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Danielle Gauthier
Danielle Gauthier is from Vail, Arizona.
Archive: It's been a while...Published: Dec. 9, 2006 at 6:30 PMEver since moving to Arizona, things have gone downhill musically. I've played my violin probably a grand total of about three times in the past four months. There is no teacher here. There isn't an orchestra. Our director abandonned that idea about four months ago and decided a study hall would be more beneficial. I picked up my violin yesterday only to find that my vibrato was painfully out of practice and my ear has definitely slipped. Why did I stop caring as soon as I had nobody to make me? Was this just me being rebelious, passive-aggressively protesting my surroundings? Or do I really not care about the violin? If I didn't care, would I be writing this? Everyone in the orchestra (all ten of us) stopped caring as soon as our director did. Is that even how I should put it: stopped caring? We do care, but we feel like we can't. It's terrible to be trapped inside someone else's decisions. I wish we were strong enough to make our own.
Jul. 30, 2006 at 2:35 PMI've finally been able to think clearly since the weather's gotten out of the triple-digits. I never thought I'd be so happy to have 99F highs (ok, so it's more like 89-but woot).Marching band is definitely easier when you aren't sweating so bad the mallets fly out of your hands and the tubas faint. I'm definitely getting the hang of percussion, but the other day, I found myself raising my bow to smack my violin out of new habit and stopped myself. Oddly, it's getting easier for me to pizz. I joined cluster orchestra (giving them enough people to become a cluster-cluster being a club that the school doesn't care about or acknowledge which is why I couldn't find it before) and we had our first meeting (sans instruments, of course). It's entirely student-run, which means (as I was told by the "conductor") "this isn't a learning opportunity for any late-beginners." This either means they are pretty good and relatively organized, or that they don't really teach new skills. Any rate, they strongly recommended that everyone take lessons (and hinted that if they didn't take the initiative to get them, then maybe they don't belong in cluster). The person I was sitting next to (a violinist) whispered to me (as if I knew), "what if we can't pay for lessons?" Enter: first student.
Jul. 19, 2006 at 5:40 PMYesterday, I met with my counselor to get my classes and, of course, asked her about some kind of orchestra-ness possibilities. We went over and talked to the band director and I learned that every Tuesday and Thursday during advisement, some string players get together as a kind of self-teaching class. Also, I joined marching band. I guess I play the zlyo...syla...xy...XYLOPHONE now.I also got more homework from registering for classes than any of my siblings combined got their first week of school. (required AP junk: rhetoric study guide w/ over a hundred terms, an autobiography, several book reports, and take the SAT before this Friday, so forgive me if I'm busy for a while).
Jul. 6, 2006 at 1:53 PMFinally made it to my update page...and on a lesser note, moved in (minus five hundred boxes). Our rental house is pretty small (which is not good if you don't like your siblings, really good for eavesdropping). Everything here is so different, especially the landscape. It's so...flat. But there are some really nice views from the backyard onto some mountains. I'm so used to being able to look to the mountains and use that to know which way is west, but here, we're surrounded by mountains and I'm so confused. Also different is the elevation. I naturally try to hold my breath when I play (and try to avoid it) but now, it's a game. I can play Kreisler's allegro from "Praeludium and Allegro" while inhaling once. I could try out for track. Or not. But a major downside to this that has really kept me away from seeing optimistically is that there really isn't a lot of string music (besides mariachi). Music programs in schools here don't have any orchestras, (with the exception of one that's impossible to open-enroll into) so nobody has any reason to learn, so I don't have a reason to teach. There are no youth orchestras anywhere near where I live (and I've changed my definition of "near" to include 85 miles). It just isn't a priority here. Air conditioning is. I still haven't been able to look into taking classes at other schools while being anchored to one because of the holiday week they're taking off...until then...
