The Bass Master (and Becky!)

Today has its good points. We took a nice walk before the Pineapple Express really got revved up, I practiced for a while, and then we headed over to UW for this.

A master class, for those who don't know, is an event in which a master of the instrument in question (Jordan Anderson and the bass in this case) listens to lesser mortals play and gives them helpful insights into how to do better. We were there for about an hour and heard two students get schooled on how to improve their playing. Both were quite competent when they played their pieces the first time, but his suggestions made a huge difference in improving their phrasing, playing style, and all the things that separate simply playing musical notes from actually making music. I was very much impressed.

The really cool part was hearing Jordan play the same series of notes as the students with such a dramatically different result. It's not that the students were playing out of tune, they weren't. His style, tone, and general musicality made a huge difference.

Afterwards, we headed to Bellevue for a Christmas open house at some friends' house and talked to a few of my ex-colleagues from Boston Scientific. Much fun was had amidst some serious pandemonium from a gaggle of preschoolers who periodically came tearing through the house moving like a noisy school of fish. Lots of cute little girls in dresses, tiaras, etc, which reminded me of the days when our house harbored a couple of similar amusing little creatures.

Finally, and most importantly, BECKY IS COMING HOME TONIGHT!!! As I write this, her plane is over eastern Montana with 1 hour and 53 minutes left to go. They are only flying at 327 knots though, which is ever so sluggish and explains the ridiculous 6+ hour flight time. No matter - less than 2 hours!!