that's all I have to say!

 

Slater Conservatory and Berklee College of Music

The garage is a cold place to practice during Flagstaff winters, but in 2001, while we were building our house on Tombaugh,  this was no hindrance to me and my imaginary peers.  I just decided to exercise that wonderful right of every pretender and adjust the world according to my wishes.  In this case, that meant adding gloves to the uniform of the Conservatory to which I belonged: the Slater Conservatory of Music.  I wouldn't change those sweet hours spent practicing, nor the joy of interacting with the shadowy sounds and actions of my imaginary friends, but I will say this: pretence 'aint got nothin' on reality when it comes to music school!  

I suppose I should take the time to be thankful that there are no Ms. Meechings as I had imagined, in black, high necked dresses, roaming around; and for that matter, I've not even thought how I didn't need gloves while practicing; but I guess I've been so overwhelmed with the wonders of reality, I haven't needed to search my past to console my present.    So there's what Berklee isn't:

• Pretend 
• filled with Ms. Meechings and 
• Bitterly cold (not inside at least)

Now, for what it IS.

First word's that come to my mind:

Unbelievable, wonderful, amazing, marvelous...

Then it kind of just repeats.   

I haven't started classes yet but I am eagerly looking forward to the privilege.  

Henry and I are comfortably moved into our dorm room and awaiting our third roommate.  All I know about her is that she is not a first semester student,  has very cute accessories and provably smells like peaches, judging by the fruity assortment of perfumes, soaps, Febreeze, lotions and even scented hairspray.  I provably won't meet her until Tuesday when classes begin.  Until then however, Henry and I are comfortably situated.  

The campus is scattered over a few blocks in Back Bay Boston, but the heart of student actives is the 150 Mass. (Massachusetts) Ave. building.  This is due to the fact that I live there.   

The cafeteria, most of the classrooms, the library, the media centers, security office, the learning center, most of the practice and recording rooms, as well as the performance center are also in that building.  It used to be an old hotel and we eat in the swimming pool.  Because the air is so humid anyways though, we hardly mind.  

(Just kidding.  They filled the pool now we eat on top of it.)

Every night at 10 they clear out the cafeteria and hold student performances.  Performances are also held in other parts of campus including personal little halls and the larger performance center.   Something I love about Berklee though is that performances are also constantly going on in elevators, and dorm rooms, and lounges, and practice rooms, and class rooms, and bathrooms, and stair wells.  Ok, maybe not bathrooms...yet.  But just wait till the rest of the students arrive!  

Right now, with so few students and no homework, I can say that one of the most beautiful things about music is that you can't lock it up anywhere.  Because of that, just sitting in your room is a sort of is a musical expedition, as your neighbors escort you through a smorgasbord of soulful, albeit illegal (we're not supposed to practice in our rooms), expressions.  We'll see how I like that during finals.  

It seems like every where I go around here I hear little angelic tidbits of unwritten melodies coming from a hidden Voice Majors.  It's wonderful!

 The practice rooms for percussion are down in the basement and are actually a little sketchy.  The ones designated for piano principles (people who have piano as their main instrument), get to practice in the Piano and Percussion building where they have rooms of grand pianos and top quality uprights!  

Yesterday we spent the day auditioning for placement in ensembles, and core music classes like theory, arranging, and harmony.  I didn't know the answers to a lot of the questions, but I wasn't alone in that.  Many of the questions had to do with crazy chords or modes, but some of them were groups of 5 random notes, many in different octaves, played on different instruments and we were to pick what five notes were played  Life must be easy when you have perfect pitch!  

The ensembles are ordered by numbers from 1 to 8 according to your experience and ability to read lead sheets and such.  I think they put me in 1 because I've never played in an ensembles.  The people I've talked to about it said they graduated with 2's and 3's though, so I don't mind.

Whelp, it's now officially tomorrow, so I think I'll take a shower and go to bed, but I'll get some pictures up soon!

Thanks for reading!  Let me know if you want to hear about something specific!