Iced in – and practicing sight-reading again

The predictions were right. On Monday night, our 6 inches of snow was glazed by a thick coating of ice due to overnight sleet and freezing drizzle. Temperatures have yet to climb above freezing, so no melting so far. I found some strap-on ice cleats in the back of my closet, so this morning I added them to my boots, and ventured to the end of my driveway to get the morning newspaper and yesterday’s mail. For the first time in the 15 years I’ve lived here, I saw a snowplow on my street. Of course, it was totally ineffective at removing any of the hard-packed ice. The blade just skittered along without digging into anything frozen. I cleaned off cars yesterday, but my driveway is in total shade thanks to the neighbor’s 12-foot tall Leyland cyprus trees, so I doubt I’ll be driving anywhere today. The community college is closed for a third day, so no chorus class today, anyway. I hope to at least bust up some of the ice in the driveway and rake it off. (Don’t laugh –  that’s what my neighbor across the street did yesterday, and it seemed to work.)

At least I’ve had lots of time to practice. I started sight-reading for 30 minutes as a part of my daily practice, which according to my teacher is the minimum time required if I want to get any better at it. But my brain is screaming after 20 minutes, so I’m not sure if the last 10 minutes is actually accomplishing anything. Today I found a music theory website that has exercises for identifying notes, intervals and chords, among other things: Ricci Adams’ musictheory.net . Since identifying intervals really slows me down when I’m trying to read, I’m going to try these exercises as the last 10 minutes of my sight-reading practice. Perhaps I can successfully click my mouse to identify an interval after my brain is done with trying to read from an actual score. We’ll see……..