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Ben Clapton

July 21, 2005 at 12:06 PM

I haven't done much work on my composition - will work on it at some point tonight.
I got two hours of violin practice done today - technical work and more Bach. I'm trying to focus on relaxing my hand, especially in the Largo to try get a more beautiful sound out of the chords. I'm also toying around with the idea of pulling the tempo around alot, just waiting a bit on all chords as they're fairly important structurally. This will also try and help me realise that I have more time to get the chords out. But I'm trying to keep the Allegro Assai straight, with no tempo changes until the last few notes.

A few things happened today - I went to my luthier to see if he could sell my violin on consignment for me, which he agreed to with the price I was looking for total coming to me Net - ie minus costs. He obviously thinks he can get more for it than I thought it was worth. I'll also be able to order a Coda Bow through him - which I will be able to pay for with the money I get from this violin sale (when it comes in). I'm going to get the Conservatory - hopefully I'll like it. :>

I also met my new student - Connor. He's been playing for a year, but is doing really good stuff so far. I only hope I can continue with the good quality teaching that he has received so far. I was able to watch a lesson as a hand over, so I could see how he had been taught, which was useful for me as I haven't taught beginners before. Games and small theory, plus practical things doing what they enjoy and what I want done is the way to go it seems. I'm looking forward to seeing how I go with this one.

That's it for now, I believe I need to go wash the dishes, and then hopefully I can watch some more cricket :)


Edit: I did end up doing some work on my composition (as well as being able to watch a fair bit of an exciting days cricket). I found some poetry about butterflies to give me ideas about what types of words people use to describe them, and then use those descriptions to put in keys that are said to describe those feelings. So I have an idea that I can have a different key for each theme - unrelated yet all expressing the same sorts of things. However, the key I want to use for the brass section - E Major (due to the description of "Exclaimations of Joy, yet missing something") I feel might make the brass players not like me. The transposed parts would be F# Major... don't think they'd like that at all. I know I wouldn't.
Anyway, it's late now, so I best go to bed.

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