I knew this would happen eventually … I just didn’t want it to happen so soon. I’m talking about my blogging regularity (obviously, blogging irregularity is the more accurate term). *sheepish smile* I’m sorry everybody! As a blogger, I definitely need a lot of improvement (gee, ya think?), but from a non-blogging perspective, I’ve had a very productive last couple of months:

First of all, let me say that as the owner of Musical Designs, I am very appreciative of the positive support I receive from customers. With today’s economy being as crazy as it is, your continued business is humbling: I am grateful.

About our floor music: I’m happy to announce that we now have short versions available for many of our songs. Yay! A complete list of our floor music, including the latest short version releases, can be found here: musical-designs.com/song list. We’ve also added a couple of new discounts.

In addition to running Musical Designs, I’ve also been plugging away with my post-wedding list of things to do. About the only big thing left is for me to get the wedding ceremony DVD duplicated. The church provided us with a complimentary DVD of the ceremony (which was absolutely beautiful btw), and the reason it’s taken me this long to get copies made is that I kind of want to add a menu to it. Nothing fancy, just something to help people jump to certain scenes. Unfortunately I don’t have DVD authoring software, so I’ve been checking around with other places to see what kinds of authoring options there are and what the prices would be. Based on what I’ve found out, it looks like we’ll end up duplicating the DVD as is. Whatever happens, I’d like to get this done in plenty of time for Christmas so the newlyweds can have lots of DVDs on hand to give to family and friends. -:)

So between now and Christmas, if anybody out there can tell me how to squish 48 hours into a regular 24-hour day, I would love to know! *lol*

P.S., I’ll continue to blog just as I’ve been doing … a.k.a. whenever I have some time … thanks for your patronage and your understanding!

We can all relate to music - it ties us together no matter where we’re from or how old we are.  Whether we sing it, play it, write it, or just listen to it, music is an integral part of our lives no matter what we’re doing or what line of work we’re in: sports, recreation, TV/movies, fashion, weddings, religion, driving, shopping … and the list goes on.  When we set up this blog to be about both music and gymnastics, we knew we’d never run out of great material.  True, words like ’beam’, ’scale, & ’score’ will mean different things depending on who’s reading this, but even so, musicians and gymnasts have a LOT in common! -:)

• Both start out learning basic fundamentals.  From there, hard work and commitment are needed to develop and perfect skills. 
• Gymnasts know how to stay focused to achieve their goals.  So do musicians. 
• Gymnasts have meets and exhibitions; musicians have competitions, too.  And lots of recitals and concerts.
• Gymnasts have coaches and choreographers.  Musicians have teachers and directors.  Hey, remember hearing them tell you that practice makes perfect?  Well this is a good saying too: ”perfect practice makes perfect”.  

So to all you gymnasts and musicians out there who are perfectly practicing, we have this to say: find your groove, stay tight, & watch your balance!

OK, let me first say congratulations to all of the gymnasts who competed in Beijing.  What an accomplishment after years & years of hard work … way to go!!  I’m especially thrilled that Nastia won gold in the All-Around and that Shawn won gold on the Beam.  All very exciting -:)

NBC’s coverage of the gymnastics was great on one hand yet left me wanting more on the other.  Sure, I was happy to watch gymnastics on TV each night, regardless of whether it was the men or women competing.  And it was nice to see some coverage of the trampoline, too, but hey - what about rhythmic gymnastics?  I didn’t see any of the rhythmic competitions; the only time I knew they were even there was when they were briefly mentioned during the gymnastics gala.  So yeah, I wish that would have been covered differently.  Same with synchonized swimming … I wanted to see that sport, too, but never did.  Bummer!