Jun. 28, 2006 at 10:44 PMTomorrow, we leave for Tucson, at which time, we'll be racing the moving van to avoid a large "holding fee"...this summer, not even the drive will seem like a vacation (but a tour given by mario andretti, himself).I would, however, be slightly amused to see a large moving van going 250mph racing a mini-van (hauling a trailer with two motorcycles) going equally as fast. and then the piano comes up fast, what's that? a rocket attatched to the back? it's a bird, it's a plain, it's...becoming larger and larger...shoot, ran out of rocket fuel. Yeehaw. Right at this moment, I'm watching the moving crew try to figure out exactly how to disassemble our piano. You can't finish the race if you don't know where the finish is...Personally, I'll just be glad to get my violin away from our evilrealitron. and be closer to my extended family. i just wish the movers would start showing up at a decent hour...i wonder if they don't know that six isn't exactly the best time to start banging around.
Jun. 25, 2006 at 2:21 PMWhat do I do?I have found myself in a bit of a dilemma... If I go to the high school with an orchestra, I will have no way of ever attending any of the colleges that I would like to because of the foreign language requirement (three consecutive years of the same language). I can't start any other language because I only have two years of high school left (*knocks on wood*) and they don't have summer school Spanish. If I go to the high school with the French class, well, the problem is obvious...I'll be orchestra-less for a year until the next audition season (for a youth orchestra). May I also mention here that Empire (the orchestra high school) is the ONLY high school in the district with an orchestra... If only we could have it all...
Jun. 7, 2006 at 11:46 PMDear diary,Today, I got really really bored...*rests head in palm and gazes out window as Dad washes it with a hose...wishes it was rain*... So bored, that I renamed all of my sister's stuffed animals So bored that I labeled everything in my room in french like you see in classrooms(take that, evil realitor) So bored that I updated my blog... The rental house that we were looking at in Vail, Arizona fell through...and the evilrealitron that has no human feelings decided to show our house today...I didn't move my vioin, but I did put it in it's case. He left a note on it. It was typed. He was expecting me to do that. So I won't continue to let him down. It was "just a reminder to put this thing away when the house is being shown."
Jun. 6, 2006 at 3:46 AMThe realitor has been helping us in getting our house ready for show and was going room to room fixing things when he came to mine.This is what he said (minus the part about how messy my closet was...why does he care?), "...you should pack your violin, sheet music and stand up and keep it in the [unfinished] basement during the time it's shown. It just makes the room look *dramatic sigh* cluttered." So I put my violin in the case, put the sheet music away, and stood up. Really, though...this guy obviously hasn't met any violinists, said that, and lived...
May. 25, 2006 at 2:44 AMI don't know why, but when I get a new rosin to try, the first thing I do is smell it. Today, I got some rosin ("paganinininininini..." or something like that) and I was prejudiced against it because it smelled a lot like someone was trying to light an aspen tree on fire using alcohol and dry-erase markers.Naturally, I smelled it again. And then a third time...just to make sure I wasn't smelling my hands. Did you know that dry-erase markers are very flamable? Especially when soaked in alcohol. I try to vary the rosins that I use based on what/who I'm playing. I have a collection so far of about fifteen...each of which has a different function. It also keeps my bowing lively and easier to concentrate on different problems that certain rosins highlight. And then there's the problem of keeping the rosins "fresh" -which I've solved using a top secret method...that may or may not involve wrapping them in tin foil and popping them in the microwave...of course, not MY microwave.
May. 21, 2006 at 2:24 PMWow, it's been awhile...with finals this week, a concert last week, recital to be pressuring my students about, and the move only about five weeks away, I'm sure you can understand.Finals have been nice, though. The ones I've been dreading turned out not to be tests, but projects instead...you don't have to study for those. Last week's concert was great. My quartet showed up and surprised me before it started. I've decided that, since I don't have many students, I'll have a joint recital with my former teacher...I do hope my students do well. As for the move, I have about four weeks to pack up here and one week to unpack in Tucson before the really crazy stuff happens. It's funny, I'm trading one Vail for another... but this one doesn't have good skiing (at least the kind I'm thinking of).
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