Summer Musical Performances!

Written by Joshua Iyer
Published: July 29, 2014 at 8:53 PM [UTC]

This morning, we had our final dress rehearsal for Shrek the Musical - the cast with full costumes on-set, and, of course, the Pit. At yesterday's rehearsal, I was missing some of the cues, but I got those today. I'm feeling quite good about opening night tomorrow. We have six performances Wednesday through Saturday. It's been tiring, playing violin for two hours almost straight, but it feels fairly normal now, which is good, because maybe I'll be able to have longer practice sessions - especially since I'm going to have to be working on my violin concerto. (By the way, I'm almost finished with the whole piece; I've changed the ending and extended several sections, but I think I'll be done soon, and I may put the MIDI on YouTube to share.)

On Sunday (the 27th), I spent some time orchestrating music for a racing game I might make for a Christmas present this holiday season. (It's a long way away, I know, but hear me out!) One track is an original piece for a course I'll design myself; the other track is an arrangement of music from Super Mario Kart for the Super Nintendo. I thought, in light of what Mario Kart 8 did, I could write and record as many instruments as possible to give the game's soundtrack a live feel. The violin has a lot of the melody for both pieces, and I've also included prominent guitar and piano parts. In addition, the Mario Kart track has a ton of percussion, so I'm hoping my percussion friend will be willing to help and will have fun playing it in the future. I'll probably work and mention more on this later in the year, but I just wanted to bring it up now real quick.

Sorry for not having any 'intelligent insights', I guess you could say, or articles that discuss various approaches to the violin and music (it's been mostly updates and such). However, I do hope you're enjoying reading about my violin and musical life all the same. :P

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