In Case You Hadn't Heard...

THIS: 

That is all. More soon! Hopefully :) 

Still Waiting for Word (but keeping busy)

Sooo I'm still waiting to hear back from Yamaha. Remember how the 90-minute audition was video taped and sent to corporate? First, the tape sat in the Yamaha mail room for 5 days. Way to go, intern.. A week later, I was told that the video wasn't properly "finalized" and thus had to be FedExed back to California to be fixed or finalized or rendered or whatever and then FedExed BACK to South Dakota (yeah, that confused me, too...I think that the head of teacher training or whoever is deeming my audition pass or fail is in South Dakota?). So I'm told that the person evaluating my audition tape now has said audition tape in his/her possession and will be reviewing it this week. So I'm told!

Meanwhile, to keep my anxious mind off of the results...

WEDNESDAY: big presentation at work (#killedit) (Quantum Learning Network)...waiting to hear from Yamaha... 

THURSDAY: freelance work due for client (Social Media Superstar)...waiting to hear from Yamaha... 

FRIDAY bid/brief due for potential new client (Social Media Superstar) 

SATURDAY: piano recital!!!! ...waiting to hear from Yamaha...

Oh and that thing called work during the day! 

#igotthis

More updates to come as they are made available! 

xx

ONE YEAR in USA: Oh, The Places I've Been!

Ah, America. The land of the free and the home of the brave. Don't get me wrong, I love my country, but as the one year anniversary of my return to this beloved land after living in Australia for more than 3 years comes and goes, I find myself reflecting on the past 365 days of my life. Am I entirely happy with what I found when I went digging down that hole? Great question. 

In the past year, I have traveled 9,473 miles from Sydney to Detroit. I have lived in Trenton and Ann Arbor (MI); Hinsdale and Oakbrook (IL); Imperial Beach, Mission Valley and Carlsbad (CA). I have visited Washington D.C., Virginia Beach, Surf City, Scottsdale, Cheboygan, Chicago, Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, LA and Las Vegas, just to name a few. I have driven 2,072 miles from Chicago to San Diego, by myself, effectively moving halfway across the country, within less than 2 weeks.

I have thought myself to be in love, but was wrong. I have had zero boyfriends and approximately 3,628 bad dates. I've also had a couple of good ones. I have reuinted with friends old and new, and made a few, too. (That rhyme was totally not on purpose, but I'll take it.) 

I've tailgated at my first Michigan football game since 2008 (on my birthday, and they won, I might add) and enjoyed those particular sports that only us dear Americans enjoy, such as baseball (Go Tigers!), *American* football (Go Lions?) and hockey (GO WINGS!). I've watched college basketball (#goblue) and celebrated our country's independence on the Fourth of July. 

I've made lots of poor investments, and a few good ones. I've made lots of (extremely) impulsive decisions, and learned from my (many) mistakes. I've wondered dozens of times why I ever moved back here, and I have browsed www.qantas.com for one-way tickets to Sydney more times that I like to admit . 

Importantly, I've gotten to know myself. I've stepped outside of my comfort zone, been rich, been poor, been drunk, been sober, been lost, then found, then lost again. And again, and again, and again. I can't say that I regret anything that I've done in the past year, and I can't say that I'm any closer to figuring out this whole "life" thing. Was moving back the right...move? 

My facebook newsfeed is inundated with posts of engagements, weddings, babies and wedding anniversaries from my peers- often from people much younger than me and even a few of this sort from a girl I used to BABYSIT for (#ouch #fml). I'm often led to believe that I'm supposed to be at a certain stage in my life, as a 26 year old, that I'm just not ready for. Do I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be married with kids and settled? Sure. But do I also value my career, my travels, my social life (or lack thereof - but hey, that's my choice!) and my freedom? You bet. 

