Violin

My violan teacher suggested that I work on the first two pages of vivaldi's violin concerto in G minor found in suzuki violin book 5 this week. There are four pages. My violan teacher believes that it is better to have the notes polished than to learn new notes and not have the notes from previous parts of the piece be up to their full potential.

In my opinion, this violin concerto is actually quite easy. There are just a couple parts for me that need a little tidying up. The measures on pages 1 & 2 that I find need a bit more attention are: 36-47, 65-75, and 84-95. For the last couple of days, I have been just zipping on through the first two pages of the concerto, not polishing up the suggested parts. I would call the last couple of days of violin practice anything but progressive.

I knew I needed to solve this problem, so I came up with another practicing technique!

What I did was I decided to rephotocopy the first two pages. Then, I cut out each line, stacked them all together, and shuffled them together! What this does is it allows you to focus on just the notes on the small sliver of paper! 

If you are going to do this, photocopy your reportoire first! Do not cut up your reportoire with all of your markings!!! Also, if you have already memorized parts of your reportoire that are not on the lines, then this excercise might not work for you, but if you think this excercise is going to help you, then you will need to force yourself to stop playing once you have gotten to the end of the line!

I hope this helps!! Happy practicing over this fine summer!!!

Viola

Today was the last day of Raspberry Ridge! We also had our recital!

Orchestra: Good, good.

Ensemble: We got our group together, we thought we were going to be fine!

Free time: Last couple of minutes to practice as a quartet without the cello.

Choir: Boring...but not with Kendall around!

Lunch: We had a guestspeaker that could sing and whistle at the same time!

Sectionals: Fine!

Tennis: I lost every match! Yay me!

Theory: I got to take home a timeline that will become quite useful when school comes around again!

Snack: We had to leave early!

Our quartet peice at the performance: I thought I did terrible! I got really nervous! I hit all the right notes but my bow wouldn't stop shaking! It was awful! I also forgot to repeat a section! I need to find out how to get less nervous! The audience said we did great! My dad who has musically inclined hearing said he heard the first violin (ehem, ehem) make tons of mistakes and not me! Well, this year's chamber peice was better than last year's! Last year, I froze up during our chamber performance! I need to find out how to get less nervous!

Viola

Penultimate Day of Raspberry Ridge! I hope I spelled that right!

Orchestra went well. I think we will be okay for our performance. My ear started bleeding again, so I missed 10% of rehearsal!

During ensemble, I thought we were fine! We will do great during tomorrow's performance!

Snack was normal. I don't even remember what we ate today.

During free time, I practiced Bach's Cello Suite in G Major 1st movement. I sounded fine. I have been practicing that peice for a long time. I have been practicing that peice for a long time because I might audition for MYCO on that piece.

Choir practice was awesome with Kendall!

For lunch, we had a little recital by the Pendergraft siblings! One played the violin while the other played the cello. They played 1D & Wade in the Water! They did great!

After Lunch, I had sectionals! We are fine!

I played tennis! I lost and won a match! Yay Kt!

Theory was interesting too! 

For snack, we had these awesome strawberry shortcake bars!

 If you ever find these in a store or if someone offers these to you, take it! No exceptions!

Soccer was fun! Then I went to my lessons! It was awesome! I learned so much!

Viola

Third day of Raspberry Ridge!

Orchestra: We practiced Handel's Messiah. I practiced that as soon as I got home today!

Ensemble: I got some help from a fellow violist named Hannah! She helped me out during free time! If Hannah & I have one thing in common it's that we both know that our quartet recital is now less than 72 hours away & that we have to pull it together! At this point, I don't care if our first violinist is getting all the notes (yes, he says he practices, but nobody is perfect) I just care about myself getting all the solo parts!

During free time, Hannah helped me out with the viola solo part-in front of everyone on the camp's basketball court, but being that there were ensembles everywhere and a private teacher helping each and every one of our qaurtet members, it wasn't very unusual.

"It's not the music that you remember, it's the people."-Hannah

During choir rehearsal, Kendall and I were separated. Very clever, conductor. I never saw that coming!

During lunch, Dr. Holly was a guest speaker. He spoke about his hidden talent which is how he had memorized the dates of when composers were born and when they died. He memorized quite a lot of composers. However, I stumbled him on Viotti (1755-1824)! I need to remember to ask him next year to see if he will remember!

