Monday 1:10 Let the experiment begin.
I went over to work with Dad on the 2 pieces I think cause him the most discomfort. And indeed, I guessed correctly but not for the reasons I thought initially.
“Time”, our very wordy, rhythmically challenging, unaccompanied piece that starts our show is one of these songs for my Dad. As we went through the piece, I realized that his brain does not move ahead as fast as mine and that is the only problem. Not the words, not the notes, not the rhythms. But rather, moving forward in real time. That’s the problem. So we took a yellow highlighter to mark the start of every system for the bass line. Then we took a pencil and circled all the big beats. And finally, we chanted through it. IF he can turn 2 of his pages quickly (which will be my husband’s job at rehearsals), he can do this!
Then, we took a look at The Best Of Bond. Fabulous fun medley of a ton of Bond movie themes. I figured Dad just didn’t relate or didn’t really “know” these tunes from the movies but nope. Those were not the problems. It is again about keeping up but not as you would expect. This time, it’s because the medley sometimes only gives us 8 bars of a song and then moves to a new key and a new tempo. This simply doesn’t give Dad a chance to slot in and stick with it. He needs to start seeing them as mini songs which of course indeed they are. So we again took our highlighter and marked the name of each song within the medley and marked the tempo change per song to boot. And then we chanted through it all. Again, there are 2 pages that my husband will need to turn and then Dad is good to go!
I’ll report back after the rehearsal tonight….should be interesting!
Monday 9:10 The results are in. The experiment was a success. Not a total woohoo-Dad-is-singing-perfectly-again success, but still he did a fair bit better than he has been doing on those 2 pieces. So we’ll take it and rejoice.
Of course, he does come home quite tired every Monday night now. I don’t quite know how to remedy that. He refuses to try for a nap in the afternoons…dang.
Monday 9:29 My husband has gone over to my Dad’s place to give him his evening pills and eye drops. We do this religiously at 9:30 every night. And so far, his glaucoma has remained exactly the same since we started this regimen 4 years ago! No deterioration – amazing. His ophthalmologist is also impressed.
I’m sitting here on pins and needles while I wait to hear the verdict that my husband will bring me. I couldn’t bring myself to go over there. I just want him to enjoy singing those 2 songs so badly that I can’t even bear to think that he might not. So I wait.
Monday 9:47 “My head is still spinning” – my father tells my husband. Of course, he didn’t realize we went through every single song tonight. On the flip side, he actually asked “do you think Criselda would mind if I just sang “da da da” words on that Time piece”? And no, I would not mind. I’m not gonna let anyone else do that but I’ll totally let my Dad do it! Nepotism – HAH!
So I think overall, we’re on the right path. We just have to decide if we let him turn his own pages for those 2 songs next week or if my husband keeps turning them for him…..only time will tell the tale.
