September 2009

A Tuner kind of AHA

September 13, 2009 11:51

Yesterday I fulfilled a life long violin dream and bought myself a tuner :-) I was of course exceptionally thrilled with my purchase and it definetly didn´t hurt fhat my tuner is gold coulored. But as I happen to be exceptionaly clumzy and clueless when it comes to technology it didn´t take long before I was sitting with the manual in front of me, trying to make sense of the tuner.

My problem was that I had no idea whether I had to plug the tuner with a microphone so that it could sense the pitch of my violin or whether it picked it up without a microphone. I´d like to add that I had only once in my whole violin life used a tuner before that :-) But after careful reading through the manual I at last got a better sense of how it worked. And after setting it right I decided to try it out by playing my A string close to the tuner. And needless to say it worked! It turned out that I didn´t need a microphone at all.

I have now fallen in love with my tuner and am lookin forward to using it further in my violin adventure. But I did realize after this experience that I´ll always be a fool around technical things :) All violinist have a music kind of AHA. My AHA proved to be a tuner kind.

Other than that, I am right now negotiating with my teacher whether I should play Mozart 3 or Haydn 4. I want to jump into playing Bach E Major but I have to blend in some classical as I am waaaayyyy to much of a baroque nerd.

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Welcome to the valley of violin frustration

September 6, 2009 13:44

Today I asked myself for the 100th and definetly not the last time why in the world I chose to play violin. I stil have yet ti find completely an answear to that question but stay tuned!

I happily skipped off to violin lesson today with Vivaldi Spring and Mozart 2nd concerto in my bag. I was looking forward to get cracking on those pieces, especialy Mozart. Well.....things never turned out the way we exactly want them to in our violin world. By the end of the lesson my teacher had announced to me flatly that he didn´t think I should play Mozart. He said that he´d heard that one should´t really play Mozart unless one is world famous. Well I happen not to be. If anything I am world anonimous. So......Mozart 2nd flew out the window, at least for the time being.

Was I dissapointed? Well....yes! It´s hard to explain but I want to improve so much in my repetoire. I have good technique and I know I can play harder pieces that I did last year .I want to play hard pieces (not talking Beethoven or anything).. I wil never be world famous but I want to play Mozart and I know I can play it with good practise.

My teacher said that he much rather wanted me to play Haydn G Major or C major. I use to love Haydn G Major but now I find it to be too simple. There´s doesn´t seem to be much to the music, it´feel superficial for me. I want something real! So I flatly told my teacher that but told him I´d rather play C Major. I took on the role of the obstinate violin student. Not something I like doing but....I want to have a say too.

So my teacher said then that he rather wanted me to play Mozart 3rd Concerto as he felt more comfortable with that one. So yet again I am going to be obstinate. I told my teacher I really wanted to play a real concerto not just short pieces as I did last year as much as I loved that. So I am going to be obstinate yet again and I determine to play Mozart 3rd. Even though it´ll mean working my fingers till they near fall off, I am going to work on it .

I am a good violinist an I want to really try out my violin skills. I want to expand my repetoire and I want to learn, work and suceed. So playing something like Mozart is important to me. I want so much more from my private violin playing. I get so much from orchestra where we play really feisty music which really moves and is real and asks a great thing of the player and takes him on a journey of musical exploring. I want as much from my private pieces.

I hope and pray that I´ll get rid of this frustration soon. And although I haven´t dicovered the answer yet I sure will do one day :)

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More entries: August 2009

September 2009

A Tuner kind of AHA

Welcome to the valley of violin frustration

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