Ensemble: Normal!

Tennis: I learned that our tennis instructor, Clare, was learning Spanish because her husband is Bolivian. I talked to her some en Español.

Theory: I explained the definition of vernacular. Vernacular is the local language of a location. For example, if someone in, let's say, Germany, says their Bible is written in vernacular, that means that their Bible is written in German! I also talked to Ms. Boyce about Ms. Bierk. I hope she is doing better! If it weren't for Ms. Bierk, I wouldn't be where I am now!

Free time: We had a guest speaker named Chisun. She had a very inspiring story to tell. She talked about her story of how she became a believer in God. She talked about how she was applying for colleges and how she kept on getting letters back saying "we can't accept you into our college". The more rejection letters she kept on recieving, the less she started believing in God. Chisun soon came to a point where she thought this whole God thing was bogas. Chisun soon got accepted into UNC. She didn't really want to go to UNC, but soon figured out the reason God decided to put her there. As a college, UNC has the second largest Christian community. That is why God put her there, so she could return to her faith. Chisun told everyone that she would be happy to talk to anyone abot their problems and I decided to talk to her. I talked to her about my whole chaamber story and she gave me her advice:

"they can practice for hours, for days, or maybe not at all, but Kt shall be the one that will end up excelling!"-Chisun

That was my day. Thank you Chisun!

Viola

Today was my second day of Raspberry Ridge camp.

First we had orchestra rehearsal. We practiced Jenkin's Palladio (easy!), Dvorak's Waltz in A major (medium), and Handel's Messiah (I had to sight read that, but everything was okay). It was a good rehearsal.

I then had ensemble practice. I thought that I had my viola solos in our quartet down, but I was wrong. I individually told our coach that I would like to play the viola solos for him so he could tell me what I could do better on them & for some reason everyone else in the quartet had to stop and listen. I got nervous and all of last night's practice went to waste. Just the fact that we have about 72 hours until our concert scares me. Time is running out! To be honest, I really hope that our first violin is practicing, or else we are dead. That ruined my day (and my self-esteem).

I then had free period. I did some more art. Yesterday, I started painting a Day Lily.

See the red part? Well, everything about my painting was perfect (in my standards) until I started painting in the red part. Now it is ruined! That's the one thing I hate about art. If you mess up one tiny detail, you end up messing up everything!

I then had choir. I got to sit by my friend Kendall! We had so much fun making jokes that one of the counselors had to come over and tell us to be quiet! Made my day!

Then I had lunch. Kendall & I decided to try dipping veggi sticks into vanilla yogurt. It didn't taste like anything. We then dipped pretzels in the vanilla yogurt. That was awesome! We were so loud during lunch. All we talked about was food!

After lunch, I had ensemble. I got the Halelluia down. Yay me.

After ensemble, I had tennis. I made such a fool of myself, but it's always good to try something new everyday!

I then had theory. In my opinion, it is the most boring class I have ever attended. I really was thinking about skipping, but I have never skipped class before; I consider skipping class to be a taboo. 

Don't skip class! 

Ten minutes into theory, we got cut short because a priest from the Chapel Hill Bible Church was here to pray and give us a sermon. That didn't mean that class was cut short. But today's class was better than I thought. We talked about how Shiniki Suzuki met Einstein. It was very interesting! We also talked about the history of music and history in general through an amazing timeline. 

Camp was over. I played soccer. Life is good.

Viola

Today was my first day at Raspberry Ridge Strings Camp!

First, we had orchestra! It went better than I expected! I hate to brag, but I was second viola- only because there were 3 violas. 

Next, we had ensemble. I am playing viola in a quartet. Our Quartet piece is K421 4th movement by Mozart.

I really need to work on the viola solos- for the fourth millionth time! 

Next we had snack, chips & salsa. Then we had choir. It was fun. It started raining intensely. Then we had lunch, we got dismissed early from choir practice. After lunch we had sectional practice. We talked about the fact that the counselours might take out the Dvorak waltz. I really don't know what to say to that. The violins sounded really good downstairs when they were doing sectionals. The viola part is easier. Then, I had theory. I wish I could have kept that timeline. When I was getting out of theory, I learned from my friend Kendall that my viola and her violin were made by the same maker-Antonio Fiorini. I can't figure out whether that is a coincidence or not. No wonder they looked so similar! I then had tennis, but since it was raining, we played ping-pong. I got hit in the face. Then, I had theory, whoops mix-up in my schedule. Then, one of the teachers at the camp Ms. Boyce, showed us her old violins. They were really cool! Then we went home.

