A problem I encountered and how I solved it

Today, i am about to talk about a problem i have encountered during the day and how i solved it. That's right, it is also related to music once again. I stayed back for band today to do my individuals. If you are wondering what are individuals, it is when a band member come down to the band room to practise his instrument by himself. My objective for today's individuals was to memorise the first three pages of my Singapore Youth Festival piece. For me, i thought it would be pretty hard as i do not have very good memory, however i was determined to try.

 As predicted, it was practically impossible to memorise the first three pages in one day. I tried to take it as a form of enjoyment and knew that i would rather be playing my saxophone than studying. I had to memorise this piece by today as there was a test on the following day. It was a really big problem to me as i did not want to disappoint my seniors and wanted to get this huge burden off me. I was really in hot soup this time as i haven't really been practising as i was too busy still trying to adjust back to my schooling routine after a long holiday.

 I started off my practise with some simple scale exercises and then moved on the the real deal. My Singapore Youth Festival piece is named El Camino Real and is written by Alfred Reed (1985) and is six pages long. My saxophone is gold in colour and can still be considered quite new, i have used it only for 2 years so far, but it has served me really well. I tried looking for similarities among the three pages so as to relieve my workload slightly. I then working on the parts which i was still not so familiar so that when i start memorising later, i would be able to memorise without additional difficulty.

I started memorising 8 bars at a time, so that i would not feel so overwhelmed as compared to memorising the entire three pages at one go. Whenever i managed to memorise a set of 8 bars, i would the play the previous 8 bars that I've memorised including the recent one, so that i would not forget the notes and get my fingers to be more accustomed to the keys. After 2 long and tedious hours, i finally managed to finish memorising the three pages. Although there were some obstacles along the way, there was nothing that persistent practise could not overcome.

 I was tremendously delighted and proud of myself that i managed such a feat. As i packed up and took the bus home, i reflected and knew that i should not take such risks again and try memorising or doing not only scores, notes and homework or revision at the eleventh hour as far as possible unless the situation really calls for such a course of action. However, i managed to slip through this time although i should have started practising earlier. I hope to improve further and become a great saxophonist! I hope you have enjoyed reading my post! The video of the entire band playing the song can be found at the top of the page. Thank you.