August 2005

August 31, 2005 17:21

Well, I had my seating audition today and I got a good vibe from the peoeple in the room. My violin teacher (start lessons next week, YAY) said glad to have you here and the orchestra director for the Symphony Orhestra (the good orchestra) said rehearsal starts monday. I hope that means I got into the good orchestra, but they only auditioned half of the violinists today but I think I will be in. I hope I will be in cause if I'm not I will probably change my plans because it obviously means I am not meant to play the violin, at least not seriously. It definately was a decent audition for the most part. I had a flub on a part I didn't expect on the first page of the first movement of the Dvorak I made a mistake I have never made before, it was really odd but the Mozart went very well except for a note here or there in some of the runs but as far as I could tell I kept it in rythm. Well, I'll know the results of the auditions on Monday morning. I'm gonna rush right over there after my Calc class. The next few days will be very stressfull as I and the rest of the auditionees await the results.

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August 28, 2005 19:22

I am so homesick right now. I just want to go home. I miss my friends, I miss my dog, I miss my house, I miss my bed. I just want to cry right now. I want to practice right now but I can't because I neglected a book for college all summer and I have to have 102 pages read by tomorrow. I just want to go home. Why oh why did I have to choose a school so far away from all that I knew.

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August 27, 2005 21:55

Hello everyone, I arrived at Luther today. I haven't done a thing with the violin today, but I will hopefully be able to practice tomorrow a bit, I have my orchestra audition next wed or thrus (hm, which day to sign up for, suggestions welcome).

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August 24, 2005 18:33

Well, I should update again. I had my last lesson with Maria yesterday. It was a sad day for me. I will miss her dearly but she told me that we could have a lesson at the times when I am home on break, more that likely 5 times in total. Everything went fairly well yesterday at my lesson, even the piece I hadn't started practicing again till a week ago. I don't think I had played that piece for about 1.5 months and then suddenly Maria asked me to pull it out last week. In one week I pretty much managed to make it nearly perfect.

I leave for college in 3 days (this Saturday), and well I am starting to get scared to leave. I am an only child so I am not used to sharing a room with someone, I am very rarly away from home for more that a couple of days, and I only know 2 other people going there and I have no idea if we will really do much or not. Ah...

Well, I was going to audition for the LaCrosse Symphony until I recieved the music excerpts today. Beethoven 7, Symphonie Fatastique, the Firebird Suite, a Verdi piece (not the requiem, unfortunately, otherwise I would have a chance with that cause I played it). Needless to say the auditions are a week from this Saturday and I will not be ready in time, so nix that idea till next year.

For Luther, I have my orchestra placement (2 orchestras) and seating placement audition sometime next week. I thing it will go fairly well. Hopefully I will be around the from 3 stands of 2nds or the back of the 1st. Although I seriously doubt I will be a first violin my freshmen year, if you were to hear them, you would know why I say this. I may have been the Associate Concertmaster in H.S. but they are a least 3 times better than my H.S. Orchestra. The mozart excerpt is a bit iffy at the moment. It just sounds to clunky to me, compared to the recording. Although, everyone I ask says it sounds really good, but I am very self-critical when it comes to violin and basically everything else. The Dvorak is going the best I think, I have made a lot or progress on it over the past couple of weeks and I think it will go over well, except for the 3rd movement excerpt, which goes fine till about the middle when the 16th notes are.

I have officially begun to change my bow grip. I am trying to make sure that I am playing will all the hairs instead of having it so pronated that I only play with half the hair. I have moved the bow a little "deeper" into my hand. I really don't know how best to describe it.

I got my bow back today as well and he did a great job. This is his second time rehairing my bow and I think he did an even better this time.

Thanks for reading, have a great day.

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August 21, 2005 21:37

Over this past week I have been hanging out with Nate a lot and I have discovered something...he is my best friend. It's kinda funny. Jr. year we sat together during AP History and he annoyed me to death. But then I started to get to know him and found that we had many common interests, not to mention we played on the same softball team for 3 years. Now, I have gotten him two jobs, the one in Frozen and he will be taking over my position at Dakota Derm. Over the last week, Nate and some of his friends and I have hung out. It has been great, I feel like I belong now. Unfortunately, I know that this Saturday will be my last day in Sioux Falls until Fall Break (sometime in October). I will miss him a lot because I have spent a lot of time with him over the last year. He always manages to make working at Hy-Vee and training him at Dakota Derm fun and he has been a treat to train cause he learns fast. I hope he doesn't foget me over the months we are apart because I know that happens. He finally got a cell phone so we will be talking on AIM or on the phone fairly frequently. I have noticed that he is becoming closer to me as well cause we now talk basically everyday now (mostly by his iniation, which seems strange to me cause I so used to having to start a conversation with people), even if it is usually about work or training or just joking on AIM. It's still a friendship, one that I will deeply miss when I go to college.