I must practice.

Viola

Tomorrow is when Raspberry Ridge Strings Camp starts! This is going to be my second year attending! I will try to blog everyday about how things are going! I want to do this because sometimes last year, the camp was very stressful music-wise & I really didn't have an outlet. I have really hard music this year! I am most worried about our quartet! I also hope that I am not put in the front of the orchestra!

Should I or Shouldn't I?

I am having a bit of a problem here.

I am both a violinist and a violist, but I am thinking about completely switching over to viola. I have been thinking about this for a long time. I have a few reasons to back up my maybe-soon-to-be decision.

1. Less people play viola. More opportunities! I remember a couple of weeks ago, I went to go visit our local violan shop, and a violin teacher was retrieving her violin. I remember her telling me this: "Violists sometimes have a reputation for being terrible violinists. However, if you embrace the viola, you will always have a home." Those words hit me. They inspired me!

2. I will excell further with viola. some people that I know that play multiple instruments are really not as good as, lets say, the cello than other people. That is because they can never focus their full time on that one instrument. It's one thing people really overlook.

3. I really have no reason to continue studying violin. I am a violist in all my orchestras, all of my recitals are just viola repertiore, and I only audition on viola. I wanted to audition for ERO on viola AND violin next year, but once I think about it, there is really no point in trying out on violin. When I came home after our ERO orchestra concert, I was all over the violin parts (both 1st and second). I just thought they were so cool because there were some pretty awesome chords in there & the violins always had the main melody. I promised that next year, I would audition on both violin and viola, because I wanted to get a really good seating. Now that I think about it, I really don't want to. There's no point in doing that. 

4. My Best Friend has Done that too! My best friend (not giving out any names!) before she rose into high school as a freshman/freshwoman (just like me!), she was an excellent violinist! She was the eigth grade concert master for her middle school! She came into high school and one of her orchestra mentors recommended that she should start studying viola. She did that. She bought herself an awesome viola (I mean it, it looks and sounds amazing!). She is in some awesome ensembles and she is just an inspiration to me! She dropped violin when viola become more of a thing she did in orchestras. She is an awesome violist! I basically have the same story, except I am not as musically inclined as her.

The only things that I have as con arguments for not continuing to study violin is I hang my violin on a wall. I just play viola and I never take it off. I feel as if I am neglecting it. A nice violin just hanging on a wall for eternity makes me sad.

My goal this summer is when I come back to school, and I play viola for the school orchestra again, I want people to NOTICE that I have made some progress. That I have improved. Will completely switching over from violin to viola help me or hurt me? Please tell me what you think in the comments below!

I think this awesome quote sums up how I feel with viola being my second love.

Viola

I would like to introduce the newest member to my family!

After some tough negotiation and some support from my grandma, I was finally able to get a viola that my skills deserved!

I will compare for you both my violin & my viola!

My violin:

1.) The greatest gift that I have ever asked for.

2.) It's from Italy! It's a copy of the guadagnini! It was made in the year 2011!

3.) I like to put ribbons on it!

4.) It lives on my wall!

5.) It has the awesomest case in the world! It's the case on top of the shaped blue case!

6.) I bought it from the Chapel Hill Violin Shop!

7.) I am never ever selling it! That violin is mine forever and if you somehow steal it from me, I will hunt you down because not only are you stealing a hunk of wood, you are also stealing my passion, my voice, my outlet, and my future!

My viola!

It's the bigger looking one on the left! 

1.) We are going to go places like never before!

2.) It's also from Italy! It is an Antonion Fliorini! It was made in 2011!

3.) I will put ribbons on it, when I find the right colors for it!

4.) It lives on my wall!

5.) I am picking up the case on Tuesday, since tomorrow is Labor Day!

6.) I also bought it from the Chapel Hill Violin shop!

7.) This thing is my life! I love it so much! If you steal it, I will act as if I am looking for my kidnapped family! I will hunt you down & I will not fail!

