Finally, some music :)

Music!! Today was my day of music :) I started off the day with Step Dancing, followed by Tin Whistle and capped off with the class Intro to Irish Traditional Music. And finally, we're heading to the Franciscan Well tonight to hear some more music later tonight.

The view of the music building from my bedroom
window at sunset

This morning, I headed up the hill to the music building, which is quite a hike. Between the pool, the hill, and the step dancing, I'd better be in good shape by the end of the semester! I had Step Dancing first, with a young teacher named Margaret. I brought my ghillie soft shoes, and wore them for the day, but unfortunately, the class is done in hard shoe :( It was still a great class. We started learning the reel today, but it was really slow going. We learned the leap step, which I know is important, but some of the people in the class were a bit....uncoordinated. So it took us awhile, but hopefully once they get the rhythm of things the pace will pick up. It also helped that I remember a bit of those lessons years ago, and show choir. Way to go muscle memory! It's definitely going to be a work out, and quite a way to start my week.

I then took a trip to a music store, which had a lot of cool instruments, to get my tin whistle. With careful deliberation, I found my whistle. On my way back, I stopped to buy some tap shoes, which would stand in for the real Irish hard shoes. I mean, I love authenticity and all, but if it's a difference between 30 Euros and 175 Euros I think tap shoes win. After that, I took trip number two up the hill to the music building for tin whistle.

Tin whistle turned out to be a small group class with 3 people in it so far: me, Jake (from St. John's) and Verina, a girl from Germany. We started off with a scale and the basics of tin whistle and moved quickly to start learning ornamentation. By the end of the lesson, we had learned out first Irish song on the tin whistle :) We have the music and a recording to listen to and instructions to practice before next class. Which I'm actually going to do.

St. Finn Barr's Cathedral from a dirty window of the
Music building

Now, if you draw a mental map of the places I've been today, my apartment, the music building, and the main campus make a rough triangle with the river running through the middle. After tin whistle, I needed to get to the main campus to register for my classes, but I'd never walked from the music building to campus. I had been told about a staircase between houses and a Shaky Bridge I should cross to get to campus. So off I went. It was farther than I thought to the stairway, but I eventually found it and got to the bridge that didn't look unstable or anything, but was a little shaky in the middle, thus the name Shaky Bridge. I made it to campus and registered just fine. I can officially take classes here now.

My final class today was Intro to Irish Traditional Music. It was in a mid-sized lecture hall and it was packed. Apparently they can only have 80 people in the class but already had 91 registered and still more wanting in. Either way, I registered last Tuesday, so I should be fine. The class was taught by my tin whistle prof and was pretty interesting. We got an overview of the harp and fiddle in Ireland, and listened to examples of a few things. Overall, it was my first full lecture class and though it's not my preferred lesson format, I think it's going to be a cool class. And one of our papers (out of 2 total) is comparing a trad session and concert setting, which means we have to go to each. Which I think will be a good paper :)

I'm finally back at my apartment to get some dinner and sit down. It's been a long day, but awesome. I can tell Mondays are going to be good days :) I think we're going to go to a pub tonight that has live music as well, so that'll be a good way to end my musical day. I'm really excited to see where these classes take me. Maybe by the end I'll be able to give you a history of the tin whistle and I'll dance and play for you :P