I have just 6 nights left in my house and then I will be moving out. I will be going 4.5 hours away from the place I have known all my life as home. I will miss many things about it, espcially the friends I have here. I will miss my puppy, who suddenly likes me for some reason. I have no choice but to basically start from scratch in the whole friends department. That will be tough for me because I tend to take a long time in forming definate friendships as evidenced by my friendship with Nate (2 years to become actual friends rather than good aquatences). I have closed a chapter in my life and am about to embark on writing a new chapter, how it is written is yet to be seen.

Much of this new chapter will be written with my violin in hand. I will be majoring in music thus much of my life will center around the violin. I will make new friends because of my violin and discover things about the violin and of myself in the year to come. I am excited yet absolutely terrified of what is to come. I am worried that my friends here at home will forget I exist and that when I come home I will have no one here to great me. In the last week I have renewed my love affair with the violin and my practice has been more productive than ever before. I owe that in part to The Inner Game of Music. Fare they well Sioux Falls and my friends who still dwell around and in it's boarders, don't forget me, for I will be back and ready to return to you.

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August 18, 2005 20:26

Well, last Sunday I went to a recital by a friend of mine and she was phenominal. Great intonation (there were a couple of slips but she corrected it almost right away), her musicality was just jaw dropping. Her tone was like butter. She did the Brahms G-Major Sonata like it was her piece, I have never heard it played to musically and warm by someone her age. It really inspired me practice. So did getting the Inner Game of Music. I started reading it on Monday night and I had a lesson on tuesday. My teacher had me play a piece for her that I havn't played at all for about a month. It was almost perfect and I think part of it is because I took the authors words to heart. I can't wait to read the whole thing. The only thing I need to do with it is get the lyrical part to sing a little bit more.

I think I will be ready for the Luther Orchestra Audition in about 2 weeks. I have the orchestral excerpt fairly close to perfection and they seem to be sounding pretty good. The only thing with the Mozart is getting the spicatto to come out more clearly. But I am using a different bow than usual because mine is being rehaired so, it should be better by the time my audition comes around. I am no where near close to the tempo the dirctor has marked though. It's half note=72-76, that's just way to fast for me, I can play it at about 60, which should be close enough, it's a college orchestra not the NY Phil. A couple of things in the Dvorak go a little out of rythm, probably because of my fingering which I'm going to fix tomorrow. I use an extended 4th and it just slows down.

I'm in a good mood now about violin and I can't wait to get to college and to get better and go to a Conservatory for Grad school. These 4 years will go extremely fast I think. I can't wait for the tours with the orchestra and the lessons with Virginia Strauss. Oh the glee.

I had my last lesson with my student tonight. She went far this summer. She managed to relearn the violin within 2 lessons and we were able to move to suzuki book 2, the wolfhart etudes and other pieces. We have played America the Beautiful for much of the summer and today she played it for me. She played it nearly flawlessly, and where she made a mistake she fixed it herself with-out me haveing to say a word. She only had to do this once. Otherwise, she had a great tone and impeccable intonation. It's such a change to work with a 12 year old who wants to learn and has a really good ear at the same time. I will miss her but next summer, if I have time to give lessons, she will come back to me again. Afterall, I will know more about music because I'm taking plenty of music classes this year.

If anyone has any tips on how to get a clearer, crisper spicatto just let me know. Have a great night!!!

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August 13, 2005 21:53

I have felt so disconnected from the violin lately. I just don't want to practice anymore. Playing the violin no longer gives me the joy it once did. Whenever I start to practice my mind starts to wonder after 30 min and then I quite practicing for 30 min and sit at the computer doing absolutely nothing. I just don't feel like playing the violin anymore. I still love the violin and classical music in general but lately it seems I'm just not motivated anymore to play my violin. I can't fiqured out if it is because I am going to college soon and I am just nervous or if it is because I no longer truely want to play the violin. I hope it's the former.

I am just feeling so down about everything right now in general. In fact, I have this way most of the year on just about everything I do. I can't seem to get really excited about something for more than a day and then it wears off. I have also begun to discover I have no real friends to speak of. Sure I have people I talk to, but it is just base stuff, I have no best friend. I have no one I can share my secrets, my passions, my desires, my deepest feelings with. I know guys generally don't do this, according to legend, but we do and we need to do it sometimes so we know we are not alone.

