The TC1100 does rehearsal

It’s finally time to put my money where my mouth is.  I’m performing Shostakovich’s 8th string quartet with the St Peter’s Chamber Orchestra.  It’s a really exciting piece to play, but there are about 8 pages of straight playing with no opportunity to stop long enough to turn a page.  As it’s a quartet, we will have no stand partners to turn for us.  We were discussing solutions in the first rehearsal; the first violinist will do 3 pages, 3 pages, and simply memorize the last one.  It occurred to me that this might be the perfect opportunity to test my tc1100 in live performance.  I’ve read off my scanned copies plenty with my students in the lessons, but I’ve never used it for a performance with an audience. 

I gave it a go in rehearsal recently as a test, and I think this is going to turn out to be a very good solution.  While the timing may be too tight to switch the bow to my left hand, grab the page, flip it over, switch the bow back, and start playing again, I do have enough time to just reach out, bow in hand, and flick the jog dial.  It conveniently sticks out enough on the right side that I just have to swipe down along the side of the device and that’s enough to hit it and get it to flip the page. 

There are however, one or two turns where I don’t even have that kind of time though, so I’ve ordered a Footime pedal to do the turns with my foot.  I’m really looking forward to getting the pedal and seeing how it works.  They list a few compatible programs, including Word, so I’m hoping it will work with Journal as well.  I have a feeling it just sends arrow up/down or page up/down signals, which should be fine. 

The other members of the group are quite interested in the set up and have no reservations about me trying it, even though two of them are so out of the tech loop they barely use email.  Despite that seeming lack of tech knowledge, they were both like “oh yeah, there’s that opera company that does that now.”  Computers as communication devices may not be so prevalent in the classical music world, but people are starting to see the benefit of electronic sheet music, and especially the convenience of page turning with a foot pedal.  Now my procrastinating self just hopes the pedal turns up before the concert.