Glenn Bloody Miller
Disclaimer: this post was written under the influence of a hefty amount of white wine. Please excuse all spelling and grammatical errors.
Since the Regional Finals Jad has been on holiday, out at grass all summer getting flabby and lazy.
Kirsty decided after the Regional Finals that she should do some dressage to music. Cue hours spent analysing Jads’ various gaits with a computer metronome and choosing music. Jad suits piano music a la Coldplay – his trot exactly fits ‘The Scientist’ by Coldplay. Too bad that we support the Make Coldplay History campaign.
Out of the 3000 songs in iTunes (and much more still on vinyl) we struggled to find much that suited Jad. It turns out that the iTunes store 30 second samples were a great way of choosing music though. For some reason I still haven’t fathomed Kirsty settled on a Glenn Miller theme and found a tune to match each gait. Cue memories of my days as a barman in the late 80′s when all we were allowed to play at lunchtime was Glenn Miller tapes on heavy rotation. So we ended up with Pennsylvania 6-5000, Rhapsody In Blue and In The Mood.
The next step was to put together a test that lasted 4 minutes 45 seconds and video it. This allowed us to edit the music to the test, get the appropriate British Dressage licences for the music, overcome the stupid digital rights management on the iTunes files – even though we have the aforementioned licence from PPL to use the tunes, burn a CD, and hire somewhere to practice.
Before we splashed out on hire we parked the car next to the riding paddock at the yard just to get Jad used to the music which does rather come in with a fanfare. We ended up with an audience as folk nearby (for instance the golf course across the stream) wondered what on earth was going on. The impromptu audience theme continued when, with two weeks to go, we hired somewhere to practice, backed the car into the arena, and spent an hour trying it for real. We found a couple of flaws, but were loathe to go all through the trouble of re-editing the music, so changed the test instead.
Without a 60×20 arena at home to practice properly all we could do then was wait until the day itself.
Today we drove to Myerscough for the Area Festival, and a first step into the gay1 world of dressage to music. Kirsty’s only concern was not coming last, wishing that she’d entered the Elementary, with only four competitors.
The good news was that the PA system was broken, and so the music would be played from a car backed into the arena. I don’t know how some folk practice, but this would suit Jad down to the ground.
Despite the technical hitches and delays at the venue Jad did a storming test. There was some rather partisan applause at the end of the test as family and yard hangers-on voiced there support. Turns out Kirsty need not have worried about coming last, as she managed second place overall. This has already qualified her for the Winter Regionals. I hope she’s not going to change the music.
It Don’t Mean a Thing If it Ain’t Got that Swing!
1 Take that as you will. Ahem.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
[...] As we wrote back in October Jad qualified for the Winter Dressage to Music Regionals. [...]