Two weeks from today I will be embarking on a new journey, college. It will be full of unknowns, and music. Maybe that is what I need, to be surrounded by those who are just as fanactical about playing a stringed instrument as I am. I can't comfirm this yet but it will remain to be seen.

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August 10, 2005 12:27

I just got some music I won off of ebay. It is some really old music though, but I am starting to really like antiquated things. I recieved Ballade and Polonaise and Concerto No. 5, both by Henri Vieuxtemps. I already had Vieuxtemps 5, but not the Ballade. I sight read the Ballade and fell in love. It's an incredible piece and I will have to talk to my new violin teacher about it in less than 3 weeks about it. Or talk to Maria about possibly starting to have something already going when I get to Luther, seeing as how we will have finished Mozart and any other pieces I'm playing, which aren't as many as there used to be, but she has me doing a lot more bowing technique using scales.

I also got some music from Shar yesterday, the ones my teacher at Luther wanted me to order. I got de Beriot Violin Concerot in a-minor, the Barbara Barber Scales for Advanced Violinists, and the Rode 24 Caprices. After trying to play the de Beriot yesterday, I realized that it is harder than it looks, but then again I have never heard it played so I have no frame of reference. Although, I think I judged it unfairly before and Maria says it will be a good concerto to start out with since it's easier. That way my new teacher and I can get to know each other better, what she expects and what I need to do.

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August 7, 2005 20:29

It's so hard to practice when my parents are home. My mom doesn't like to hear me for more than an hour and after that she says,"are you done yet." Now, she likes to hear me play but hates to hear me practice cause well, who honestly likes to hear someone practice. It just isn't music to her and it drives her crazy. So, in other words I only got about 1 hour of practice in today but oh well.

I am sorta working on the Bruch Vln Concerto by myself cause I hope my new teacher will let me do it cause I honestly think that the de Beriot will be kinda easy for me and I will learn it rather quickly. I already did pieces of that level and higher. But I have never done an official romantic concerto. Still, from what I have seen of the concerto on CD Sheet Music, I could probably learn it in a month or less (maybe 2 weeks if I can get my 5 hours a day of practice in).

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August 5, 2005 20:24

I can't believe it, in 3 weeks from this Saturday I will be moving into my college dorm. I also can't believe it will be with my former concertmaster either. Somehow, without requesting it, they paired us up.

I talked to my new violin teacher at Luther and she is going to have me very busy. We are going to systematically go through the Kreutzer Etudes fall semester, start with the de Beriot a minor concerto (or Bruch or Symphonie Espangol, she'll decide once she hears me play), Leibesleid and Leibesfreud, solo Bach and lots of scale practice. All I can say is bring it on. I think I will go to Grad School right away. I really want to try out for CIM and CCM. Those are my ultimate goal. The next best thing for a graduate orchestra would be UofA Pheonix. My H.S. orch went down there and sat in on a first rehearsel of new repetoire and they were just amazing. They were sight-reading Swan Lake better than I have heard any group around here perform any piece. I was just struggling to keep my place, and it didn't help that I was sitting right next to the pricipal second violinist who was utterly amazing. She made me feel so inadequate. As far as right now goes everything is going great. My student is absolutely magnificent. She does everything I tell her and every week things just get better and better. I assigned her to work on the rest of an etude and she played it almost perfectly for me the next week...astounding. I have begun to introduce shifting. That will be tougher to get her to understand but I believe she will get the basics of it before I have to leave.

I can't believe I only have 3 lessons remaining with Maria. I will miss her deeply. Without her constant pushing for perfection I would not be going to one of the best schools in the midwest both musically and academically. I would not have played after high school and would not be making my career music. She has helped me become a more confident person and I will forever be grateful to her for that. I never would have gotten one of the bigger music scholarships from Luther without her help and constant support. I have grown so much as a violinist in the last two years. We have become more than student and teacher we have nearly become collegues, since now I have had some students of my own. We have also become friends. On my lesson last tuesday we discussed when I would be leaving, my last lesson with her will be on the 21st of August. I said to her that that would be my last lesson with her before I leave and she responded, "yes, it is, and I will cry." As I write this entry my eyes are becoming puffy and red and I want to cry. I will miss Maria. Sometimes we would have a lesson that went for 1.5 hours and she would only charge me for 30 min. Well, this post is to you Maria, for how much you have meant to me as a violinist and as a person...Goodbye

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More entries: September 2005 • July 2005