Well I am preparing to head off to the land of Brockvegas for the weekend. This time tomorrow I shall hopefully have arrived safe and sound back at home to visit with my family for the weekend. I haven't made it back since the first weekend in August so it's about time!
Today was a pretty sweet day in that both my lesson and my two-hour orchestra rehearsal were canceled so I got a lot more time to run some errands / study for finance. We had a guest for our masterclass this evening too which was SUPER awesome; Shane Wieler from Marcus Wieler Bassoon Repair in Brampton drove down to give us a lecture on maintenance & other related topics. Turns out he went to school for commerce & music as well and is actually a certified CGA! I wish I could have stayed to chat longer but I did get a few answers to questions I've been having:
- The case I have (a Yamaha) is about as light & good as I'm going to get. I've been hoping for something lighter (I'm at about 18lbs now) but alas any of the lighter cases don't provide as good of protection as he recommends. Today was also the first time I've ever heard that Wiseman cases aren't super-awesomely-amazing (a $600 case I've had in the back of my mind for a while)...
- My ritualistic double-swabbing is doing a lot of good for my instrument. Most people just do it once, but I have two sets of cloths anyways so I've always done it twice. Turns out this is what he recommends now anyways.
- The silver plating on bocals do peel. My freak-out incident earlier this fall was also not an isolated incident :)
- The waiting list for a brand new Yamaha (my make) bassoon in North America is over a year-and-a-half right now!! Cha-Ching! My resale value went up a few pretty pennies more since I last had it appraised (not that I'm planning on selling anytime soon... but still; yay!).
- I really should have my instrument serviced more than once every two years. It is $100/hr for them to look at it, but it kind of needs to be done on a yearly basis to maximize my instrument's playing potential.
I know there has been a LOT of bassoon-talk on here lately. Hopefully I haven't driven too many of you away from reading... I'm sure my posts from home should be much less bassoon-centred.
Starksy here I come!
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