So uni is pretty awesome really. I can sit in a room and play flute all day. I can justify going out to 4 hours of concerts last night. I'm finally doing what I've always wanted.

It's interesting. It's stressful. I have a really great teacher, and she started out giving me lots to do to push me, and see what I'm capable of. We were aiming for one study per week, but that's never happened. I had a bit of a technical issue, which basically meant that in the last few weeks I've had to...

I started uni on Monday. Bachelor of music in classical performance, specialising on the flute with an additional Classical Performance Extension subject in place of semester 1 theory because my entrance exam was good.

I'm expected to do around 4 hours practice a day. Probably more because of extension. The formal requirement to pass is 24 hours a week, but I'll probably end up doing much more than that. It's basically all of the work I have to do, so I just squeeze it in wherever...

Just found out that I got accepted to the Bachelor of Music specializing in classical performance at Adelaide Uni. Exactly what I wanted.

Fuck yeah. I'm too excited to even care that I have 2 blogs on the front page, motherfuckers.

It was my 5 year anniversary here on Thursday.

I joined this place at the end of primary school. I was young, bright eyed and ready to take on the world. I had friends, career goals and the energy to be constantly pushing myself.

I'm typing this with 4.5 weeks of school lessons left, plus a few weeks of exams. Everything wrapping up. My university audition is on Tuesday next week, and I'm confident that I can play everything well for it.

I'm tired. Tired...

I'm doing an arrangement for school. We have to holistically change a piece into another style. I've taken a well known tune and put it into a baroque style following every key melodic note with only minor harmonic changes*. The only trouble is that I think I got a bit carried away and you can't recognise it any more.

If someone could take a listen and guess the piece I will love you forever.

BAROQUE STYLED PIECE

Also, here is the score for that snippet...

I love playing the flute. I work really hard at it, but in the last 2 years I felt like I've made very little progress. I have less than a year until my uni auditions and I'm really stressed out already. Every time I pick my damn flute up I'm feeling anxious. I have a lot to do in the next year, but my flute teacher is convinced that if I do everything he says I'll get into the Adelaide Conservatorium, which is probably the best place to study in the country right now.

My saxophone,...

I just performed with a bigband infront of 3000 people. In said performance, I had an improvised* solo. It was absolutely nerve racking and I was shaking severely after I'd left the stage. I managed to contain the outward signs of terror until after the performance, which is more than I can normally say. My knees usually wobble if I'm standing during a performance.

I'm buzzing right now, although I'm extremely exhauseted. We only played for 3^1/2 minutes, but something about...

Today I had another great musical experience that I was lucky to be invited to.

A flute teacher I know (the one that lent me the contrabass flute for a week) flew the big flute specialist Peter Sheridan over from Melbourne the other day. She flew him over with the intention of him giving a bass flute lesson to her and her friend. She contacted me by email about having a lesson, too.

She decided that, while Peter Sheridan was over, she may as well put on a concert,...

I've spent the last 3 days been at a nation-wide Bigband competition. It's been fucking amazing.

Schools from all over Australia come down to Mt. Gambier (a city built around a dormant volcano) and either play or listen to jazz the whole time. Naturally after so long I'm all jazzed out.

On Friday, we met at school at 8 in the morning and started on our 6 hour bus ride down from Adelaide. It was horrible. After arriving at Mt. Gambier, we had about 10 minutes to go into...

The three in our lesson group walked into our lesson today. The teacher said:
"Today, we'll be doing some quartet playing."
"There are only 3 of us!" exclaimed one of my peers.
"Including the teacher..." Replied the other.
The teacher continued, "we'll play these... Oh, there's a soprano sax part. I'll just get one of you tenors to play it." (I am one of the 2 tenors.)
"I want to play a soprano..." Said the first of my peers to speak.
"I've wanted to play...