I love my Violans!

Violin

This was an article that for some reason, didn't get published, so here it is!

Yesterday and last Friday, I went to my first Suzuki workshop. There were so many people there! Ranging from all ages, and all Suzuki books 1-5 and advanced peices too like Sicillienne.
However, believe it or not, the little kids and everyone else are ahead of me! Why? Because I started with orchestra music in eighth grade! I didn't even know most of the suzuki peices by memory!
So after the concert, I became inspired to completely learn & memorize all Suzuki peices from books 1 and 2. By doing this I infered:

-I would become a better violinist because it would help build my memorization skills

-By next year, I would completely know most of the peices by heart.

My practicing ideas:

Starting from Suzuki volume 1, every week I would have a suzuki violin song every week that I will have to learn and memorize.  For example, the song of the week would be Lightly Row or May song. By the time the week has finished, I would completely know the song by heart.





Terry Durbin's website:

http://www.timothydurbin.com/Site/Welcome.html

Link to another practice blog!

So, I just got an email for registration that strings camp registration deadline is the 19th of this month. It's a great camp in NC, it lasts a whole week!

So I scrolled down (it was a long email), and I found a link to a practice blog! I don't know how to follow it, so I will just save the link here for myself and anyone else! Does anyone know how to do that?

http://www.privatelessonmatters.blogspot.com/

Everyone is Different!

I love listening to the Four Seasons! One of my favorite movements is movement 3 (presto) from the summer concerto! Why? Because it is so fast, and it requires a ton of effort to be able to play it! I love listening to my favorite virtuosos play this movement because they all play how they see a summer storm (that's another name for that movement!) in their perspective!

I have picked 5 of my favorite virtuosos! All of them are playing the same movement! I can't decided which one I like best! Enjoy!

You can tell that Janine Jansen told the orchestral accompaniment to play strong and make sure this movement would suck out the energy of every string player! Janine Jansen has added double stops to her solo! That is genius! Janine Jansen is an extremely hardcore virtuoso violinist!

There are 2 movements shown in the video, it's the first one that's the 3rd movement that we are focusing on! Anne-Sophie Mutter hates blending in! She wants everyone to know of her existence! Anne-Sophie Mutter has extended the notes! She uses more bow! She makes her violin sing in the extremely rapid parts of the movement! This is music!

This is the first video that I listened to of a virtuoso playing the 3rd movement. I love all of these virtuosos to death, but I love Sarah Chang the most of them all! I am most inspired by Sarah Chang! Unlike Anne-Sophie Mutter, Sarah usually blends in rather than standing out (another good example of this is her performance of the winter concerto!). I love that!

Like Janine Jansen, Joshua Bell has added double stops to his performance of the 3rd movement!  Like Anne-Sophie Mutter, he makes his violin sing in the first solo after the first tutti! Look at him go!

Itzak Perlman has slowed down the tempo a little bit! I love this because it allows the audience to absorb the pure beauty of the notes even more than if the 3rd movement is being played at it's normal quick tempo! Slowing down the tempo has allowed Perlman to add in a little more variation to his solo parts!

NEXT EXAMPLE: CARMEN'S FANTASY!

CARMEN'S FANTASY! I LOVE THIS! I want to learn to play this so badly!

Anyway, Sarah Chang! This is her version of Carmen's Fantasy! You may notice that Sarah Chang had to mash up this 12 minute violin concerto into a 5 minute music video! I love this music video! Obviously, she blended in!

Notice the contrast between the two virtuosos! Anne-Sophie Mutter is performing the full concerto! Notice how she has slowed down the tempo in order to add her own variation to the concerto!

EXAMPLE 3: THAIS MEDITATION!

Joshua Bell's performance.

Sarah Chang's performance. I cried when I first heard this. No joke!

Janine Jansen's performance. One of the best out there! 

Itzak Perlman's performance!

Anne Sophie Mutter's performance!

Staying Focused While Practicing

When you are practicing, have you ever just lost track of what part of a piece you are practicing? Do you ever just start practicing a section of the piece and just trail off and play the piece until you get to the end of it? This is very common, especially for me! I have always found these tips helpful whenever I practice! I'm not going to say that they are my own because I'm very sure that other people have come up with these ideas way before me! 