Some things I miss about Australia: suburbs like Woolloomooloo, just for the sake of its name. Pure Blonde. Tim Tams. Rugby (not that I understood the sport, but I can't really complain about gorgeous, buff, 20-something-year-olds running around the field in short shorts and tight muscle shirts, now can I?). The Opera House. The Sydney Bridge. My studio in North Sydney. My salary. Traveling around Australia at someone else's expense. The people I used to work with. Mates. Blokes. Pubs. Pubs open until 6 am. TAB. BYO restaurants. Sunday sessions. Woolys. Sushi. Thai. Aussie accents. Aussie kids. Adorable aussie kids with aussie accents in aussie hats. The words mum, brekky, chrissy, reckon, prawns, ay and cheers. Yamaha Music Australia. Driving on the left side of the road. Bondi Beach. And many more things, people and places that I won't mention here. 

I have no idea where the next year will lead me. There is still so much that I want to do, so much that I want to see, and so much that I want to accomplish. Yes, I've had some low points, but I've also had some highs. *insert inspirational quote about getting back up on the horse or how it's the way you respond to situations that matters the most, blah blah*

For now, Carlsbad, California, USA is home. My lease ends in June. I'm thinking Ireland. 

10 Lessons From My 10 Day Challenge (thus far)

1. A little Mozart in the morning goes a looooooong way. 

2. Everyone should spend the first 5 minutes of their day doing what they love. Read a poem. Play your favorite song. In my case, play a lil piano. Gardening. Running. Whatever it is that gets you in "the zone"...do it. There is a 50% chance that you will have a better day if you do!

3. I am forever grateful to the song "In My Life" by the Beatles for helping me to successful identify an ascending minor 6th interval. Also, in their song "From Me To You" the syllable keep you satisfiiiiiied" is an augmented chord. Thanks again, guys, for making the aural component of my prep a little bit easier - and enjoyable. 

4. Playing really fast for a long time is very hard on one's wrist if proper technique isn't used. THANK YOU, Doris Richards, for talking me through this! A side to side motion is ideal, not up and down.

5. I can accomplish anything with enough Diet Pepsi. 

6. Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" has a diminished 7th chord in it. And that's how I identify THAT one. 

7. A little scotch tape can also go a long way. Check out that amazing sequence of pages that I assembled above! Yes; copying, cutting and taping [pasting] were involved! Perfect for those page turns both backwards AND forwards (there's a coda). 

8. My neighbors, it turns out, do not like Schubert as much as I do :-(

9. Working full time + adding one component per night of my exam to my study schedule = sleep deprived but powerful Mariah. Don't mess with me. I've been up until midnight every night this week and I could crack at any second!

10. I love playing music. 

Goodness gracious. I've just spent another 20 minutes blogging that I could have spent practicing, listening, composing, music theorizing, transposing, improvising.....

Practice exam tomorrow at 7:30 am. Observing/co-teaching 9 AM-12. Practice. Private lesson. Practice? SLEEP. Practice. Practice. Practice. 

Exam for realz: Monday at 5 pm (after a full day of work, of course). 90 minutes. No stopping. Video taped. Sent to Yamaha Corporate. Eek. 

See y'all on the other side!

The Ten Day Challenge (starting 2 days ago)

No, this is not about weight loss. This is about me finding out that I need to prepare for and pass my Yamaha Music School Education Teacher Certificate Exam by October 1. I am wasting precious finger action right now typing this...back to practicing I go! Among other things, as you can see above..

Quick note: this website http://www.musictheory.net/exercises/ear-interval has been a life-saver for my ear training! 

CHALLENGE: ACCEPTED. 

The Power of Muscle Memory: Observations of a Pianist Jumping Back Into Practicing After Years of...Not

I'm baaaack :) I guess it's been a hot minute, hasn't it? (Does that last post say May 2012? Eek....) I'm just going to dive right in.

I recently decided to get back into playing (piano - kinda hard to transport a harp across the country - that's a whole other blog post - and keep it in a shoebox sized studio apartment), and it's increased my happiness level about 120%. Here's a condensed version of what happened (oh and by the way - hi! I moved back to the USA from Australia last October, lived in Michigan, then Chicago, then San Diego, and now Carlsbad. More on that later, maybe...): 

1. A few weeks ago, I noticed that some other, clearly less cooler Mariah Gillespie out there in the world had begun tweeting and was thus STEALING my first page SERP (search engine results page) ranking. I had been quite pleased with myself in the fact that I am reasonably googable; i.e. when one googles "Mariah Gillespie," the first page of results on google is actually me (my LinkedIn profile, my business facebook page, my tweets, etc.). No more. Some silly teenage girl has decided that twitter is cool (umm welcome to the party, sweetheart - does your mommy know what you tweet?), and she is STEALING MY RANKING! Of course, I'm not about to sit around and let that happen. Therefore....

