October 2012

Carving Pumpkins!

October 28, 2012 17:50

Tonight as part of the Halloween festivities we carved pumpkins! I made mine music-themed. I included two quarter notes and two beamed eighth notes, so it looks pretty cool. (Except one quarter note the stem is on the wrong side... shoot.) I was going to put in an f-hole that can be found on a violin, but I decided not to. Have a good evening, everyone! :)

First picture! :)

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Symphony No. 1 - Mvt. 1: Moderato

October 26, 2012 20:09

At long last, the first movement of my first symphony is finally complete! I will send it in for IHSA's composition contest sometime this weekend, I expect. I'm sure I've posted other entries, especially over the summer, about this, so here you can hear all the hard work I've been doing. Thanks for listening!

Click here!

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An Apple Laptop

October 19, 2012 13:04

You guys don't know how excited I am right now! A few days ago my dad came home with an Apple iMac laptop computer. For some reason, it didn't have Garageband and iMovie, two features I most looked forward to using, on it. So yesterday he took it into the Apple Store and modified the situation. And now, this afternoon after school, I finally got to really try it out! I have Finale and Garageband and everything. Garageband will allow me to mostly make soundtracks to movies, and Finale will be the Finale it's always been. So, in a nutshell, this computer will be my dream for composing, entertainment, and schoolwork. It won't be a source for performing music. I'll have my violin for that! :) And actually, Garageband allows me to use my violin and create multiple parts. So I could make my own orchestras out of real instruments that I play! How cool is that?!

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Fall Orchestra Concert - 2012

October 16, 2012 19:37

It's that time of year. Tonight, from 7:30pm to 9pm, we had our first orchestra concert of the year! Two middle schools joined Symphonic Strings and Chamber Strings - the uppermost groups - in a night of fantastic music-making. You know the pieces I played from past entries, and I just have to say that they went pretty well. I was especially proud of the ending chord in the Mendelssohn piece - it was just fantastic how the sound bounced around the auditorium. Chamber Strings played the last two movements of Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, and when they did I was reminded just how much I liked him as a composer. Combined with the Wind Orchestra (Woodwinds, horn, trumpet, trombone, timpani, and other percussion), they also played "Danse Bacchanale" from the French opera "Samson and Deliah" (1877). Of course, this was written by Camille Saint-Saens. I do not know the full story of the opera (I must look that up sometime tomorrow!) but the piece itself was pretty amazing.
Overall, the night was fantastic. To top it off, it was my teacher's birthday, so we all sang 'Happy Birthday.' Now we're ready to start preparing for Prism - our Christmas concert - on Thursday. Prism's going to be a lot of fun because we're combining all the Fine Arts on a snowy night in December (hopefully). The finale of that concert - since I went last year - will be spectacular because everyone involved will be playing!

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Symphony Updates

October 13, 2012 10:10

Remember that symphony I began in May? (Well, I restarted it in July, but still...) Well, after finishing it on my birthday (mid-August), I had some trouble trying to figure out how to edit it. Now it's October, and I had showed my symphony to several teachers. Sometime this week (obviously after the weekend is over), I may sit down with them and we will go through my symphony together. I've already begun my true editing. After learning about different things in AP Music Theory, I know a lot more than I did then, and my teacher suggested I go through and analyze my piece. That's what I've been doing. For example, at the beginning the bass starts on G when it should start on a C, because the piece is in C Major. There's also two measures that, when I wrote it in the summer, I guessed on. Basically, it's a modulated D# Minor melody. I've kind of smoothed that section out a little bit when editing today. So obviously, with my symphony, there are plenty of things I can work on, and it's due on November 1st, I hope to finalize everything before Halloween!

Our first orchestra concert of the year is on Tuesday, October 16. Panic in the streets! :)

No, not really. We're playing Mendelssohn's Symphony X, Orion and the Scorpion, which just came out this year, and Rosin Eating Zombies from Outer Space. (I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before, but here it is again.)

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The New A String

October 9, 2012 16:42

I popped open my violin case today during orchestra when I discovered my A string had snapped off the bridge and was hanging on the scroll! I had to use my teacher's violin, both for the orchestra class and for my private lesson half an hour later, and I don't think we hit it off very well at all. Luckily, we were able to go to PM Music at 5:30pm to get a new A string. The worker there checked all my other strings, but they seemed to be staying on pretty well. It's odd; whenever a string is broken, it's ALWAYS my A string, and I just recently replaced my strings in the summer. Oh, well. Not a huge deal. But just one I thought I'd mention. :)

And our first orchestra concert of the year is next week! Expect a post then! :)

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La Primavera

October 6, 2012 10:37

Jingle bells and snow combine
As snowballing hymns are heard
Linus plays Beethoven sonatas
And the timpani crackles softly.

That lovely string quartet
Playing Vivaldi’s Spring
At the crack of dawn with the rising sun
With violin birds twittering.

When orchestras show films
At the ocean waves of the conductor
Blue flutes clash black tombones
As Frodo’s epic journey is heard.

Notes next fall from the sky
Splashed on the skeletal page
Screaming strings and pounding pianos
All on Halloween night.

It’s a symphony that’s all around us
Morning, noon, or night
Whether in movies or in concert halls
It binds us all together in extraordinary delight!

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October Practice

October 1, 2012 18:57

It's been a while since I've actually talked about what I've been doing each day when I take my violin out of its case, and because it's October 1st, I figured I'd give you all a quick update.

In Symphonic Strings, the name of the orchestra I am in, we are playing three pieces. One "Rosin Eating Zombies from Outer Space," is an easy piece we are playing with middle schoolers at some point in time this year, I don't know exactly when. It's a pretty cool piece, complete with various effects you can do on the violin such as glissandos and a percussion effect in which you bounce the bow between the bridge and tuner pegs of the violin. It's actually pretty cool! Our other two pieces, Mendelssohn's "Sinfonia X in B Minor" and "Orion and the Scorpion", recently published in 2012, in fact, are also pretty awesome pieces. Our concert is in mid-October, so it's coming up quickly!

I did mention the Christmas medley in one of September's posts. It's written for two pianos (well, technically, four hands), one (solo) violin, and jingle bells. I've been playing through it a little. I'm hoping to play it at the Christmas piano recital, although I don't know if I'm playing violin (I may have a friend play) or 1st (most likely) piano. But still, I've been steadily practicing this piece whenever I have time.

Finally, I have whatever I'm doing in my violin lesson (right now, I just finished up a violin solo), and our technique etudes. But in a nutshell, that's what's been my agenda last month!

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