1. Set a goal: Let's say you usually practice for 30 or up to an hour (or maybe more!). Let's say you are practicing something as difficult as maybe Bach's Concerto in A minor. It is impossible to master that piece in a day! At least that is how it is for me! This goes for all pieces that are the same level of difficulty, or maybe even harder.

My friend told me that you just can't say to yourself, "today, I want to learn to play all of this!" 

You have to set a goal! 

I have to learn Bloch's Meditation for viola because I have to record it so I can be in this certain awesome ensemble group. Being that the person that wants the recording wants it ASAP, I thought to myself, "hmmm, well spring break goes from March 29th to April 8th. I bet I could learn the piece in at least 5 days if I focus! I could count how many measures there are in the piece and then I could divide that number by five! That's perfect! I will make a checklist of what to learn each day! Sounds like a plan to me!"

This plan is helpful for any work you are studying because it allows you to focus on certain part of the work and master it! 

Another thing I do is I make a this-week's-practice-priorities checklist for both violin and viola. This helps me know what I need to focus on throughout the week. 

Also, make sure these goals are attainable. I go to high school, I have homework too, so my parents only let me practice for half an hour after I come home from school, so I only get 15 minutes of practice on each instrument! That is so little! I tell myself, okay what can I do in 15 minutes? For violin, I will usually practice my scales for 5 minutes, then for 10 minutes, I will practice a small section of a piece I am working on. Same goes for viola.

2. Make a checklist out of your peice: This does not fall into the same category as tip #1 because it's making a checklist out of your piece! I do this to a lot of my pieces! Observe the picture:

Do you see on the side next to each clef, a little box, some with a little check inside of them? Those are where the check boxes are supposed to go! What I find so cool about this idea is depending on how much you want to learn each day (let's say you want to learn 3 lines a day), there are two ways of mastering this! You can go through the piece in an orderly fashion from top to bottom of the page. Another way you can use the checklist is you can do random lines without worrying about the order. I usually do this randomly because I usually want to master a piece in at least two week's time, and I want to master the hard parts of the piece first before I master the really easy parts. I sometimes go through a piece and go "WHOA! That line looks really hard! Must master it!" I usually get it.

Before checking off each line, I ask myself 3 questions:

"Did I get the fingerings down?"

"Is my bowing correct?"

"If Sarah Chang (AH! MY IDOL!) was listening to this, would she be impressed, would she find this boring, or would she not want to listen to it at all?"

Then I check it off!

3. The power of a piece of paper: A piece of paper can have a printed piece on it, you can do your homework on it, you can read it, you can make a checklist out of it! What else could you do? Use a piece of paper to cover other pieces of paper, of course!

Before I came up with this idea (I'm very sure someone has come up with it way before I did!), I would always be playing a certain part of a piece and instead of focusing on mastering those certain couple of measures, two things could happen to me. I would either be like, "WHATEVER! I'll ask my private teacher for help on this & everything will be fine! NEXT MEASURE!" or I would just play until I got to the end of the piece! This is wrong! 

One day, I decided that I wasn't getting anything done and that enough was enough! I thought to myself, "I have to stay focused on this certain part or I will never master it!" I looked around my room and noticed my gigantic stack of loose-leaf paper. I grabbed a piece. I covered the whole music piece with that piece of paper. What I do is I have one line of music shown and the rest of the piece is covered with the sheet of paper. This allows me to focus on one line of music and not trail off! When I think I have mastered the line, again I ask myself the three questions:

"Did I get the fingerings down?"
"Is my bowing correct?"

"If I had to audition and play this certain line, would the judges be impressed? Or would they just be like 'uuhhh....YOU CAN GO NOW!'?"

Practice tip #3 is usually a tip you could use if you really need to stay focused and practice tip #2 just doesn't work at all! 

I hope this helped! Happy practicing!

OhMyGawsh!! I Have An Audition Tomorrow!!

False alarm, I don't, but when most people do, this is probably what goes through most peoples' heads (does this sound like you?):

The fact that you have practiced your scales and your solo peice like crazy and you know you know everything you need to know, but are afraid that you will mess up anyway in front of the judges.

The fact that you only get one opportunity to get into a particular ensemble, and if you mess up, the judges won't give you a second chance, NO EXCEPTIONS.

