Well... part of being a musician is the interleaving of projects... you can't always just concentrate on the next immediate project only, otherwise you find that you are panicking trying to learn the repertoire in time for each project, and you are in position of just getting things done only just in time. It can be quite stressful when that happens, and so it is often best to prepare some of the groundwork long ahead of time and to also just quickly triage what actually needs looking at and with how much lead-in preparation. Of course, sometimes the tempo (ha ha...) of projects is just too fast, and then you are really trying to survive... but I have found it to be a good habit to be just a little ahead of the ball so that you aren't hitting that stressful point too often.

So, a good chunk of work tends to be triaging for me... I'm a decent enough sight reader, and so I find that there are not too many things that need serious work and practice. Which is quite nice... seeing as I enjoy playing, but enjoy practicing a good deal less! However, when I am leading an ensemble... it does mean that I need to look after more than just myself, and there does need to be a bit of extra preparation done so that I can direct and rehearse the group with purpose. Aimless rehearsals and unclear leadership is one of the MOST frustrating and demoralising things for colleagues (and myself, when I get exposed to it occasionally).

In the coming weeks, I have a few concerts that need a bit of preparation.. this current week and the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a lull time with respect to learning things... I had a pretty easy orchestral project, which didn't require me to learn much... all of it was pretty easy on the technical side of things. So, that gave me time to project out the preparation a few weeks ahead to performances on the viola d'amore and two groups where I am leading the show.

A while back, I had to put on a modern type string to replace my broken viola G string because I had run out of spares of that particular string type. As you can see, that string had a metal ball end that is common to modern strings. This metal ball hooks into an equally metal slot on modern tailpieces and it is held securely in place with the tension on the string.

For an Baroque instrument, the tailpieces is fully wooden, and there is no metal section to take the strain of the metal ball... which meant that when the string was under tension, it started to get caught within the hole of for the string. Added to that, the winding of the gut and metal near the ball was thicker than having a loop end and so when I went to replace the string with a proper old style loop end gut/silver string... well, the modern string was wedged quite firmly in place!

Now, the easy solution would be just to cut the string on the top side and just push out the remnants and the ball end. But, that would have been just a waste of money and a waste of a good string that I could reuse on the modern viola... so.... I had to figure out how to get the string out without damaging it, and without destroying my tailpiece either!

... the tools of choice. First attempt was to try and tweezer the ball and pull firmly... but unfortunately, there wasn't enough grip on the ball, and each time it would slip away. I didn't try too many times, as each slip had the danger of damaging the varnish when the tweezers suddenly jerked loose.

Second option... the paperclip with a little exposed "hook" that could go into the hole of the ball end. Almost... but I couldn't get enough leverage to pull downwards. Plus, the hook was too small and kept coming out of the hole...

... which led to the idea of using my iFixit computer tools. A needle nosed set of tweezers. Using the needle end to hook into the hole in the ball end, and then firmly pulling down whilst support the tailpiece. The extra leverage allowed me to pull firmly without fear of the tweezers suddenly loosing traction on the hole of the ball.

... and success! Intact string, undamaged viola and tailpiece! But for a about half an hour... I was wondering if I was going to have to take the bloody thing to a luthier!

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