My piccolo!!

As most of you probably know already, I have been playing the flute for nearly 3 years. What many of you probably do not know is that I am now learning the piccolo. My piccolo has been "in repairs" for a while, but it finally came back yesterday. I am SO excited about learning it - I think the longer I had to wait for it the more excited I became.

My piccolo (I still haven't come up with a name for it yet - any suggestions are welcome!) is the prettiest looking instrument I've ever had the privilege of owning. The body is made of ebonite, and I'm told that the keywork it is most likely gold plated! Whatever it's plated with, it looks good. It's absolutely tiny, being only a finger's width, and as short as 2 hand's lengths!

The main reason I'm so excited about it, however, is this: since a piccolo is basically just a very small, very high pitched flute, the playing techniques are very much the same. That means that I get to enjoy all the fun of learning a new instrument, but without having to worry about learning any new techniques!!

While the technique is very similar, the sound of the piccolo is very different to that of the flute. It is much more of a light "whistling" sound, and sounds more cheerful & bright. Some of the high notes can be shrill at times, though. I try to avoid playing those notes for the sake of my family, myself, and our windows!

On a different note (no pun intended), I am really loving my flute and piano at the moment. My (well, our) keyboard is leaving us to go live with Joshua tomorrow, because there is no piano where he lives. I'm so glad that he will have a keyboard to play, but at the same time I feel like I've lost a very close friend. I suppose that's very selfish of me, considering that we've got a perfectly lovely Yamaha upright piano here, but all the same I can't help having the feelings. Every piece I've ever composed was on that keyboard, so my emotional attachments to it are justified.

Speaking of compositions, I am uncontrollably excited about a composition workshop that is going to be held right here in Cooma on the 2'nd of May. A group of professional musicians and composers are coming to show high school students how to compose and arrange music for an ensemble, then they will put on a concert featuring all the new compositions. Then on May 6-9 I get to attend a music workshop which is being held at the ANU School of Music as part of my music course, MuST (Music for Students with Talent). I don't know what the workshop is going to be about yet, but it is held by very professional musicians, and goes for 4 days in a row, so I'm sure it will be packed with exciting new things to learn. I can't wait! The only problem is that Mum or Dad is going to have to drive me up there and back every day, since the bus from Cooma to Canberra would arrive too late for the workshop and we don't really know anyone in Canberra, so staying there isn't really an option.

Finally, for those of you who haven't heard a piccolo, to give you some insight into what it sounds like, here is a sample mp3 of a piccolo concerto. It may not sound really impressive to you, but I like it, and I also wanted to see if I could embed an mp3 file into a blog post, which is part of the reason why I did this - please let me know whether it works for you, and if you have any trouble downloading it. Thanks!

Edit: I have been informed that the piece I had here previously was actually performed on a descant recorder, not piccolo - a very embarrassing mistake on my part. Anyway, this time it's a real piccolo (I know for sure, because I actually saw it played), although unfortunately it is a different piece. It is a different movement from the same concerto by Vivaldi.