This is quite a common problem when auditions just pop right out of a corner.

About a month ago, I was participating in the North Carolina Eastern Regional Orchestra. You have to audition to get in, and I remember just feeling all this pressure coming at me; this was the first time I have auditioned for this type of orchestra! You do not know how happy I was when I found out I got in! 

During our clinic, our conductor, Jim Waddelow, was talking to us about things that get in the way of having the perfect audition! I can't believe I still remember these, but I found it so helpful that I had to blog about it!

1. Wash your hands in alcohol: Not so much alcohol that a person can smell it from 10 miles. Washing your hands in alcohol (the type you buy at the pharmacy to clean wounds) will help improve your performance because if you get sweaty hands, the alcohol will keep your hands completely dry! 

2. Excercise the day before: If your heart rate skyrocks hours (or maybe even minutes) before your audition, then I recommend you do this! Go running! Go swimming! Take an aerobics class! Cycle around your neighborhood! Do something that will make you tired! If you excercise the day before, this makes it so your normal heart rate is the one that you had while and after you were excercising, it takes away some of that unnecessary energy for the audition! I hope that made sense!

3. Eat A Banana: He had a good reason on why this helps if you eat a banana the morning before an audition. I wish I remembered!

I hope this helped!!! 

"Don't blend in, STAND OUT!" -anonymous

Inspiring quote, but it doesn't mean standing out is always the way to go, especially when it comes to blending your sound into ensembles.

Most musicians know that if you play an instrument in any type of ensemble is to make it as if the ensemble is just a couple, or maybe even one instrument playing. This is what I call blending in (refer to the quote). Being able to achieve this can turn out to be quite a struggle for musicians. I struggle with blending in all the time!

The reason decided to make this blog post was because I have been thinking about a solution to this common struggle for quite a while. Then, all these ideas came to me! Just like that! I had to write them down before I forgot them! These ideas help me, but let me remind you, I have quite a crazy mind when it comes to giving advice!

1. Observe: Of course this is what the majority of the musician do when the recieve any new peice of music. However, if you struggle with blending in, then you are probably just staring at the notes. Not to get you wrong, you're doing the right thing if you are looking at the notes before having to sight-read a new peice! However, you are missing other important parts of the peice that make it an ensemble peice! For example, the dynamics of a peice! If you play a note with a forte dynamic while the peice says to play with a piano dynamic, this is when standing out isn't cool! I have seen this happen all the time, it happens to me! 

There is a reason that the composer that wrote your ensemble music placed that certain dynamic in that certain measure! It is our job as musicians to express the feelings that the composer was feeling while writing that peice of music! It is our job as musicians to learn to express those feelings that the composer was feeling to an audience! If the peice tells you to play forte, maybe the composer was feeling angry! However, if you play the indicated forte dynamic as piano, then you are not doing a good job at expressing the composer's feelings that were felt in the work!

Also, don't just observe what is going on in the sheet music, observe what the players of a higher chair are doing! Notice what the principal player is doing, or maybe what the concertmaster is doing! For if you blend in, everyone will follow suit, and now everyone sounds as one!

2. Ask for Help: The more you ask for help, the better a musician you will become! There is a reason you take private lessons! When it comes to blending into an ensemble, some people are afraid to ask for help because they are afraid that they are asking a stupid question! There are no such things as stupid questions! Ask away, because no one is judging you, for they know you are trying to fix up your mistakes to makes a classical work transform into solid perfection! Good questions to ask would be:

"What dynamic are you playing this part in?"

or

"How fast are you playing this part?"

3. Listen to others: Listen to music made by renown ensembles. Watch some quartet performances on Youtube! Buy some classical music off of Itunes! Buy some cd recordings of ensembles! Observe how their parts all seem to blend into one! You will learn from this to become a better player in an ensemble by becoming inspired by these musicians!

(Whoa! I've never seen a viola like that before!) 

Not only that, if you have friends that play in ensembles, ask when their next concert is so you can go watch them play! Last week, I went to go watch my friend play for her ensembles, and I loved the way they took blending in very seriously; the ensemble(s) sounded great! Just watching my friend play drives me to become a better musician! 

I hope my advice helped! Wow, pretty good first serious blog post!