2. I decided to chop up every single musical performance that I have of myself into short video clips and post them to youtube (owned by google), keywording the hell out of myself in the process in order to reclaim what is rightfully mine - after all, the only Mariah Gillespie worth googling in this world is me! It's still a work in progress and will probably take a few more weeks to complete. 

3. In doing this, I watched myself as a 11-18 year old performing on the piano and the harp in various situations, such as harp ensembles, concerts, fundraisers, orchestras, etc. Unfortunately, the first thought that usually came to mind upon watching these clips was, "Damn. That's quite possibly the coolest I'll ever be. I practiced 6 hours a day! Look at those fingers fly - look at that technique! What have I been DOING with my life since I was a featured harpist and scholarship winner with the Great Lakes Symphony Orchestra and received a standing ovation to a full house and an article in the Detroit Free Press?!"

4. Meanwhile, I have been in communications with the local Yamaha Music School at SoCal Pianos. If you know me at all, you know what a HUGE deal teaching music is to me! I won't get into all the details now (another blog post that I may or may not write for you - hey, baby steps! I'm back, aren't I?!), but basically I have to get re-certified in the USA in order to teach Yamaha classes here. SO, long story short, my self-inspiration (is that a word? a thing? Can one inspire oneself? Check.) from watching myself perform on video combined with my upcoming Yamaha audition (I have to audition live in front of a video camera for 90 minutes, which includes performing 2 contrasting songs, sight-reading, sight-singing, transportion, improv...all sorts of fun stuff that will be sent to Yamaha Corporate Head Office), I am practicing every day! I usually squeeze in about a half hour on my lunch break and 1-2 hours after work. 

Here are some of my observations:

• It's kind of like getting back into working out after a long time. (I think. Not that I know anything about being a gymrat. That's not sarcasm - I actually don't.) The first 30 minutes was pretty brutal. I do play my keyboard quite often, but usually fun stuff, easy stuff, songs that I enjoy playing, and nothing too technically difficult (when it gets difficult, I just skim over it or power through without correcting my mistakes). When I dove into some scales and technical exercises for the first time, my fingers were NOT happy. They were quite stubborn, in fact, and it was pretty much a total mess! VERY sloppy playing. Having said that...
• Muscle memory is AMAZING! Once I gave my fingers a good work-out (brutally slow scales, finger stretching exercises at work, arpeggios, etc.) and hesitantly opened up my Schubert Improptu No. 2 in E-flat (Schubert)....it was like my fingers picked up right where they had left off (following one initial very slow read-through). After a few play-throughs, I was SPEEDING through it and my fingers seemed to know EXACTLY where to go. It's crazy - my phone would go off and I would glance over to see who it was (talk about easily distracted - I have since learned to put my phone on the other side of the room...thank goodness iPhones weren't around in high school), and in those few seconds of looking away, my fingers KEPT ON GOING. I would refocus and find that my fingers had continued on without my brain. I wrote about muscle memory a few years ago but I had no idea that it could last for years. 
• Muscle memory can also work against you! It actually made me laugh out loud while practicing. I found that the SAME problems that I had when I worked on this piece years ago, still exist. The same fingerings and flats and accents and chords that are literally circled, xed, marked in red, have "careful" written mid-measure on the page (you can see it in the photo above)...my fingers stumble upon these spots as much as they did years ago! 
• I love playing music. I LOVE playing classical music. I get high from playing classical music, and I hope that I never go this long without playing ever again! 
• I want to put on a recital soon, a full blown, solo, Mariah Gillespie at the piano, recital. There might be 3 people in the audience, but I want to do it. 
• I love playing music.