Oh, & kind of along those same lines is that I also wish NBC would have shown gymnasts from all of the particpating countries, not just the USA and the other top-placing countries all the time.  That kind of coverage could have been achieved during the preliminaries or something.  Oh well - nobody ever asks for my input for these types of events.  *lol*

Anyway, from what I DID see and hear, I was very happy to observe how MUSICAL the floor music was … great use of orchestra and orchestral instruments!  *am very happy*

I’ve gotten a number of e-mails from people asking specifics about the Olympic floor music.  Here’s what I can tell you about a few of the gymnasts:

• Nastia Liukin:  “Variations on Dark Eyes” (from Lara St. John’s CD called Gypsy) 
• Shawn Johnson:  A medley of music from the movie August Rush (great movie btw)
• Anna Pavlova:  Music from “Exodus” (performed & recorded by Maksim Mrvica)
• Yang Ylin: “Bolero” from Moulin Rouge
• Yekaterina Kramarenko: “Leyenda” by Vanessa Mae.  Hey, there were vocals all throughout this song, yet no deduction was given!  What’s up with that?  The thing is, the ah’s that we could all clearly hear were not in the original recording.  I have this recording by Vanessa Mae and while there are some male vocals in it, there aren’t any female vocals (at least not all throughout the song like that).  So why they were added is a mystery to me - the music would have been just fine without them.  But more to the point, why didn’t the judges give a deduction?  And why wasn’t anything mentioned about it by the commentators?  Strange!!

I’m also very familiar with the “Bolero” piece that Yang Ylin used.  It’s almost 7 minutes long, & pretty much the whole thing is instrumental, except for there’s a male vocal singing “ah” for about 5 seconds towards the end.  I heard just the beginning of that “ah” in the cut Yang Ylin competed with.  OK, a split second of an “ah” is one thing, but a whole 1:30 is quite another!  I took a look at the official Code of Points just to make sure they didn’t change that rule, and they didn’t.  It clearly says that floor music is to be ”without singing”, and that a 1-point deduction is given if the gymnast competes with no music or competes with “music with voice (song)”.

Oh well!  On the upside, I can happily say that I finally understand the new scoring system.  Whew!  I’ve been struggling with the whole scoring thing ever since it first came out, and I’m proud to say that I was able to grasp the concept at last.  So contrary to what others might think about my abilities, obviously it IS possible for this old dog to learn new tricks.  *hahaha*

What’s it all about?  BALANCE

• For gymnasts, it’s training vs. homework … and staying on the beam of course
• For parents of gymnasts, it’s managing the family as a unit (especially during meet season).  We could easily substitute the word ‘juggling’ instead
• For musicians, it’s trying not to play too loud or too soft
• For everybody, the more we have going on, the easier it is to lose it

Back when our youngest daughter was about to go into 7th grade, she wanted to be homeschooled so she could balance her schoolwork and her gymnastics schedules better.  I was game to give it a try, and as soon our homeschooling activities began, all of my spare time went out the window.  It came down to juggling gymnastics schedules for both Kelly and Keri, homeschooling Keri, and working part time.  Out of necessity, I stopped doing things like working out in the yard, and I pretty much stopped cooking, too.  The girls always ate something nutritious before they went to the gym and again when they came home, but family meals were few and far between.  Sound familiar to anyone? 

Anyway, both girls retired from competitive gymnastics during their high school years, and instead of catching up on yardwork then, as well as all of the other things around here that needed finishing, I followed my heart & started a home business: Musical Designs.  The girls have both gone on to college (Kelly graduated last year and got married a couple of months ago.  Talk about being busy)!  Needless to say, while we’ve kept up with the basics like mowing the lawn and staining the deck, etc., it’s been years and years since we did any of the extra things like plant flowers or lay pine straw.  Oh well!  We’re working on it little by little, so maybe one of these days … -:)  

Like I said: balance.  Hard to keep - easy to lose.

We have a daschshund (did I spell that right?) who is 16 years old, and last weekend she developed something called “peripheral vestibular syndrome”.  This basically means that - among other things - her sense of balance went out of whack.  For the first couple of days, she had no idea if she was moving forward, backward, up or down; the world as she knew it was suddenly spinning all around her.  She walked in circles a LOT and fell over a lot, too.  She’s much better now, thankfully, but still loses her balance every now & then. 

And there’s that word again.

Welcome to the blog for Floor-Routine-Music.com (a.k.a Musical-Designs.com). We plan to blog about our floor music specifically and also about floor music in general.  We’ll definitely talk about gymnastics and will probably get around to talking about the music industry, too … and who knows what else!  We certainly welcome your comments along the way, so please check back from time to time. -:)