Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Creating Piper's First Kur

In two and half weeks, Piper and I will be doing our first musical freestyle / kur together in competition.   And at this time, I still don't know what music we will be riding to, nor what pattern we will be using.   But, we have 2 weeks to get this sorted.

The design of the kur Jeddien and I did last year, the kur which earned USDF Region 8 Reserve Champion at 3rd Level Freestyle only took a few years to put together.   Yes, years.   But that's due to the fact that I was hoping to debut at freestyle riding in the UK.   I knew which music I was going to use and had cut my first CD for practicing with, but the floor plan and choreography was still very rough.

Then we moved to the USA, and Jeddien had a foal, and well, time kept slipping by.   In 2009, concentrated design work was picked up again in time to do 3 competitions, qualify, and get to the Championships.

So, with prior experience of designing ONE KUR, I am aiming to get the second one done in less than 2 weeks time.   A wee bit ambitious?   You bet!   Nothing like a little pressure.   :-)

Once again, having good tools helps.   This includes my collection of Isabell Werth CDs, iTunes for ripping the CDs, my Shuffle for riding with music in my ears, a metronome, Dressage Divas software to play with the floorplan and timings, and Audacity software to edit the music and create a high quality CD.

Today, with a major heatwave underway, I spent the day indoors with a box fan to one side and laptop in front of me.   With a wide selection of music and a good example video of Piper doing First Level Test 4, the keystep is now done.   I now know the Beats Per Minute (BPM) of Piper's walk, trot, and canter.   And sure enough, they are different from Jeddien's!

I have a floorplan in mind, but now that I've narrowed down the music choices to two sets of walk, trot, and canter tunes, I know the choreography is going to have to be changed.   But first, I want to decide on the music.   And for that, I really want to get on Piper....

.... only after the heatwave breaks.   Saturday, I hope....

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